Arguably the most iconic American poet of the 20th Century, Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel stands without peer. Of German, Irish and Cherokee heritage, this extraordinary woman’s keen perspective through prose and poetry turned her life experiences into a wealth Wilma mined with a writer’s clarity, a poet’s insight, and a conviction and intensity etched through raw experience.
Picking up a pencil as a child of eight, Wilma transformed the wrenching reality of Depression-era hopelessness into a lifetime of writing steeped in hope, perseverance, revelation and renewal. McDaniel distilled down observations and thoughts whenever and wherever she could find suitable scraps receptive to pencil or pen. In the hardest times in her earlier days, lined paper was not an option and a pen more often a luxury as well . . . yet write she did, with her inimitable sparkle of insight, wit, and sincerity. Wilma’s first published poem, Nature is Unfair, was published in the Depew Oklahoma Independent in 1933 when she was fourteen years old.
Explore the lifework of a woman whose mother bore her amid the grip of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918; one of eight children in a family of sharecroppers in the heart of Dustbowl Oklahoma, struggling for survival and dignity as the very soil they clawed for sustenance blew away before their eyes--while their country sank into the depths of the Great Depression. The McDaniel’s were forced to uproot their family and migrate across the continent to California in 1936--all to reclaim some degree of that dignity and a second chance at survival without facing “acute starvation”.
The poetry and stories Wilma has left behind provide profound first-hand insights and snapshots of an epic set of chapters in modern American history: the Great Depression . . . the Great Dustbowl exodus to California . . . the Great Postwar Boom in America [and California in particular], with corresponding levels of continued low income and poverty maintaining the status quo in pockets liberally sprinkled across this Great Central Valley of our ‘Golden State’--all rich fodder for Wilma’s mind and pen to wade through; whether reconciling her loss of roots in the ‘Big Muddy’ of her youth; or chronicling her ‘new’ life in the small towns in the Central Valley that dominated the following six decades of her life.
This remarkable woman was, above all, a survivor. Wilma wore her Okie heritage proudly; focusing on details and events the length of a long, winding road through the majority of her 88 years doing what a great poet or writer does so well--transcending the joys; the hopes; the highs; the tragic lows; the shattering losses encountered--and nimbly narrating her way back to something resembling sanity through each pared-down poem or completed story, with the plain-spoken humility that remains her trademark.
Wilma’s pen, her prose, most especially her poetry was her grounding rod--making sense of even the most unbearable by honing words as a point of reckoning to re-center and gain the strength to carry on--and just as importantly--to tell her story; to write it down; to pass it along so that it in turn can be re-lived through each poem or prose.
In her lifetime, Wilma published much of her work in the 53 known books and chapbooks highlighted below; fifteen were self-published--her first not until she was over 50 years old. Her work was also accepted and widely published nationally in over seven dozen periodicals and poetry journals, and has been included in numerous anthologies in California and across the US; while still more of her original pieces she sent off in correspondence to friends spread far and wide--making any complete accounting of a body of work encompassing at least 80 years of writing an impossible task!
Nonetheless, this open invitation to discover the wonder and magic that was Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, and is the gathering of poetry and prose she has left us to marvel at and ponder over. Her literary legacy lives on as a testament to the stories and people she refused to let get lost to time--her beloved Okies and the equally beloved Oklahoma of her childhood:
1) The Carousel Would Haunt Me (1973) 58 poems. Self-published at Tulare Print Shop, Tulare, CA, 5.5" x 8.5", 48-pp. softcover saddlestitched chapbook; cover illustration by Opal Faye McDaniel, the poet’s sister; 500 copies. [When this, her first published book came out, Wilma was 54 years old] “Dedication - Cornelia [Jessey] and Irving [Sussman] \ my starters \ my stayers in poetry \ may they live in High Heaven”
2) Letter to Cleotis (1974) 34 poems. Self-published through Carl & Irving Printers, Inc., Tulare, CA, 6" x 9", 33-pp. glossy 2-color cover saddlestitched chapbook; cover art by the poet. 100 copies. “to Alfred Pietroforte, Who Understands My Need For Writing This Letter To Cleotis” [Al is a former English instructor at College of the Sequoias in Visalia, CA, where Wilma attended several classes]
3) The Red Coffee Can: Poems and stories of the unique spirit of a San Joaquin Valley people. . . (1974) 22 poems, 18 prose. Valley Publishers, Fresno, CA, SBN: 0-913548-19-7, 5.75" x 8.75", 95-pp. hardcover book with 2-color coated jacket and cover illustration by Opal Faye McDaniel; back jacket sleeve with photograph of the author in her home. A short introduction by Wilma: “These poems and stories are pieces cut out of the pie that is my life, made up of ingredients that are peculiarly mine . . .”
Also from the jacket sleeves: While The Red Coffee Can is a richly individual interpretation of San Joaquin Valley life, it is at the same time a warmly perceptive look at the group of individuals who fled to the valley during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Miss McDaniel, herself a Dust Bowl escapee, has drawn with compassion several slices of life about the people who brought a uniqueness of spirit to Tulare, Visalia, Fresno, Merced, Los Banos and the rest of the valley. With The Red Coffee Can, the author makes a significant contribution to the literature of and about the San Joaquin Valley. Combining almost flawless poetry with vignette and short story, she has--in terms of presenting valley life and its peoples--taken a place alongside John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath), William Saroyan (The Human Comedy, Places Where I’ve Done Time), Edward F. Treadwell (The Cattle King) and Doris Gates (Blue Willow). The author brings her life to The Red Coffee Can, having come to the San Joaquin Valley with her parents, brothers and sister during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. She describes herself during that period as “a gangling girl madly in love with John Steinbeck and carrying lead pencils and lined paper as a torch for him.” Miss McDaniel attended three or four colleges or universities at different times, but does not attribute her writing style to formal education. Instead, she turned to flea markets, shopping centers, rest homes and cemeteries for her inspiration, and her style “just happened.” A Catholic lay woman in the Third Order of Saint Francis, the author is the founder of Saint Anthony’s perpetual rummage sale. In her spare time, she teaches religion to retarded children in Tulare. In 1973 the author published a first book of poetry, The Carousel Would Haunt Me, depicting scenes from Tulare County life.
4) Buttermilk Children (1974) Self-published Stone Woman Press, Tulare, CA [at present, no additional information on hand]
5) The Wash Tub: Stories of people who knew the wash tub as an integral part of life in America (1976) ten prose and one poem. Pioneer Publishing, Fresno, CA, 5.5" x 8.5", 65-pp. softcover perfectbound; cover design by Opal Faye McDaniel. 250 copies published for the city of Tulare’s Bicentennial Celebration [Wilma was named Tulare Poet Laureate in 1976]; second printing (1982) by Valley Press. The following poem opens Wilma’s six-page Preface of The Wash Tub:
“ ‘Billy Jack,’
his mother called
from outside the kitchen window.
A breeze from May picked up his name
jokingly from Inyo Street,
tossed it against the water tower,
then carried it back to the woman,
gently repeating, ‘Billy Jack,’
where she tied up moonflowers
on the wooden trellis
that reached the house’s eves
As the echo died away
she called again
‘Billy Jack,’
Get a move on in there
Dry off and dress
Your clean pants and shirt
are hanging across the ironing board
When you finish, just be certain
that you scrub out the wash tub
and hang it on a nail
behind the house . . . .”
