It’s 2018–What Are You Reading?

I have always loved book recommendations: the summer reading lists our teachers gave us each May, the books chosen for Oprah’s Book Club—remember those? And recommendations found in newspapers and magazines. So, each year when the Nebraska Center for the Book announces its “One Book, One Nebraska” selection, I pay attention.

This year, that “One Book” we are encouraged to read is Nebraska Presence: An Anthology of Poetry. It’s published by Backwaters Press of Omaha, edited by Mary K Stillwell and Greg Kosmicki, and contains poetry from over 80 Nebraska poets. These include former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner, Ted Kooser, former and current state poets, Bill Kloefkorn and Twyla Hansen. As well as award winning poets Marjorie Saiser and Don Welch, and many others.

In population, Nebraska is a small state, but it is rich in poets. And what poems they write! Addressing topics such as mortality, a paradise on the Niobrara, and being on Nine Mile Prairie when news comes of the twin tower attack. There are poems about hawks, “an old fish feel[ing] its way up toward the morning,” potato soup, a funeral in a small town, supper, and “Our Lady of the Rest Stop.”

What does it mean to live in Nebraska—in a state of cities and small towns and vast expanses of land which seem to go on forever? A state with a complicated past and a fascinating and diverse present? Nebraska Presence helps to answer that question. “What Nebraska Presence provides,” Mary K Stilwell says, “like my hometown’s café on Stone Street, is an intergenerational meeting place for readers and poets to gather side by side and talk.”

To join in the discussion, and learn more about Nebraska Presence, you may visit, http://onebook.nebraska.gov/2018/news.aspx. Happy reading!