Dave Roderick's Blue Colonial

In David Roderick’s debut poetry collection, Blue Colonial (The American Poetry Review), language is literally a tool for digging into a past that is both personal and historical. In the opening poem, “Excavation of the John Alden House,” Roderick hands us the letters of the alphabet and sends us into the dirt:

We needed an alphabet to get our grid laid out.
Then we tore grass from the site and found
a pike-head, a spoon, a key with a hollow shank.
Voices behind us chipped into the ground,

Throughout the collection, Roderick continues to unearth treasures buried in two different places. The first is the historical landscape of New England and specifically the area around Plymouth, Massachusetts (Roderick’s childhood home).

In poems like “William Bradford Drafting Of Plimoth Plantation,” “John Billington’s Conversion,” and “Priscilla Alden’s Sickness,” the past is made personal. In “William Bradford Drafting Of Plymouth Plantation,” we are brought into William Bradford’s house as he writes. Through carefully balanced detail, Roderick slowly invites us closer until we see “breath/stream from his nostrils,” and “his lips quivering/like the flame that lights his page./Because this is the way history/ was written back then.” History is not just written on the page, it is first lived and then hidden away in the dirt.

Roderick does not limit himself to the writers of history; he inhabits the concerns of the women as they set foot in Massachusetts for the first time, bringing the artifacts we will later uncover.

A line of goodwives climbing the dune’s spine.
They have baskets or children
in their arms, iron pots, spools.
They walk toward hornpout and otter fat,
Toward the gleam of a minted name
but above them the sky
is spoiled cream, clabber from the bottom of a pail.

These are not idle concerns; food, family, and legacy speak to us all.

As Roderick mines the other important theme of this collection, the past is personal:

If I become her son, which I will,
if I become her last line,
which I will, if I grow
into her visible grief,
which I will, I will
she can push me into mulch
around mongrel trees
or bury me in the beach-stone square.

Roderick, digging into the intersections between his childhood in Plymouth (growing up in the blue colonial house of the title poem) and the historical heritage of New England, sees “as a mole sees: diaphanous/ bird calls, sounds to guide his blindness.” Here in the darkness of his own past, Roderick returns to language in a series of three “self-portraits” to give shape to an experience not often encountered in poetry: that of baby in womb.

But it would be remiss to portray Blue Colonial as completely dark. Roderick, after all, paints himself as “the tickler’s son,” and his work often ripples with his trademark wry, quirky humor. “The Makers of the American Language” lists various men of the new world: “Shit shovelers./ Seed-sowing hands when the crabapple buds/ grew as big of as the balls of a bull.”

Whether in the sheer loveliness of many of the sounds (“Strangers. Saints. Blazers of sphagnum and sap”) or his honest childhood exploits in the title poem, “Blue Colonial,” (I was bored until I began rigging catastrophes”), Roderick’s poetry is always a joy to read. It is perhaps for these reasons the book was chosen as the APR/Honickman First Book winner. Or it may be why Robert Pinsky wrote the introduction. But for whatever reason you pick up Roderick’s language tools and begin digging, you will not be disappointed by what treasures lay down deep.

In Pursuit of Perfection

Classical Pursuits: Beyond Tourism to Meaningful Travel

In researching my book on the Irish Literary Revival, I came across the itinerary for a trip to Ireland titled "Irish Literary Genius." It was with a program out of Toronto called Classical Pursuits. Although the timing didn't quite work out for me to go on that trip, I stored the information away for future investigation. Now, I'm intrigued. After a few conversations with founder Ann Kirkland, I see how Classical Pursuits is one of the leading programs in the growing movement in literary travel; the programs offered bring inquiring adults together to explore life's big questions in the context of the world's greatest wriers and artists.

Classical Pursuits founder Ann Kirkland

Kirkland's outfit essentially runs two programs: one brings much of the world's literature and culture to Toronto and the other brings travelers into the world to experience culture first hand. Toronto Pursuits is a six day immersion in the stuff you wish was part of the curriculum when you went to college: fear of colour in contemporary art, Egyptian novels, Iranian cinema, alongside the classics you wish you had payed more attention to: Shakespeare, Russian fiction, Moby Dick. Around a hundred, fifty people from all over flock to Toronto each summer for the engaging conversation and camaraderie.

