Jan Minich was born in Youngstown, Ohio, and grew up near fields, ponds, and lakes in Poland, Huron, and Lisbon, Ohio. He received a BA in Literature and Writing from the University of Arizona, an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a PhD in English from the University of Utah with specialties in poetry writing and Western American Literature, before moving to Carbon County and teaching full-time at USU Eastern/CEU, where he also co-hosted a long-running Readers’ Series, was Director of the Wilderness Studies Program, and where he is now an Emeritus Professor. Other colleges where Jan taught include Youngstown State University and Columbia College. Always drawn to water and the outdoors, Jan cruises Lake Superior in the summers in a small boat, and in winter hikes Utah’s canyons. His poetry comes from his relationship with wild areas, many times focusing on deep concerns for natural environments. Other poems channel the voices of women, mainly historical characters, including female pirates, a burlesque dancer, mermaids, and western women who left their homes and traveled through Utah with outlaws, in his latest collection of poetry Wild Roses. His books include The Letters of Silver Dollar, Wild Roses (a chapbook), and History of a Drowning. His work has been published in many journals including Cutbank, Weber, Kestrel, Blueline, The Cape Rock, Stone Country, Seattle Review, Clover, Sugarhouse Review, Verse Wisconsin, Limberlost Review, Deep Wild, and New Poets of the American West. Jan lives in Wellington, Utah, with his wife, poet Nancy Takacs, and their two dogs. Nancy and Jan have a son, Ian.
Works
Southern Ohio
Southern Ohio
It is late evening and Sarah
has just left her cabin in the woods
to revisit the old couple,
her nearest neighbors
several miles down the road
and through the covered bridge.
On Fridays, she takes them eggs
and if it isn’t too warm tonight,
a gallon of milk from her young Jersey
that has just come fresh.
They remember her mother,
used to see her walking alone
late at night down by Poplar Springs
where the old black man
had built his house and barn
three times to see it burnt.
She used to take him eggs and milk
and we all thought it was her
that talked him into building again.
But the third time he packed
his tools in the wagon and rode out,
and her mother wasn’t seen for days.
Her actions were never scolded,
the nights of wandering never forgiven.
The women stayed away from her,
afraid she’d start making sense
and they would burn their own wedding dresses
so their daughters could
not wear what had no more meaning.
from Wild Roses, Mayapple Press, 2017, also published in Ellipsis
Wildness
Wildness
It isn’t as if this hasn’t
all happened before.
Whip-poor-wills disappeared
from the sugar maple out our
bedroom window at the farm.
And the Great-Horned owls
are no longer by the river.
Wildness requires a wave
just before it breaks,
but animals
are dying all around us.
Seeing trees reflected,
waves breaking in another time,
we’re no longer here
but a place in time,
that better place
the dying are told they’re going
though they would just as soon
stay in place,
move only with small steps
as if they had just learned to walk,
startled at how different
their lives would be,
while others start dreaming
of a mountain pass they dreamt
about once years ago,
before they started grasping the pages,
pinching the paper
between thumb and forefinger,
wondering how long the trees
would remember them when they’re gone.
Jackrabbit, Dugout Canyon
Jackrabbit, Dugout Canyon
a different way of seeing
the blue sky
through the tallest sage
he waits until you’re close
then bounds away possibly amused
at making more racket than necessary
startling you for the joy
of his first leap
and how you still can’t keep
from being startled
pulling a shoulder back at the sound
or a change in your step
that brings the sky down
from the Book Cliffs
the passage into solitude
that comes only with age
perhaps a dance like the jackrabbit’s
through the sage
beneath the blue sky
above the desert
Recession
Recession
1.
You listen to waves,
like the spaces of songs
touching a beach or breakwater,
a recession of everything human
where time descends
to just below the surface
and you hear pebbles
being pulled off the beach,
a sound so pleasant
you dream of drowning
and let go of the nightmares
of dying too old.
2.
Crawling just low enough
to clear the fence,
you hear a rhythmic breathing,
waves at Hartley Beach
when the nights were longer.
You sit up and take notice
when another body floats by
under the beautiful sky
you can almost imagine
in that single moment
of silence between waves.
Bibliography
- Wild Roses, Mayapple Press (Woodstock, NY), 2017.
- Wild Roses, Outlaw Artists Press, 2008.
- The Letters of Silver Dollar, City Art Press, 2002
- History of a Drowning, Owl Creek Press (Seattle, WA), 1990
