Today, my friends at The New Territory released the latest edition of Literary Landscapes, their ongoing series of personal essays on Midwestern writers in Midwestern places. This volume includes a piece by me, about finding a memorial to the Nebraskan poet John G. Niehardt near where I live in Branson. The site of Niehardt’s former residence has now, in typical Branson fashion, has now become a strip mall across from the Branson visitors center. The contrast between a memorial to Niehardt—best know for interviewing the Lakota holy man Black Elk and writing epic poetry set in the American West—and the excesses of the Branson Strip makes for quite the visual.

I wrote this piece nearly a year ago, not knowing that when it was published I would be living five blocks from the Niehardt memorial. As it happens, I can now call myself—like Niehardt—a Nebraskan writer living in the heart of Branson. It’s a strange convergence of writing and life.

Niehardt is not one of those writers who’s especially important to me, though I think Black Elk Speaks is a wonderful book. His poetry’s not very good, if I’m honest, and I don’t share a lot about the quasi-New-Age way he viewed the world.

But, viewing myself as a Nebraskan writer in exile, Niehardt has become more important to me as I realized he shared this fate with me. He too came to Missouri in search of stable employment and a low cost of living for his family. And he too stayed here a good long while even as his writing cast its vision further West.

I didn’t know, when I wrote my essay on Niehardt’s life in Branson, that I would share that life quite as closely as I am. But I think I did know that learning about Niehardt’s Branson connections would help me grow in intimacy to this place where I now make my home. It’s a comfort to me, as I pass by the billboards and the theaters on my way to my house, to think about another Nebraskan writer inhabiting this same place. It makes me think that I might not have to be a writer of exile, but that I might still sing the songs of Nebraska in this different place.

It’s a strange and paradoxical thing that I could only really gain this comfort in Branson by finding a tie to a writer from the place where I no longer live. Such are the vicissitudes of homesickness and belonging to place.

For more on Niehardt in Branson, please head over to The New Territory and read my piece alongside contributions from others on many wonderful Midwestern writers.