Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Graduate Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 2021 Precarious paradise: Toolesboro, Iowa Nancy Priester Hayes Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd Recommended Citation Hayes, Nancy Priester, "Precarious paradise: Toolesboro, Iowa" (2021). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 18507. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd/18507 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Precarious paradise: Toolesboro, Iowa by Nancy P. Hayes A thesis submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF FINE ARTS Major: Creative Writing & Environment Program of Study Committee: Debra Marquart, Major Professor Christiana Langenberg Linda Shenk Julie Courtwright The student author, whose presentation of the scholarship herein was approved by the program of study committee, is solely responsible for the content of this thesis. The Graduate College will ensure this thesis is globally accessible and will not permit alterations after a degree is conferred. Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 2021 Copyright © Nancy P. Hayes, 2021. All rights reserved. ii DEDICATION To John O. Hayes, my beloved husband iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv ABSTRACT v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 2: POEMS Prairie Proem 6 Go Back 7 Ancient Grief 8 Thinking Wild in January 9 What the snow brings to light 11 Glimpses 13 What the Snow Shows 16 Snowshoe Murder Mystery 18 Feather Tracks 21 Hoarfrost 23 Burn Pile, 2019 25 Red Buffalo 28 One week after the prairie burn 31 Two weeks after the prairie burn 32 Already Hope 35 Tragedy in Louisa County 37 Comedy in Louisa County 39 Tragicomedy in Louisa County 41 Precarious Paradise 43 For the beauty 45 We gather together 46 Prairie Notions 47 John, in the carriage house 48 Prairie Harvest 49 Prairie Wedding 50 Gathering Indian grass seed 51 Inflorescence 53 Sowing 54 The Color of Prairie 58 Harvest Hymn Cento 61 iv Peep! 63 Prairie Grasses Attend a Wedding 64 CHAPTER 3: FIELD NOTES Field Notes 2016 67 Field Notes 2018 72 Field Notes 2019 78 Field Notes 2020 82 CHAPTER 4: TROUBLED STEWARDSHIP 1. Settlers and Skeletons 89 2. Putting Toolesboro on the Map 92 3. Excavations 96 4. Enticing Immigrants 100 5. Mounds, the Old Fort, and Stewardship 103 REFERENCES 111 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To my major professor, Debra Marquart, thank you for shepherding me through the MFA program with such kindness, rigor, and wisdom. Your workshops have shaped me as a writer, a thinker, and a person. Your incisive comments have shown me how to make poems tauter to let what matters in them shine. To my committee members: Christiana Langenberg, thank you for valuable line comments helping me to give other readers of my poems more space; Linda Shenk, thank you for giving me courage to embark on this adventure in the first place, for reminding me that my purpose in writing goes beyond polishing my own poetry; Julie Courtwright, thank you for opening up Great Plains history for me, for enriching my understanding of Toolesboro and its significance as part of a larger American story and for appreciating the Red Buffalo. To Kenny Cook, thank you for so enthusiastically launching me into the program and two autumns later so gently guiding me to a happy landing. Your first admonition to “read like a writer” made all the difference in my bumpy transition from thinking like an English professor to thinking like a writer. You showed me I could do both. To my cohort! Ana, Riley, Julia, Allison, Aimee, Bri, Caroliena, Richard, Michael, Dan, and Eric, thank you for your generosity of spirit, your critical keenness and warmth of encouragement, your expansive imaginations, your kindness and caring, your unique brilliances. I feel a bond of friendship with each of you that I will always cherish. To the little thesis-writing accountability group that began because of COVID and our shared panic about preparing drafts of “our books” for Kenny’s master class: Ana, thank you for setting up zoom and organizing vi sessions last summer that have continued up to today, for keeping me on my toes; Riley, thank you for pragmatism and sweet humor; Julia, thank you for deep thinking and fortitude; and Allison for flights of fancy and love of beauty. To these “thesis gals”: I couldn’t have done this without you! To my poetry workshop classmate Crystal Stone, thank you for sharing your passion for writing poems, your forthright critiques, and insisting I set up a poetry reading at a local coffee shop in Davenport and read with her. To Carl Herzig, my former colleague at