Synopsis:
It is shelling corn that Montag remembers. And butchering chickens. It is the big, gaping yawn of a Sunday afternoon when time stood still. He remembers breaking his sister's collar bone, killing rats, plowing at night. Montag was raised on an Iowa farm during "the grey Republican 1950's," as he calls them. The Curlew he remembers was long ago and far away, yet Montag makes it immediate. Scene pulse with a poet's vividness. His days serve as an emblem for the lot of middle westerners who do not speak for themselves. Farmers are pretty tight-lipped. All their lives mean something, Montag wants to say. Memory alone is not enough, though, so he journeys to see what remains. Will he recognize anyone? Will the land rise to meet him? What will he find that he has left behind? He goes back as an empty cup waiting to be filled, he goes back expecting the world to speak to him. And it does. Memory and the journey stand side by side. Curlew:Home is a tribute to a place most Americans only fly over, a tribute to people who work the earth and bring crops to harvest, a tribute to Montag's parents and his brothers and sisters, and to all the middle western farm families who endure.
About the Author:
Tom Montag is a middle western poet and essayist who has all along been interested in place and the literature of place. For his next project, Montag hopes to look at one town in each of the middle western states -- the people, the history, the landscape -- to see what it is that makes us what we are. Beyond that, he will continue working on his book about the people and places of the Fox and Wolf River basins of Wisconsin, "Middle River Tangle."
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