The other arm of the program takes travelers to the places that make this art come alive. With literature and art-based trips to places like Mexico, Georgia, Italy, Spain and New Mexico (this year's destinations), Travel Pursuits aims to offer an experience that will last long after travelers return home, marrying high ideas with high adventure. Kirkland offers some half-dozen trips each year, fueling literary and artistic investigations worldwide.

As a writer of literary guidebooks, I find programs like Kirkland's Classical Pursuits (http://www.classicalpursuits.com/), and Francis McGovern's Literary Traveler(http://www.literarytraveler.com/) encouraging signs. People are starting to demand more from their travels and are looking for programs like these to help them engage their minds beyond what they find in their guidebooks.

Seven Gables Talk

Book Talk at the House of the Seven Gables in Salem - October 6, 2006

I gave this talk at the annual meeting of the House of the Seven Gables in Salem on a spectacular fall day that began at daybreak at the Fruitlands Museum. It was a thrill for me.

Thank you for coming. I would like to begin by thanking Stan Burchfield and the House of the Seven Gables for having me here this evening. It is quite an honor to be speaking not just at the House of the Seven Gables, but at the annual meeting. I am also thrilled to be back in Salem on such a lovely day because the last time I was here, Salem was full of snow and bitterly cold.

At the risk of offending these very walls, I want to start tonight by talking about another venerable old house, the Old Manse in Concord. The Old Manse was home to Ralph Waldo Emerson from 1834 to 1835 and to Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne from 1842-1845.

When I started writing this book two years ago, I began with the Concord chapter first, because I knew that although many of the early public events of the Transcendentalist movement happened in Boston and Cambridge, much of the most dynamic and original thinking was done in Concord.

I also knew that I needed to understand Concord’s role in Transcendentalism in order to fully appreciate the movement’s relationship to New England – because this is really the driving force behind both this book and the ArtPlace series.

My book is the third title in Roaring Forties Press’s ArtPlace series. The series looks to examine the interaction between the landscape and geography of a place, and the art that is created there. Other subjects in the series include Dorothy Parker’s New York City, John Steinbeck’s California, and a really great one on the Irish Literary Revival (but more on that later).

For my part, this series was a dream come true. I have always been interested in how groups of writers interact and inspire each other. In my career as an English teacher and founding director of a writing center, I was particularly intrigued by groups of writers who drew inspiration from the community and the landscape around them. In addition, I developed a particular affection in college for Nathaniel Hawthorne, having studied many of his works in my courses.

So when the opportunity to do this book came up, I jumped at it and began to try a get a sense of what Transcendentalism truly meant.

One of the first definitions I found came from a minister named Father Taylor, who was a friend and colleague of the Transcendentalists. He defined Transcendentalism as “a seagull with long wings, lean body, poor feathers, and miserable meat.” Not very helpful.

Rebecca Harding Davis characterized its followers as “hordes of wild-eyed Harvard undergraduates and lean, underpaid working-women, each with a disease of the soul to be cured by the new healer.”

Even Hawthorne, got in on the act: “Never was a poor little country village infested with such a variety of queer, strangely-dressed, oddly-behaved mortals.”

It’s not surprising that when the British novelist Charles Dickens came to Boston and inquired about Transcendentalism, he was told that “whatever is unintelligible would certainly be transcendental.” Clearly, these answers were not going to help me, so I went to the Old Manse.

This house was home to Ralph Waldo Emerson from 1834 to 1835 and to Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne from 1842-1845.

While Emerson lived here with his mother, he wrote the book that quickly became one of the core documents of Transcendentalism: Nature, The book begins with this remarkable challenge:

The forgoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?

Then follows an Emersonian, and therefore Transcendentalist solution: go spend time in nature, and see what new ideas this brings.

Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us, by the powers they supply to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past?

It seems particularly telling that Emerson wrote these words, with their central metaphor of “the flood of life,” looking out at the river from the window of his study. As he states, however, “to go out into solitude [to achieve our ‘original relation’], a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society.” Emerson made good on this premise by going out daily to walk the hills, forests, and meadows of his chosen town. He let neither the elements nor the demands of society keep him from his walks.

Emerson is also clear about the benefits of the move into nature:

In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- a mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

It was in these passages from Nature that Transcendentalism first came alive for me, and I structured the book around what I view as Transcendentalism’s central quest: to forge an original relationship with the universe or, as Emerson puts it, to behold “God and nature face to face.”

