The weather is suddenly sultry again, yet the light is autumn light . . . dusky mornings and early sunsets, and now the maples are beginning to turn red, the garden flowers beginning to fade. The yard looks like October but feels like August.
Yesterday I carted a bunch of musical instruments to the high school, as donations for the music program--two guitars, a banjo, an amp, all of which I used extensively when I was a school music teacher but haven't touched since. Clearly the violin is the only instrument I will ever be serious about. I thought I would be ashamed of myself, but really I was relieved.
In similar news, I have started reading an Agatha Christie novel that I found on my son's bookshelf when I was packing up his stuff. I haven't read a Christie mystery for 30 years or so, and I am finding it strangely soothing, despite the fact that the characters are irritating stereotypes (the coarse, violent Italian man; the prim governess; the stupid voluble middle-aged American woman . . . ). I'm pretty sure that this is not a good book in the disguise of a friendly mystery novel. I think it really is trash and that that I am too distracted right now to be a good reader of real books. Thus, a silly plot-driven train story is easier to manage than the great Penelope Fitzgerald novel I pulled off the shelf to reread. I'm also having problems with my book of Australian history, which I was so excited about. It has begun to self-destruct, and I'm finding it hard to manage a 700-page paperback when all of the pages are falling out. I think I will have to acquire a new copy after we move.
All this is to say: I wonder what kind of participant I will be in our communal Geoffrey Hill poetry-reading project. Overall, I feel quite stupid.
Thursday, September 8, 2016
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Discussing Geoffrey Hill's Poem "Genesis"
Guest post by Thomas Juvan
The coincidence of Geoffrey Hill’s death this summer with Dawn’s call for suggestions for a poet to read together was irresistible for me. I’ve dipped in and out of his work for years now, and the results have been equally bewildering and marvelous, so I jumped at the idea of a group reading in which to sustain some of my attention on some of Hill’s poems and to bounce ideas off the members of this lovely and thoughtful group of readers and writers. Approaching a poet as allusive and formidably learned as Geoffrey Hill is always intimidating to me (I lapse back into panicked academic mode), but one of the helpful by-products of my own time at the Frost Place under Dawn’s and Baron’s guidance there has been a greater willingness on my part to proceed from the ground floor and open up the poem with less worry about “getting it right” (thank you, Dawn and Baron!). So thanks to you all for joining in to explore Hill’s work together!
I thought it appropriate to begin with “Genesis,” the first poem in Hill’s first book, For the Unfallen. After all, it even announces itself as a beginning! I think it’s interesting, too, as a poem in which Hill uses the first person, which his poems often seem to avoid. He’s often engaging with historical figures or is speaking from a kind of quasi-omniscient, metaphysical point of view, which I think some can find a bit too grandiose or overweening.
But it’s also a poem that raises a question I often ask myself when reading poems: Why do poets break poems into sections? To get the discussion rolling, I’d ask you to think about this question in relation to “Genesis,” and also perhaps to reflect on your own writing as poets. What seems to be the sense of the divisions in “Genesis”? Do you divide poems into parts? What’s your motive in doing so, and does that shed light on why and how Hill is dividing up the parts of “Genesis”?
* * *
Note from Dawn: With Tom's questions in mind, we'll take a few days to read and mull over the poem. In the meantime, do leave comments here as you begin to develop your own questions and ideas.
The coincidence of Geoffrey Hill’s death this summer with Dawn’s call for suggestions for a poet to read together was irresistible for me. I’ve dipped in and out of his work for years now, and the results have been equally bewildering and marvelous, so I jumped at the idea of a group reading in which to sustain some of my attention on some of Hill’s poems and to bounce ideas off the members of this lovely and thoughtful group of readers and writers. Approaching a poet as allusive and formidably learned as Geoffrey Hill is always intimidating to me (I lapse back into panicked academic mode), but one of the helpful by-products of my own time at the Frost Place under Dawn’s and Baron’s guidance there has been a greater willingness on my part to proceed from the ground floor and open up the poem with less worry about “getting it right” (thank you, Dawn and Baron!). So thanks to you all for joining in to explore Hill’s work together!
I thought it appropriate to begin with “Genesis,” the first poem in Hill’s first book, For the Unfallen. After all, it even announces itself as a beginning! I think it’s interesting, too, as a poem in which Hill uses the first person, which his poems often seem to avoid. He’s often engaging with historical figures or is speaking from a kind of quasi-omniscient, metaphysical point of view, which I think some can find a bit too grandiose or overweening.
