MPR’s Cathy Wurzer interviews Minnesota poet Phebe Hanson about her poetry, the concept of “Minnesota Nice," life for women in the state, and a conference Hanson will speak at that celebrates Minnesota women as part of national women's history month.

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(00:00:00) I'm very happy and
(00:00:01) proud that in Minnesota. We do pay attention to so-called political correctness and cultural diversity were you know, where state of lots of Norwegians and swedes and Germans, but we've also been very open to diversity. And for that reason this doesn't specifically address the issue of being a woman in Minnesota, but I think that's one of the reasons I love living here. I always feel as though and that comes into the that enters into the whole topic of Minnesota. Nice. Enos the good side of Minnesota niceness, I think maybe one of the reasons it's a good place to be for a woman. I mean there is the dark side but is that we do have this reputation for being
(00:00:41) nice do we really have that reputation? Well, maybe it's something we
(00:00:45) put on ourselves. I don't know
(00:00:46) for sure. It's very hard to say
(00:00:49) but you hear it all the time. And when we talked about this conference, that was one of the things that the organizer of the conference wanted to address the whole issue of Minnesota. Nice. Now, of course, I grew up is the daughter of a Lutheran minister in a small town. And so I immediately learned that I had an obligation to be naughty not nice, you know, everybody was watching us and of course we were told that we had to be nice because everybody was watching us but I grew up kind of feeling rebellious and wanting to be naughty Although our Rebellion took the form of rather rather small
(00:01:23) potatoes. Do you think Phoebe that this Minnesota niceness has actually though kept women down here. The state that it's the myth has kept women here from being as strong as they might be.
(00:01:36) I think there's that possibility. I think that that's a possibility not only Minnesota, but that's sort of a nationwide may be a worldwide thing that women have been culturally trained to be nice and to not make a fuss internet and to not complain so I don't know that it's a Minnesota problem necessarily, but I think you're right that it has kept women down, but I think we're learning that we We're going to be nice and still stand up for our rights.
(00:02:02) We are talking to Phoebe Hanson. She is a poet she is currently teaching at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She's a former High School teacher and she's the keynote speaker for a conference that celebrates Minnesota women as part of national women's history month now as a writer getting back to this Minnesota nice. Yes. Yes, you are from Sacred Heart Minnesota. That's right, which generally is it harder to be critical and as honest as you need to be as a writer when you write about your hometown, Not for me. I
(00:02:32) learned early on I didn't start writing poetry till I was except for a few little forays into it in college until I was in my 40s and by that time I think this is something that happens to women you get courage as you get older by that time. I felt that it was very important to tell the truth about my life and I try to do that in my poems and I found also that the humor helps when you're telling the truth. I don't mean that Humor should be used to deny the truth. But I think humor can be used sometimes to diffuse the harshness of the truth. So I know I haven't felt it a problem. I haven't felt it a problem at all. Most of my poems are autobiographical. So, you know, it could be a problem and I noticed someone pointed out to me that there was a letter to Miss Manners the other day in the Tribune, I guess about this problem of being a friend of a writer and how they did not these people did not want to be written about and so it's always a problem when you are an Fickle writer it can be a problem. I haven't found it to be
(00:03:33) yet. What are the challenges that face an older? Female writer.
(00:03:39) Well, I think one of the challenges is because I wrote a lot I have written a lot of poems about my family and both my parents are dead now, so it's not a problem anymore. And as far as they're concerned, but for a while when I first started to write my father was still alive and I worried a great deal about his reading my poems. I did everything in my power to keep my poems from him and to keep from him the fact that I was actually writing poems. It seemed quite childish now and I look back on it because I was after all in my 40s, but I still worry about what he would think and of course once he actually by accident he read some of my poems because a neighbor of his brought over a book that and an anthology that I was in and he was very pleased and very proud. All he did was point out. However that there were some mostly what he did was point out that there was some factual errors in a couple of the poems are written in which he appeared, but he was not hurt or offended in any way.
(00:04:35) Do you find that you're writing becomes richer as you grow older? I'm still writing poems
(00:04:41) about childhood because childhood never goes away. It's always part of you. And so I'm still writing poems about the past but I may start with something in the present and often do because I like to write about the present moment to but every time I write about something in the past, I read about it in a different way. It's like as I said, you revisit your life and you see it differently each time you examine it and it's Infinitely Rich, you never run out of material. So I always tell people in my journal classes that they never have to worry about running out of material if they're writing about their lives because your life just gives and gives and
(00:05:16) gives how important is it speaking of journals. Now how important is it for a woman to keep a journal?
(00:05:22) Well, I of course am a True Believer in keeping a journal and I'm very van jellicle about it and I urge everyone not only women but men as well to keep journals and women have more traditionally than men I think journals, although many of the published journals are by whereby man and we think of people like Thoreau as a journal keeper when we think of General Keepers, we think often of men but in recent years in the last 20 years, perhaps since the Resurgence of the women's movement the second or third way of I don't know what wave it was the early 70s much attention has been paid to women as Journal Keepers and it's City on with that is very Democratic any anybody can keep one and I found one of the most wonderful things about teaching the journal class is to hear other woman's tear of women's stories because most of my classes seem to attract women. I occasionally get a man but the women's stories are so remarkable. I will go to walk into the class the first day and think well, it looks like you know a bunch of women who are more or less alike and then as the week progresses and I hear the stories they read they write and they read them. I realize how diverse they are. And how each stories Totally unique and how important it is for each woman to tell her story.
