A Work in Progress

At the Source: Gillian Clarke on Poetry

One of my semi-reading-failures this year has been to read a book in monthly installments and then written about it over the course of the year.  I have come across some really fantastic books that lend themselves well to this sort of reading project.  There has been Roger Deakin and Anna Pavord.  Both books are written in perfect 'bite-size' chapters with essays and observations presented in a monthly format.  This year's book At the Source by Gillian Clarke is another perfect read for this kind of serial reading project.  It was a gift from my friend Cath with whom I have been (at least had been until I dropped the ball) reading along.  Somewhere along the line, early summer I think, I fell behind and now am just trying to finish reading the remaining chapters. It is presented in journal format by month with additional essays at the beginning of the book. 

Clarke is a Welsh poet and her writing is, unsurprisingly, very eloquent.  She is also a careful observer and reminds me of Roger Deakin at times.  To be honest I am not sure I will remember many details, little bits here and there only, but the act of reading her writing is a pleasure in itself.  I have all sorts of pencil markings so when I go back and dip into various chapters I can easily see the things that caught my eye.  There is just so much--it's such a lush sort of book, and even reading it very slowly (which her writing sort of demands) I mostly just let it all wash over me as i go.  It's like looking at paintings or sculpture in a museum--you can soak some of it in but when you leave you are mostly just left with impressions and images.   

So, at this point, I won't write about each chapter but as I was catching up on my reading I came across a section of wonderful bookishness.  I wish I could just share every bit with you here and now, but let me pick out a few especially tasty morsels.  Since she is a poet she writes a lot about her own work and that of others.  What she says is so spot on when it comes to reading in general.  And she makes me want to read and love poetry, which someday I hope to achieve (just like I have come to love short stories).  Here are a few snippets on poetry or reading or novels that I think every reader (of any type of literature) will appreciate.

"Good poetry is layered with secrets, observant, true, the best so simple it can stop your heart."

Then she goes on to name a few poets in particular--Yeats, Emily Dickinson, R.S. Thomas, Hughes and other living poets.  Must check some of these poets out--I know some of Emily's work, but in general I am woefully underread when it comes to poetry.

Do those of you who read poetry agree . . . she was at a literary conference and talking with other passionate poetry fans notes that "we rarely read a novel more than once, but the poetry-lovers all read favorite poems over and over, searching for the secret of their power, finding something new at every reading, yet never fathoming the mystery."  Even though I am not a poetry reader I can somehow see what she is saying.  The power of words to create strong images or a story maybe, and how the meaning might change depending on what the reader brings to the poems or interprets the words. 

And this is wonderful:

"Reading a novel and reading a poem are completely different ways of reading.  There is no comparison.  One drives you on, page after page.  The other stops you dead, stops your breath as if you saw the burning bush.  One is a journey, the other is a spell."

But this doesn't mean she doesn't appreciate good novels, too.  And I can easily concur with here here:

"When the novel is finished I close the book, and if it's any good it unfolds in my mind for hours, days, weeks, forever if it is a tryly great novel, by Tolstoy, Dickens, George Eliot."

And this actually gave me shivers--she was talking about an especially stunning poem and how she reacts to it:

"It's a spell, a magic trick, a key to your heart made by a man who doesn't even know you."

But it's so true.  A really good piece of writing is like a work of art.  It speaks to you across time and distance.  It is really quite a gift, and to think that someone somewhere had the ability to shake you up in some way, to give you a good memory, something you can take with you outside that particular moment and carry with you in your heart and mind.

This is what I love about good books (and good poems!).  It's for this moment (and they don't come as often as I would like) that I read!

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder

"The cold lasted so long that it seemed it would never end."  Out of bed in the cold.  Daily meals of coarse brown bread.  Grind the wheat to make the bread.  Twist the hay as fast as they could.  Day after day after day.  Daily meals of coarse brown bread.  Grind the wheat.  Twist the hay.  All to keep fed and warm.  To survive an awful, and very long winter on the Dakota Plains.   The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder certainly takes a decided turn from the previous books of warmth and bounty.  I am chastened.  Remind me in January and February when I am sure to be complaining about the 'long winter' that long and winter are terms that are open for interpretation!

That 'new horizon' that I read about not so long ago is now home to the Ingalls family.  They set off from the banks of Plum Creek to stake their claim on a piece of land to call their own.  Their own  homestead out west, acres of land to farm but close enough to a town, or a burgeoning town that will soon grow by leaps and bounds, so that the girls could finally go to school.  Things were looking bright and cheery despite Mary's loss of sight.  They had built a sturdy shanty and Pa had a storefront in the little town, and while everything was new they were setting down roots.  A first year in a new place, and this town is as new as they come, is always a little spartan--hence the green pumpkin pie, but the Ingalls family has always done well.  They are frugal when need be and cautious but always reap the bounty of their efforts.  

Laura is nearly fourteen and must be useful in ways she has never had to be before.  Aside from the fact she is not a little girl anymore, she must take over tasks once Mary would have taken care of as the oldest.  Laura has always preferred to be outside.  She loves the wide open country and nature and being part of it.  She's not especially happy with the idea that since Mary is blind she will now need to be the one to become a teacher and does not look forward to going to school.  For now, though, she convinces Ma and Pa that she can help work in the fields--even though Ma notes that only "foreigners" allow women to work the fields.  But needs must and there is no one else to help Pa.  While Pa pitches the hay into the wagon Laura tramples it down and later it will all be stacked to be saved and used later.  And it is a wise move as events will show later.

