My wife, who has a sly and mischievous sense of humor, blurted out one day, “I’m too old to be a new talent!” She said that, although she had already achieved much acclaim as an actor, teacher (Monterey Peninsula College) playwright and critic.
And we all know of masterful musicians and singers who blow us away, who have mastered their craft and appear to be on their way to the top. And we also know that most of these gifted artists will never receive the recognition and acclaim their hard work and talent deserve. The same is true of visual artists, actors and writers.
On the other hand, some truly great artists finally get some recognition, and although it is sweet and welcome, it usually arrives late in life, does not come to the attention of larger audiences and fades away. That was true of one particular California poet with whom I maintained a relationship until her recent death.
This is about that writer who achieved success after nearly a lifetime of writing and putting away her verses, who did it her way and finally received some recognition. She was first unappreciated, then under appreciated and finally acknowledged as a true wonder. Here is a part of her story.
About a week after one of my writer friends died, I pulled open my large and unwieldy “correspondence” drawer and began to sort through and re-read the letters and notes he and I had exchanged over the years.
As I was going through the various papers from that writer’s folder, I happened to catch sight of a much thicker file marked “Wilma” in the back of the drawer. I felt a familiar and persistent tug of guilt for I had been meaning for some time to write about Wilma Elizabeth Mc Daniel, who was lovingly called by many in her part of California’s Great Valley, the “Poet of the Okie Migration.” I realized that I had to set aside other plans and get to the job of remembering and honoring Wilma.
Some background: I wasn’t quite ready a few years ago when Ed Markman, the well-known actor and radio personality, telephoned to say that Wilma had died. She had been ill with a variety of ailments for much of her life, and Ed and I had become used to her chronic problems and her more recent round of medical appointments. Her bad vision had also become worse, but Wilma was Wilma and we just assumed that she would keep on with her more or less regular correspondence with us.
But now, Wilma was dead, and her hometown of Tulare, California, was in mourning.
After I got off the phone with Ed, I began my own process of sorting through and grieving, mostly for the fact that I had never managed to get out to the Valley to see her in person. All of our correspondence over the years was through the exchange of letters and postcards and by the many exchanges of our poems and sometimes our books of poetry.
I had gotten to know her through those letters and notes, and through her direct and off-hand comments about her life and times, and, most directly, through her very personal and haunting poetry.
My introduction to Wilma Elizabeth Mc Daniel began back in the 1980s when Markman, who hosted a long-running program on Radio Station KPFA in Berkeley, and I were discussing a book of my poetry from which he was to be reading during his weekly one-hour program for KPFA. He was reading my work along with that of Jesse Stuart of Kentucky and a lady named Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel of Tulare, California. Ed thought there was a down to earth similarity in the writings of the three of us, and he had decided to place us together in consecutive programs. I was familiar with the poetry and short stories of Stuart but knew nothing about Wilma.
As I listened to Ed read from Wilma’s books, was intrigued by her ability to capture her world using many words and phrases, and stories so familiar to me but set in rural Oklahoma and Central California. I asked Ed to determine whether she would welcome some comments and contact from me.
Within a week I received a long letter from Tulare, with a poem newly written with a heavy black marker on a grocery bag which had been folded, taped, addressed and stamped. A short accompanying note told me she had read and heard some of my work and would welcome exchanges.
Until her death we exchanged notes and poetry at irregular intervals, but we stayed in touch through those exchanges. She always included information about her declining health, especially about her eyesight, which I gathered had been a major problem for years.
Sometimes her notes were written with magic marker, and often there would be a new poem included on a scrap of paper, the back of a menu or just about anything else you could name.
After weeks of careful planning, and working around Wilma’s various health appointments, Ed and his wife Pamela made plans to travel to Tulare to visit and spend a bit of time with Wilma, They invited me to go along, but at the last minute, a death in my family required me to miss, as it turned out, my one chance to have a long -desired face to face with Wilma McDaniel.
Not wanting to rely just on impressions from the exchanges with Wilma and my repeated readings of her poetry, I did some on-line research to discover more about her earlier life.
She was born in 1919 in Oklahoma, the fourth of 8 children, into a sharecropper’s family. She attended small town schools on or near US Route 66, which was convenient when her father, in 1936, decided – in the middle of the Great Depression – to take his family to California. Wilma was seventeen.
From the earliest age, she had written poems on scraps of paper, on paper bags and on whatever she could get. Until she began to be published, she kept her poems hidden in a box beneath her bed.
Here is a sample of Wilma’s early work, written in 1933 when she he was 14.
Nature Is Unfair
The sky is crying grey color
like the buttons in the bin
at Pettigrew’s store
and makes me feel the sun
will not come out for us
poor folks today
but over there is Texas
where they live in their
dry land
and we know they don’t
need any more sun
– Wilma Elizabeth Mc Daniel
In California, Wilma worked in the fields for a time and later found employment as a housekeeper. A lifetime recluse, she never married. She finally settled in Tulare which, as she described to me, was “deathly hot in the summers…..”
At some point in the 1970s, when Wilma was fifty-two years old, she took her box of poems to the local (Tulare) newspaper and met with the editor. He liked what he saw, and started publishing her poems. The paper continued to publish her throughout her life.
Over the years, Wilma mailed several self-published books and a few books published by small presses. When “Hanging Loose Press” discovered Wilma McDaniel, she became more widely known. Pete Seeger was a devoted fan.
As I sorted through the disorderly collection of notes and poems in my files, bits of paper and books, I revisited the manila envelopes and pulled out a few things.
In July of 2001, she sent this, which was written on the back of a library bookmark:
My left eye
has never worked
with my right
It sees darkness
with no light
refuses all candles
Never mind that
good right eye
comes with matches.
WEM 7-18-01
Her eyes were a constant problem with which Wilma dealt without self-pity. In a short note accompanying some poems in March of 1998 she wrote:
On my way to Ophthalmologist,
will be unable to see anything
after my pupils are dilated.
So this is hurried.
Your books are a comfort.
Best to you and Wife.
WEM.
Wilma had a cackling sense of humor! In December of 2002, she wrote me (I had sent her a “Claxton” Fruitcake for Christmas):
“There are so many silly jokes about fruitcakes.
I love them!
My $3,000 teeth are a problem with nuts,
but I manage,
and I share liberally with my ninety-two year old brother.
He has stronger gums and possibly
a more skilled dentist…”
Just before she was to perform a reading for the Pixley Woman’s Club in March of 2004, Wilma wrote me: “I’m sending you an invitation. I am in a wheelchair after a fall and a fractured hip. A wonderful young man will drive me to Pixley and handle my wheelchair. I am blessed to have friends half my age and younger than that.”
Warm regards, WEM
Here is an example of how Wilma could take a subject as simple as a pair of overalls and squeeze magic from it:
Today
I read my country’s name
again
on the brass buttons
of overalls
And saluted its flag
a red bandana
trailing from a pocket
now
I know who kept it safe.
She got a good laugh from this response I mailed to her after she had revealed her attitude toward her health and her writing schedule. Her words had suggested to me that she was generally content with her situation and believed in living while alive.
Advice From Wilma
Dance today
and all you can.
– Tomorrow
all your minstrels
may linger on the way
or can’t tune up
in B flat.
– The call may be
for you to come fix something.
– Firemen on their way
may scream,
their sirens wailing close
saying it’s for you
– So, then the dance
is gone.
‘ere the great lady sings
– And that white shirt
was bought for naught
and so on, and so on and thus.
– Charles Brady
