{"id":1500,"date":"2015-09-16T00:00:29","date_gmt":"2015-09-16T04:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/mission-and-identity\/?p=1500"},"modified":"2019-09-18T16:49:18","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T20:49:18","slug":"sept-16-kathleen-norris-dakota-a-spiritual-geography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2015\/09\/16\/sept-16-kathleen-norris-dakota-a-spiritual-geography\/","title":{"rendered":"Sept 16 – Kathleen Norris — “Dakota: A Spiritual Geography”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday\u00a0 September 16\u00a0 –\u00a0 ” To attach oneself to place is to surrender to it, and suffer with it.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Author Kathleen Norris writes prose and poems that cut deep into ordinary lived reality.\u00a0\u00a0 In 1974, after living her way into New York City\u2019s world of poetry with mentoring from the legendary Betty Kray at the Academy of American Poets (http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1987\/11\/24\/obituaries\/elizabeth-kray-patron-and-friend-of-poets-and-their-art-dies-at-71.html<\/a>) Kathleen and her husband shocked their peers by moving to Lemmon in northwestern South Dakota where Kathleen had inherited the family home of her grandmother.\u00a0 They stayed a long time.<\/p>\n

In 1993 her Dakota: A Spiritual Geography<\/span> took the literary world by storm.\u00a0 Took me by storm too.\u00a0 If a short book of micro essays, some only half a page, ever approaches the taught, lean focus of strong poetry, for me this is the book.\u00a0 In those South Dakota years she also formed a deep friendship with the Benedictine Monastery at St. Johns in Minnesota and wrote several memoirs about the intersection of her secularity with deepening roots in Benedictine prayer and wisdom.<\/p>\n

Why, I wonder, did she come to mind in the middle of last night?\u00a0 This sort of question refreshes the imagination because it has no tidy answer.\u00a0\u00a0 Anyway, I am glad she visited me today.\u00a0 Think of these short quotes from Dakota<\/span> as poems, try reading them out loud.<\/p>\n

Have a blest day.<\/p>\n

john sj<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s Post\u00a0 four texts from Dakota<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOnce, when I was describing to a friend from Syracuse, New York, a place on the plains that I love, a ridge above a glacial moraine with a view of almost fifty miles, she asked, “But what is there to see?” The answer, of course, is nothing. Land, sky, and the ever-changing light.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe the desert wisdom of the Dakotas can teach us to love anyway, to love what is dying, in the face of death, and not pretend that things are other than they are. The irony and wonder of all of this is that it is the desert’s grimness, its stillness and isolation, that brings us back to love.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be an American is to move on, as if we could outrun change. To attach oneself to place is to surrender to it, and suffer with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

“For me, walking in a hard Dakota wind can be like staring at the ocean: humbled before its immensity, I also have a sense of being at home on this planet, my blood so like the sea in chemical composition, my every cell partaking of air. I live about as far from the sea as is possible in North America, yet I walk in a turbulent ocean. Maybe that child was right when he told me that the world is upside-down here, and this is where angels drown.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Dakota\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Norris\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kathleen Norris<\/strong>\u00a0(born in Washington, D.C. on July 27, 1947) is a best-selling poet and essayist. Her parents, John Norris and Lois Totten, took her as a child to\u00a0Hawaii<\/a>, where she graduated from Punahou Preparatory School in 1965. After graduating from\u00a0Bennington College<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Vermont<\/a>\u00a0in 1969, Norris became arts administrator of the\u00a0Academy of American Poets<\/a>, and published her first book of poetry two years later.[1]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0In 1974 she inherited her grandparents’ farm in\u00a0Lemmon, South Dakota<\/a>, moved there with her husband David Dwyer, joined Spencer Memorial\u00a0Presbyterian<\/a>\u00a0church, and discovered the spirituality of the\u00a0Great Plains<\/a>.[2]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0She entered a new, non-fictional phase in her literary career after becoming a\u00a0Benedictine<\/a>\u00a0oblate<\/a>\u00a0at\u00a0Assumption Abbey \u00a0 ND<\/a>\u00a0in 1986, and spending extended periods at\u00a0Saint John’s Abbey<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Collegeville, Minnesota<\/a>.[3]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0Since the death of her husband in 2003, Norris has transferred her place of residence to\u00a0Hawaii<\/a>, though continuing to do lecture tours on the mainland.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday\u00a0 September 16\u00a0 –\u00a0 ” To attach oneself to place is to surrender to it, and suffer with it.\u201d Author Kathleen Norris writes prose and poems that cut deep into ordinary lived reality.\u00a0\u00a0 In 1974, after living her way into … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11641],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1500"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1504,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500\/revisions\/1504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}