(00:06:38) When do women have time though Phoebe? Dwell
(00:06:40) Journal? You don't need a lot of time as I often try to point out to my classes that if you just took
(00:06:48) five minutes a day or even a couple times a week
(00:06:52) you would write an amazing amount in a year's time. I think we do think that you got to sit down and really, you know, spend hours at it. You really don't just takes a couple of minutes you can I often give these three minute, right? Exercises just to show people how much they can write in three minutes or five minutes. You know, it's
(00:07:09) amazing even by hand. Have you done much with historical journals and have you can you compare and contrast historical journals with journals kept today? Are there any themes that go between the two I've read
(00:07:25) a fair number of journals kept by women, you know through the through the centuries one of my favorite Diaries is one kept by a tenth Century Japanese woman. Some say she owned a gun. It's called the pillow books of size shown again. And these are actually books that she kept her that she wrote in every night before she went to bed and stuck under her pillow. That's why they're called pillow books and many of her diary entries are in the form of lists. She'll make things lists of things such as things that make my heart beat faster, but in those through those lists, they're not like some of the conventional journal entries that we we know and that we make ourselves but through those lists you really get a sense of what her life was like and it doesn't that much different. I mean some of the some of the surface things and some of the exterior things are different of course, but otherwise, there's so many similarities and her her riding feels very contemporary you feel like she's alive again when you read those journals those Pillow books and there are other Journal Keepers one. Another favorite of mine is Louisa, May Alcott course, who's whose books were great pleasure to meet you.
(00:08:34) Me great
(00:08:35) pleasure in my childhood and she kept copious journals. She wrote voluminously in her journals and she had some of the same concerns that we do today. You know, that's the thing I guess about journals because they're written in the immediate present. They still managed to sound so you feel like the person is right there with you. It's one of my favorite genres
(00:08:59) if you're tuning in were talking to Phoebe Hanson and she is a poet she teaches at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Zayn were talking about journals this morning as well. She's also the keynote speaker for conference that will celebrate Minnesota women as part of national women's history month and you'll be talking about Minnesota women and this myth of Minnesota nice at all kinds of different
(00:09:21) topics. What I love about this particular event is that it is going to focus on the personal experiences of women who grew up in Minnesota or who spent considerable time being a woman in Minnesota. And so we Have a great deal of cultural and ethnic diversity in the in the panel that's going to follow my my speech the word keynote address terrifies me. So I'm just thinking of it as a little talk or a little chat with the audience. But we have these women who are going to actually tell us the stories of their lives and what it was like to grow up in their particular skin in Minnesota. And so I'm really looking forward to hearing them
(00:09:59) growing up in small town, Minnesota Phoebe from Sacred Heart do you find Now as a woman of 65 and as a writer mmm that small-town life is romanticize that it's not really all it's cracked up to be.
(00:10:12) Well, it's interesting to consider that question because I decided about I guess it's almost 8 years ago now 85 I had a year off because I got a bush Grant to write a book of essays about a woman who was our housekeeper in the 30s and Sacred Heart and I decided to go and live in a small town. I didn't live in Sacred Heart, but I lived in a town down the highway from Sacred Heart. Not quite as small as Sacred Heart Montevideo Minnesota, and I wanted to see what small town was life was like now in the 80s are then in the 80s. And yeah, there is a certain romanticizing of small-town life, but there's a certain truth to their man to say isn't true small-town life is I think simpler and in some ways Kinder, although again, the dark side is always there to including interesting crimes. I don't know if you can call Crime interesting, but I was I was astonished at how how hard it is to keep isolated now in small towns that big city life and big city problems do enter into small town life. So I suppose you could you could say they've been romanticized but I don't know that it's altogether
(00:11:20) bad. Have you found as a writer also that in a sense small town residents are almost patronized by other writers. I don't think so. I don't think so. I think
(00:11:34) I think As you say there is a sort of Glamour and romance to having grown up in a small town it it seems in some ways more interesting than having grown up in a big city. Although that's not entirely true. I think I think if a writer is truly a writer he will or she will be interested in a matter and where you come from no matter where it is and find something of interest in whatever your background is. There's just recently been a book published by a woman named Kathleen Norris who was a poet. In New York City inherited a farm of her grandmother's in lemon South Dakota. I believe it is and she went to live there just briefly he thought and ended up staying there for 20 years and now she's written a book about it. And that book has gotten a lot of attention. I think people are intrigued by small town life and especially someone who lived in New York City trying out small town life anything that is in your past is is your material. So what you've been dealt and that's what you write
(00:12:30) about getting back to the conference for a moment the women who will follow you. In a panel discussion after keynote address will be talking about their experiences living in Minnesota. What else needs to be done? What are some of the key women's issues that you
(00:12:45) see the key women's issues that I see
(00:12:50) I think we need to continue more of the
(00:12:52) same. I mean, I'm very proud that in Minnesota. For instance. We've been we've been in some ways in the Forefront of work on the domestic abuse issue that I've been where I I work with a woman at the College of Art and Design Mary McDonald who was one of the founding members of a group of artists who decide to do something about domestic violence and had a project called The Silent Witness project and this kind of activity is is very there are activists in this other who are really working on the domestic violence problem. That's one of the issues that I think is important and needs to be continued work needs to continue on it and I think also getting more women into public office of course is another one of my of my desires and I see it happening slowly but not, you know, not quite fast not quite fast enough to suit me, but I think that's also I think we're also going to be in the Forefront here in Minnesota on that issue and I hope that we see a great explosion of women in public office at all levels soon.