Remembering Belle Turnbull

When it comes to decisions about which historical figures we should remember and honor, and how we should conduct the “honoring” part, our nation has been floundering.

Meanwhile, a bunch of Coloradans has just offered the nation a nearly perfect — let’s be honest, an entirely perfect — demonstration of how to do this right.

Belle Turnbull was a noted Colorado writer who lived, wholeheartedly, in Breckenridge, and who published poems that received national recognition. Because she wrote so memorably about the state’s mountain landscape, and also because her poems crossed the boundaries of class and occupation with agility and respect, her writings constitute a treasure in our heritage.

And people who would like evidence for that assessment should hurry to acquire a book, “Belle Turnbull: On the Life and Work of an American Master,” edited by David J. Rothman and Jeffrey R. Villines.

How did this book come into being?

First, we forgot all about Belle Turnbull. This permitted us to take an entirely fresh approach to thinking about her.

Actually, we didn’t do the forgetting ourselves. Somehow, after her death in 1970, even Coloradans who took pride in their knowledge of Western literature forgot about her.

Second, the right people — with the capability to show the world how to remember and to honor — had to be introduced to each other.

Years ago, I became acquainted with two Coloradans — Jan Robertson, the author of a spirit-lifting book, “The Magnificent Mountain Women: Adventures in the Colorado Rockies,” and the above-mentioned Rothman, a gifted poet and musician. And then I invited Rothman to give a presentation on Colorado poetry to my class. Robertson was sitting in on the class, and after she heard his talk, she said to Rothman, “Why didn’t you mention the Colorado poet Belle Turnbull?”

Taking the question to heart and seeking out Turnbull’s poetry, Rothman was overwhelmed with admiration. So he assembled a team of Colorado literary figures — George Sibley, Susan Spear, Uche Ogbuji and David Mason — to share in this joyful rediscovery and to write essays to accompany a new collection of her poems.

Third, not one of us put forward the witless idea that the proper memorial to Belle Turnbull would be to cast her in bronze and put her on a lofty pedestal, where she would look distant and dull.

A mystifying enthusiasm for this peculiar custom has burdened the United States for a long time. Since bronze is very susceptible to corrosion, this strategy for honoring historic figures has left a number of these figures pitted, scarred and discolored. Moreover, turning human beings into metal and elevating them has proven to be a very effective mechanism for creating an aura of pious tedium and suppressing curiosity among viewers.

Belle Turnbull was a person of great wit, enormous vitality, and a profound sense of time. Thus, we have to wish that she had had the chance to record her thoughts on her nation’s enthusiasm for bronze memorials.

In her poem “Time as a Wellspring,” a miner sums up a life history composed of equal parts of contentment and tragedy. When it comes to a commentary on our curious customs, his concluding words fit the bill: “I have to laugh, he said, I have to laugh.”

Patty Limerick is Colorado’s state historian and faculty director and chair of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado.