9/19/2007:
Prolific North Dakota poet Thomas McGrath died on this date in 1990. Born near Sheldon in 1916, he was called “our Homer and Sophocles” by Everett Albers, former director of the North Dakota Humanities Council.
McGrath graduated from Sheldon High School and the University of North Dakota and, though he left the state in 1939, he never forgot his roots. Always a North Dakotan, his epic poem, Letter to an Imaginary Friend, says “North Dakota is everywhere.”
Nicknamed the “dream champ,” McGrath was a 1939 UND graduate and studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and at Louisiana State. A World War II veteran, he taught, edited, wrote for films and television and wrote poetry.
Much of McGrath’s work captured the expansiveness of the American West, while some portrayed the dehumanizing effects of technology, capitalism and the social class struggle.
Called the “people’s poet,” he was a Guggenheim, Bush and National Endowment for the Arts fellow and received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from UND in 1981. He had a gift for being able to say what people truly feel and think.
He worked a variety of jobs around the world, including labor organizer, paralegal and political activist. Called “Tommy, the Commie” by some antagonists, he came from a family of poor Irish farmers and developed his politics at an early age as his father was a member of the radical Industrial Workers of the World.
Some of his poetry displayed some far-left political feelings, and he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1953. Unwilling to cooperate with the committee, he lost his job at the Los Angeles State University and was blacklisted from academia.
However, it did not end his writing career. From 1954-1990, McGrath published 17 collections of poetry, 2 children’s books and 2 novels, writing mostly about his own life and various social concerns. He received many awards, including the prestigious Lenore Marshall/Nation Prize for Poetry and the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society for Western Literature.
Just a few of his works include Letter to an Imaginary Friend, The Movie at the End of the World and Passages Toward the Dark. He produced two kinds of verse—one angry and steeped in sympathy for the oppressed, the other descriptive, quiet and personal.
McGrath returned to North Dakota in 1962 and taught at North Dakota State University. In 1969, he accepted a faculty position at Moorhead State University, retiring from there and moving to Minneapolis in 1983. He died there on September 19, 1990.
by Cathy A. Langemo, WritePlus Inc.