So, what quickly became interesting to me was how this group of writers, philosophers, poets, activists and dreamers conducted their quests. Where did they go for that “face to face” interaction? How does one forge one’s own unique relationship with the universe?

For Hawthorne, one way is to work in the garden. The garden at the Old Manse is a replica of the one planted by Henry David Thoreau for the Hawthornes as a wedding present. Hawthorne absolutely loved it.

I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation.

It was truly a present that kept on giving. And it seems wonderfully appropriate that this replica garden continues to give. It was planted by the non-profit group Gaining Ground who uses the “vegetable progeny” to feed the hungry and less-fortunate of Boston.

And Hawthorne did not limit himself to the garden. In the introduction to his collection of short-pieces called Mosses from an Old Manse, Hawthorne rhapsodizes about the Concord River, calling it “the river of peace and quietness.”

(I was also gratified to read that Hawthorne lived there for three weeks before he could tell which way the current flows because I thought for the longest time that the river flowed in the opposite direction.)

Much of Hawthorne’s introduction to the Old Manse, as well as his journals from the time, is filled with these wonderful descriptions of natural splendor: the orchards, the fields, and breezes that blow through them. These passages are especially powerful when contrasted against his descriptions of the “dead books” and “dreary trash” he finds in the attic library of the Manse.

Hawthorne also reserved great praise for his study: “there was in the rear of the house the most delightful little nook of a study that was ever afforded its snug seclusion to a scholar. It was here that Emerson wrote Nature.”

And, while Hawthorne certainly poked fun at the Transcendentalists and never thought of himself as belonging to any movement, many of the central tenets of Transcendentalism (awareness of the creative and imaginative power of nature, the breaking away from form and tradition, and the emphasis on individual experience) can be see in stories like “Young Goodman Brown” and novels such as The Scarlet Letter.

In the opening essay of The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne addresses the ennui he feels as a government employee, directly contrasting it against what he feels in nature:

It was not merely during the three hours and a half which Uncle Sam claimed as his share of my daily life, that this wretched numbness held possession of me. It went with me on my sea-shore walks, and rambles into the country, whenever – which was seldom and reluctantly – I bestirred myself to seek that invigorating charm of Nature.

It is these passages, and many more like them scattered throughout Hawthorne’s works, along with his close connections to major Transcendentalist figures like Henry David Thoreau, Elizabeth Peabody, and Charles Ripley, that allowed me to include him in this book.

But he was not the only one in Salem with Transcendentalists leanings. Certainly, there was Elizabeth Peabody, whose contributions to the movement have for so long gone unsung. But her story has recently been wonderfully told in Megan Marshall’s The Peabody Sisters, so hopefully she will get her due as one of the leading forces of not just the Transcendentalist movement, but American culture of the nineteenth century.

I also want to take a moment to talk about the Salem poet, Jones Very. Jones Very grew up, like Hawthorne, in Salem and went off to Harvard in the mid-1830’s. By 1838, he had come to the attention of Emerson, who had brought him to Concord to lecture in April of 1838.

By this time, Very had graduated from Harvard but stayed on as a Greek tutor and divinity student. During the summer of 1838, he began an essay on Shakespeare. At the same time, he was attempting to completely erase his identity in order to be an empty vessel for God’s light.

These two projects proved too much for him: the twenty-five year-old poet and scholar began to develop a reputation among the young undergraduates of Harvard for a madness that culminated in telling his student to “flee to the mountains, for the end of all things is at hand” and storming Professor Henry Ware Jr.’s rooms, asserting he was the second coming of Christ. When Ware questioned him, Very responded, “I had thought you did the will of the Father, and that I should receive some sympathy from you – But I now find that you are doing your own will, and not the will of your father.”

Not surprisingly, Harvard quickly let him go, and Very returned to Salem under the care of his younger brother, then a freshman at Harvard.

Although Very continued to channel God’s light and was given a month’s sojourn at the McLean Hospital in Cambridge for it, he remained relatively harmless and eventually lived out his life serving as a supply preacher.

But forging one’s own unique relation with the universe was not necessarily a solo adventure. You could go to Elizabeth Peabody’s bookstore on West Street to develop forge that relationship, particularly if you were coming to attend one of Margaret Fuller’s discussion groups or join the groups bandying about ideas for social reform.

