A few words...
The American world I came into was flat and vacant-looking: North Dakota, Great Plains. I heard Norwegian and Swedish spoken in some of its few human confines and would reject, then embrace, then shrug at that heritage of mine, would work in San Francisco and the mountains of the same name in Arizona but at length return to the place that knew me. Quiet and solitude are an enjoyment, not a burden. I walk and watch in town, too, often along the river of my birth. (Not all of these poems are “about” the plains. “Good Hope,” for instance, a retelling of the Flying Dutchman legend, takes the reader to the southern tip of another continent.)
Rodney Nelson's work began appearing in mainstream American literary journals , e.g., Georgia Review, long ago, and chapbooks ensued; however, he turned to fiction and did not write a poem from 1982 to 2004, when he made a comeback in the ezines. His entry in the Poets & Writers directory contains a partial list of credits. A liking for what some have termed nature poetry drew him to the work of Robinson Jeffers and, on the far other hand, that of the youngish German Ron Winkler. Nelson has worked as book and copy editor and lives in Fargo, North Dakota.
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