Poet Richard Eberhart Remembered

MOWER COUNTY—After nearly drowning as a kid, my mom had a great fear of water. So, all hell broke loose when she found out that I had been swimming in the Cedar River behind Oakwood Cemetery on the north edge of my hometown of Austin, Minn.

It was a great swimming hole with a swinging rope latched onto a good size oak tree. In my youthful imagination, it had a Mark Twain-Huck Finn feel about it.

On hot summer days a bunch of us kids would ride our bikes there and swim for a couple of hours. On the mile-ride home we would often stop at Burr Oaks Market for a soda and a candy bar.

Recently, I was browsing through a collection of poetry by American poets at the Preston, Minn. library only to find a poem by Richard Eberhart, whom I knew had grown up in Austin. I didn’t know much about Eberhart’s work, other than one of his books was titled Burr Oaks, nor about his literary celebrity.

In his poem by the same name, he was writing about a place I knew quite well.

The pasture is a field of changing vision.
Seen from a height, it stretches to distant woods.
On either side the Cedar River flows
From Baudler’s swimming hole to the old sand bank.

Much has changed since Burr Oaks was published by Oxford University Press in 1947, Eberhart’s sixth volume of poetry. Today, interstate I-90 cuts between where the Baudler home used to be, the cemetery and swimming hole where I swam in the 1960s.

Eberhart’s early years

Eberhart was born in 1904 and grew up on a 40-acre estate called Burr Oaks. His father was on the board of directors at the Hormel Company at a time when it was growing into a major meatpacking enterprise.

Richard Eberhart pictured in the 1921 Austin High School yearbook. A notation in his biography stated: “Well directed energy, with invincible determination, will do anything that can be done in the world.” (Photo courtesy Mower County Historical Society)

The Austin High School 1921 yearbook shows that during his senior year, Richard was captain of the football team, involved in debate and drama club, served as president of the Duodecim Literary Society, was editor of the Austinian yearbook, and played saxophone in the orchestra.

A note under his achievements in the annual read: “Well directed energy, with invincible determination, will do anything that can be done in the world.”

Indeed. His eventual recognitions include:

• Pulitzer Prize in 1966
• National Book Award 1967
• Poet Laureate of the United States under presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy (succeeding Robert Frost)
• Poet-in-Residence at Dartmouth College for nearly four decades

While Eberhart grew up in relative comfort in Austin, his family went through some difficult years.

The Eberhart house on the 40-acre Burr Oaks estate. It was later owned by the Nicholas Wagner family before becoming Burr Oak Nursing Home. (Photo courtesy Mower County Historical Society)

When he was a teenager, his father Alpha left Hormel after an employee of his embezzled more than a million dollars from the company, forcing share prices to fall. The result was that the family’s finances suffered greatly. And when he was 18, his mother Lena, who encouraged his creativity, died from cancer.

The literary life

Eberhart told a reporter that the death of his mother made him a poet^[1]. He published his first book of poetry, A Bravery of Earth, in 1931 while he was a student at St. John’s College in Cambridge, England. While in England, he met such literary giants as George Bernard Shaw, William Butler Yeats and G.K. Chesterton.

The title page of the book Burr Oaks, published in 1947. This was Richard Everhart’s sixth book of poetry. (Image by John Torgrimson)

The Depression years were difficult for Richard as he was unemployed for more than a year. But it also led to his determination to continue writing.

In 1934, one of his more famous poems, The Groundhog, was published, detailing four stages of decay over time. His literary career would be noted for themes of life and death, man and nature.

In 1956, Eberhart joined the faculty of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he also received his bachelor’s degree. He taught there for more than 30 years.

His daughter, author Gretchen Cherington, recalls many literary contemporaries visiting their home – such as Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton. He also carried on correspondence with poets W.H. Auden, Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens, as well as other notable authors.^[2] His literary papers are housed at Dartmouth.

Richard published more than a dozen books of poetry and received numerous awards: the Pulitzer Prize for Selected Poems, 1930-1965 in 1966; the National Book Award for Collected Poems, 1930 -1976 in 1977.

He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 1959-1961. He was awarded a Bollingen Prize in 1962.

State literary landmark

The original Eberhart home still stands in Austin on the corner of 4^th Street and 8^th Avenue in a residential section in the northwest part of town. When I was visiting Austin over Thanksgiving, I drove through what was once the Burr Oaks area; the Baudler home is gone, torn down a few years ago – now an empty lot, next to a Hardee’s fast-food restaurant.

Oakwood Cemetery can be seen on the other side of the freeway, just west of the Cedar River, near where Eberhart and I may have shared a swimming hole.

Prior to moving to Burr Oaks estate, the Alpha and Lena Eberhart family lived in this house on old Kenwood, now 4th Street and 8th Avenue Northwest in Austin. (Photo by John Torgrimson)

Over time, the home on the 40-acre Eberhart estate was purchased by the Nicholas Wagner family and later became Burr Oak Nursing Home. I remember going there as a child with my father to visit my Great Uncle Tom who was a resident there. Nearby, a neighborhood of homes has grown up running east down to the Cedar River.

In 2017, Richard Eberhart was honored in his hometown with a state Literary Landmark – the eighth of its kind in Minnesota. The landmark is located inside Austin High School.

And the landmark is in good company – other Literary Landmarks in Minnesota include F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birthplace in St. Paul and Sinclair Lewis’ boyhood home.

Eberhart died in 2005 at the age of 101.