6) Someone Find My Old Doll! (1976) 14 handwritten prose. Self-published Stone Woman Press, Tulare, CA, 5.5" x 8.5", 40-pp. glossy cover perfectbound, last page includes a portrait photograph of Wilma. 200 copies, 100 signed and numbered; Wilma also did a second edition in 1978, but quantity unknown. “These are stories of some wondrous dolls whom we have known and loved in this Valley. Many never knew of their great nobility, but it was not wasted or lost on some of us. The cover was done by Anna McDaniel, my mother at the age of eighty-eight.” . . . “Dedication \ By the color \ of their names \ rich \ and slow spreading \ I know the people \ belong to me”
7) The Peddlers Loved Almira (1977) 15 poems. Self-published Stone Woman Press, Tulare, CA, 5" x 7" 22-pp. double-spaced typewritten, softcover saddlestitched chapbook; cover art by the poet. 500 copies, 100 signed and numbered. “Dedicated to my brother Roy”
8) The Coughdrop Saint (1977) 34-pp. short story prose. Self-published Stone Woman Press, Tulare, CA, 5.5" x 8.5" softcover saddlestitched chapbook; cover illustration by Wilma’s close friend and fellow poet & artist Art Cuelho; 100 signed and numbered. Dedicated “To all the friends at St. Francis”
9) With This Cracker Jack Ring (1977) Self-published Stone Woman Press, Tulare, CA [found a slip of paper copied from a newspaper with two poems attributed to this collection, however, no additional information on hand]
10) Beneath the Water Tower (1978) six prose, one poem. Seven Buffaloes Press, Big Timber, MT, 5.5" x 8.5" 16-pp. single-spaced typewritten, softcover saddlestitched chapbook; wrap-around illustration on the front and back covers by Artie Cuelho [his rendering of the rooster in blue jeans on the back is wonderful].“These are a few human \ dramas acted out beneath \ The Water Tower \ of a poet’s inspiration”
11) Cooking for Eli: Recipes by Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel first edition (1978) includes two additional prose pieces and a tribute poem by Art Cuelho dedicated to W.E.M. Self-published Stone Woman Press, Tulare, CA, 5.5" x 8.5" 37-pp. single-spaced typewritten, glossy white cover, perfectbound; 500 copies. The second edition (1998) was W.E.M.’s fifth publishing collaboration with Back40 Publishing, Springville, CA, and does not include the additional endpieces found in the first edition. ISBN: 1-929184-04-2, 5.5" x 8.5", 18-pp. Hammermill recycled paper stock, spiral-bound chapbook; 100 copies. Cover art on both editions by the poet, with color and binding variations. Introduction paragraph on the inside title page by Wilma: “It does not do him justice in any way, as he lives out his long life on the front porch, in the green chair at night, in the small house for meals and his late afternoon tea. A great cat! Miss Callie will not want another one.”
12) The Fish Hook: Okie and Valley Prose and Poems (1978) nine poems, 13 prose, and one long prose\poem. Seven Buffaloes Press, Big Timber, MT, 5.5" x 8.5" 31-pp. single-spaced typewritten, softcover saddlestitched chapbook; cover art by Artie Cuelho. Signed and inscribed by the poet on the title page: “I had to pay $3.00 \ to a doctor in Delano \ should have stayed \ at home”
13) This is Leonard’s Alley (1979) 33 poems. Self-published Stone Woman Press, Tulare, CA, 5.5" x 8.5", 21-pp. single-spaced typewritten, softcover saddlestitched chapbook; cover art by the poet; 70 copies signed and numbered. “Dedicated to Leonard Bernstein”
14) A Homemade Dress (1979) 22 poems. Self-published Stone Woman Press, Tulare, CA, 5.5" x 8.5" 21-pp. softcover saddlestitched chapbook; cover drawing by Anna Elizabeth Finster McDaniel, the poet’s mother; 50 copies. [Here, I have added Wilma’s mother’s maiden name to lend some additional background. One of Wilma’s first cousins from her mother’s side was the Reverend Howard Finster, who became quite a renowned artist back home in Summerville, Georgia. He was born two years before Wilma and died on Wilma’s birthday (December 22) in 2001]. “Poems by Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel”
15) Shoes Without Laces and Other Hard-Luck Poems (1979) 32 poems. Self-published Stone Woman Press, Tulare, CA, 5.5" x 8.5" 32-pp. softcover saddlestitched chapbook; cover illustration by Nancy Hightower. The title poem, followed by another, from this early collection:
“Shoes Without Laces
Eldon Dyke’s father
arrived on Sunday
nonstop Greyhound bus
from Oklahoma for a visit
Next morning after breakfast
Eldon told him, Old man
I’m taking you to Bakersfield
to buy some decent shoes
John Dykes felt whipped
and answered
with his soul slumped down
Son
these shoes ain’t that bad
all they need is laces”
“Belated Question
Arlie Day
never once asked his mother
How did you and Daddy meet
didn’t really care about it
until the day after the funeral
when they were going through
the cards of sympathy
She answered
from the distance of 1937
Why, old man Walker told me
Velda come in here
and meet Willard Day
He’s home from the C.C.C. camp
And there was this big long
drink of water
with blue eyes
who shook hands and said
I’m pleased to meet you”
16) A New Leather Belt (1980) nine prose. Self-published Stone Woman Press, Tulare, CA, 8.5" x 11", 66-pp. double-spaced typewritten, side-stapled softcover; cover illustration by Nancy Hightower. Serendipitous discovery of this all-but-unknown rarity when I was presented with an original copy the summer of 2008 when visiting with Frank De Luca, whose sisters and family were close friends and neighbors of Wilma’s years back in Clovis, CA. Many thanks to you, Frank! “Stories by Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel”
17) Toll Bridge (1980 & ’81) 31 poems. Contact II Publications, NY, ISBN: 0-936556-01-3, 5.5" x 8.5" 23-pp. 2-color softcover saddlestitched chapbook; cover photograph by Walker Evans, reprinted with permission of the Whitney Museum of American Art. “The book that defined my place on paper . . . . I dug out the poems which I mentally call Toll Bridge, when I visualized them in a small chapbook. Anyway, this is the key poem of the collection. It tells me a great deal about myself and my Dustbowl contemporaries:
Toll Bridge
The years between
Broken Bow
and Sacramento
Made a bridge
for Okie Barker
and charged a toll
to burn a gooseneck lamp
at midnight
and read aloud
the wine dark sea”
From the back cover: Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel’s poems are the product of not only the years during the Depression, but the winds which swept the Southwest and formed the Dustbowl of Oklahoma which drove hundreds of starving people out of their home country. Her poems reflect her part Creek Indian ancestry, her toils as a migrant worker in California and her excruciating sensitivity to her fellow travelers and friends. Ms. McDaniel tells the story of her life sometimes in a flagrantly biblical tone reminiscent of Faulkner and Steinbeck. She chronicles these tragic years with zest and humor and an economy of language that will catch the reader’s breath. The ‘Bridge’ which she has crossed has taken its toll indeed and we, as well as Ms. McDaniel, are left the richer for it.
18) Sand in My Bed (1980) 44 poems. Self-published Stone Woman Press, Tulare, CA, 5.5" x 8.5", 24-pp. softcover saddlestitched chapbook; wrap-around cover illustration by Ada Morine Stanley. Rare; 70 copies signed and numbered. Title page poem: “There was always sand \ in the bed \ grating between the sheets \ of my mind \ scouring like a good abrasive \ all the rust away”
19) A May Healing (1981) fourteen chapters, prose. Triton Press, Morro Bay, CA, 5.25" x 8.1", 76-pp. perfectbound softcover; cover illustration by Mark Bertramm [sp?] Stumbled across this most recent rarity when researching Wilma’s Tulare Historical Museum archives in March of 2009.
20) Flowers in a Tin Can (1982) 55 poems. Wormwood Review Press, Stockton, CA, ISBN: 0-935390-07-3; 5.3" x 8.25" 36-pp. entire edition of Wormwood Review: 86, v. 22, #2; softcover saddlestitched chapbook; 700 copies, 60 signed and numbered. Title poem handwritten by W.E.M. as cover art:
“Flowers in a Tin Can
Alone
semi illiterate
whiskey drinking
tobacco spitting
you don’t expect an old
man
like John Wentworth
to have flowers on his
wobbly table
zinnias
in a tomato juice can with
the label on it
Best regards,
Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel”
21) Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, a special issue of selected short stories (1982) 31 prose. Day Tonight\Night Today, Hull, MA, 5.5" x 8.5" 76-pp. single-spaced typewritten, softcover saddlestitched chapbook; ISSN: 0275-3073, #7 Feb ’82. From the editor on the last pages: About Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel . . . When DT\NT first began publishing, as editor and publisher, I had some preconceptions of what women writers would send in and therefore, hopefully, allow me to publish. I won’t go into what they were (I’m not into embarrassment) but will admit that Wilma McDaniel’s work did not exactly fit into these preconceptions. She came in on such a different angle. Her poetry and prose, which I have been publishing since Issue #3, sets itself apart by its strong evocation of the many seemingly transparent gestures of America. Her stories are moral/es of survival. She allows us to witness the role of Faith, Endurance and Compassion in the face of Poverty, Hate and Bigotry, in the meting out of pleasures and meaning of life, particularly among people who don’t have much else. (Some of us are so busy out buying stuff, we forget and get confused about this ‘what we are here for’--I mean, some people really do believe it is to watch tv and play video games).
