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Constable: Childhood fun in nature inspires Geneva writer's poetry

Growing up on Chicago's Gold Coast as the son of a prestigious doctor, Rick Holinger of Geneva had his “epiphany” on the edge of the Catskill Mountains while he was a student at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York.

“I discovered that I loved reading and writing,” says Holinger, who was enthralled with Elia Kazan's novel “The Arrangement.”

Holinger remembers being so thrilled with that revelation about what he wanted to do with his life that he walked across campus singing Chicago's “Only the Beginning,” with the lyrics “Only the beginning of what I want to feel forever.”

This year, Holinger turned 71 years old, retired after 40 years as an English teacher at Marmion Academy in Aurora, and had his first book of poetry, “North of Crivitz,” published by Kelsay Books. The book includes a poem titled “Bluebells in the Time of Coronavirus,” which is about a walk in April with his wife, Tia, but the roots of his poetry run deeper than the pandemic.

“I've been writing these poems since I was in my 20s,” says Holinger, who has kept a handwritten journal since he was 19. “I started my coronavirus journal on the Ides of March.”

Many of the poems in the book grew out of weekends as a boy on his grandparents' land on a wooded floodplain in Plano, where his “Pop” installed the retired luxury Pullman One railroad car, once used by presidents, on a bluff overlooking Rock Creek.

“It was a wonderful time for a kid to imagine,” says Holinger, who played with his three older brothers and heroes and villains of his imagination.

He also took in the sights during summer trips to his family's cabin on a lake in the Northwoods just north of Crivitz, Wisconsin. He writes about box elder bugs and monarch butterflies, snapping turtles and cowbirds, fishermen and poets.

“Because poets and anglers sit side by side in the boat, equally at ease floating over paper or water, conforming to conscience and imagined invisibles, never succumbing to belittling the little, the less, the loner, the lost,” Holinger writes in his poem “Artists and Anglers.”

For high school, his parents sent him to a boarding school in Connecticut “for kids who weren't living up to their potential,” Holinger says. After college, he worked a night shift as a security guard and wrote short stories. He still remembers his first rejection letter from Esquire, which read, “I love the story, but the telling leaves me cold.”

He went on to get his master's degree in English at Washington University in St. Louis and taught at St. Louis University High School, until his wife landed a job as a French teacher at Glenbard West High School and they moved to the Fox Valley, where they raised their children, Jay and Molly. Tia Holinger now teaches art at St. Francis High School in Wheaton.

Seeking the input of “good people to read my work,” Holinger got his doctoral degree in creative writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1993. In 1995, he founded the St. Charles Writers Group, and through his work with libraries has been a leader in the Elgin Community College Writers Center and the Night Writers Workshop of Geneva.

His poems have been nominated for three Pushcart Prize awards, and he has won numerous writing awards for his poetry and fiction writing. He started writing a newspaper column about his life in the suburbs 20 years ago in the now-defunct Geneva Sun and still writes a bimonthly column for the Kane County Chronicle.

In November, Dreaming Big Press published a collection of columns in a book titled “Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences: Views of a Guy Who Wants To Know, ‘What Do They Make Pinewood Derby Cars Out Of?'” Both his books are available at richardholinger.net.

He's currently working on a collection of poems about “people who changed the way human beings imagine,” from Homer to Steve Jobs. But he still writes short stories and adds to his journals.

There is joy in “the rhythm, the imagery” of writing, Holinger says. “I write whatever the muse is offering me.”

  Named after the location of his family's cabin in Wisconsin, "North of Crivitz" is a collection of poems by writer Rick Holinger of Geneva. Brian Hill/bhill@dailyherald.com
  Retired teacher Rick Holinger had two books published in 2020 at age 71. One is a collection of his poems, and the other includes several of his suburban newspaper columns. Brian Hill/bhill@dailyherald.com
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