.

About-Face

This prairie’s lore:
hoar bonhomie
of dinosaur
and bygone sea.

Our founders’ stance:
mint goodly wealth
through broad expanse
of homestead health.

Intrepid souls
push back frontiers,
sun’s aureoles
scorch pioneers.

Brave wagon trains,
badlands’ morass,
perpetual plains,
big bluestem grass.

Vast fields of corn
and beans: earth flat,
sky wide, windborne
hawk acrobat.

Now, wind farms built,
fair scenery’s blot.
Foul crazy-quilt—
bright blades soon rot.

Not Holland’s quaint
benign windmills,
but bloody taint
of mass bird-kills.

Dismantle them!
Restore to grace
our glowing gem,
green-growing space.

.

.

Mary Jane Myers resides in Springfield, Illinois. She is a retired JD/CPA tax specialist. Her debut short story collection Curious Affairs was published by Paul Dry Books in 2018.

NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets.

The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary.

 

***Read Our Comments Policy Here***

 

22 Responses

  1. Paulette Calasibetta

    There is a great irony in what some call ‘progress’ a progress that leaves behind its wrath and destruction.

    Your 5th stanza’s imagery is so impactful : “Vast fields of corn and beans: earth flat, sky wide, windborne hawk acrobat.

    Reply
    • Mary Jane Myers

      Paulette
      Thank you for your kind comments. The terrain of central Illinois is entirely flat, except near the larger rivers, where there are gently rolling hills for perhaps a quarter-mile on either side of the banks. Many people find the landscape “boring.” But consider the miracle of the best topsoil (literally) in the world, as cultivated by our skillful and industrious farmers. The result: a fertile vista stretching to the horizon! Is this not heaven-on-earth?!

      Most sincerely
      Mary Jane

      Reply
  2. Roy Eugene Peterson

    I agree with you, Mary Jane. Progress is not progress when it destroys. Excellent imagery with a Midwest perspective.

    Reply
  3. Adam Sedia

    Love this! I looked at your bio and it confirmed my suspicions that you were a fellow Midwesterner. I wrote a poem a few years ago about the wind farm in Benton County, Indiana, which reflected exactly the same sentiments. What I really like about your piece is its terse dimeter and directness, appropriate for the subject.

    Reply
    • Mary Jane Myers

      Dear Adam

      Thank you for your encouraging comments.

      This poem is inspired by the actual scenery here near my home. In the last four years, wind turbines have been constructed on the “Old Jacksonville Road” — a lovely 25-mile stretch of rural two-lane roadway that connects my home in Springfield to the town of Jacksonville. That route seemed a picture-perfect postcard illustrating the breathtaking beauty of country roads. However, now these wind turbines ominously loom overhead like monstrous rough beasts. Their enormous size disrupts the proportions of the landscape. Their metal blades reflect and intensify sunlight, so that it is dangerous to look directly at them.

      Illinois Central Illinois folks are plainspoken. They construct terse yet colorful sentences: concrete noun coupled with strong “active” verb, full stop, often an exclamation (Humph!). No upspeak or vocal fry! I thought dimeter might give a flavor for these speech patterns. The other technical aspect that attracted me is the density of the rhymes, which helps to create a “full stop” between each short stanza–only 8 syllables, yet 2 exact rhymes. The effect (I hope) is that the reader “slows down” to “register” the rhymes.

      Sincerely
      Mary Jane

      Reply
  4. Joseph S. Salemi

    Leave it to liberals to think up something stupid and destructive like “wind farms.” I’d love to see them all chopped down.

    I agree with Adam about the clipped and clear terseness of the poem’s structure.

    Reply
    • Mary Jane Myers

      Dear Joseph

      Thank you for your kind comments.

      My poem is meant as a lament for the degradation of our beautiful landscape, and the disruption to our productive farms. There of course are arguments pro and con for this technology. Because of the flat expanse of the prairie, with no natural windblocks, we in central Illinois experience high winds daily, especially in the late afternoons and evenings. In theory, our area is a perfect place to “harness” the energy of those winds. However, I’m skeptical that “wind energy” will prove to be cost-effective or efficient.

