Biographical
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1946, Thiem grew up in southern Delaware, in the small town of Seaford. He graduated from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, after having spent a year of study in Italy. He then taught two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana,West Africa, where he was known as ‘Kofi.’ In 1975, he received his doctorate in Comparative Literature from Indiana University.
Thiem’s academic research has focused on two areas: a. the theme of book destruction and anti-intellectualism in world literature; and b. myths of the epigone (translator, biographer, reader) in postmodern fiction. His essays have appeared in Comparative Literature, The Journal of the History of Ideas, Cadmos, Translation and Literature, Sincronie, and The Dictionary of Literary Themes. His books include Lorenzo de’ Medici: Selected Poems and Prose (Penn State Press, 1991), short-listed for the Columbia Translation Center Prize; and Real Life: Ten Stories of Aging (University Press of Colorado, 1994), an anthology of fiction edited in collaboration with philosopher Patrick McKee.
With Ralph Slotten and Bettie Anne Doebler, he has published two volumes of poetry: Book of the Mermaid (Sutter House, 2001), and Nine Waves (Sutter House, 2003).
Rabbit Creek Country:Three Ranching Lives in the Heart of the Mountain West is a work of non-fiction written in collaboration with his research assistant Deborah Dimon. It examines the lives of three early twentieth-century settlers in the Northern Colorado mountains and their intimate relation to the land. The book was published in 2008 by University of New Mexico Press.
Rabbit Creek Country was a finalist for the 2009 Colorado Book Award in biography.
1953
We were seven, Johnny, Denny, Mikey, and me.
Like the Lone Ranger, like the Cisco Kid,
we wanted a campfire to warm us in the wild.
Our houses had no hearths, no fireplaces.
We had the new invention, TV.
Not tongue of flame, not incandescent amber,
but flicker and flutter of seem and make-believe
static’s subtle crackle, flecked with snowflake,
fine white flour silting up our dreams.
We skipped into the woods. We went in deep.
A logging road gave us autumn grasses,
yellow, dry as paper--these we stacked
below a leafless tree.
Mikey struck a match, the pile puffed.
What happened next we never saw on NBC.
Rotten trunk and brittle limbs became
a dragon, darting flame, fire tearing
patches of dazzle from branches,
burning bushes leaping in our way.
Too late, too late I thought of Smokey Bear.
We ran to save ourselves, we ran and cried,
we knew the firestorm would take our homes
and burn to ash our Western Flyer trains
our toys, our model bombers, fighter planes,
our little soldiers, sisters, all we treasured.
We ran and ran to tell our Moms who called
the fire trucks--they came careening from
the town, screaming down Concord Road
their sirens weaving ribbons all the way.
And we were spared, our things, our homes,
where Moms relieved, where Dads severe now sent
us pyromaniacs to bed, but let
our gloating brothers and sisters stay up to watch
the Walt Disney Show.
Ten acres of Delaware woods laid waste.
Those flames, they burn inside me still,
O year of Fire, year of Miracle
Nineteen Fifty-Three
from “Webster’s Second” Part III
. . . . . . . . . . . . . When I was eight my Dad
bestowed on me his grand old Funk and Wagnalls,
(the one he used in college, I believe),
and said that once a week we’d play a game:
after a random search we’d find a word
that neither of us knew, and learn it well.
He bade me open up the bulky book
at any place I would; he made me shut
my eyes and put my finger on the page.
I lift my lids. I raise my little digit.
An unknown word appears. As if by magic
I called it into being: peridot
(rhyming with fairy knot), precious stone,
a gem, pellucid green, and I, too young
to know, a color I could never see.
No matter. The word did conjure up the stone.
It’s still imbued with that imagined hue,
unfading lumen, star of my third eye.
Many a time I’ve looked it up again,
to trace it backwards to old French and thence
to faridãt, old Arabic for gem.
That game we played no more. The damage done,
the gem became my Judas word, the lure
that made the others swim into my ken.
Two Boyhood Poems