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three novels by that time the alkali cliffs juniper s dragon and salt bear drafted after i d mastered the art of putting together an engrossing tale the key to the epic as a poetry form is not only the language though it is also that the poet is exploring massive themes in the odyssey the driving force of survival the power of home and the sacredness of hospitality xenia in paradise lost the high cost of disobedience to god and the path to redemption are among the massive themes woven through the stories in the weirding storm love and destruction loom as it treats love not just as an emotion but as a dangerous volatile form of magic capable of altering fates blurring the boundaries of mortal existence and countering total annihilation as dragons face extinction and humans struggle to become human in an american spirit the clash of cultural identities and ideologies as well as the mythical synchonocity of menominee myth and spirituality are put side by side with christian mythology in an exploration of the essence of spiritual identity and the mean of being an american writing epic poetry is an epic task 2 comments filed under essays poetry tagged as an american spirit books epic poetry epic stories formal epic poems formal iambic pentameter in epic poetry home kazantakis literature milton paradise lost poem poetry the odyssey the weirding storm writing august 12 2026 9 20 am beginnings an autobiography that recounts stories from a boyhood to events in indian country that changed native history and the united states of america finally after two years my autobiography of my years in western colorado and working at the menominee county community school and the menominee indian tribe has been published i have copies in hand that can be found or ordered in bookstores throughout the world and all major online venues like amazon or barnes and noble the book tells of growing up in delta and grand junction colorado my love affair with ethel mortenson davis still happily married after closing in on 59 years and so much history from the early 1970s that occurred because of the remarkable menominee leaders of those days resulting in the indian controlled schools movement and the restoration of the menominee tribe and the start of the dominance of the self determination era that changed the relationship of american indian tribes to state governments and the federal government i was a participant in what happened an observer part of the reason i wrote this book is to rescue a part of american education and american indian history that seems to be in danger of being lost the indian controlled schools movement was short lived but it was the spark that led to the creation of the tribal colleges and universities which i have played a part in moving forward all these decades and the contract schools operated by nearly every tribe in the country the innovations from that movement are still echoing throughout american education the history of the menominee restoration committee and its creation of the contemporary menominee indian tribe of wisconsin is every bit as important since this was one of the major foundations of the self dermination era in tribal and government relationships that changed the arc of american history there are also stories about the menominee indian warrior takeover of the alexian brother s novitiate outside of gresham wisconsin that made international news the rise of the posse comitatus in shawano county one of the first major right wing militia groups and how a handicapped colorado boy overcame his limitations and insecurities to find love the strength of indian values and indian people and a small place in the history of this country and its relationship to native people hopefully readers will find the history informative the stories exciting and understand that their lives have been impacted by what happened back then 1 comment filed under uncategorized tagged as alexian brother s novitiate american indian history american education autobiography culture education history indian controlled schools movement indigenous innovation in american education menominee indian tribe menominee restoration committee politics posse comitatus shawano thomas davis tribal colleges and universities writing august 8 2026 3 57 pm the meaning between the images ethel mortenson davis and the poetrics of juxtaposition i suppose i shouldn t be writing essays about ethel mortenson davis s poetry after all she s been my wife for close to 59 years now but what i ve noticed over the years is that too many people though obviously not everyone sees a poem of hers and feels a certain spark of delight at the image it sparks in their head a short poem she just wrote so many of her poems are short brought that to the front of my thoughts pollen sacs a frenzied flock of thrushes thin and desperately looking for food left us worried and wondering a bumble bee with huge pollen sacs attached to his legs struggles to fly homeward your eyes flash like so much of her poetry you can read this poem or better yet listen to ethel read it out loud and you can see the two images the starving flock of thrushes and the bumble bee with huge pollen sacs but the question is what is in the poem beyond the images years ago even before we were first married in grand junction colorado i learned to distrust my first reaction to both her poetry and her art what you see is inevitably there but if you leave what s there at that you probably are reacting to what s there rather than understanding the depth of what s there and the meaning in this particular poem it s easy to read the first stanza see that it is about thrushes frenzied in their desperate search for food go to the second stanza and see the word struggles and assume that it is a poem about creatures that are struggling maybe from the canadian or western u s wildfires so prominent in the world today certainly there is a layer in the poem that suggest that global climate change might be affecting the thrushes who are in a state where they are desperately looking for food but pollen sacs are larvae food providing essential protein fats and vitamins that baby bees need to grow a bumble bee struggling to carry two of them attached to his legs is not struggling in the sense the frenzied flock of thrushes are the bee has collected abundance and are struggling to get what it has gathered of richness found inside flowers it has visited home another element in the poem is that the pollen in the pollen sacs is essential to life on the planet earth since as the bee flies from flower to flower the pollen brushes off on the next flower helping with the pollination process that is necessary to so much food production around the world as well as the diversity of plant life that in turn feeds into the diversity of insects and animal life that keep the entire natural world vibrant therefore the poem is constructed of a parallelism one image juxtaposed with another this creates a complexity of meanings that admittedly demands some understanding of science but creates an even deeper level of poetic meaning exploring all kinds of issues overwhelming our current world therefore the poem does contain an implied warning the thrushes desperate for food leave us wondering why they are desperate what has caused that in a world that flows from the bee as part of the chain of events that creates diversity and even throughout so much of