Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Hunting Poet
John Casteen by Jesse Dukes
Suggested Host Intro: Poets have always taken inspiration from nature. Think of Robert Frost swinging on birches, or Emily Dickinson envying the grass. But these days, it may be a little odd to think of the academic poet—safely ensconced in a liberal college town—as a deer hunter. John Casteen the Fourth is a poet who teaches at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. And he goes deer hunting whenever he can. One of his poems “Nighthunting” was featured in this year’s Best American poetry series. Producer Jesse Dukes—not a hunter--wondered what the connection was between hunting and poetry. So Casteen invited him on a camping and hunting trip to find out.
John: So remember what I told you. Pick your feet up when you walk and concentrate on heel to toe. Watch for sticks, watch for crumply leaves. Let’s give it a shot
Jesse: OK, I’ll follow your lead.
[walking sounds begin and and stop]
It’s a little before sunrise, and I’m following John Casteen along a trail, looking for a place to hunt deer. John is in his late 30’s, he’s both clean cut and weathered, thickly built and fit. And with his rifle and hunting clothes, he doesn’t really *look* like a college professor.
[walking sounds begin again continue for a moment, and stop]
John: So what I’m going to do is just go up this trail along the ridge for a little while, until we see something that looks like we’ve got a good view and then settle in.
There’s enough light to walk, but the fog is really thick--we can see a tree here, a boulder there, but mostly just dark grey mist . And after 20 minutes of very slow walking, we settle on a spot just off the trail, where we sit to wait for deer.
John: So we’re socked in pretty tight by fog. And when the visibility is like this, pretty much any place is good as you can see that far. If the sun comes up, and burns off the fog we’ll move.
[pause]
I’m a pretty outdoorsy guy, but waiting for deer is hard. It’s damp and chilly and you can’t move to stay warm or talk to pass the time. We strain to see them through the fog and trees, and we strain to hear deer footsteps in the dripping mist. But mostly we just wait— and after an hour, my legs are going numb.
[Long pause***—just fog dripping—bird call]
Jesse: Can I ask you, When you’re out here by yourself, what do you think about?
John: (chuckles) Poetry.
Jesse: So you’ll compose in your head?
John: Yeah. If I’m going to be out all day long, go out before the sun comes up, come back after dark, then I bring pencil and paper with me (yawns) so I don’t forget.
Jesse: Do you get restless?
John: No, nope. [Laughs] I think I used to get restless, like the first five or six years I was hunting, I would fidget. I would move every hour. Not any more. One thing people like about hunting is unfiltered thought. You are finely attuned of what’s going on around you… Where the wind is, what you’re hearing, and what the light is what you’re seeing. [yawn] but you don’t have to be thinking about anything.
[pause with dripping]
Yeah, John’s yawning. Maybe because last night, instead of going to bed early, like we probably should have, we stayed up late around the campfire…
[fade up campfire sounds and wind]
[fade up light laughter under narration]
We told stories, talked about poetry, and eventually, John read some of his poems.
Jesse: Will you read that poem?
John: Which one, Night hunting?
Jesse: Yeah,
John: (reading) Night hunting
Because we wanted things the way they were
in our minds’ black eyes we waited. The beaver
raising ripples in a vee behind his head
the thing we wanted. A weed is what might grow
where you don’t want it; a dahlia could be a weed,
or love, or other notions. [fade here]
This poem is about John and a friend, waiting to shoot a beaver that’s taken over the friend’s pond—a pretty common practice in the country.
… We wanted
a pond to look like a pond: standing poplars,
shallows unsullied, fish and frogs and salamanders.
The gleaming back of fur and fat may not belong,
or may: God of varmints, God of will, forgive us
our trespasses. We know precisely what we do.
This poem explores John’s ambivalence about hunting a beaver. And as a deer hunter John says, he doesn’t like the killing or the violence. But he thinks it’s worth it on the whole.
The profound satisfaction I get from being able to get, care for, and eat my own food, in a way that I find spiritually enriching, gets me out into wild beautiful places that I probably wouldn’t go see otherwise… it’s worth it for me.
Lots of John’s poems deal with hunting, and I had thought those were the ones he wrote while hunting. Actually, it turns out to be the opposite—he’ll write about hunting when he’s at home, and other things when he’s in the woods.
John: When I go in the woods, when I go for a walk, when I walk in the city, I’m not looking for subject matter, I’m looking for comparisons, I’m looking for metaphors, vocabulary. I don’t set out to write poems that are about hunting.
[Poem fades and wind fades slowly afterwards]
[fade up dripping rain]
Back on the hunt, in the afternoon, we suddenly hear the sound of hunting dogs on the mountain. This is the most action we’ve gotten all day, and we hurry to the main trail.
John: Did you hear it? The lead dog is right where we were.
Jesse: How do you know?
John: I just heard him.
[two louder bays]
We’re hoping the dogs will scare the deer and get them moving, and we try to guess which way they’ll go. We leave the trail and plunge right into one of the mountain laurel thickets.
John: It’s so thick up here.
We’re hoping to come out on the other side into a clearing where we’ll be able to see any deer if they come by.
[bushwacking sounds, cracking sticks and slidey leaves]
Jesse: Alright we’re bushwacking.
The laurel is just about face height, and it’s hard to walk through, especially if you’re holding a rifle -- or a microphone. And we don’t find any clearing, [pause] so we sit down to think.
[pause with dripping – GOOD.]
John points at one of the mountain laurel trees. He asks me what adjective I’d use to describe its bark.
John: I mean, there’s got to be a botanical word for it, but I’m trying to come up with an adjective for the texture and the color
I realize he’s looking for a metaphor for one of the poems he read me last night.
John: The best I come up with so far is in that poem, “For the mountain Laurel” Limber and striated is what I ended up saying
Jesse: I don’t know the word striated…
John: Striated works, right?
Jesse: I just don’t know what it means.
John: Oh it just means striped. Striated is closely related to stratified.
Jesse: Yeah. I actually like stratified, too. The way it curves, it reminds me of rock layers.
John: mm hmm.
John: Yeah, I know that the word that’s in there is not exactly the right word, that’s how I know the poem isn’t done.
Jesse: That’s a fun challenge.
John: That’s what I do (laughs).
Jesse: Yeah, I get it (laughs)
[pause, dripping sounds]
For a little while, I’m into this—hanging out in the mountain laurel thicket, contemplating metaphors. But we’ve been out for 6 hours now, we haven’t seen one deer, and realize I’m shivering so I go back to the tent to warm up. John is plenty warm, and content to stay out in the mountain laurel, and the icy mist, looking for deer that never come, [PAUSE] of finding more words for his poems.
John: For the Mountain Laurel
Here’s what to admire…
Poem finishes. Short bed of fog drip follows.
