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The beauty of Wisconsin seen Only on This Planet
By Erik Opsal
Library Communications
Posted 9/18/2007
MADISON, Wis. – Wisconsin's landscape can be beautiful and it can be brutal. Using vibrant imagery as a means of self-reflection, John Graber traces these changing landscapes and seasons in the latest 
Parallel Press chapbook, Only on This Planet.
In a collection of 30 poems, Graber sets the mood in "Over There the Sun Shines" by serenely describing a sunny, winter day. He writes, "Over there the sun shines / through a small gap in the clouds / It makes a gold circle of heaven / on the frozen, snow-covered lake."
Beginning in winter, Graber's poems move chronologically through the seasons, explaining the restlessness for spring and the longing for chirping birds. In "May 5," Graber describes three cardinals that rid him of winter's grip. He writes, "a sudden flash / caught my heart, stopped / then contracted it again / red, then red, and RED / three flushed cardinals."
Originally from western Kansas, Graber received degrees at St. Olaf College and the Iowa Writers Workshop. Before coming to Wisconsin in 1978, he taught grade school, high school and college students for six years at Holden Village in the North Cascades. He now lives in Stockholm, a village on the Mississippi River, with his wife and three children.
Graber shows his connection to Wisconsin in many poems by describing life along the Mississippi River. In "Standing in the Middle of My Life," Graber uses water as a metaphor for forgiveness. He writes, "impossibly swimming in cold October water / were all the people I can't forgive / all I fear who can't forgive me / And they all were happy, wet with forgiveness / and glad to be wearing the same robe of water / They were all one and all was forgiven."
Although bipolar disorder has complicated his teaching, editing and writing, Graber has had more than 50 poems published in a variety of magazines including The American Poetry Review, The Great River Review, Free Verse and the American Review. Walking Home, an earlier collection of poetry, is available from Pudding House Publications.
The Parallel Press is an imprint of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries. Only on This Planet is its 51st chapbook. For more information, visit http://parallelpress.library.wisc.edu/chapbooks/poetry.
Orders may be sent to:
The Parallel Press
372 Memorial Library
728 State Street
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: (608) 262-2600
A selection from "Drinking America ":
I've drunk America like a glass of water
when I expected wine.
Taken the battered, enamel cup of Iowa,
hung from a working windmill,
and drunk an oat harvest, taking turns.
Drunk America like a glacier in the eye.
Thoughtlessly drunk it with a handful
of pain pills—sip, swallow, back to work.
I've taken America like a grapevine in June
and felt it all the way up from deep roots
go out through the arms to clusters
of fingers . . . thank you, thank you!
Sometimes even while making love
with my free wife, forgetting even as I drank,
I've drunk it. Drunk it poor
and drunk it rich. Drunk it in New York
and drunk it in over forty states
from cabin springs, Kansas days,
Florida swamps, Cascade streams,
and now by the Mississippi I take it in.
And all along the way, before the image
of the crowning heads of our three children
being born, I've paused with the skull of it
at my lips and then, OH! drunk it,
toasting America to them as I drank
it for years like a vote, a paycheck
forgotten to wait for, a spade-fork full
of the surprise of new potatoes,
a careless speech, a flag.
