Psalm to Whom(e)

In Psalm for Whom(e), the restless and astonishing Diane
Glancy continues to break new ground with a hybrid collection of personal writings
that explore the relationship between place and faith; the need for movement,
stability, and inner exploration; and the search for home.

Psalm for Whom(e) centers on Kansas and rural Texas, places
that usually see the underside of planes.
Glancy focuses on geography.
History. Origins. Memory. Faith.
Once in a while, in desperation, she offers a prayer to whom(e)ver is
there. Glancy stretches and pulls the language to see behind the words: old
Native thought patterns, for instance, or echoes of Gertrude Stein. She takes
us with her into museums, churches, and national parks, shuttling freely
between personal, cultural, and spiritual history, narration and poetic
exploration.

Psalm for Whom(e) defines the world as a place on which to
mark, as evidenced in the earliest pictographs.
Embedded in the markings on cave walls and rock facings are circles and
spirals in which the impulses to move, to travel, to migrate, to explore one’s
own inner wilderness and solitude are homed.

The ＂whom(e)＂ is in an essay, ＂Among My Friends Are Letters
of the Alphabet.＂ ＂As a loner I write a
lot because I have to have something to do and the letters of the alphabet
always are there.＂ The isolation of Covid may have driven her farther back into
history, she says. Into the beginning of faith on the prairie. Into her own believing on her grandfather’s
farm and her own father’s work in the stockyards. ＂Sometimes I add letters to
words. As an ’e’ as in ’whome’ because
then I see home, for which I always am looking.＂

Diane Glancy is professor emerita at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she taught creative writing and Native American literature. Currently she teaches creative nonfiction in the MFA low-residency program at Carlow University. Among her works are Pushing the Bear: A Novel of the Trail of Tears and Stone Heart: A Novel of Sacajawea. Glancy has won multiple honors and awards for her work, including the Five Civilized Tribes Playwriting Laureate Prize and the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, as well as being awarded grants from, among others, the National Endowment for the Arts.