      Sincerely
      Mary Jane

      Reply
  5. Margaret Coats

    Good prairie picture, Mary Jane, with fine historical sketch to support the favorable view. You’re right about blades rotting: we have some poorly maintained and minimally operational wind farms in California. They are much more of an eyesore when the extent is larger than the few fans in the post illustration. I have heard of a Midwest project where entrepreneurs want to build small, picturesque windmills–but these would only provide electricity for each farm purchasing the service.

    Reply
    • Mary Jane Myers

      Margaret

      Thank you for your kind comments. The wind farms near me are brand-new and have not yet begun to disintegrate. But apparently they begin to degrade within 15 years.

      Re: the “old days.” My father grew up in eastern Colorado during the Dust Bowl in the 1930’s, before rural electrification. The dry desert terrain was dotted with small family cattle ranches. Each ranch necessarily had on its property both a well to tap underground water, and a windmill to supply the energy to pump the water out of the well. These windmills were built for practicality and durability, and their designs were utilitarian rather than aesthetically pleasing. I suppose our love of nostalgia has now dubbed them “quaint.”!

      Sincerely
      Mary Jane

      Reply
  6. Marguerite

    Thank you for this poem. Since the cost is so great to gain so little, one wonders who/what is behind it. No recycling possible. It is the same with the expansive fields of solar panels — awful here and awful through what were beautiful and historical swaths of Europe.

    Reply
    • Mary Jane Myers

      Dear Marguerite

      Thank you for reading my poem, and for your encouraging comments. The policy issues are complex, of course. I think the average person (like the narrator of the poem) reacts unfavorably to the ugliness of wind turbines and solar panels that now dot our rural landscapes. They resemble somehow those “brutalist” buildings that have disfigured our cityscapes.

      Most sincerely
      Mary Jane

      Reply
  7. Paul Freeman

    A lot of talking points with your poem, MJ, though I reckon I’m in the about-to-be berated minority.

    Of course, the prairies were once vast grasslands thundering to the sound of the feet of hundreds of thousands of buffalo, and dotted with native American villages before the near annihilation of the bison and the e
    cleansing of the indigenous inhabitants.

    Now alternative forms of energy are needed to negate the effects of fossil fuels on the environment so that we leave a sustainable planet to the children and grandchildren we purport to love so much.

    I know that the president seems to find wind turbines (windmills he mistakenly calls them) abhorrent, and thinks that somehow they cause cancer, but we’re looking at a landscape evolution, just as we’ve had throughout history. Windmills in the Netherlands, for instance, were never built for quaintness, but primarily to pump water out of waterlogged land for land reclamation.

    As for birds getting caught up in the blades of wind turbines, despite the links ‘proving’ how lethal they are that will probably be thrown into the mix, if they are so lethal, why didn’t the Dutch get all upset about dead birds when they built their quaint windmills centuries ago.

    Reply
    • Mary Jane Myers

      Dear Paul

      Thank you for your close reading of my poem, and for your excellent comments. I agree with you that environmental and energy issues are complex. Calm and rational discussion of policy becomes nigh impossible in a highly polarized political atmosphere.

      The speaker of the poem is upset primarily that “the view” has been spoiled. So she’s a bit childish! (That’s OK, I think: poets are supposed to be empathic and emotional!) I’m thinking of that wonderful poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins Binsey Poplars who is upset when his favorite trees are cut down and his “scene” is ruined:
      “The sweet especial scene,
      Rural scene, a rural scene,
      Sweet especial rural scene.”

      You are correct: windmills historically were always built for practicality, and aesthetics were never a primary consideration. I commented above about my father’s experience in the 1930’s, when windmills were essential working equipment for small cattle ranches.

