Hannah’s Travel

Richard Speakes

Richard Speakes’s Hannah’s Travel is a collection of poems linked by narrative and theme and told in sequence. Set in 1851–52 between Macune, Missouri, and Ft. Laramie, Wyoming, all are told by Speakes's arresting heroine Hannah. Not only do these poems comprise one lyric poem that works as a whole; they stand on their own and behave like single entities as well. The syntax is a bit formal to our ears—this conveys both a sense of an earlier colloquial range and of the formality used by a verbal person without verbal education to match her natural talent. These poems are about the men with whom Hannah will set out on an adventure, and her stories of what they hope and fear to find.

Richard Speakes received a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Washington, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Vermont College. He currently teaches English at Santa Rosa Junior College in California.

A sample poem from the book

May 10, 1852

St. Joe, Missouri

Then they settled into stories

& they made the fires dance.

A bottle in the hand, Barton

swore Nebraska’s steep—

if they be neighborly the men

would show him kindness, ease

the labor of his oxen,

to drink & turn his wagon light.

I drank my brandy in tea as the oxen

nodded their blunt heads, their thanks

lolled in thick-tongued silence.

But the men,

their stories each a heave on the rope

men tie to what they want,

they talked on & drank they would coil

Nebraska’s length behind them. Now

they were all working together remembering

what they’d done when need be,

& near midnight, like a gigantic stump

in the field, the Rockies tore

loose & into view, approached

the pace the moon draws night.

Just a few more words, just

one more story . . .