St. Ambrose University: thank you for encouraging me to write poems for the SAU’s literary and art journal Quercus. Your editorial support was and still is invaluable; your belief in me as a poet gave me belief in myself. To my decades-long fellow Renaissance conference friends: Carole Levine, Anya and Craig Bertolet, and Linda Shenk (again), thank you for your enduring fellowship and support, and Anya, for the wonderful letter you wrote for my MFA application. You helped me bridge the gap between Shakespeare and Toolesboro. To my loving friends from home, who supported me so faithfully these three years: Ann Austin, thank you for always thinking of me and sending me beautiful items for my Ames apartment, especially the lighted flower tree and ornaments for every season; Beth and Tom Kreuger and Carol and Marshall Daut, thank you for looking after my husband when I was in Ames; Stella Herzig, Rochelle Murray, Ted Woodruff, Nancy Hultquist, for cards and letters. To my children, Sarah and Mike McMahon, Marion and Ian Bonar, and J.D. and Lauren Hayes, and my grandchildren, Julia and Brooklyn Bonar, thank you for all your loving support, in particular, J.D., for your patient technical support, helping me in my moments of panic. And lastly, to my beloved husband John, who had to manage alone while I was away in vii Ames, thank you for believing in me, for bearing with me when I was so busy with school, for sharing your family history, for expert editing, and for bringing prairie into my life. Thank you to Carl Herzig and his St. Ambrose University student staff for including the following thesis poems in issues of Quercus: “Inflorescence” (Vol. 28, 2019) and “One week after the burn” (Vol. 29, 2020). viii ABSTRACT Precarious paradise: Toolesboro, Iowa tells a tale of a very small but extremely significant place on a river bluff in southeastern Iowa, site of both 2,000-year-old Native American burial mounds and an ancestral farm dating back to early white settlement in 1835. Through poems, field notes, and an historical essay, it conjures up both ancient and pioneer past, as well as the flourishing present of the prairie reestablished on what had been crop land for 175 years. In a variety of poetic forms from free verse to villanelle and sonnet, cento and prose poem, as well as in free-flowing notes recounting the author’s observations made on myriad walks around and through the prairie, this hybrid collection strives to depict seasonal life and death on the small tallgrass prairie accurately and empathetically. The place we now call Toolesboro has been and is a place of boundless beauty, but also of danger, beset by invasive species, both human and nonhuman, competing for sovereignty. Though lack of respect toward native peoples was shown in the past, the works in this thesis are dedicated to honoring their heritage as well as appreciating the legacy of the pioneers by heralding the natural beauty and bounty of the land that sustained them both. 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION In the preface to his 1841 work, Sketches of Iowa, or the Emigrant’s Guide, John B. Newhall, wrote of the emerging state of Iowa in flowery terms: “Possessed of a soil unrivalled in the variety and excellence of its products, its salubrious climate, and rapidly settling by a people who are bound to their brethren from the Atlantic states by the indissoluble ties of religion and kindred, Iowa will, ere long, enjoy all the advantages that can render a country prosperous, and a people happy.” As we look back today, we recognize the tragic reality that the good fortune of the white settlers had heart-rending consequences for the Native American peoples already living in this frontier territory. Broken treaties and brutal actions gradually drove the Sac and Fox (today’s Mesquakie) from the land along the Mississippi between today’s Muscatine and Burlington, making way for settlers like those of my husband John Hayes’s ancestors to find prosperity and happiness. We were their beneficiaries, but also bear responsibility for their injustices. The little town of Black Hawk (later renamed Toolesboro) on a bluff above the Iowa River near where it flowed into the Mississippi River (the river has since changed its course) played a significant colonial role, but before that, stretching back at least 2,000 years, the place was populated, at times in the thousands, by waves of native inhabitants. The confluence of rivers providing water and facilitating travel and trade, the woods and the prairies burgeoning with animal and plant resources, and the bluffs offering lookouts and protection from enemy tribes and harsh weather all made this area a chosen land.