      The poet of course does not mention the negative effects of all those fertile lush fields of soybeans and corn. Those scientifically-managed fields have supplanted the natural prairie flora and fauna. Therefore, migratory bird populations have been significantly reduced because our scientific farming methods create uniform landscapes that lack the habitat diversity that birds need to survive. And of course, the widespread use of pesticides is harmful to all wildlife.

      Most sincerely
      Mary Jane

      Reply
      • Paul A. Freeman

        Hi MJ. I’ve just (re)read Binsey Poplars. I last read it in 1980, when I explained to my teacher’s satisfaction what the word ‘sandalled’ might mean. On Wikipedia it says that the poplars were re-planted shortly afterwards, cut down again in 2004 and replanted again. None of which is of comfort to Gerard Manley Hopkins. I felt the same way when I returned to the town of Atbara, in northern Sudan, to discover the graveyard of old British steam trains had be taken away and the engines melted down, making Atbara just another desert outpost.

        You may have sensed a little tension with others over my support for wind turbines, and for that matter solar energy. Improvements in battery technology allows power to be increasingly stored. Therefore the sun doesn’t need to be continually shining, nor the wind continually blowing. And even through cloud cover and with just a light breeze blowing, energy is being collected. The US has turned away from renewable energy technology, partly for political reasons, and is now playing second fiddle to China (number one in electric car technology and solar panel production) and will not admit its mistake. After all, there’s plenty of ‘clean’ American coal still – which is like saving the tobacco industry by encouraging the smoking of menthol ciggies.

        Another reason for the antipathy towards scientific advancement in some is that whereas several hundred years ago a person could know about almost everything worth knowing, in this day and age we can’t, and some people feel this belittles them. To them, trusting scientists and experts with knowledge they don’t posses themselves, is like trusting a plane pilot, leaving us like helpless passengers. They feel out of control and will desperately troll through the internet trying to find obscure and radical sites to back up their feelings of inadequacy, and links to make themselves still feel relevant. Worse still, having gaslit themselves, they will deliberately mislead others and deem it a victory when they’re praised for their dedicated ‘research’ in outing those with real knowledge as charlatans.

        Anyhow, I loved your descriptions of the prairies. That part of the world has featured so much in popular culture, from ‘Little House on the Prairie’, to Stephen King’s ‘The Stand’ and ‘Children of the Corn’, to the scene that makes me laugh most in ‘Dumb and Dumber’.

  8. Mike Bryant

    I love “About-Face.” You celebrate your flat, fertile land with cornfields to the horizon and hawks dancing in the sky. But then you turn that love into a gut-punch, calling out those monstrous wind turbines looming over Old Jacksonville Road. You’re right, they’re not “progress,” just a blight on this heaven-on-earth, and your words make that betrayal sing.
    You’re also right to question this wind farm nonsense. These aren’t the old Dutch windmills some folks romanticize, built small and smart to pump water and grind grain. They are industrial beasts, forged with fossil fuels, scarring our land with concrete and rare earth metals strip-mined halfway across the globe.
    The idea that they’re “evolving” our landscape is hogwash-it’s a crooked, subsidized eyesore, plain and simple. Earth’s climate has been shifting for billions of years from solar flares, volcanoes, orbital wobbles—not because of CO2, which is more friend than foe to our crops.
    Betting on these monstrous, rough beasts to “save” us while they can’t even keep the grid steady without coal or gas is a fool’s wager, not a plan for our kids’ future.
    And the birds… your “bloody taint” line is perfect.— those huge, high-speed blades are shredding hawks and eagles by the millions every year. There are no bird deaths attributed to the 17th-century windmills. We see the carnage now, and it’s real. Maybe we should forget about the dodo and the passenger pigeon and concentrate on something we can do something about. Your call to “restore to grace” our “green-growing space” isn’t just poetry; it’s a stand for what’s ethical, practical and true.
    Mary Jane, your poem’s a battle cry for our country’s soul. Keep turning up the truth- it matters.
    Just a note… “Today, the term “windmill” refers to any device that uses turning blades to harness wind power for practical work. This includes grinding grain, pumping water, and producing electricity. Modern windmills designed primarily for electricity generation are often called wind turbines, but calling them windmills is still accurate and true to the term’s broader meaning. This simple definition respects history while embracing modern technology.” – Perplexity

    Reply
      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Who cares? There are some idiot scientists who are also trying to recreate the mammoth from genetic bits harvested from frozen mammoth carcasses. It looks like some of these scientists have too much free time.

