dannydmc

"Hark and here me a Humble poet
As I tell a tale of times gone by
When heros walked this Wonder-land
And Dangerous, Daring Deeds were done!"

I first wrote those words in November of 2003. I'd had this interesting little idea for a writing experiment; I was going to try to write a modern day version of a heroic epic in verse. At the time I figured it be 10, maybe 15 pages long and, if I stuck with it, would most likely end up as a comedy. The sticking with it bit was the problem; I'd always had wonderful ideas for stories in the past, but I had no real see-through; I'd get several pages into them and then lose interest. The concerns of real-life would always come knocking at my door, and I'd shrug and put my writing away.
I mention all of this because, this morning, at roungly 12:15 AM I finished that story I started so many years ago. The 10 page comedy by that point had become a sprawling 132 pages of verse, using the ancient Germanic style of alliterative poetry. In the time it took me to finish, I began student teaching, graduated from college, moved to Madison and ended up unemployed for the summer, took a job in the Alaskan Bush, and got accepted to Graduate School in North Dakota.
It has been, looking back, some of the roughest years of my young life and, through it all the tale of SIgismund the Bold; Lumberback of the North Woods and battler against the vile Wendigo, was been entwined. As Sigismund saw the body of his father, killed by the Wendigo, I was awakening to my new profession as a teacher. When SIgismund fought the monster for the first time, I had slipped into one of my many minor bouts of Depression in the past few years. As the hero was saved and sought refuge with a local indian village, someone tried to break into my house, threatening to kill me. The Wendigo was slain at about the time I learned I would be going to grad school and would never have to enter into a High School classroom again. And now, as the twin sons of Sigismund stood over the slain form of their own father, who had fallen under the curse of the monster, I am readying to leave my village and travel back home to Wisconsin.
The funny thing is, is that looking back, I can't say with any certainty exactly why I stuck with this poem. I don't see any great financial payoff for it, I'll be lucky to get it published. But, for some reason the story sunk is talons deep into me and wouldn't let me go until it had its way with me. Maybe, suffering under the pressures of the world as I was, I needed a hero of my own and, finding none available, I simply created by own. He was flawed, of course, but then so am I, and I've always suspected that its a heros flaws which make them so grand in the first place.
What ever the reason; I am DONE! The rough draft has been completed and sent off to friends. I plan on taking a break of about a month or so before I go back to edit it for good. I'm not sure what will happen after that and, suddenly, I don't really care either. The tale of the Tree-Splitters; three generations of Wisconsin Lumberjacks (Deitrich, Sigismund and his sons Sigbert and Sigwolf) has been put onto paper and been told. That was the hard part; the rest should pale in comparison. I hope.

I'll leave you with the last words of the poem:

"It hurled o'er the horizon as the hot-star
Rose from its rest. A raging inferno
Painted the pond in patterns of red
Welcoming the warrior to the world-after

And somewhere, as the sons sang songs of victory
A lone lupis, lonely in sound
Wailed his welcome to the war-prince."