Ernest Hilbert

Poem of the Week, by Ernest Hilbert

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Friends, I’m teaching a FREE online workshop via Zoom next Friday, April 17, 1-4 pm Central time, for anyone who loved someone who died of suicide, substance abuse, or untreated mental or physical illness. Feel free to sign up for it even if you don’t exactly fit that definition – so many of us are deeply troubled right now, and you are all welcome in the Zoom room. No writing experience necessary. Email me if you’d like to register.

Last week Paco and I woke up early and spur of the moment decided to play hooky and follow the Mississippi south to the Driftless region of southeastern Minnesota and Wisconsin. I had never been to the famous little towns of Stockholm and Pepin and Maiden Rock and it was high time to remedy the situation.

In Pepin we wandered the streets of the tiny town, admiring its little shops and restaurants, almost all of them closed on a Monday. But wait, what was this shop? Oh my God, Alison, I thought, you HAVE been to Pepin before.

More than twenty years ago, when I was researching metalworking for my novel Shadow Baby, I looked up metalworkers in the Yellow Pages and drove to Pepin to interview a husband and wife team of metalworkers.

Tom and Kitty Latané are still at work, still making things out of metal that are beautiful and useful. Kitty and I chatted for a few minutes and I walked away, thinking about quilting and gardening and cooking, all things I love to do. The comfort and relief of slow skills.

Song, by Ernest Hilbert

A song for those who learn forgotten, slow
skills, crafts submerged long past by massed commerce,
by hard, dark, oily machines, and the din
of duplicates shipped by the millions, stowed
in cavernous depots to be dispersed
to each home, used once, and then binned.
This is for those who weave by hand, who brew
their own suds, and roll their own smokes, hammer
together shelves, print on presses, plant gardens
in vacant lots, raise beams, fire pots, the few
who challenge the swift, transient tenor
of the age, the lonely sincere wardens,
the last, noble pull of old ways restored,
valued and unwanted, admired and ignored.

For more information on Ernest Hilbert, please click here.

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My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Ernest Hilbert

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Once when my son was little I overheard him and some of his friends whispering in the doorway where they had snuck up to watch me type. “Is your mom the fastest typer in the whole world?” one of them said. “Yup,” my son said, “she is.” When it comes to typing all I want is speed, because then my fingers can outrace my thoughts and spin words out without thinking. But when it comes to cooking and quilting and gardening, slowness is what matters, physical labor that absorbs hands and muscles and lets thoughts wander free. (As I wrote that last sentence it just occurred to me that maybe speed and slowness are actually the same thing. Same coin, flip sides.) Poem of the Week, by Ernest Hilbert.

Song
– Ernest Hilbert

A song for those who learn forgotten, slow
skills, crafts submerged long past by massed commerce,
by hard, dark, oily machines, and the din
of duplicates shipped by the millions, stowed
in cavernous depots to be dispersed
to each home, used once, and then binned.
This is for those who weave by hand, who brew
their own suds, and roll their own smokes, hammer
together shelves, print on presses, plant gardens
in vacant lots, raise beams, fire pots, the few
who challenge the swift, transient tenor
of the age, the lonely sincere wardens,
the last, noble pull of old ways restored,
valued and unwanted, admired and ignored.

For more information on Ernest Hilbert, please click here: here.

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