In some of her work, she calls it ‘religion’, but usually she let’s her people call it what they want, insisting only on its importance. The simple needs in You Gotta Forget Homemade and I Have Got Me A Roomer; the passing of time in The Vigil; the obscene blinded racism in The Namesake; a child’s clearsightedness in Real Friends Can Drink Lemonade Together; the religious humor in A Silly Question; all expose and bring us closer to the reality of change, and the pain, fear and hope for comfort that accompanies it. Dreams of better times . . . .
She produces mountains of work, received on scraps of paper, all handwritten, (I apologize for any faulty translations...). She is a master of the craft of writing, and of her style, one that very few could pull off. She admits, “I know of nothing more obsessive, being in the grip of it myself.” She is of “part Creek Indian ancestry” and as a child lived in sharecropper houses, and was one of eight children. “I was born in Oklahoma, and was one of thousands who made the grand exodus to California in the Dustbowl Depression 1930s. I have been some kind of poet as far as I can remember.”
In an interview with Charles Hillinger of the L.A. Times, she says, “They were hard times. We never had a decent roof over our heads. Everytime it rained we moved the pots and pans around to catch the leaks.”
She now lives in Tulare, CA, and has has 13+ books of poetry and prose published since 1973, although she is not ‘well known’ in the celebrity sense. They include: The Carousel Would Haunt Me (1973), Letter to Cleotis (1974), The Red Coffee Can (Valley Publishers, 1974), Toll Bridge (Contact II Publications, 1980). Broomstick magazine, out of San Francisco, has also published her work consistently for years. Day Tonight\Night Today will continue to publish her work in upcoming issues, and thanks her for her interest and support. In Issue #8, we go back to our usual format...
22) Sister Vayda’s Song (1982) 54 poems. W.E.M.’s first publishing collaboration with Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn, NY, ISBN: 0-914610-27-9; 5.5" x 8.3", 66-pp. 2-color coated perfectbound paperback; cover design by Harley Elliott and back cover portrait of the poet by Tulare photographer Don LeBaron. [Actual books by HL Press should not be confused with Hanging Loose, the same title of their poetry journal that accepted and published Wilma’s poems on numerous occasions] From the back cover: Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel was born in Stroud, Oklahoma in 1918 and raised in the area called the Creek Indian Nation. Her family were sharecroppers and in 1936, they made the Dustbowl-Great Depression exodus to California. She worked on farms for many years.
Wilma McDaniel started making up poems when she was four and she’s been writing them down since she was eight. She’s written a short novel, several books of stories, and twelve books of poems. She now lives in Tulare, California, and recently began writing a regular column [under Wilma’s own moniker: Poor Street Journal] for Valley Voice, a new regional newspaper.
23) Going Steady With R.C. Boley (1984) 22 poems. M.A.F. Press, Portlandville, NY, 5.5" x 8.5", 24-pp. single-spaced typewritten, softcover saddlestitched chapbook; cover illustration by Mary Ann Henn. The foreword is by publisher Ken Stone: Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel is that engaging sort of poet who sneaks up on her reader with the quietness of her words. She spins her images in the across time of memories: Of places, people and events. None of which, on their own strikes us as arresting--but with the building of craftily woven tales, she captures us in the beauty of her word-pictures. These poems contain a simple grace and form which transports us from the reading--here to the poet’s when. Her poems present the past as a living memory and the philosophy that today is constructed from the mind’s remembrances of those times. Even though these poems are gentle in tone and style, they possess the power inherent in the works of a master story-teller. Although Wilma’s physical eyesight is troublesome, her mind’s eye is as sharp and clear as a camera. Her photographs are her words. The scrapbook open to the reader. Study them at your pleasure.
24) Junkyard Sculpture (1984) 44 poems. Im Press, Berkeley, CA, 7" x 8.5", 26-pp. single-spaced typewritten, softcover saddlestitched chapbook; no cover art credit. Editor’s notes by Maggi H. Meyer: Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel calls Tulare, CA her home now. I don’t remember how she found us, but Bay Area Poets Coalition has published 26 of her poems since April 1980, in our monthly poetryletter, along with work from over 300 other authors.
In its article on Okies, the September 1984 issue of National Geographic says Wilma is known as a “gravy poet”. I was warmed to read on page 340 that the author (William Howarth of Princeton), while traveling and researching, carried with him “poems by Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel and Dorothy Rose who made the long trek as girls”.
Ken Stone (Portlandville, NY), publisher of R.C. Boley, says Wilma’s poems “transport us.” They do! You’ll see.
Wilma and I have not met except through words, but I am enchanted with her language and its understandability. You will be, too!
25) Who Is San Andreas: poems to survive earthquakes (1984) 40 poems. W.E.M.’s first publishing collaboration with Blue Cloud Abbey, Marvin, SD, 5.5" x 8.5", 23-pp. softcover saddlestitched chapbook; poem cover art by Wilma. Published as v. 30, #3 of The Blue Cloud Quarterly [although Wilma’s poems appeared on numerous occasions in this journal previous to having an entire issue devoted solely to her own work]. From the back cover: Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel was born of Anglo-Chrokee descent in Oklahoma in 1918. She was raised in the Creek Nation and ran the gamut of the Great Depression Dustbowl Exodus to California.
She says, “I came to the San Joaquin Valley in 1936 where I still reside in a small stucco house with a wide crack from one of our many earthquakes. I have been some kind of poet all my life, even when I didn’t understand what ailed me. Editors have been gracious enough to publish thirteen books of my poetry, also to use it in many magazines and papers. I hedgehopped between various colleges and universities, but got no inspiration. Even today, I have to go sit under my only tree and remember the red clay road of my childhood. I hear a rain crow in the blue purple haze of twilight, and some order and beauty will descend to my spirit and bring poetry to my pen.”
Cover art poem handwritten by W.E.M.:
“Columbia, S.C.
June 10, 1983
Dear Cousin,
Just a note.
We worry about you.
Who in the world
is San Andreas who
shakes your life
apart by earthquakes.
Your loving cousins
XOXO”
26) I Killed A Bee For You (1987) 35 poems. W.E.M.’s second publishing collaboration with Blue Cloud Abbey, Marvin, SD, 5.5" x 8.5", 21-pp. softcover saddlestitched chapbook; cover illustration by Opal Faye McDaniel. Published as v. 34, #1 of The Blue Cloud Quarterly. Inside front page: Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel was born of Anglo-Cherokee descent in Oklahoma in 1918. She was raised in the Creek Nation and ran the gamut of the Great Depression Dustbowl Exodus to California. She says, “I am a poet who finds that aging only sharpens the pain and beauty of poetry.”
27) Fourteen And Feeling It (1988) 19 poems. Wormwood Review Press, Stockton, CA, 5.3" x 8.25" 12-pp. center insert in the 40-pp. issue of Wormwood Review: 109, v. 28, #1; softcover saddlestitched chapbook; 700 copies, 70 signed. Title poem handwritten by the poet on the first page:
“Fourteen And Feeling It
Clemmie proclaimed
I belong to me, Clemmie Prater
and no one else
never have
and never will
and about that time his daddy
took a strap to him
You left out your two makers
boy, me and God
and of course, your mother
Sincerely,
Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel”
28) A Primer for Buford (1990) 95 poems. W.E.M.’s second publishing collaboration with Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn, NY, hardcover ISBN: 0-914610-88-0; ISBN: 0-914610-87-2, 123-pp. 4-color process coated perfectbound paperback; cover illustration by Ann Mikolowski. From the back cover: Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel’s poems bear powerful witness to one of the nation’s most dramatic sagas, the Dustbowl exodus of the Depression and its aftermath, and they speak with a masterly, deceptively simple style.