But it’s also a poem that raises a question I often ask myself when reading poems: Why do poets break poems into sections? To get the discussion rolling, I’d ask you to think about this question in relation to “Genesis,” and also perhaps to reflect on your own writing as poets. What seems to be the sense of the divisions in “Genesis”? Do you divide poems into parts? What’s your motive in doing so, and does that shed light on why and how Hill is dividing up the parts of “Genesis”?
* * *
Note from Dawn: With Tom's questions in mind, we'll take a few days to read and mull over the poem. In the meantime, do leave comments here as you begin to develop your own questions and ideas.
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
We spent most of yesterday reaming out the attic. Then I went to the fair to judge the talent show, and Tom stuffed grape leaves and made corn pudding. The winner of the talent show was a tiny scrap of a girl, maybe nine years old, who sang Otis Redding's "Dock of the Bay" as if it had been written for her. I felt like I was listening to a baby version of Dusty Springfield. Believe me: you never know what will turn up at the Harmony Fair.
And now, on Tuesday morning, I will return to doing the usual: e.g., editing a manuscript and hauling a load of detritus to the Goodwill. How did we manage to accumulate so much useless stuff? Some of it, though, was pleasant to revisit--for instance, toddler Paul's crayon drawing of "a happy piece of toast."
* * *
On Wednesday I'll initiate our next group poetry-reading project. The featured poet, as you know, will be Geoffrey Hill; and our featured reader will be Tom--not the one who cleaned out the attic with me but an excellent high school English teacher from Connecticut. Because it was he who first suggested that we consider looking at Hill's work, I thought it was appropriate to invite him to open the conversation. The first poem we'll be looking at will be "Genesis," and tomorrow he'll share some of his thoughts and questions about the poem.
And now, on Tuesday morning, I will return to doing the usual: e.g., editing a manuscript and hauling a load of detritus to the Goodwill. How did we manage to accumulate so much useless stuff? Some of it, though, was pleasant to revisit--for instance, toddler Paul's crayon drawing of "a happy piece of toast."
* * *
On Wednesday I'll initiate our next group poetry-reading project. The featured poet, as you know, will be Geoffrey Hill; and our featured reader will be Tom--not the one who cleaned out the attic with me but an excellent high school English teacher from Connecticut. Because it was he who first suggested that we consider looking at Hill's work, I thought it was appropriate to invite him to open the conversation. The first poem we'll be looking at will be "Genesis," and tomorrow he'll share some of his thoughts and questions about the poem.
Monday, September 5, 2016
Route 9
Dawn Potter
“Precious Memories!” screams
the backlit sign in the lot across from the animal
shelter in the autumn of my life.
A sudden wind whips a spatter of hard rain
through gas-station plazas and funeral-home porticos.
I motor sedately, transliterating billboards and neon coils.
“Be kind to the wicked,” whispers each virtuous advertiser,
each quaintly brutal heart.
Heart, I know,
connotes oleo and a diamond.
Define kind and wicked for yourselves.
[first published in Across the Margin (June 2016)]
Sunday, September 4, 2016
I decided to take yesterday off from being a writer. Instead, I canned tomatoes and went to the demolition derby at the Harmony Fair. I have not attended the derby for 15 years or so, though I have often listened to it from inside the Exhibition Hall, where I've usually been stationed. But because this may be our last Harmony Fair, Tom and I decided that we should take in the spectacle.
The fair is always packed on derby day. We threaded our way through the folding chairs and the bodies draped on the dry hillside and found a patch of grass. The day was hot and bright, an afternoon for sunscreen and a big hat, though almost everyone except for me seemed content to fry. First, we watched the pretty car contest, which is judged via audience applause. The winner was a minivan painted with "Save the Boobies" and breast cancer emblems and had a cardboard marriage proposal illegibly affixed to its hood. Next was the ugly car contest, won by a Plymouth Satellite-like 70s sedan painted mud-yellow and decorated with purple polka-dots. Everyone cheered for that one, so Stan the announcer declared that the victor had been chosen "Anonymously." It took me a beat or so to realize that he meant "Unanimously."
