In the epilogue of “Kansas Matters: 21st-century Writers on the Sunflower State,” which I co-edited with Thomas Fox Averill, I wrote that Kansas is “a place wild with stories, overrun with strange and unexpected creatures, a place of discovery and heart.”
For me, Kansas started with my childhood rural home, which was fecund with native grasses, a forested creek and animals that stalked the perimeters, flew the coops, and slithered the pasture. We were never alone on that small stamp of land, and because full attention was required, I was fully alive.
We all know Kansas as a place. But Tom and I wanted the book to be about Kansas as feeling, Kansas as meaning. We wanted “Kansas Matters” to go beyond teaching the facts of our state — those books already exist, many of them excellent. We wanted stories that showed us the varied ways we can live in this sloping-uphill prairie.
As the poems, essays and stories came to us, a distinct Kansas wildness abounded. We were not the first to notice this trait. Traci Brimhall, our current Kansas poet laureate, wrote in her poem “Ad Astra,” which she read at the governor’s inauguration: “Our chapters / will be like our seasons — reliable in their surprises.”
Some surprising, wild examples: John Brown, of course, and tornadoes. Teenage boys saving a friend’s life in the strip pits of southeast Kansas. A Kansas Day party in South Korea, and Pride celebrations in Parsons. “Furred kings” (bison), shovelnose sturgeon, deciduous trees and the fossilized bones of the ancient Inland Sea. A Chicano movement born from kitchen table conversations. Chana dal, conchas, Angus beef, wheat. El Vaquero and La Salsa Man. The body of a beloved brother.
Tom and I quickly realized that our role as editors was going to be tough: How do we tame this mad assortment of stories into one book?
Eventually four themes revealed themselves. Oh Give Me a Home, which expands the concept of home and is the reason many of us build our lives here.
Elemental Landscapes was another theme; nearly every work references the land, sky, or plants of this great expanse.
Deep Roots: Family and Community, which can be the hardest work we will ever do, and hopefully the most rewarding (and to me the wildest work we can engage in).
And finally Astra: Imagining Traditions, which looks to the past and envisions us into the future — which is an innately Kansas trait, if you ask me.
Note that nearly every poem, essay, and short story could fit into each theme. We had to make decisions.
Tamed and corralled, however, the wildness of these Kansas stories endure. Each writer in this collection is attuned to the subtlety of this place. They see the openness and abundance that this large state has for us and ask, in many ways, “Why not?”
Why not live a full and strange life? Why not open our hearts to listening? Why not make things right, or reach out, or fix what’s been broken? Why not be proud of where you live?
For Kansas Day, I want Kansans to see the Kansas that the writers of “Kansas Matters” show us: the much-ness of it all, the space we have for difference, and the poetry that underlies our bloodied endurance. See the grit and stamina and presence of us as a people, and the unique, hearty expressions of self that we have the collective space to hold. Just like the flying, bounding, crawling, and swimming wild creatures of my childhood home, Kansas has the space for all of us. Let’s hold all of us.
Leslie VonHolten writes about land and culture in the prairie and Great Plains region. She lives in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate.