McDaniel was born to a family of Oklahoma sharecroppers, part Cherokee, in 1918. In the Thirties, they joined the desperate trek of thousands of Okies to the green fields of California and a bitter harvest that is still being reaped today. McDaniel spent a lifetime as a farm worker and she knows the territory intimately. At the age of eight, she began writing poems and she has never stopped, even when poverty forced her to cram her poems onto the backs of envelopes and brown paper bags. After nearly half a century of writing in near-solitude, she began to show her poems and, in 1973, her first book was published. Since then, she has published poems in many magazines and collections (including Sister Vayda’s Song, published by Hanging Loose, which Sojourner called “a small masterpiece”) and has also published short stories and written a regular newspaper column.
Her new collection, A Primer for Buford, is her longest book and it speaks with urgent memory in what American Book Review has called her “scraped-clean language.” The urgency is due to McDaniel’s realization that the number of people who can remember the Okie experience and the life it led to is dwindling rapidly. The book takes the shape of a poetry primer for a young man who needs to learn about his own heritage. Luckily, the rest of us get to listen in.
Her work has wit and charm and no pretension. Her characters and their objects fit together naturally. There is never any intrusion of the poet. . . .There is history in her poems through the mouths and actions and objects of people who do not feel like historical people, but rather like ordinary, one-day-at-a-time people. -- Faye Kicknosway
I wish there were more poets like Wilma McDaniel. One wants to return to her book again and again. Little slices of real truth, to be long savored. -- Pete Seeger
Included here is the Introduction penned by Gerald Haslam: Young Buford will find no better mentor than Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel because no writer has more powerfully or more originally captured the lives of California’s Okies. People who read The Grapes of Wrath can in her poems trace the Joads beyond that boxcar where the novel ended. Indeed, Wilma herself represents well the great contribution made--however unwillingly--to California.
She is no longer the awkward teenager who journeyed with her family from “Big Muddy;” no indeed. Today she is a writer--humane, humorous and unflinching. Critic Cornelia Jessey praised her “dry and burning phraseology;” and novelist James D. Houston called her work “absolutely unique and magical.
” The first lines of the first poem in her first book, The Carousel Would Haunt Me:
“Mooney’s Grove is in my blood
like hemoglobin, I suppose
that I would become anemic
if the county barred me . . .”
(from “Mooney’s Grove”)
--revealed that an extraordinary vision and voice had been brewing in California’s Great Central Valley where the poet has lived for fifty years. To that valley Wilma brought values honed elsewhere, values that have become part of what makes her region of the golden state unique.
Like Joe Fluty in Essentials, who:
“. . .didn’t take anyone with him
but a coondog
and some scratchy records
of Jimmie Rogers”
--Wilma brought the core of rural Oklahoma to rural California. And, like Vonetta Jones in Okie Teenage Girl Describes Friend, 1936 she also brought a talent:
“I see color
smell it
taste it
and take it home for my
dreams.”
True to place, true to people, yet powerfully universal, Wilma’s language is as vernacular as what you might hear in a Central Valley shopping mall and her subjects are as palpable as breath itself.
Wilma’s poetry offers remarkable folk wisdom, revelations of the intimate braiding of her two states, and glimpses of life lived on the cusp of poverty where hope and hopelessness dance. In fact, she has written here a primer not only for Buford, but for all of us.
29) A Girl From Buttonwillow (1990) 70 poems. Wormwood Review Press, Stockton, CA, an entire edition of Wormwood Review: 118-119, v. 30, #2 & 3; 5.5" x 8.5", 48-pp. softcover saddlestitched chapbook, cover art not credited; 700 copies, 70 signed. Last pages include the first annotated W.E.M. bibliography [21 titles described] by WR editor Marvin Malone, which also features W.E.M.’s first published poem that ran in The Depew Oklahoma Independent in 1933, published when Wilma was fourteen years of age. The newspaper ceased publication over 50 years ago. It was reprinted with the poet’s permission:
“Nature is Unfair
The sky is crying grey color
like the buttons in the bin
at Pettigrew’s store
and makes me feel the sun
will not come out for us
poor folks today
but over there is Texas
where they live in their
dry land
and we know they don’t
need any more sun”
[Of added interest, the first poems of Wilma accepted by Wormwood were published in 1980, WR: 81-82, and can also found on the last page of the editor’s bibliography in A Girl from Buttonwillow]
30) The Manager of Sundown Motel (1991) 18 handwritten poems. Self-published Stone Woman Press, Hanford, CA, 18-pp. 8.5" x 11" on side-stapled single-sided white bond paper; cover art is a newspaper blockletter collage by the poet. VERY RARE. Wilma’s first poem in this collection:
“The Reason
The road to nowhere ends
at Sundown Motel
any traveler can recognize
a deadend
it is put up or shut up
in the same breath
because tenants here remember
what the road behind them
looked like”
31) A River They Call Merced (1991) 23 handwritten poems. Fifteenth and last self-published collection; Stone Woman Press, Hanford, CA, 24-pp. 8.5" x 11" all handwritten on side-stapled single-sided white bond paper; cover art by the poet. VERY RARE; 25 copies, all signed. Wilma’s Preface:
“Preface
You might expect a Big Muddy
woman
having crossed it many
flooded times
to draw a perfect turtle
from memory
of the lazy thing sunning
on a fallen log
but I can not for the love
of me
draw better than I can”
32) Song of San Joaquin (1992) 69 poems. Palm Printing, Palm Springs, CA, 5.5" x 8.5" 32-pp. single-spaced typewritten, softcover saddlestitched chapbook; cover features Central Valley, CA map detail. [Wilma was still residing with her sister Opal in Hanford at this time] Introduction by Troxey Kemper, editor of Tucumcari Literary Review: When I first came across some of Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel’s work in 1988, I knew it was an important discovery. While I am devoted to rhyming, structured poetry, I recognized immediately that Wilma can say more, with a few well placed words, than some poets (even I) can express in a lot more space.
She writes about a time long gone, when people were real people and not painted masks demanding Me First, when schooling meant real education, when people had a grip on the important things in life and when people took responsibility for their own actions. And her writing covers the years up to right now.
I do not know her age but she came with her family from Oklahoma to California in Dust Bowl days. Her writings, in poetry and in prose, rely heavily on a fantastic memory of things she knew in Oklahoma and newer experiences in the San Joaquin Valley and other locales in California, and a few points along the way. Some of her writings have been published in book form, but she is so prolific, great stacks of her particular wisdom and insight remain to see the light of publication.
One of my greatest hopes is that both she and I live to see the recognition she deserves.
Many of Wilma’s prose pieces have been published in Tucumcari Literary Review. Aside from her poetry I chose this prose piece, “A Whitman Sampler”, as a sample of her work. -- T.K.
“A Whitman Sampler
Grandma Hooley has a candy box someone gave her in 1900 when she was ten years old. She has kept it lovely and clean all these years, full of her treasures and encased in a thick pillowcase. When her granddaughter Veronica came home from the university on holidays, she loved to have Grandma open the box. This Thanksgiving, Veronica asked, “Grandma, did you share the chocolates with other children?” Grandma Hooley looked stunned. She said, “Honey, didn’t I ever tell you? There wasn’t no candy in the box when Mister Boswell give it to me at Christmas. I was tickled to death to get the empty box, It was so pretty and smelled so good. I put my comb and hair ribbon in it and any little trinket that people would give me. Candy is gone in a few minutes, but a box will stay with you for years if you take care of it.” She took out a small gilt ring with a cloudy pink stone and held it lovingly towards the light. She said, “Veronica, your granddaddy give me this when he was courting me. He got it out of a box of Crackerjacks.”