history fecundity in the natural world are they migrants from wildfire or severe drought or some other disaster the poem doesn t give us a clue it just gives us the image of a fact but it also gives us a lesson about bees and the larger importance of diversity in a time when the idea of protecting diversity found in either the natural world or human populations is under attack the bee with pollen sacs so heavy that it struggles to make it home causes your eyes to flash the bee is a symbol of hope it is flying home to feed the larvae that is going to propagate the hive into the next generation that hope is contrasted with the desperate flock of thrushes what looks like a simple image or even set of images is not always simple especially in poetry and art especially ethel s poetry and art the chinese tradition of poetry at the heart of what ethel tries to do in so much of her poetry does flow from two major sources the major one is the traditional chinese tradition of poetry where concrete images juxtaposition suggestion and meaning are generated through the relationship between images there needs to be an intuitive leap by the reader to take the images juxtaposition s and suggestions presented by the poem to discover the meaning of the poem in this sense the aesthetic convergence of a poem or even a work of art can be much more interesting and an act of discovery as direct influence in archibald macleish s poem ars poetica he claimed that a poem should mean not say although that s admittedly not the exact phrase from the poem poetry is not generally deductive science making hypotheses and then testing those until hard truths are either proven or disproven it is the art of seeing the universe in a blade of grass which comes out of walt whitman s line i believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars the imagistic tradition of poetry the second major continuity in ethel s body of work is the modern imagistic tradition starting with ezra pound pound had several ideas about what a poem should be when he first started writing about imagism according to pound a poem should direct treatment of the thing whether subjective or objective use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation as regarding rhythm compose in the sequence of the musical phrase not in sequence of a metronome in applying this sense of poetic construction pound defined an image which should at least in his view be at the heart of modern poetry as that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time that means that an image in poetry is made up of what we literally see an emotional response an intellectual recognition associations that aren t explicitly stated relationships to other images in ethel s poem pollen sacs the title leads us to notice that this is the central image the thrushes give us hunger desperation uncertainty and perhaps ecological disturbance the bumblebee gives us effort abundance fertility reproduction and continuity but the poem doesn t explain those things it presents them the reader experiences the relationship between them the value of empty space i want to end this essay by talking briefly about chinese art traditional chinese landscape painting often isn t about reproducing a landscape photographically it creates a relationship among elements mountain water tree mist human figure empty space so that the viewer enters the painting and completes the experience even in her abstract pastels and paintings ethel usually tries to do the same thing this is part of what relates her poetry to her art in her poetry she gives us the image or thing in pound s formulation in the case of pollen sacs we have the thrushes and the bumble bee then she leaves a conceptual space between them this is designed to lead us into first a visual and emotional reaction then to a question why are the images so different from each other which leads hopefully to thinking about the poem s meaning conclusion i suspect that this is what i have been learning from ethel for nearly 59 years i have learned not to rush to explain what i see in her poems or paintings either to myself or others i have learned to stay with the image for a while to look at what is there and then to pay attention to what is not there and to let others discover what they can find and understand for themselves the meaning is often in that space in pollen sacs the thrushes and the bumblebee never meet ethel doesn t tell us what connects them she doesn t tell us whether the thrushes are victims of a changing world whether the bee represents hope or whether the two images are part of some larger warning about the fragile web of life she gives us the images and leaves the space between them open leave a comment filed under essays ethel mortenson davis poems poetry tagged as archibald macleish books chinese poetry essay ethel mortenson davis ezra pound imagistic poetry nature poem poems poetry whitman writing august 3 2026 8 58 pm dance laugh and sing by thomas davis we dance we dance into infinity and laugh and sing our time bound life of songs as beauty swirls in butterflies and great wide plains that swarm with wildbeest that move and throng into time s boundaries as if time is a myth that doesn t limit life s continuance through generations that will spin and move and dance yes dance into the issuance of what must be forever true and real though death forever brings its day of doom when heartbeats fail and flowers lose their bloom and every one of us is set into our tomb so dance dance as infinity wheels stars across the skies and gifts us love and joy inside the room we live inside each day dance love be what you most enjoy 3 comments filed under poems poetry thomas davis tagged as dance eternity laugh poems shakespearean sonnet sing sonneteer july 11 2026 9 38 am beginnings is a different kind of memoir although beginnings the trail from a boyhood in western colorado to the indian controlled schools movement and restoration of the menominee indian tribe chronicles the work of the menominee restoration committee and the formation of formal tribal government after the termination era in american indian history helping usher in the era of indian self determination it is a different kind of book for one thing in the western colorado sections and in the chapters where i recount the magical love story between ethel mortenson davis the poet artist and my wondrous wife i integrate narrative poetry into the larger story of being born in the small town of delta our move to grand junction our marriage and early years together and finally my success in earning a teaching degree in history and english at the university of wisconsin oshkosh the other aspect of my story during these years was the struggle against physical handicaps caused by charcot marie tooth disease a hereditary disorder that affects much of my extended family the theme of how physical handicaps can affect american children growing up in a culture that extols exceptionalism while often denigrating intellectual and physical disabilities is i believe both powerful and universal i was fortunate that my particular affliction was one i learned somewhat shakily to overcome partially because of the glory of falling in love with ethel i am often asked whether i am american indian then after i answer another question follows how did a western colorado boy end up spending most of his life serving american indians through the indian controlled schools movement th...