Or you could go, as Nathaniel Hawthorne did, to Brook Farm and join their utopian community. Or join Bronson Alcott’s Fruitlands community just west of here in Harvard, Massachusetts.

Perhaps the most well known method to forge an original relationship to the universe was to move to Walden Pond and attempt to “front only the essential facts of life” as Thoreau did from 1845 to 1847.

His experiment in living the Transcendentalist quest, along with the record of it we know as Walden, has had perhaps the greatest impact of any of the Transcendentalist writings.

It is regularly quoted as the defining text for a wide variety of philosophical movements and radical thinkers. His words are regularly used for everything from yoga websites to articles on new technology.

But my favorite story of Thoreau’s influence is about a shy, lanky Irish boy whose father read Walden to him in the mornings before he trundled off to school. On summer vacation in the west of Ireland, this same boy then dreamed about moving to an island in the middle of a lake and living like Thoreau.

He even picked out the perfect island and spent a night reconnoitering it. As it turned out, the boy never lived out his dream, but he did write a poem about the island. The poem is called “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” and the boy is the Nobel Prize winning writer William Butler Yeats.

I tell that story, and more, in my next Roaring Forties Press book due out in February, A Journey into Ireland’s Literary Revival. See I told you I would come back to that.

Blatant self-promotion aside, this story speaks to one of the things that surprised me the most about Transcendentalism: the influence and interconnections between people. For example, just among the major Transcendentalist figures: Hawthorne met Elizabeth Peabody here in Salem, who had also worked for the Transcendentalist educator and philosopher Bronson Alcott, as did critic and writer Margaret Fuller. Bronson Alcott lived in Concord and was close friends with both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was invited and came very close to living at Brook Farm where Hawthorne was before he married Elizabeth Peabody’s younger sister Sophia in a ceremony at Elizabeth Peabody’s West Street Bookstore, where Brook Farm was first dreamed up. And the Transcendentalist journal The Dial was published. By Margaret Fuller. And Emerson. It’s dizzying.

The other thing this book taught me was how human these philosophers were. As someone who grew up in California, and only studied the Transcendentalists from afar, I had the vision of these writers as a series of lofty and forbidding men with serious foreheads and Transcendent thoughts. They may be that, but they were also human.

One of my favorite Hawthorne stories is about his tendency to get caught up in the moment and forget the practical details of life: While planning his wedding, Hawthorne wrote to James Freeman Clarke, a liberal Unitarian minister to ask him, (a man he’d never met), if he would perform the ceremony.

Both Nathaniel and Sophia had read his sermons and valued his ideas and philosophy. Unfortunately, Hawthorne neglected to include any details about the wedding in the letter. He also forgot to add a return address or way to get in contact.

So the good minister, well-acquainted with Elizabeth Peabody’s bookstore, was able to do some investigative work and be at the wedding on time. I love this story because it is totally something I would do.

Another favorite story is about how, when the Hawthornes lived at the Old Manse, the river behind the house froze over and Emerson and Thoreau stopped by for a skate with Hawthorne. Think of it, three of America’s most important writers skating in the backyard like a bunch of schoolboys.

These are the stories that make both the literature and the place come alive for me. I would guess many of you feel the same and that idea underlies your commitment to this place.

So, as I leave you to your own quests, I urge you to walk with Thoreau and Emerson, garden with Hawthorne and Dickinson, I urge you to dream your own utopian communities like Bronson Alcott and Charles Ripley. And read. As Thoreau reminds us:

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

I hope you enjoy this journey and read it as deliberately and reservedly as the spirit in which it was written. Thank you all very much for your wonderful attention. I will take some questions if you have some.

Wait...what happened?

We were still high-fiving and carrying on when I happened to look back at the screen to see Brian Ching rise well above Jay Heaps and essentially put the Revs away. Yes, I know he just tied the score to put the game into a shoot-out. Yes, I know that should have been to the Revs' advantage with Matt Reis on fire. But I knew at that moment, still hugging my eight-year old boy while celebrating Twellman's goal that it was over. There was just something so final about it.

Damn, and the Revs played well. With the exception of the first fifteen minutes, the Revs took the game to the Dynamo. They took away Mullan and Davis, and DeRosario could only blast away from the outside. They slotted in a few crosses and looked dangerous from time to time. But the Dynamo go home winners because they simply did not give up.