[One of my favorite poems in this particular collection of Wilma’s is found on the bottom of page 13:]
“Desert Siren 1932
At thirteen
Avis already knew
how to manage boys
for her own benefit
She charmed Cloyd Lee
out of his canvas bag
of water
there beside Route 66
just as the desert
began
to heat up for July”
33) Vito and Zona (1993) 33 poems. Trout Creek Press, Parkdale, OR, ISBN: 0-916155-21-8, 5.3" x 8.25" 40-pp. softcover saddlestitched chapbook; cover art by Callie James. [Last year of Wilma’s period of time in Hanford with Opal] Introduction by Lee Nicholson, Modesto College, Modesto, California: Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel’s poems work like clean canning jars used to water plants on the front porch. They help nourish the human spirit. But in the reading of this craftswomanan there is one moment when the tilted jar catches the light and what pours out is an artist’s mix of pure and shining brilliance. Then we really see, we really feel her artistry. It is as though by using words she says in some other medium what cannot be said, only felt; the light through the bottled water. McDaniel is a historian of the heart; portraitist of our people. She knows all the best shortcuts to the soul.
34) A Prince Albert Wind (1994) 62 poems. Mother Road Publications, Albuquerque, NM, 5.5" x 8.5" 72-pp. hardcover ISBN: 0-9636829-1-1; ISBN: 0-9636829-2-X, 5.5" x 8.5" 72-pp. coated softcover perfectbound paperback; cover photograph: Drought Farmers, Sallisaw, Sequoyah County, Oklahoma, 1936 by Dorothea Lange courtesy The Library of Congress; back cover portrait of the author by Fr. Emery Tang. [Unfortunately, Greg Smith and Mother Road Pub. seems to have melted away; Wilma requested and never got all her material returned after the book was published; letters sent went and have remained unanswered]
From the back cover: Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel was born in Oklahoma in 1918. Called “the biscuits and gravy poet” by writer Eddie Lopez, she has lived in California’s Central Valley since migrating there in 1936 with her Okie sharecropper family. Author and critic Cornelia Jessey praised her “dry and burning phraseology” while novelist James D. Houston described her writing as “absolutely unique and magical.” Collections such as Sister Vayda’s Song (1982), A Primer for Buford (1990, and A Girl From Buttonwillow (1990) have garnered wide acclaim for the poet, who is arguably the finest writer to emerge from the Oklahoma Dustbowl exodus.
Introduction by Robert Peters, UC Irvine: A Prince Albert Wind, Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel’s new collection of poems, is evidence of the growing visibility of this important American writer. Arriving in California from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl in the 1930s, over the years she has quietly written stunning poems, sheltering them in unusual places. I first read her over a decade ago, in the pages of Hanging Loose and in Marvin Malone’s seminal Wormwood Review where she keeps company with Charles Bukowski. These journals remain faithful to her. Hanging Loose Press published her collection, A Primer for Buford in 1989. Jennifer Bosveld in the December 1994 Pudding Stone Review featured her. In my Great American Poetry Bake-off III (1987) and in Hunting the Snark (1989) I expressed my enthusiasm, calling her an overlooked American treasure. My estimate of her remains higher than ever At every turn I recommend that editors, readers, and publishers I know read her; and I teach her in my lit[erature] classes at the University of California, Irvine. I was thrilled when Greg Smith of Mother Road Publications informed me that he was publishing this book and invited me to write prefatory words.
What makes her poems so magical? They are utterly unpretentious, homemade, and focus with rare intensity on her Oklahoma roots and memories. On the surface, her poems are as plain as the shoe boxes we rural folk once bought our school shoes in; and she creates wonderfully lean, yet precise, short narratives, usually applying an unexpected twist by way of closure. The intimacies of family and neighbors, mainly Oklahoman from Dust Bowl days, may seem to parallel those John Steinbeck created in The Grapes of Wrath. Her vision, however is not as bleak, and she can be a wry and gentle humorist. She loves her people, and gives them voices, many of them long since dead. She spins forms (she favors quatrains and triplets) and complexities other poets should envy. “Populist” is a useful term; for her esthetics is not arcane and meant for the initiated, abstruse reader. You meet her with ease, loving the humanity and clarity.
Bondage reveals several of her devices, themes, and strengths. The basic stanza pattern is of five lines, with two three-liners inserted towards the end. The setting is contemporary--she visits a glossy supermarket on “double coupon days” and pushes her cart through aisles where canned fruit is on sale. The twist, as recollection, arrives speedily: her early life in rural Oklahoma and California (her family settled near Tulare) produces imagery of root cellars with real worms at work in the earthen walls, hand-shelled peas, and bright watermelon pickles. The sanitized modern supermarket is unreal, so much so that by shopping there McDaniel betrayed her past: the final image of Eve reaching for the apple is stunning:
“Bondage
It’s double coupon day
and the market has a giant
special on canned fruit
I arrive early and push my
basket down the aisles
Betweeen the pyramid of
Dole pineapple
and tiny cans of Asian oranges
it becomes clear to me
I will never be free of root cellars
Dim and cool in my mind
with earth aroma
and sprouting life
they still own and keep
me straight in these markets
Where false labels tell me these
are English peas
but give no proof of shelled out green
No white halved pears
in true-blue glass
no watermelon red in clear antique
There are no earthworms in these
walls working for the soil
not even a snake slides
out of its hole
reminding me how far I fell
when reaching for an apple”
In Questions of 1934, McDaniel displays a characteristic empathy for a Dust Bowl lad who fears his family’s displacement from Oklahoma. McDaniel herself was about ten years old at the time, and the poem tells us as much about her as it does of Jody Penshaw: that she pretends to exclude herself merely doubles the power Here is the poem. The once famous, trans-America Route 66 is a powerful image:
“Questions of 1934
The tearing up
and moving out
bothered little kids
quite a bit
especially Jody Penshaw
he would ask
every night
Mama,
where will we sleep
tomorrow night
and who could blame
him
that question was on
the mind of every
mother
and father too
though men pretended
it didn’t upset them
they had to concentrate
on that Road 66
that was running
through their minds”
In Changing Soap, 1935, the joy found in life’s small favors (here advancing from “yellow soap” to Ivory) liberates a very special woman, a California vineyard worker. The yellow stuff, I would guess, is Fels Naptha, a staple in my own Wisconsin farm family of the same era; there was nothing subtle about a hunk of the cheap stuff--it ate the dirt out of the laundry as effectively as it removed it from your body. The touch of “barefoot handmaidens”, evocative of the Bible, is marvelous. I assume that Zona is preparing herself for a date with “vineyard boss” Gino:
“Changing Soap, 1935
Gino the vineyard boss
said he had a date
that night
and let everyone quit
work early
Zona walked slowly home
with grapecolor sweat
oozing from her pores
and carrying a secret
Outside her tent
with hanging fern in
a lard bucket
she called to barefoot handmaidens
Draw me a bath
little children
in the old zinc tub
Bring me the towel
that Billy Hawkes stole
from Travelers’ Hotel in Phoenix
And toss me that new
cake of Ivory
from my candy box
on the shelf
I’ve moved up
little children
from using yellow soap”
No poem is more moving than Oklahoma Litany for it reveals better than any other the depth of Wilma McDaniel’s feeling for her Oklahoma roots. As she ages, hungering for “balm;” she pulls open a dresser drawer marked “Oklahoma”, withdraws a list of “small, raw towns”, which she reverently recites:
“Oklahoma Litany
. . . Bowlegs
Depew
Pretty Water
Idabel
Lone Star
Gypsy Corner
Broken Arrow
Cloud Chief
until the words
form a prayer
which I do not understand
but close the drawer
with my own Amen”
A Prince Albert Wind requires no final words. An introduction ideally should entice you, reader, into opening these pages. You are in for some stunning discoveries.
35) The Last Dust Storm (1995) 87 poems. W.E.M.’s third publishing collaboration with Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn, NY, hardcover ISBN: 1-882413-17-2; ISBN: 1-882413-16-4, 5.5" x 8.5" 106-pp. 4-color process coated perfectbound paperback; cover art by Elizabeth Hershon, cover design by Caroline Drabik; back cover portrait of the poet by Roman Loranc. From the back cover: Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel’s poems bear powerful witness to one of the nation’s most dramatic sagas, the Dustbowl exodus of the 1930s Depression era, and chronicle the lives of workers in California’s hot Central Valley towns over the decades. Born to an Oklahoma sharecropping family, and part Cherokee, McDaniel began writing when she was eight, and has kept on through a lifetime of working on farms, even when poverty forced her to write on old envelopes and brown paper bags.
