Oomen’s memoir “Pulling Down the Barn” is Ripe in the Land of the Sleeping Bear

By Norm Wheeler
Sun editor
Empire poet, playwright, and teacher Anne-Marie Oomen’s memoir “Pulling Down the Barn” is being released by Wayne State University Press. A frequent contributor of poetry to the pages of the Glen Arbor Sun, Oomen has written several plays based on local history, including “Aral: A Folk Opera” (about a double murder near Otter Creek), “Barta’s Path” (about Barta Peth, resident of South Manitou), “Remembering Ruth,” and “A Stone That Rises” (about the Burfiends, the first settlers of Port Oneida). She has also published several chapbooks of her poetry, including “Seasons of the Sleeping Bear,” and Oomen’s skill as a reader is featured in the video of the same name available at the Visitor’s Center of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Empire. Anne-Marie is one of the founding members of the Beach Bards Bonfire held on Friday nights in summer at The Leelanau School beach where she performs many of her own poems, and she is chair of the Creative Writing Department at Interlochen Arts Academy.

Brandon Kelley at Wayne State University Press writes, “Pulling Down the Barn eloquently recalls author Anne-Marie Oomen’s personal journey as she discovers herself an outsider on her family farm located in western Michigan’s Oceana County, in the township of Elbridge — a couple hundred acres in the middle of rural America. Written as a series of heartfelt interlocking narratives, this collection of essays portrays the realities of farm life: haying, picking asparagus and cherries, the machinery of tractors and pickers; but each chapter also touches upon the more ethereal and rarely articulated: the stoic love that permeates a family, the farmer’s struggle with identity, the unspoken patriarchy of land passed onto sons (often at the expense of daughters), and the way land can shape a childhood. With its rich language and style, “Pulling Down the Barn” engrosses the reader in Oomen’s memories — setting beauty and wonder against work and loss — and paints a poignant portrait of growing up in rural Michigan.”
Author Jerry Dennis of Traverse City writes, “The wind sings through the pages of this wonderful memoir of coming of age on an American farm. You can hear the waves on Lake Michigan, feel snowflakes on your face, watch dust motes spiraling in the hayloft. This book is about courage and endurance and the grace to be found in simple moments.”
Pulitzer Prize winning poet Stephen Dunn exclaims, “’You can’t take the farm out of the girl’ is a statement that Anne-Marie Oomen would not only accede to, but has found ways to celebrate in this well-written memoir. She, the writer, has gone beyond her rural roots, but here she pays her loving debts to the people and the natural world that so inform her attractive sensibility.”
And author/teacher/editor Michael Steinberg writes, “Anne Marie Oomen utilizes a poet’s eye to lovingly depict the beauty of the northern Michigan landscape, while at the same time finding a kind of dark splendor in its sometimes harsh and raw climate. A must-read for those who love memoirs about setting and place.”
Anne-Marie Oomen’s memoir “Pulling Down the Barn” will soon be available on the shelves at the Cottage Book Shop, or you can get it straight from the publisher by calling 1-800-WSU-READ, 1-800-(978-7323), or going to their web site, http://wsupress.wayne.edu.