Coming Out of Nowhere
Alaska Homestead Poems
by Schandelmeier, Linda
88 p., 15 halftones, 6 x 9
Format: Paper and electronic
Price: $14.95
2018
“The earth near our place / was cradle,
/ it rocked us— / became our skin. /
House doors opened, / spilled us out,
/ we disappeared into trees— / they
clothed usin delirious green. / . . . We
knew the song / of this place, made it
up, / sang it—”
Homestead life is often romanticized
as a valiant, resilient family persisting
in the clean isolation of pristine
wilderness, living off the land and depending
only on each other. But there
can be a darker side to this existence.
Linda Schandelmeier was raised
on a family homestead six miles south
of the fledgling town of Anchorage,
Alaska in the 1950s and ’60s. But hers
is not a typical homestead story. In this
book, part poetic memoir and part historical
document, a young girl comes of
age in a family fractured by divorce and
abuse. Schandelmeier does not shy away
from these details of her family history,
but she also recognizes her childhood
as one that was unique and nurturing,
and many of her poems celebrate
homestead life. Her words hint at her
way of surviving and even transcending
the remoteness by suggesting a deeper
level of human experience beyond the
daily grind of homestead life; a place
in which the trees and mountains are
almost members of the family. These
are poems grounded in the wilds that
shimmer with a mythic quality. Schandelmeier’s
vivid descriptions of homesteading
will draw in readers from all
types of lives.
Schandelmeier unfolds her story in a way that conveys both her joy and her sorrow. . . . In writing Coming out of Nowhere, Schandelmeier gets to the heart of her life on an Alaska homestead in the 1950s and 1960s. The overall impact is stunning and timely.
—NewPages
2019 Women Writing the West WILLA Award Winner, Poetry
Linda Schandelmeier is the author of Listening Hard Among the Birches. Her poems have appeared
in Alaska Quarterly Review, the Northern Review, Cirque, Ice Floe, and Connecticut River
Review, among others. She was Artist in Residence at Denali National Park in 2012.