In The Last Dust Storm, her third book from Hanging Loose Press, McDaniel’s poems continue to surprise: their work is done through what American Book Review has described as “scraped-clean language.” Beneath their calm surface lie profound feeling, insight, sophistication, and often a sly humor at the expense of those who would patronize working people. The title of Tulare County poet laureate, recently bestowed on this extraordinary writer, has real meaning.
Of her most recent Hanging Loose book, A Primer for Buford, critics wrote:
McDaniel stamps her poems with an undeniable signature of simplicity of diction combined with power of suggestion. She tells stories of the people she’s known over the decades and never falters in letting them speak in their own language. She . . . puts down the old ways and people who lived them, so they won’t be forgotten. In this she is both an historian and a tribal storyteller. -- Laurel Speer, Remark
McDaniel, a farmworker for all of her long life, writes with full knowledge of its bitterness and hardship, but also with love . . . and humor. . . -- Noel Peattie, Sipapu
“The apparent simplicity is deceptive. . . . Incisive observation reveals . . . shadings and depths. -- Small Press Book Review
36) A Bowl of Sopas (1995) 14 prose exploring Okie-Portugee shared experiences in California’s Central Valley; W.E.M.’s first publishing collaboration with Back40 Publishing, Springville, CA, ISBN: 1-929184-00-X, 5.5" x 8.5", 19-pp. softcover saddlestitched chapbook, Hammermill recycled paper stock; cover illustration by Art Coelho. Limited edition of 100 numbered copies.
37) The Ketchup Bottle (1996) 13 prose. W.E.M.’s first publishing collaboration with Chiron Review Press, St. John, KS, ISBN: 0-943795-31-1, 5.5" x 8.25", 49-pp. softcover perfectbound paperback; cover art by Julie Ball. Limited edition of 100 numbered copies. A revised second edition is scheduled for release this summer by Back40 Publishing.
38) Shirtwaist Women (1996) 17 poems and 21 prose. W.E.M.’s second publishing collaboration with Chiron Review Press, St. John, KS, 5.5" x 8.25", 74-pp. softcover perfectbound paperback; cover art by Julie Ball. Limited edition of 100 numbered copies.
39) Man With a Star Quilt (1996) 30 poems and 20 prose. W.E.M.’s third publishing collaboration with Chiron Review Press, St. John, KS, ISBN: 0-943795-30-3, 5.5" x 8.25", 56-pp. softcover perfectbound paperback; cover art by Julie Ball. Limited edition of 100 numbered copies.
40) Hanging Out at the Avalon Cafe (1996) 30 prose, three poems. W.E.M.’s second publishing collaboration with Back40 Publishing, Springville, CA, ISBN: 1-929184-01-8, 5.5" x 8.5", 39-pp. softcover saddlestitched chapbook, Hammermill recycled paper stock; cover art by Julie Ball. Two printings of 100 each.
41) Martha and Mary (1996) short story prose. W.E.M.’s third publishing collaboration with Back40 Publishing, Springville, CA, ISBN: 1-929184-02-6, 5.5" x 8.5", 21-pp. softcover saddlestitched chapbook, Hammermill recycled paper stock; cover art by Julie Ball. Limited edition printing.
42) Tatted Lace (and Other Handmade Poems) (1997) 41 poems and eight prose. W.E.M.’s fourth publishing collaboration with Back40 Publishing, Springville, CA, ISBN: 1-929184-03-4, 5.5" x 8.25", 50-pp. softcover saddlestitched chapbook, Hammermill recycled paper stock; cover art provided by Trudy Wischemann.
[We called this a “second expanded edition” per Wilma, who had mentioned an “earlier version”--which would have been Wilma’s 16th self-published collection in late 1993-early 1994 and the last Stone Woman Press edition from her days residing in Hanford--but with Wilma’s move back to Tulare in February ’94 and sister Opal’s passing a month later, the project was forgotten until Wilma resurrected it in 1997 as her fourth Back40 chapbook, essentially a revised first edition] A revised second edition is scheduled for release this summer by Back40 Publishing.
43) House with a Gold Door (1998) 13 chapters of prose. W.E.M.’s sixth publishing collaboration with Back40 Publishing, Springville, CA, ISBN: 1-929184-05-0, 5.5" x 8.5", 39-pp. softcover saddlestitched chapbook, Hammermill recycled paper stock, cover art by Julie Ball, with gold paint accents by the publisher. Limited first edition.
44) Weatherwatch (1998) a semi-autobiographical short story. W.E.M.’s seventh publishing collaboration with Back40 Publishing, Springville, CA, first edition ISBN: 1-929184-06-9, 5.5" x 8.5", 95-pp. softcover perfectbound paperback; cover art designed by the publisher. A 2007 second printing, ISBN: 978-1-929184-06-4; 100 copies each print run. Foreword by Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel: “As a child I already knew my relatives in the Oklahoma bottomlands were fatalists, even before I learned what the word meant. They rolled their Bull Durham cigarettes, smoked thoughtfully and said whatever would be would be. They looked far out in the wild pecan groves and told me that my life had already been shaped. They blew perfect smoke rings and added that my destiny could not be changed.
I silently watched hawks soaring above the pecan trees and loved my kinfolks but I did not agree with them about my life.
Two generations later I still do not agree with them. It wasn’t fate that shaped my destiny. It was weather. Giant storms ruined most of my youngest years. Weather improved about halfway through life, at least it brought me fair to middling weather. One spring it sent me rainbows every day for a month. Weather has tempered itself to brittle bones these last few years and even sent me some golden stretches pulled straight from heaven. For these and all other weather reasons I salute the years of my life.”
45) Sleeping in a Truck (1998) 37 poems, plus another reprint of Wilma’s first published poem (1933). Mille Grazie Press (from chapbook series 6), Santa Barbara, CA, ISBN: 1-890887-03-X, 5.25" x 8.3", 39-pp. softcover perfectbound paperback; jacket cover art by Julie M. Ball, cover design by Jeff Kaiser. “This book is dedicated to Jennifer Bosveld” From the jacket sleeve: In her new collection, Sleeping in a Truck, Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel once again demonstrates the unmatched skill to probe the extraordinary lives of ordinary people that has made her the unrivaled chronicler of the working class experience in California’s Great Central Valley. With an acute eye for detail and a master storyteller’s keen sense of irony, McDaniel guides us into the everyday sagas of friends and neighbors, weaving lessons of universal compassion and spiritual interdependence along the way. Her stories are so compelling and her characters so immediately recognizable that it isn’t until after we look up from the page that we discover we have been in the hands of a master poet as well.
And from the last page, accompanying the poet’s portrait by Roman Loranc: Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel was born in Oklahoma in 1918. In 1936, her family joined the great Dustbowl exodus to California’s Central Valley, where she has lived ever since. Part Cherokee, she began writing at the age of eight, often cramming her verses on old envelopes and brown paper bags, which was all she could afford. In 1971 at the age of 53, she appeared at the office of the editor of the Tulare Advance-Register [Tom Hennion] with a shoebox full of poems. The newspaper, which had a policy of not publishing poetry, immediately made an exception for McDaniel’s verses and her poems began to appear regularly in its pages. Since that time, she has published over 25 books and chapbooks of stories and poetry, and has appeared in numerous anthologies. McDaniel’s work is studied in colleges and universities around the country, and she is recognized as a major chronicler of the lives of the common working people of the Central Valley. She lives in Tulare, where she is Poet Laureate.