Then the derby proper began. We watched two heats, each of which happened to feature one of my former students. The pit is gravel, so in addition to hunks of loose metal and engine fires and such, there are also flying rocks and a whole lot of dust. Also, during the second heat, there were hornets, whose nest had been disturbed by a flailing tire. What with all this chaotic mashing and destruction, the event pulses with danger for both the crowd and the drivers, but it happens so quickly and is so bizarrely toy-like that it's hard to detach a sense of terror from a sense of comic wonder.
I felt sentimental when my former student won the second heat. I remember attending a facsimile demolition derby that he and my older son had devised when they were in first grade. A corner of the classroom was roped off with plastic chain. Parents and classmates sat safely on their tiny chairs, while the boys in the pit made car noises and crashed their Matchboxes into Lego barriers. As in real life, it was difficult to tell what was going on.
The fair is always packed on derby day. We threaded our way through the folding chairs and the bodies draped on the dry hillside and found a patch of grass. The day was hot and bright, an afternoon for sunscreen and a big hat, though almost everyone except for me seemed content to fry. First, we watched the pretty car contest, which is judged via audience applause. The winner was a minivan painted with "Save the Boobies" and breast cancer emblems and had a cardboard marriage proposal illegibly affixed to its hood. Next was the ugly car contest, won by a Plymouth Satellite-like 70s sedan painted mud-yellow and decorated with purple polka-dots. Everyone cheered for that one, so Stan the announcer declared that the victor had been chosen "Anonymously." It took me a beat or so to realize that he meant "Unanimously."
Then the derby proper began. We watched two heats, each of which happened to feature one of my former students. The pit is gravel, so in addition to hunks of loose metal and engine fires and such, there are also flying rocks and a whole lot of dust. Also, during the second heat, there were hornets, whose nest had been disturbed by a flailing tire. What with all this chaotic mashing and destruction, the event pulses with danger for both the crowd and the drivers, but it happens so quickly and is so bizarrely toy-like that it's hard to detach a sense of terror from a sense of comic wonder.
I felt sentimental when my former student won the second heat. I remember attending a facsimile demolition derby that he and my older son had devised when they were in first grade. A corner of the classroom was roped off with plastic chain. Parents and classmates sat safely on their tiny chairs, while the boys in the pit made car noises and crashed their Matchboxes into Lego barriers. As in real life, it was difficult to tell what was going on.
Friday, September 2, 2016
On the whole, I am feeling better about the house situation this morning. I talked to lots of friends and family members. I walked in the woods. I started packing up a few things in my son's room. I thought about making a new little garden somewhere else. I think my melancholy will ease when we actually acquire another place to live. For the moment, I don't have any solid image of what a new home might look like. I will feel better when I have a room to picture.
I also spent an hour on the phone with my younger son, who, like his mother, can be nostalgiac and overemotional. And I think he and I are more or less in the same place: shifting from sadness, to acceptance, to anticipation, to sadness again. Right now, though, he is also immersed in the enormous transition from high school to college . . . in particular, the way in which the social life one creates may become both an emotional and an intellectual adventure. He and his roommate are intensely discussing their love for Faulkner's novels and the film Killer of Sheep. "I'm learning about new ways to think about the way rap artists layer their music!" he tells me. "My friend who wants to be a chemistry major also loves Keats!" All of this makes me so happy.
Today the Harmony Fair begins, and I will work what I presume will be my last stint at the exhibition hall. Tom and I are planning to go to the demolition derby tomorrow, just for old time's sake. Maybe you'd like to look at some of his derby pictures and his Harmony art, to see what we are leaving.
I also spent an hour on the phone with my younger son, who, like his mother, can be nostalgiac and overemotional. And I think he and I are more or less in the same place: shifting from sadness, to acceptance, to anticipation, to sadness again. Right now, though, he is also immersed in the enormous transition from high school to college . . . in particular, the way in which the social life one creates may become both an emotional and an intellectual adventure. He and his roommate are intensely discussing their love for Faulkner's novels and the film Killer of Sheep. "I'm learning about new ways to think about the way rap artists layer their music!" he tells me. "My friend who wants to be a chemistry major also loves Keats!" All of this makes me so happy.
Today the Harmony Fair begins, and I will work what I presume will be my last stint at the exhibition hall. Tom and I are planning to go to the demolition derby tomorrow, just for old time's sake. Maybe you'd like to look at some of his derby pictures and his Harmony art, to see what we are leaving.
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