To their credit, the Dynamo played a great game as well. Their backline positioning was excellent, their midfield did their best to harry the New England central midfielders, and Onstand was, quite literally, golden. And when push came to shove, they converted.

Although disappointed by the result, I was not disappointed by the game. Both teams played a wide open game for the most part, and guys like Jay Heaps were still making forty-yard sprints in the waning moments. Although he figures twice in the loss, nobody can heap the blame on Jay. He was a credit to the team. Elsewhere, Parkhurst, Joseph, Reis, Noonan (who also missed), and Smith played outstanding games. I hope for Dempsey's sake that he gets to see some European playing time and the same goes for Joseph. For my part, I'd love to see the Revs come back for one more shot.

A Promising Start...only

Snowfall in the cornfields of the Pioneer Valley

The evening started off beautifully: the kids were settled nicely in with a babysitter, we arrived at the restaurant right on time, and the wine was an excellent choice. The menu looked enticing, and we ordered quickly, anticipating a delicious meal before going to a friend's poetry reading at Amherst Books. Unfortunately, the meal never measured up to our expectations. It wasn't that the food wasn't delicious; it just...wasn't anything. In the hour and a half we enjoyed each other's company and that great wine, there was no food to be found. No bread, no salad, no bar nuts, no food. With only ten minutes left before the reading, we paid for our wine and hightailed it over to Antonio's pizza, who were able to serve up our food before we had even decided on a table.

In contrast, the poet Dave Roderick reading from his new collection of poetry, Blue Colonial, was a satisfying as anything on the menu of a friday night. Dave returned to the valley where he earned his MFA after a two-year teaching stint at WMA, and his ease in front of this "home crowd" was noticeable. He told stories, thanked members of the audience for their roles in his development as a poet, and explained his poetry with a disarming honesty and humility. As for the poetry itself, it was clear that this is a voice in American poetry to pay attention to. Roderick effortlessly weaves in historical themes with a more personal and introspective voice. His imagery is rich and textured, filled with the naming of specific objects and striking juxtapositions. I look forward to exploring the poems in greater detail and will report later.

A Top Ten of Yeats Poems

The Mountain Ben Bulben in County Sligo

Recently, after some discussion of highly touted lists of the most important novels in America over the last twenty-five years or the most important Irish writers over the last one hundred years, I posed a challenge to the Yeats discussion group to see what they felt were the ten most important (a difficult distinction) poems of Yeats. Their answers were excellent and demonstrated both the depth of their knowledge and the eclecticism of their approaches. So, here is my take on Yeats' ten most important poems. My list is more biographical than some, and certainly leaves out some very important and very good poems. But it was an interesting exercise.

“The Stolen Child” – for its tour of the magical places of Sligo that inspired him
“Cuchulain’s Fight with the Sea” – for the Cuchulain theme
“Adam’s Curse” – for Maude Gonne and his view on art
“The Wild Swans at Coole” – for his relationship to Coole and to beauty
“Easter, 1916” – for his relationship to politics
“The Tower” – for his thoughts on aging, legacy, and connection for place
“Words for Music Perhaps” – for its use of oppositional forces
“The Municipal Gallery Re-visited” – for his nostalgia
“Cuchulain Comforted” – for his return to the theme
“The Circus Animals Desertion” – for some of his last words on art

Our Annual Treading of the Path Less Taken

It started off just as most of our annual backpacking trips start. We ranged from fifteen minutes to two hours late in leaving, the trail head was not were it was supposed to be, the town where we were all going to meet was pitched into darkness by sixty mile an hour winds and driving rains. After a fiftful night of sleep in the cars, we headed off into the mountains among the now swirling snow.

In spite of all that (or, more likely because of all that), we had a great trip -- one of the best we've had in the ten years we've done this. At the risk of sounding like a gear snob, having the right goretex outside and breathable fabrics inside made all the difference. To start, we climbed up Styles Peak in southern Vermont, across the ridge to Peru Peak, and then down to Griffith Lake for lunch. After lunch we pressed on to Baker Peak and then down to the Big Branch shelter for the night. The next day's hike was a realitively easy (and infinitely more pleasant without the heavy winds and snow) trek across to Lost Pond and then up White Rocks before descending to the Greenwall shelter. We spent the night there before hiking out the next morning.