46) Hoeing Cotton in High Heels (1998) 47 poems. Liquid Paper Press, Austin, TX, 5.5" x 8.5", 52-pp. softcover saddlestitched chapbook; cover art by the poet. From the back cover: Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel is an authentic Okie. Her sharecropper family was wrenched from Oklahoma by the Dust Storms and the Great Depression, making the exodus to California along with thousands of other desperatepeople seeking survival. As a teenages, she brought with her the fire and burden of poetry, which has remained her constant and often critical companion these many years. “It can burn away trash and sear my ego, or warm my spirit in a bitter cold state of mind. I cannot imagine life without it.”
And, The whole world should be reading Wilma’s poems and they should also know the story of her amazing life.
-- Sherman Alexie
47) We Live or Die in Pixley (1999 & 2002) a short novella. W.E.M.’s eighth publishing collaboration with Back40 Publishing, Springville, CA, ISBN: 1-929184-07-7, 5.5" x 8.25", 66-pp. softcover perfectbound paperback; cover collage art by the author. Two print runs of 100 each. Wilma’s classic poem, We Live or Die in Pixley, serves as an introduction to this edition:
“We Live Or Die In Pixley
We didn’t get to her house
until the second day
after the yellowjackets
stung her in the vineyard
But her eyes were still
swollen half-shut
and there was a red knot
on her forehead
Waspstung or not
she was the same old Ruby
full of heart
laughed when she saw us
Folks, I could look worse
without these new medicines
I would have puffed up
and busted wide open
We have to eat, don’t we
there is no substitute
for food
people get hungry
north south east or west
We know how the system works
pick grapes
fight yellowjackets
We live or die in Pixley”
48) Wind Rocked Our Babies To Sleep (1999) 46 poems. Mt. Aukum Press, Mt. Aukum, CA, 5.5" x 8.5", 42-pp. Spectratech Lustro Laser coated cover stock [careful, the toner-ink used on these covers scratches off way too easily], saddlestitched paperback with coated pages; photo of the author as a young woman on the back cover. An Autobiographical Note serves as an introduction; it is the same found in W.E.M. on W.E.M. on this website. Originally it was The Almost Interview with W.E.M. by Joan Jobe Smith and was first published in Chiron Review, issue #59, Autumn, 1999. From the back cover: “I considered myself to be an authentic Okie. My family was wrenched from Oklahoma by the Dust storms and Great Depression of that era. We made the exodus to California along with thousands of other desperate people seeking survival. As a teenager, I brought the fire and burden of poetry with me. I have never ceased to write in all the years since.”
49) Getting Love Down Right (2000) 43 poems. W.E.M.’s ninth publishing collaboration with Back40 Publishing, Springville, CA, ISBN: 1-929184-11-5, 5.25" x 8.25", 57-pp. coated stock cover perfectbound paperback; cover photograph of Bernis McDaniel Wagner on her wedding day, courtesy of her aunt, the poet.
The Foreword includes: The poetry of Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel is in a special category. I define that category by quoting a Zen teaching: ‘If you want to hold something in life, hold it as gently as you would hold water in your hand.’ -- Cornelia Jessey, novelist and essayist
Her words tell massive truth worthy of a playwright who knows the language of the people. She uses it so the poetry is not lost and the truth can come in like the light of a firefly. The light goes out, but the truth stays in.
-- Fr. Lawrence Gerst, jazz poet
For the back cover, Wilma wrote this poem and we accompanied it with this photo of the poet by Chris Simon:
“Courtly Young Men
They pass my way
carrying the burden
of life
Sometimes they stop here
and lay it down
All are young
half my age
even one-third of it
They could be sons
if Poetry muse
ever selfish
Had not dragged me
after her
with no mercy”
Of interest and added here [chronologically] are a titles of a set of video files stumbled upon on YouTube.com: the Askew Poetry Journal series, consisting of twelve short clips featuring Wilma reading poems in her apartment in Tulare, made by the editors of ArtLife at the same time that the photos for the cover of the February 2000 edition of ArtLife were taken; Wilma was featured poet of the month in that edition.
A fascinating glimpse of the late poet at home. The poems Wilma recites in streaming video include:
Also appearing here is the video documentary, Down An Old Road, The Poetic Life of Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, a film by Chris Simon (2001) Sageland Pictures, Salt Lake City, UT, run time 34 minutes; should be available on DVD now, too. A great ‘primer’ on Wilma; how she reads her poetry here adds much when one reads her work after seeing her in this film and learning more about her life. Great work by Chris and her crew. E-mail film orders to: sagelandmedia@gmail.com
50) Borrowed Coats (2001) 92 poems. W.E.M.’s fourth and final publishing collaboration with Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn, NY, hardcover ISBN: 1-882413-94-6; ISBN: 1-882413-93-8, 5.5" x 8.5", 112-pp. 4-color process coated cover, perfectbound paperback. Cover art and design by David Borchart; back cover portrait of the poet by Kim Grossman. From the back cover: Borrowed Coats, the fourth Hanging Loose collection of Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel’s work in the last twenty years, once again demonstrates the understated power of this poet who began writing as a child and has never stopped. Her work fuses the overheard conversation of real people with memories of a Depression childhood, a highly personal spiritual insight, and sharp observations of life in today’s San Joaquin Valley.
Of German, Irish, and Cherokee extraction, McDaniel made the journey to California’s “Pastures of Plenty” with her own family, sharecroppers in 1930s Oklahoma. She has spent a lifetime in working America, from Dustbowl farms to California vineyards and small Valley towns. In these poems a deadpan wit and a surface clarity reveal transparent depths of great subtlety, true unsentimental feeling, and the symbolism of everyday life.
Wilma McDaniel is the subject of a recently released documentary by filmmaker Chris Simon called Down an Old Road: the Poetic Life of Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, available on video from Hanging Loose Press. Comments on previous books by Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel:
I wish there were more poets like Wilma McDaniel. One wants to return to her book again and again. Little slices of real truth, to be long savored. -- Pete Seeger
McDaniel stamps her poems with an undeniable signature of simplicity of diction combined with power of suggestion. -- Laurel Speer, Remark
McDaniel, a farmworker for all of her long life, writes with full knowledge of its bitterness and hardship, but also with love . . . and humor. . . -- Noel Peattie, Sipapu
51) A Brief Romance in Black Oak Country, 1980s: with Texas Tea Holding Steady and a Steinbeck Story (2005) prose. W.E.M.’s tenth publishing collaboration with Back40 Publishing, Sebastopol, CA, ISBN: 1-929184-06-9, 4.25" x 5.5", seven-pp. softcover saddlestitched “pocket print” chapbook; cover art from an original painting by Nancy LaCroix, the author’s cousin. [In 2004, I moved from Springville to northern California, but was still in touch wih Wilma quite often]. This was done as Wilma’s health was declining and is very rare and limited in number to about twelve proof copies; it is slated for eventual release as an expanded limited edition that will include selected additional prose, in memory of Wilma.
52) Walking On An Old Road: a collection of writing and poetry (posthumous, 2007) 77 poems, 72 prose. Released to commemorate what would have been a celebration of Wilma’s eighty-ninth birthday on December 22 [the winter solstice of 2007] and includes all material Wilma had published in South Valley Arts from 1993--2000. Nominated for the 2008 Oklahoma Book Award, this was W.E.M.’s final publishing collaboration with Back40 Publishing, Sebastopol, CA. After suspending publication of SVA in 2000, Wilma and I planned to compile all the SVA material into one book--belatedly, this is it. With Wilma’s passing and to give readers a more intimate view of the poet, I added selected correspondence I had received from Wilma through the period of time spanned in the book. ISBN: 978-1-929184-16-3, 5.5" x 8.25", 225-pp. 4-color process cover, perfectbound paperback; cover photograph courtesy Chris Simon, from her 2001 film, Down An Old Road, The Poetic Life of Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel.
From the Introduction: What unfolds here is a fascinating view of Wilma--a taste of her poetry, a sampling of her storytelling . . . as well as a glimpse of her innate humor and indomitable spirit. -- Jim Chlebda, Back40 Publishing
From the foreword pages: Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel . . . the unrivaled chronicler of the working class experience in California’s Great Central Valley. . . . it isn’t until after we look up from the page that we discover we have been in the hands of a master poet as well.
