Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Poetry Provides Peek Into Past

Poetry Provides Peek Into the Past

00:00 opens with Scott Joplin?s Maple Leaf Rag, music fades under at
00:02 seconds

Trax 1: Poetry has long been used to tell stories about the past: think of Homer?s Odyssey or Henry Longfellow?s ?Midnight Ride of Paul Revere?. Poetry may be uniquely suited to the task, says Janet Aalfs. She?s Poet Laureate of the small New England city, Northampton, Massachusetts:

Aalfs Ax1: There's a way that the heart can come alive, that the heart of history can come alive; even though poetry is not necessarily fact, per se, I believe it gets more to the truth of a culture or a person's existence in the context of actual historical events.

TRAX2: Annie Boutelle is one of several poets exploring the genre of historical poetry. A founder of Smith College?s Poetry Center, she became fascinated by Celia Thaxter, a 19th century poet from New England. Thaxter lived much of her childhood on the remote Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire. At the age of 16, she left her beloved family home to enter what was to become a deeply unhappy marriage near Boston. Boutelle?s book, BECOMING BONE, imagines the interior life of a woman who transcended her circumstances to become one of the bestselling women poets of her time.

Boutelle Ax2: I was drawn to her because of the complexity of this woman, and I was also greatly taken by her courage and by her stamina. She re-invented herself as poet, as writer, as artist, and labored extensively to create a very strong public image of herself.

TRAX3: Thaxter wrote sentimental nature poems. But Boutelle was able to penetrate to darker layers of her subject?s character. She writes of that more private self in her poem ?The Marriage Bed?, from which this excerpt is taken:
Boutelle AX3: ?Seal," he cries,/ and then again,/ "my seal."/ And I wonder/ is he the letter, smooth,/ unopened, the surface/ polished white, and the firm/ folds hiding the contents;/ and I the warmed wax/ yielding to the imprint?Or does he mean the seal/ whose sea-dark head breaks/ sleek through the white of blown-back spray,/ and is he the rock I spiral
round, this island with its hard/ and shining crevices, its cliffs,/ its graveled coves?
TRAX4: Gail Thomas uses verse to explore the history of place. Her book, NO SIMPLE WILDERNESS, AN ELEGY FOR THE SWIFT RIVER VALLEY, is about the drowning of towns and villages in the 1920?s and 30?s to create the Quabbin Reservoir near Amherst, Massachusetts.

Thomas Ax4: The evidence of the towns is palpable, because you can't walk anywhere in Quabbin without seeing the foundations, the roads that just lead into the water. It's a very haunting place to walk and I wanted to learn more about the background of the Quabbin.

TRAX5: Thomas talked to oldtimers who had lived in the vanished towns. She says that poetry is the ideal vehicle for their voices:

Thomas AX5: Through the act of imagination, voices can be made very immediate. Voices are what speak to people and what carry emotion.

TRAX6: Poetry is also good for conveying the complex realities of events. Thomas has often hiked the wooded paths around the reservoir and enjoyed their beauty. She?s found that while something was lost, something else was gained:

Thomas AX6: There's so much palpable loss in the Swift River Valley, but, in addition to loss, there's reclamation, which is why I came up with the title NO SIMPLE WILDERNESS -- through the destruction of the towns, there is also reclamation in the source of water, in the hiking trails, in the bald eagle population, in the wildlife, and in the wonderful gift that now exists. So, it's not an easy equation, and I thought poetry would be a good way to communicate that.

TRAX7: Her poem ?Bald Eagle? makes that equation: (00:03)

Thomas AX7: A sighting is what we long for
When January wind slices across the ice.
Long wings spread straight as a knife,
White head lowered, eyes hungry for movement.
Along the shore, sweep of feathers sounds like forgiveness.
What was almost lost nests here, sins redeemed in the counting.

[Scott Joplin?s Maple Leaf Rag, fades in at 4:28 and fades down at 4:32]

TRAX8: Holly Iglesias? poetry cycle, Now You See It, is about the 1904 World?s Fair in St. Louis, where her family is from. She says that poetry answers our need for a sense of continuity and connection to our past:

Iglesias Ax8: Because we live so fast forward in our culture, it's almost like we're in exile from our past. Poetry is a way of stopping experience so that it can be savored. It becomes a sensual experience. You can't ever relive the past, but you can sense it and I think poetry is all about the senses.

[Carlos Nakai?s Gateway fades in at 5:07 and goes under immediately, fades out at 5:14]

TRAX9: Here at the Bridge Street cemetery in Northampton, Massachusetts lies the 1853 grave of Sally Mamanash. It bears the inscription, ?Last of the Indians here?. Janet Aalfs refers to Mamanash in her Ode to the Many Voices of Northampton, composed for the town?s 350th Anniversary. The poem summons the senses to evoke a living palimpsest of time:

Aalfs AX9: Someone kneels in the garden, sparks still whisper in the grass./ Sally Mamanash was not the last shimmer of Algonquian here/?As crocuses open and the swans return the long tidal river floods its banks/ Connecticut, named in a language fragile, tenacious, memory fractured as the land.?

In honor of Poetry Month, I?m Francesca Rheannon