The thing that made this such an amazing trip was the variety. We had everything from snow and forty mile an hour winds to warm sunshine. We hiked through evergreen forests, birch forests, scrub pines, along rushing rivers, across small brooks, and around still mountain lakes. We scrambled up granite peaks and strode along wide forest paths. Sometimes we ran into a number of people (mostly through-hikers), and other times we felt we were completely alone in the wilderness. Every turn brought some new thing for us to experience. Most memorable was descending from White Rocks towards Greenwall and coming across a place in the woods where someone (or many people) carefully balanced rocks in mini sculptures around the trail. The bright white rock formations against the cool evergreen forest was truly surreal.

However, it's difficult to explain all this to people when we get back. They hear snow and cold winds and think it must have been miserable. And it does sound miserable. But when we were out there, being anywhere else seemed like a poor substitute for being in the woods.

A Rare Rant

This will be a brief and rare rant for me, but I need to get it out of the way. Organized sports for our children is way too...organized. Kids playing in leagues below high school age do not need silk uniforms. They do not need their names on the back of their jerseys. They do not need matching duffels with the team name on it or large flags waving over the field. Ten year old football players do not need eight year old cheerleaders in miniskirts and makeup cheering them on. Coaches do not need matching uniforms.

When I coach my sons' soccer games, I love having a third of the group wandering either in mind or body off the field. I love the kids who run like crazy only to miss the ball completely. I love the parents who cheer for both teams and for pretty much anything. I love coaches who do as much laughing and smiling as yelling.

I've read recently that American soccer has become way too structured, that kids are not learning the creativity and flow of play that comes from playing pickup games wherever there is a flat space and a round object. I wonder what it is about American culture that seems to be forcing our adults to live vicariously through our children, forcing them to live out dreams we never followed through on.

A Journey Into Ireland's Literary Revival - my next book

The Path to Coole Park -- Galway, Ireland

Three of the four Irish writers who have won the Nobel Prize for Literature have walked up this path and these stairs to visit the Coole Mansion belonging to Lady Augusta Gregory. She lived here for the better part of fifty years, hosting such literary greats as George Bernard Shaw, John Millington Synge, and her closest literary friend, William Butler Yeats. The place continues to be an inspiration to writers and artists from around the world, including the poet Seamus Heaney, who won the Nobel for his poetry in 1995.

I profile Coole Park and much more in my next book, A Journey Into Ireland's Literary Revival, due out in February. This book was tremendously fun to write and research. The turn-of-the-century Irish writers who made up the Revival were an interesting and colorful group, full of great stories of encounters with spirits and British gunmen and rioting theater patrons. Ireland, to boot, is a country full of energy and new money flowing in, mixed with truly breathtaking scenery and dramatic natural features. Whether you go for the literary landscape or the pints, it is well worth the trip.

Deborah Noyes - Angel and Apostle

It seem to make sense that my first real post should be words in praise of another author. I've just finished Angel and Apostle by Deborah Noyes (from Unbridled Books, http://www.unbridledbooks.com/page/angel-and-apostle). In this "re-imagining" of the end of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Noyes introduces to the Pearl we wish was in The Scarlet Letter. The narrative follows Pearl's life in the woods outside of Boston, to her removal to England, to her eventual marriage and return to America. Throughout the novel, Pearl's voice rings true, and Noyes is at her best setting up the relationship between the stubborn and independent Pearl and the pathetically dependent Simon, a blind boy she meets in the forest. Pearl's relationship is also as tightly strung as a guitar and resonates with just as much music.

I appeared at an event recently with Deborah Noyes at the Old Manse in Concord (http://www.thetrustees.org/pages/346_old_manse.cfm), and was very impressed with her approach to writing knowledge of seventeenth century life. She is an author worth keeping track of; she is planning another historical novel.

First Post

The wind whips across the top of the cornice, making my ski pants crackle and snap. Although down at lodge level, people are out in their short sleeves soaking up the early spring sun, up here on this ridge, I am shivering. Maybe its the cold wind or maybe its the fact that I can see the bottom of the run between my skis, right about where my toes end. The rest of my skis jut out over the edge. The run is called Idiot's Delight, and the reason I am up here is to give my father his sixtieth birthday present. I take a deep breath, say "Happy Birthday Dad," and push off into thin air...

This is me.

The photo is by a great photographer, Betsy Archer (http://www.betsyarcher.com/), and I use it for book jackets