-- David Oliveira, Mille Grazie Press
Also included in the foreword pages is She Calls Us Her Sons, a re-print of Art Coelho’s tribute poem honoring Wilma that first appeared in the 1978 edition of Cooking For Eli; followed by an intimate foreword by Trudy Wischemann.
And from the back cover: As an iconic American Folk Poet of the 20th Century, Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel stands without peer. Of German, Irish and Cherokee heritage, this nationally-acclaimed Okie poet’s keen perspective through prose and poetry turned California’s San Joaquin Valley into a rich vein Ms. McDaniel mined with a writer’s clarity, a poet’s insight, and a conviction and intensity etched through raw experience. Migrating as a teenager to California in 1936 from the Oklahoma Dustbowl with her family, Wilma transformed the wrenching reality of Depression-era hopelessness into a life of writing steeped in hope, perseverance, revelation and renewal.
Despite (or in light of) her mother’s fundamentalist Baptist background, Wilma sought out and converted to Catholicism shortly after arriving in California, lending a perspective that would have profound impact on her life’s work. In 1953 she became a professed Lay Franciscan. Ms. McDaniel died at eighty-eight years of age on April 13, 2007. In her lifetime, Wilma published her work in 49 known books and chapbooks; her poetry and vignettes have been included in over three dozen poetry journals [the list has grown; see below] and numerous anthologies across the US; while still more of her original pieces she sent off in letters to friends spread far and wide.
This book is in loving memory of Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel and is a small tribute to her literary legacy. Walking On An Old Road is the complete chronological collection (1993-2000) of Wilma’s columns of prose and poetry published in South Valley Arts (SVA), the former monthy arts and events journal from California’s Central Valley. Some poems were previously published, others appeared for the first time in the pages of SVA and can be found here.
In addition, selected notes from her correspondence are included that further highlight Wilma’s illuminating warmth and wit--and the endearing friendship she cemented with the publisher of South Valley Arts in the final decades of her life.
53) Goodbye to a Scarecrow: poems by Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, 66 poems (posthumous 2009). Orchard House Press, Port Orchard, WA, ISBN: 978-1-59092-660-4, 5.25" x 8", 79-pp. perfectbound paperback. Don’t let the odd cover art put you off--it is not an image of a hooded Iranian hostage--although Wilma would imagine just that if she were to see it herself [the back cover’s image of a scarecrow would have made a more fitting cover image].
With a June, 2009 release date, this collection of Wilma’s poetry was a collaboration between Wilma and her friend, Jeanie Harris, who first got acquainted with Wilma when Jeanie was her postal carrier, delivering packages of books to Wilma’s door. Their friendship grew as Jeanie left the Postal Service, always encouraged by Wilma to write. For this project, Jeanie carefully typed up a manuscript from Wilma’s hand-written originals and, with specific instructions, sent it all off for publication. All told, a wonderful “final” collection of Wilma’s poems here. Included as an endpiece photograph is a cropped image of Wilma as a child of about eight, cradling a cat in a field near the old family home in Creek County, Oklahoma. [See an original copy of the complete image below, that includes one of Wilma’s younger brothers holding a Buck Rogers-type toy ray gun.]
From the back cover: Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel was born near Stroud, Oklahoma during the raging influenza epidemic of 1918. She became “afflicted” with poetry at a young age. As a barefoot child, Wilma scavenged inch-long pencil stubs and discarded calendars to write a few lines of poetry. Her childhood was forged in the extreme conditions of rural poverty, violent weather, and the atmosphere of the Great Depression.
In the ensuing Dust Bowl, Wilma’s parents realized their only hope seemed to be joining family members in California’s Central Valley, where they were engaged in farming. Wilma arrived in California as a shy seventeen-year-old and spent the rest of her life in the Central Valley. She held many ‘jobs’ during her long lifetime, but poetry was her true vocation.
She’s written countless poems about her rural community in California, while never forgetting her Oklahoma roots. She toiled away in relative obscurity for many years, but her talent was eventually recognized and she became Poet Laureate of Tulare County in California. She continued her life-long practice of writing daily, and wrote poems on grocery bags, the backs of envelopes, or any available paper. She saved her poems in a shoebox stashed under her bed.
[Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel’s] popularity has evolved and endured because her poetry speaks to a wide audience--from university professors and other literati, to the ordinary folk. Goodbye to a Scarecrow collects [some of] her last poems with grace and honor.
It is an honor to present second expanded editions of both The Ketchup Bottle and Tatted Lace. The first edition of The Ketchup Bottle was published in 1996 [see #37 above]. This 2009 edition brings back all thirteen original vignettes found in the first, but includes eleven additional sketches Wilma specifically requested be included in subsequent editions by Back40 Publishing. Along with a complete redesign of the cover art and page layouts, all text has been reset in Century Old Style. ISBN 978-1-929184-22-4, 5.5" x 8.5" 100 pp. perfectbound paperback.
The first edition of Tatted Lace and other handmade poems was published in 1997 [see #42 above]. This 2009 edition also reprints all the original material, while including nine additional poems and one prose that were part of Wilma’s original Tatted Lace file manuscript but were not published in the first edition. Along with a complete redesign of the cover art highlighting the beauty of Trudy Wischemann’s original piece of lacework, several page layouts include reproductions of Wilma’s original handwritten poems. ISBN 978-1-929184-21-7, 5.5" x 8.5" 73 pp. perfectbound paperback.
First editions of both of these Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel titles were limited to only 100 copies. By reprinting, it is my hope that it will be as much of a pleasure to enjoy reading each as it was for me to assemble these expanded selections of Wilma’s prose and poetry for a wider circle of readers.
In addition, special thanks and appreciation to Terry Brazil and the staff at the Tulare Historical Museum in Tulare, CA; Sally Ferrell, Lincoln County Historical Society, Chandler, OK; and Kacy Marume, UC Merced ᾿09 graduate, W.E.M. archivist and curator of the Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel exhibit at UC Merced’s Kolligian Library for help firming up this fairly comprehensive list of periodicals, poetry journals and publications the poet had submitted work to and was published in:
[One example of the impact Wilma and her work had on many an editor:]
Pudding 22 -- 1994 issue
Featured Poet Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel
We have Robert Peters, the well-known poet and critic, to thank for this wonderful selection of poetry from an important American poet. I say important because Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel has for many years captured in the relatively little space of poetry a chronology of coping and thriving and creating and loving and going-on that is unique to the life of one who came out of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl of the 1930s to live in California. Since working on Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel’s Feature, I have been blessed to receive many hand-written scraps of poems and letters from her humble desk.
Since my introduction to Wilma, however, I have now noticed just how widely published she is and that many other editors reading this will acknowledge that they’ve known about her for years . . . and where have I been all my life? At least grateful for this late revelation and will cherish my wonderful collection of letters and poems in her own hand. An August 19, 1993 letter included,
“August is a hard month, not completely without merit. In the past, I’ve written some of my most meaningful (to me) poetry. I’ve written about twenty totally new pieces these past eighteen days. I’ll enclose one or two. My book ms. with Mother Road Press in New Mexico is coming along as quickly as small presses can. I’m satisfied the young editor will do the best he can since he loves to write and publish. Of course I am delighted that Robert Peters will write the introduction.”
What humility comes through turn after turn along the lines of these priceless letters. Pudding House is deeply indebted to Robert Peters for this recommendation that we get in touch with Wilma. And we are deeply indebted to the poet--a national treasure I believe--for including us among her long list of publishers. I specifically asked for previously published work, believing that McDaniel’s poetry deserves far more exposure. -- Jennifer Bosveld, Pudding editor
More thanks due here to Kacy Marume, as mentioned above, for her work organizing Wilma’s archived material at UC Merced and enabling the recent additions to this fairly complete list of critical reviews, literary anthologies, scholarly studies, and related that included, featured, and\or discusses the poetry and prose of Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel:
All poetry and prose of Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel presented here and on the adjoining webpages are
© 2009 Back40 Publishing, Sebastopol, California; and are posted on the pages of this website in tribute to,
in memory of, and as an informative resource highlighting the late poet and her literary legacy
Comments? To reach Back40 Publishing, please contact:
james@back40publishing.com
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