WAXING POETIC ABOUT INTERSTATES: Many Wyoming writers have stories and poems of the road. No surprise -- we spend half of our time driving. We’ve been stranded during the winter along I-80 near Elk Mountain. We’ve marveled at thunderheads rising out of sun-baked prairies. Breakdowns along lonely county roads and wild road trips with college friends populate our memories. A few weeks ago, I read one of my Wyoming road stories (“Road Kill”) at the Teton County Public Library. Last weekend in Rock Springs, Barbara Smith read her much-anthologized poem “Interstate 80” at the WWI conference. Later this month, Barbara will read her poem to a caravan of people driving cross-country to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Eisenhower Highway system. This is on June 19, when the group stops for lunch at Western Wyoming College. On June 20, 5 p.m., Cheyenne will fete the interstate caravan at the Historic Train Depot. Emcee will be Milward Simpson, newly named director of Wyoming State Parks and Cultural Resources. The Chugwater Philharmonic String Quartet will perform some road songs. WAC roster artists Jeffe Kennedy and Chavawn Kelley will read some of their road-oriented writing, and WAC Manager Rita Basom will read work by some other WYO writers. It’s free. Come out and celebrate all those writers who’ve been “on the road” in Wyoming, such as Beat writer Jack Kerouac, novelist Ernest Hemingway, and humorist Mark Twain, who wrote about the state’s roadways when they were mere trails. The highway caravan will split into two groups when it leaves Cheyenne June 21. One will go east across I-80 into Nebraska and the other goes south to Denver along I-25, and then east into Kansas, on their way to the Eisenhower home in Abilene.
- posted by Michael Shay @ 8:41 PM