The SoTac Way of Amelia Haller

After much searching, it appears that Neko Case may have lost her unofficial position as the poet laureate of South Tacoma.

In a previous post I quoted author Wallace Stegner who said that “No place is a place until it has had a poet …” and then went on to say, “If what Stegner says is true … then discovering the Way of [South Tacoma] means discovering the poets. Where are the people who give visual, oral or written expression to the streams of people who inhabit the houses, keep the shops and walk the streets of this community? Where are the creators whose material consists of the cheers, tears and jeers of people in this borough? Where are the artists who look upon this place and are able to gather what is scattered and scatter what has been poorly gathered, since, if Stegner is right, we will not be a place until these poets are discovered.” I can now gladly tell you that one such person has been found and her name is Amelia Haller.

A few years ago Darlene Reiter published a book in which she presented the history of South Tacoma through pictures. I met Darlene when she came to my church in Manitou seeking some pictures in our old photographs. In our brief meeting she mentioned what a great time she was having getting to know the people of this community and then began to list several of those folks. Among that list was a woman who had written and published several books of poetry. I interrupted without thinking,

“A poet?”
“Yes.”
“In South Tacoma?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”

At this point I need to make a confession. The cognitive dissonance created when poet and South Tacoma are laid next to one another was unbearable for me. So I did what most of us would have done, I began to lower my expectations. Well, I thought, most likely these poems are full of Hallmark sentimentality. It is also most likely true that they are all simple rhyming limericks of the ‘roses are red’ variety. And if I had to bet, I’m sure that none of this person’s work could, as Emily Dickinson described how she recognized poetry, “… make my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me [or] feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off.” It was with such prejudices that I embarked to meet this octogenarian poet of South Tacoma, Amelia Haller. Fortunately, I departed her house that afternoon liberated of my arrogant prejudices.

It was at a restaurant in Puyallup in 1944, that a teenage waitress met a recently returned soldier. Within months, Max and Amelia were married. In 1950, they moved to a two bedroom house on Ferdinand Street in South Tacoma where they lived for 12 years before upgrading to the 3 bedroom house just across the street in 1962 where they still live. For the first 30 of those years, Amelia filled the traditional role of wife of a hard working husband and mother of eight children (if anything is traditional or typical about raising 8 kids). She was approaching that sweet spot of life when one’s kids are almost raised and your health is still sound enough to enjoy life when she was shocked into a new vocation. “In 1976,” she told me during our last visit, “I had a massive heart attack. I couldn’t do anything while I was recovering, so I started writing poems.” Did she ever?

Over the next few decades this humble house-wife who had received most of her education in a one room Minnesota school house went on to publish 8 books of poetry, graduate with a BA in creative writing from Evergreen State College, teach seminars and classes through Tacoma Community College and Metro Parks, mentor countless aspiring writers such as Prof. Deborah Miranda of Washington and Lee University, as well as female inmates at Purdy prison. Her poem Claymore Apartments won the 49th Parallel international poetry contest and another of her poems, Dedication, is permanently etched into the stone of Union Station. In 2008, her life work was recognized when she received the Jim Smith Award from the Pierce County Arts Commission. All this from a housewife and mother of eight from South Tacoma … that’s right South Tacoma.

During my brief visit with Amelia and Max I asked her how much the neighborhood influenced her writing. In her soft and warm voice she said, “Ohh, I guess it was just always there.” And then she proceeded to tell me about the hill, that is Wapato Hill, which rises east off their front porch. What she proceeded to tell me and the poems that hill inspired give particular language to the words of Simone Weil who said that “only two things are piercing enough to penetrate our souls … they are affliction and beauty.”

In her book Words and Water Ease the Living Dust (a title that any minister would have loved to first articulated), Amelia wrote the following poem entitled “Wapato Hills” for her children.

As if waiting were from some other world,
the sun, fast over the drumlin
like an ancient being, broke into our eyes.

I hold with that dawn, the way
of heat rising from time of no more;
summer spent like new pennies,

copper-bright and shiny.
We went for cattails and polliwogs;
I for memories, they for discoveries.

We left the city and society dangling,
walked through brush and beginning trees
onto pheasants’ land. Just out of reach,

garter snakes and quail trembled the wild-grass,
a new piece of Earth with shapes
that scurried over a page.

Water beetles wrote their magic in glass jars.
A red-tailed hawk circled time
over the drumlin’s back.

Amelia let me know that somewhere in the News Tribune’s archives there is a picture of her children hunting for pollywogs or sailing little boats in the pond that once sat on this elongated hill just outside their front door. I’ve heard several other long time residents speak of Wapato Hill with fond memories as a place where they scampered away their childhood. What is hidden in the recesses of the memories of countless South Tacomans is captured in the images that Amelia’s words conjure like a magician.

It was this same hill that inspired Amelia to write a poem of great affliction to shadow her first poem of great beauty. In as understated a tone as one could imagine she told me that one day they found the body of a little girl on that hill, “… and well, I just had to write about that.”

“Green Hill”

They called it that. I suppose
the meadow like slopes
told it from other hills.
But it once needed no adjective
to hold it in place.
it was The Hill.

Children gave it meaning –
paper-sack picnics –spying tadpoles
just past the slough’s edge –
siccing dogs under blackberry bushes
flushing the waiting pheasant –
puzzling over Captian Blood’s Rock
so far from the sea-

The Hill … The Hill
In its season …
kites, bicycles,
make-shift sleds …

The Hill … Green Hill …
The headlines …
Missing Girl Found
Under Black Plastic …

In one of fate’s twisted ironies, Amelia is starting to lose her ability to conjure words. To steal the words of another poet, Isaac Watts “time like an ever rolling stream bears all its sons [and daughters] away, they fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the op’ning day.” Thanks to the mind and pen of Amelia Haller, some of those sons, daughters, times and places of South Tacoma will fail to fade and instead remain etched in the memories of all who are willing to stop and listen and read.

AFTERWARD

In a recent conversation with Amelia I asked her what she thought about the idea of setting a time and place for various poets and writers to gather and share work that has South Tacoma as its muse. She replied that it was a good idea and then mentioned, almost as an after thought, that she was currently a part of such a group that met at the South Tacoma library.

“A writer’s group?”
“Yes.”
“In South Tacoma?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”

Old prejudices die hard. Amelia went on to explain that this group (called the Tacoma Writers Club) was founded after the World War I and as recently as last decade had over 30 regular members. Yet, like so many other groups, this one has faded down to a faithful core of three. When I asked her if it would be okay if I came to this group and invited others, she was more than happy to say yes.

So, if you are interested in sharing your work, hearing the work of others in South Tacoma and keeping alive a group that has existed for almost a century, then meet at the South Tacoma library (56th and Puget Sound) at 3:00 on the 2nd Tuesday of every month (next meeting is on Tuesday, October 13th at 3:00).