        Paul, your entire approach to this question is religious, not scientific. Your religious faith of “environmentalism” is just one small sect in the larger world-encircling Church system called Left-Liberalism. In fact, your rhetoric on the subject is messianic, apocalyptic, and proselytizing, with all the urgency of someone desperate to save the world, and to bring scriptural truth to non-believers.

        Your talk of “alternate forms of energy” and “fossil fuels” and “the environment” and “a sustainable planet” gives your game away. This is the vocabulary of the catechism answers of the Great Left-Liberal Religion. Like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, you can’t help ringing our doorbells.

    • Mary Jane Myers

      Dear Mike

      Thank you for your kind comments. I’m pleased that my poem is touching a nerve with readers!

      The poet-speaker in this poem is (confess it!) myself. I’m trying to capture in a few compressed poetic stanzas my upset feelings when I drive along Old Jacksonville Road. It’s so depressing to encounter these creepy brutalist machines, up-close-and-personal. I’ve even seen them being constructed. The blades are incredibly long–I’d guess 150-200 feet–and it is surreal to see these blades stacked on flatbeds and being hauled by huge trucks. Traffic jams are caused–we who are driving passenger cars must wait patiently for many minutes, as the truck drivers struggle to make impossibly wide turns into the farmers’ side roads.

      The main issue with solar and wind from a policy perspective, as I understand it, is that the energy they produce is intermittent. That is, solar depends on sunlight, and wind depends on natural air flows. This is a severe limitation when our energy needs require 24/7 availability. The other major problem seems to be the awkward design of contemporary wind turbines. They are huge and ungainly, and disintegrate quickly. They definitely confuse and kill wildlife (birds and whales, for example).

      Sincerely
      Mary Jane

      Reply
  9. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Mary Jane, I love everything about this poem – the chosen form, the rhyme, the rhythm, the superb imagery… and most importantly – a crystal clear message of truth that sings to my soul! The closing stanza is a triumph!

    Reply
    • Mary Jane Myers

      Susan

      Thank you for your kind comments. This poem took a lot of thought–I knew the emotion I wanted to convey, but I wasn’t sure which form to use. The final product is the result of many drafts. I’m so gratified that you think well of my work.

      Sincerely,
      Mary Jane

      Reply
  10. Mike Bryant

    Mary Jane, your poem’s message about those windmills wrecking our prairies keeps resonating, and I’m all in for your call to “restore (our land) to grace.” Paul’s latest sermon, painting conservatives (especially me) as Luddites scouring the internet for “radical” links to justify our righteous indignation at these “turbines,” is nonsense. No one needs obscure sites to see the truth your poem captures-those hulking, bird-killing machines are a blight, not progress. Some have blind faith in “experts,” I trust my eyes: the damnable windmills slaughter millions of birds annually, disrupt farms, and rely on fossil fuels to even exist. The pilot analogy? More like trusting a drunk captain who is steering us into a storm.
    As for the “windmill” vs. “wind turbine” question:
    Today, the term “windmill” refers to any device that uses turning blades (a turbine) to harness wind power for practical work. This includes grinding grain, pumping water, and producing electricity. Modern windmills designed primarily for electricity generation are often called wind turbines by those selling them, but calling them windmills is accurate and true to the term’s broader meaning.
    Your “bloody taint” line says it all-those blades aren’t saving the planet; they’re scarring it.
    The truth matters. Thanks for putting it out there.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.