Searching for the Spring : Poetic Reflections of Maine by Ken Nye (2005, Paperback) : Ken Nye (2005)

MY HEART was first molded a Mainers when I was five and my parents purchased land on Lake Androscoggin in Wayne where they built a summer camp.My father was a minister and, consequently, we always lived in homes that, as I saw it at the time, were loaned to us. But the camp in Wayne was ours. It has always been, and still is, the center of our family s life and the summer gathering point for family members who are spread out all over the eastern seaboard. My wife Ann and I both graduated from Colby College in Waterville,Maine, and after seven years in temporary residence in the mid-west, we returned to Maine to raise our family and to become official residents. That was thirty-three years ago. We bought an old farm in Rumford Center, up toward Andover, that hadn t been lived in for five years, had hay growing right up to the front door, a hole in the back roof, an L and shed and attached barn that went on forever, five outbuildings in various stages of decay.We lived there for thirteen wondrous years, raised two children, a small herd of Black Angus cattle, chickens (and eggs), bees (and honey). We hiked the woods, climbed the cliffs, skied the snowmobile trails that could take us through the wilderness to Canada.We burned eight to ten cords of wood every winter (wood that we cut, split, hauled, and stacked ourselves), swam in the Ellis River all summer, fought the snow drifts every winter day to get out and later to get back in, rose every morning to the sun coming up over the cliff in back of our barn and went to bed every night to the glow of sunsets behind the mountain and cliffs on the other side of the valley. When our slave labor force graduated from high school and went to live their lives as Mainers in other corners of the state, we reluctantly said farewell to the mountains and our farm and now enjoy coastal suburbia in Freeport. We still live in the country, (Maine doesn t really have a suburbia), in an 1830 New England center chimney cape with three fireplaces and a yard that is bordered by woods.We both are past our 60th birthdays, still working (Ann teaches in an elementary school, I teach at the University of Southern Maine), both dealing with health issues that have raised our appreciation of good health. (Ann has an implanted defibrillator; I have Parkinson s.) But we are grateful that we live in such a beautiful place, surrounded by family and the beauty of Maine. One last note of possible interest: I began writing poetry two years ago when I wanted a way to tell Ann how much she meant to me.We have known each other since we were twelve and have been in love since we were seventeen. The poem One Moment, One Lifetime was the first poem I wrote. Having had fun composing it, and finding out that through poetry I can explore and express my feelings, I have been writing ever since. I don t attempt to hide the fact that my poetry is personal stuff, but that is what poetry should be. And, because it s personal is why I begin this collection with a little information about the person who wrote it. I hope that by reading these poems you get to feel a little of the pervasive culture of Maine in which human beings find rejuvenation, inspiration, connection and strength from the mountains and forests and waters of this beautiful corner or our country.

Ken Nye has not been a poet all of his life. As a matter of fact, he discovered poetry only four years ago at the age of 61. Consequently, his poems carry the perspective of a person who can now reflect back on where he's been and how he got there, a person who is a bit more sensitive to what is important in life and what isn't. In an easy, laid back narrative writing style laced at times with a touch of a smile, Nye tells the stories and highlights of his life as a father and husband, grandfather, lover of dogs and lover of the woods. Although Nye's poems are personal, almost all of them dealing with events and people in his life in Maine, they are also universal, prompting readers to nod their heads and say to themselves,, "I know exactly what he's talking about." Nye's love affair with the state of Maine began when he was six when his parents purchased land on the shores of Lake Androscoggin in Wayne. Born in Nebraska, raised in Westchester County just above New York City, the son of a Congregational minister whose family was raised in parsonages belonging to others, the "camp" in Wayne became for Nye his heart's residence. He fell in love with Ann, a high school classmate and childhood friend, at the age of seventeen and when they graduated from high school, Ann went off to Mount Holyoke and Ken to Colby College in Waterville, Maine.. After two years of Ken hitchhiking back and forth to and from Ann in South Hadley, they realized that they were meant to spend their lives together, so they got married, Ann transferred to Colby, and they haven't spent much time away from each other for the last forty-five years. After Colby, the Nyes spent seven years in Illinois where their children were born. Ken taught high school English and attended Northwestern University where he received his Master's degree in 1965 and a Ph. D. in 1971. With his degrees in hand, Ken went back to Maine, looking for a high school principalship. Hired by the Rumford School Department as assistant principal at the high school, Ken brought the family back to Maine to an old farm that hadn't been lived in or operated as a farm for ten years. With a hole in the roof, hayfields lapping at the porch steps , dust and debris thick throughout, the farm became home for the Nyes, as central to the family as the camp in Wayne was for Ken. When their two children graduated from high school in Rumford, Ken and Ann moved to Freeport where Ken was principal of Yarmouth High School and where, in 1993, he was named Maine's Principal of the Year. In 1994 Ken moved to the University of Southern Maine where he taught educational leadership for twelve years. Now retired and dealing with Parkinson's disease, Ken spends most of his time on his poetry, on his yard, and playing cards with Ann. The Nye's have two children, a son (now 41) and a daughter (now 40) who lives with her family right across the road, three granddaughters, two dogs of their own and three granddogs.