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The road taken: Marty's final column

At age 12, when I still thought I was or would be or could be a poet, John G. Neihardt figured large in my imagination. For 50-plus years he was Nebraska’s poet laureate. He began his editing and writing career in a cottage—really a shack—at the edge of the Omaha Indian reservation, 12 miles from where I grew up. Later he became known for the classic Black Elk Speaks, but early on he published lyric poetry such as that in A Bundle of Myrrh, which inspired me then though its romanticism embarrasses me today. Among some memorized lines that have stayed with me:

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