Mary helps in the house as best she can, Laura helps Pa, Carrie takes over Laura's chores and Grace is still too little to do anything but watch and wish.  And soon fall comes and school starts and even sooner than expected the days turn cold and the snow begins to fall.  It's a sign that the prairie animals begin growing thick coats.  But it's not what Pa notices about the animals so much as what he doesn't see.  "Something's queer.  Not a goose nor a duck on the lake", he tells Caroline.  "I never saw a country so empty and still."

"The silence was as terrible as cold is.  It was stronger than any sound.  It could stop the water's lapping and the thin, faint ringing in Laura's ears. The silence was no sound, no movement, no thing; that was its terror.  Laura's heart jumped and jumped, trying to get away from it."

First the animals and their nest building and preparing for winter.  Then the lack of animals.  It was the strangest fall and no one could quite say why it felt so strange since they were having what seemed to be perfect weather, a beautiful Indian summer. Then an October blizzard hits and Pa brings back news from the town of De Smet that a very old Indian brought warning of the coming hard winter.  Every seven years he tells the town that a terrible winter hits and so Pa makes the wise decision to close up the shanty and move to town.

Even living in the little town of De Smet among so many people (too many for Laura!), some seventy-five or eighty, won't keep the Ingalls family safe from the weather.  It would have been okay if the trains could get through, but blizzard after blizzard closes the school and then closes down the town.  They are cut off from everyone.  No matter how they try and dig out the tracks they are only covered again and again.  Finally there is nowhere to put all the snow and no way for anyone to get into the town to bring food and supplies.  No matter how prepared the Ingalls family is, their food stocks begin to thin out.  So the wheat must be ground and the coarse bread baked.  And for warmth the hay that was so carefully harvested now becomes their fuel to burn and to cook with and their only hope for survival.  But even that begins to run out.

The Long Winter is quite a story, an adventure story and a story of survival.  While it is very much a Little House book it has a slightly different tone than the others I have read so far.  The Ingalls family has changed and their living situation somewhat new, though the pioneer spirit is there strong as ever.  Laura is much the same yet older, too, and so growing up and becoming more of an independent spirit (even more so in the next book!) and more responsible.  Almanzo and his brother Royal are 'baching' like so  many other men setting out west.  While 'Manzo only made a cameo appearance in the last book, he is a resident of De Smet with hopes and plans to make his own farm.  He is young (and tells a fib to appear older and stake a claim) but smart and something of a hero in this story.  If the bleakness of the winter made me weary for the families, Almanzo's pancakes made my mouth water.  It's quite a lean winter for most families (unless you are bachelor brothers by the name of Wilder) but if you can hold out long enough winter fades into spring.  

I am already reading Little Town on the Prairie and am happy to tell you that it is warm and sunny and July right now and not a snowflake is in sight.  I have two more books left to read of the Little House books.  I am hoping I can finish all three before the year is out (and hope I am not being overly ambitious).  It has been fun watching Laura grow up and there are still more adventures to come I suspect.   

Teaser Tuesday: A Jest of God

I loved Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel when I read it a number of years ago.  It has taken far too long to get around to picking up another of her books, but I can already tell it will be well worth the wait.  A Jest of God is another of Laurence's novels set in the fictional Manitoba town of Manawaka.  She has a cycle of novels (which I think need not be read in any particular order) set there.  She herself is from Neepawa, and I am guessing that the books must be in some way autobiographical perhaps?  Or at least the fictional town is inspired by her own.

I seem to be reading several books that are about spinsters at the moment (am working my way through the wonderful Elizabeth Taylor right now, too).  A Jest of God (I will be interested to see what the title means--have not had that 'aha' moment yet) is told from the perspective of thirty-something Rachel Cameron.  Actually so far, and I am not too far into the story, most of the narrative is spent inside Rachel's head.  I am wary of stream-of-conscious type narratives, but I must say I am enjoying how this story is being told. 

I feel like I know Rachel and being so close to a character makes me feel quite sympathetic towards her.  She is such an intriguing character.  I think I see bits of myself in her which makes it all the more interesting.  She lives with her widowed mother and is a school teacher.  She is socially awkward and constantly self-doubting.  You can tell she yearns for some sort of deeper or more interaction with others but the relationships, thus far, she is presented with are not really satisfying.  You can feel that she wants something more than she is being offered.  And she allows herself to get into situations that she doesn't want to be in but is too nice or simply not strong enough to just say no. 

I have chosen an excerpt from the beginning of the story to give you a taste of Rachel's interior voice.

"This bedroom is the same I've always had.  I should change the furniture.  How girlish it is, how old-fashioned.  The white spindly-legged dressing table, the round mirror with white rose-carved frame, the white-painted metal bed with its white-painted metal bow decorating the head like a starched forgotten hair-ribbon.  Surely I could afford new furniture.  It's my salary, after all, my salary we live on.  She'd say it was a waste, to throw out perfectly good furniture.  I suppose it would be, too, if you think of it like that."

"I always brush my hair a hundred strokes.  I can't succeed in avoiding my eyes in the mirror.  The narrow angular face stares at me, the grey eyes too wide for it."

"I don't look old.  I don't look more than thirty.  Or do I see my face falsely?  How do I know how it looks to anyone else?  About six months ago, one of the salesmen who was calling on Hector Jonas, downstairs, asked me out and like an idiot I went.  We went to the Regal Café for dinner, and I thought every minute someone I knew would see me and know he sold some embalming fluid.  Of course someone has to sell it.  But when he told me I had good bones, it was too much.  As though he were one of the ancient Egyptians who interred the pharaohs and knew too intimately the secrets of the core and marrow.  Do I have good bones?  I can't tell.  I'm no judge."

"Go to bed, Rachel. And hope to sleep."

I am rooting for Rachel and while this is a thoughtful sort of story I am turning pages quickly to find out what happens to her.  This, like The Stone Angel the year I read it, is a strong contender for best read of the year!