The Lazarus Project
The Lazarus Project
K.C. Hanson
North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.
St. Cloud, Minnesota
Copyright © 2014 Kenneth Hanson
All rights reserved.
Print ISBN: 978-0-87839-744-0
eBook ISBN: 9780878398423
First edition: September 2014
Published by
North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.
P.O. Box 451
St. Cloud, MN
www.northstarpress.com
For the people in the pictures
Table of Contents
Foreword
Before the Steeple
Leaving Winnipeg
Annabelle
Astronaut
Wilhelmina Louise Griswold ’07
The Recipe Book
Sincerely
Leaving St. Louis,
Loving Father, Beautiful Child
Editorial Marriage
The Servant
Dell and Nell
Katy
Found Poem
I Played Pa
Lovingly Vallie
Dad’s Girlfriends
Children’s Ward
Redondo
Mr. & Mrs. F.S. Griffith
The Cameraman
Alma Mater
Cora & Art Preise
Russian Photo
The Man of Industry
Mrs. Taylor Stone
Here
Rev. Bruer in Pulpit
Taken in 1918
Stella
Brothers
Dear Mrs. Bliss
Faith
Your Grandma
Solstice
Will You Love Me Forever?
Credits, and a little about the pictures:
Foreword
The Lazarus Project is very much just that, an attempt to wake the dead. It is a resurrection of voices lost in the American past due to death of a blood line, literally or figuratively, and a celebration of the art that has allowed what little we have of these people’s history to come forth in time. On the Internet, where fully half of these pictures were purchased, they are often tagged as “instant ancestors.” Somehow this is very telling of our culture. My intent, though, is to make it true—to make of my readers, at least, literary descendants of these people.
Because these photos represent family and history we have lost, I have spent a great deal of time running each photo through a Google image search—and every marking through an extensive textual search—in an attempt to discover any holders of copyright. I was lucky enough to find the descendants of some of the photographers, and to gain a set of names for one photo. Though most of the photographs are too old for it to matter, my search did not reveal a copyright holder for any of the images. They are printed here as orphaned photos. Most of the people in them remain a complete mystery. If you recognize any of them, please contact me. My greatest desire is that at least some of them might find their way home. My email is k.c.hanson@gmail.com.
What little I know about the pictures is listed along with the credits.
– K.C.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
–William Shakespeare
Before the Steeple
We stood on the cusp of a great new world, balanced
like the long row of cars, black with envy,
tipping between the steeple-less church and
a road that stretched the prairie to the sky.
We thought that road was endless, that if we
were bold enough, like our uncles in the last
great war, and charged the ditch, we would be-
come like the words through the wire, grown up fast.
We gazed at its ends for hours that day, watching
our futures build out there in front of us,
wishing one better each time, hoping
one day to cross the ditch into its dust.
We went back into the church that day
not knowing we were already on our way.
Leaving Winnipeg
This postcard, like the young men in it, was meant
to travel, to live in smoke and steam on the tracks
and roads, streets and rivers of continents—
all it needed like they did was the jack
to go and a place to go to. Home. The address,
again like theirs, is blank both ways and free
like three young men of any correspondence
at all. What a stunning way to see
the world, clean and blank as Descartes’ slate,
always inventing the future before you like glass
spinning molten on a tube. No time, no date,
only a story to tell, how one of these
one day pointed out the American verb:
perpetual i, and n, and g.
Annabelle
Like my dress, this chair and table fit
me perfectly. Each leg has its foot
like mine and each foot has toes. I sit
in this chair reading, for fun, a book
written so I can read it myself. Its size
allows it to fit just right in my hands. The print
is easy to see and there aren’t so many words
on each page to confuse me. This is important. I haven’t
been reading that long. I suppose it’s like good shoes
in that I can run and jump and skip faster
and farther and higher and so much prettier in those,
or just like how kindling makes the best little fire.
It really should come to you as no surprise,
I do so much better with things that are exactly my size.
Astronaut
Even then I was reaching for the heavens,
my white bonnet pulled down tight, all buttoned
up, so short I was lifted by my earthbound
family, giants, and yet I knew the stars
were mine. I just knew I could make it as far as
the street without falling, maybe farther—send
my beaming glance backward, squeal, and if the wind
and luck were with me, if I caught my legs
on the other side of that stutter-step, I’d be gone.
Of course I never made it. I couldn’t get free
and when I did, the glance back, or the curb,
some minor glitch in the timing always sent me
crashing down. Still, I leapt from the Earth
in my mind—did somersaults—raced the dawn.
Wilhelmina Louise Griswold ’07
This is Lady Liberty, except
not in the French form (so romantic) but
a child, a laughing little girl on the doorstep
of the world carrying not a melting pot,
no salad, certainly not a torch (children
shouldn’t play with fire, you know), but
a mixing bowl, her grandma’s, the wooden spoon
stirring in the freedom, moving about
swiftly, dragging the yeast and sugar through
the layers and lumps of glutinous paste (the salt
of the earth, you know, has always been wheat), the dough,
so it can rise unwatched, like the poor, and put
food in the mouths of children. A wondrous feat
for a Lady of Liberty: “Come to my table and eat.”
The Recipe Book
I took my Confirmation picture while swearing
on a recipe book. I held my breath
the whole time thinking God would surely blast
me down. Dad said I was being silly
but he never said why. Mother just said
to be quiet. Years later with my Bible
in hand I would show my Great Uncle, the blasphemer,
and he would laugh. “Good God, Girl,” he said,
“A recipe for Heaven is what religion is!”
I felt relieved, sanctified, and told
him so, but he just shook his head. “Jesus
Christ,” he muttered, grabbed my Bible and held
it, shaking. “He made everything—plant and beast—
every thought in your head. You can’t trick God like yeast.”
