From Indians we learned a toughness and a strength; and we gained
A freedom: by taking theirs: but a real freedom: born
From the wild and open land our grandfathers heroically stole.
But we took a wound at Indian hands: a part of our soul scabbed over.
We learned the pious and patriotic art of extermination
And no uneasy conscience where the man’s skin was the wrong
Color; or his vowels shaped wrong; or his haircut; or his country possessed of
Oil; or holding the wrong place on the map–whatever
The master race wants it will find good reasons for having.
–Thomas McGrath, Letter to an Imaginary Friend, Part Two
Awyn, I'm happy to have steered you to a poet who's new to you. There's nothing like the pleasure of such discoveries.<br /><br />And Bob, what a wonderful memory! Serendipity is sweet and seems to help poets out fairly frequently. I wish I'd had the opportunity to meet McGrath. Lyle Daggett has some fine memories of him on his blog <a href="http://aburningpatience.blogspot.com/
I lived in North Dakota for years, about 70 miles north of Thom, appreciating his work but never thinking he was 'known'. At one writers' conference at the Univ. of North Dakota, I was in charge of Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Corso, and others on the stage of a panel discussion when McGrath asked a question from the very back of a crowded room. Ferlinghetti, shading his eyes, asked "
I like that poets share other poets' work on their blogs, letting the words themselves entice the reader to investigate further, and how else would I have found out that this poem took 30 years to write but has never appeared in print as a single volume? Thirty years on a single poem!! McGrath is described as a poet with humor, and an "astonished observer awed by beauty and sadness and