Sincerely
How could one word mean so much? Hold
sway over the all and the everything, dash
dreams like china in a fireplace, fold
my someday with a cursive hand to trash?
How could one word mean so much? Rolled
letters in a loop, no cut or slash
penmanship, just bold and circling cold
swirls of lovely carved as if in ash.
How could one word mean so much? Hold
court: attorney and judge, jury and lash,
witness and gavel—everything all told
for the sin except the sin, the sin and the fl
ash?
How could one word mean so much? How could
one word mean so much? How could? How could?
Leaving St. Louis,
the gateway to the West, he holds the iron
rail in his fists even for the picture.
Her hands are loose, two fingers on
the bar, resting, enjoying the ride—the other
hand hangs quick, ready to grasp the moment.
They are going to San Francisco. To him
this is a trial: a test of his will bent
against the world. To her: adventure. The brim
of her hat soars. Romance to him is a porter,
keeping the train on time. Maybe we all
were born on this train, somewhere between wherever
and when, poor and free, before the fall,
to this unwed couple of dreamers, our Adam and Eve,
going to Eden, already ready to leave.
Loving Father, Beautiful Child
He told her once that pennies were for wishing,
that in America you should wish for land.
We found them at a wooden table sitting
together, trapped staring longingly toward
the door, past the dumb heirlooms lying
around in well-placed disarray, all busted
and broken, awaiting purchase by patrons wasting
their wishes on what someone else had dreamed.
Now it’s all worth ninety-five cents,
their lives wrapped in plastic, protected, given
a home in a box, shared, his life and hers
forever, a bastion of wishes adrift in time. In
pennies, that is nearly a hundred dreams,
but in her eyes are one-hundred-million.
Editorial Marriage
For those of you who don’t have this picture in hand,
it’s simple: a young bride in her white dress and
gloves stands by and holds a chair; there
is a window behind her, and flowers in her hair.
It’s the sort of thing an optimist would call
a traditional pose, to allow the dress to fall
more naturally, one perfect shot of the bride for
her husband’s desk—pessimists say he’s dead in the war.
But for the poet, symbol is everything;
whether her husband is there or not, alive
or dead, she is still married to an empty chair
and wearing the suit of an angel who’s traded her wings
for a veil. All she wants to do is dive
out that open window, to dare, to dare to be so fair, so very fair out in the open air . . .
The Servant
I am real though my life is fake, this child
of light before me not my own, the column
behind but a painting of a column, even the hide
I stand upon, borrowed, like the sum
to take this picture, or my servant’s outfit
which I’d never seen before this afternoon.
Seeming rich must be so important,
to lose so much now that he might later win.
It is that way for me as well perhaps,
stirring other people’s pots so I
one day might have my own, bigger, for soups
made the industrial, American way.
Some will say then this child was raised an heir,
but it was I who delivered him up to there.
Dell and Nell
This is mother and daughter as they were meant
to be, close and happy, comfortable if not
with the camera, at least with each other, no hint
of animosity between them; they had a lot
of things in common—eyes and chin and the way
they held their hands in fists, as if relaxing
a finger were out of the question, that it would say
“I’m lazy, slothful, in my heart the devil is king,”
so there could be no husband, no granddaughter
for them to have so many things in common with—
eyes and chin and the type of clothing, better
in youth—surely, dresses always look better with
bows—hair and the air of feminine wiles,
yet always this apple between them, a universe of cells.
Katy
On the day of the vote, my breasts caught with ribbon,
I wore a campaign hat and seated you,
my only daughter, at my right hand like the son
before the father, and had us shot, you
and I and your brother, with a camera when
the men at the booth didn’t do it with guns.
I think your father expected them to, but then,
who really knew? He called the line that runs
across the front of the picture, separating
him from all his family, the “vote,” and still
holds it against me that I went. “Voting,”
he said, “it’s dirty business.” I said, “It will
be fine.” I wrapped the photo in pink ribbon
for him—a concession to allow both sides to win.
Found Poem
Across the back of this postcard Edith wrote:
“Mrs. Grey, Ray, and Edith pilloud the home
in Spokane, Washington. Dear Laddie, Here
is a picture of the house. What do you think of our home?
You can tell Mother, Ray, and Me. The other
two were just friends out here when they were taken.
The white dog is Lady. She is in the hospital
now, not expected to live. How
are you? I won’t write anymore now.
I think I owe you a letter but I’m not sure
so if I do—I’ll write in a few days.
Have you a telephone? If so, let me know,
might call you up some day—Love to all
from Edith.” I wonder why it was never mailed.
I Played Pa
I played Pa, the dreamer, though the gun
was real. Jill played Ma, her sour face locked
like a raisin. Sara was our wild son,
Jacob. Brave and daring, his new hat cocked
to the side, sure to find us plenty of fun
(trouble, you mean, Jill would say) socked
into an afternoon along the sun-
drenched trail to California. “Gold is locked
in them hills,” I would say, and Jill would hurl
“No more jaw-jacking. We won’t have biscuits come morning.”
But Jake would be off messing with some pretty girl
farther back in the wagon train, or stirring
up cattle rustlers or Indians, and in that whirl
of a world and a story, I guess we grew up spinning.
Lovingly Vallie
How is it so often when a woman wants
to present herself, her real self to someone
without the falseness of the everyday, take a run
at eternity I suppose, or love, she creates
a dream of herself like silk from a mushroom, or treats
a magician pulls from your hair? Sincere and fun,
sexy and pure and—perfect. She’s the one
every time. But how can that be? What feats
are in a camera’s lens, in the film
or in the practiced script of the feminine hand,
what ancient trick, genetic code or whim
of fancy lies in a picture built to land
the hearts of men? Lovingly Vallie, it says,
as if that’s all there was, or ever is.