Reading is always, for me, an inducement to creativity; an invitation into worlds and ideas which eventually spark something in my work. It’s not taking on any specific style or characteristic of what I read, but a point of departure. I recently finished three books differing in form: a poetry collection, a novel, and a collection of essays. Each, however, shares a quietness that creates room for contemplation. Not the cliché of ‘quiet contemplation,’ but a deeper suggestion. The quiet within the novel and the poetry is so still it creates a generous spaciousness for thought. And in the essays, a deliberate, quiet approach to understanding one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers provides room for cogitation.
A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr
Can a memory be so fragile it might be altered or damaged simply through recall? Memories are often faulty, and I think the act of recall is unavoidably at least partially generative. Our recollection of the experience is altered simply by remembering it.
In A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr, Tom Birkin recalls several weeks in his past. Something in his later life has triggered a desire to experience them again, though that lies beyond the borders of the novel. But there is danger that revisiting will shake loose something he doesn’t wish to remember, or his memory will be so impossibly idyllic and sentimental as to be unreal; dreamlike. His exploration is therefore careful. As though he hopes to traverse his past without impact, leaving no footprints.
That desire contrasts with the very reason he visited the country during those weeks. He’d taken a job to uncover the imprint of a deeper past. Despite not wishing to be noticed at his work, or in the memory of it, his presence in the small town makes an indelible impression. No one who encounters Birkin is left untouched. He leaves many footprints, not the least of which is what his work reveals to the town about itself. In Birkin’s wake, personal and civic changes affect how the villagers see themselves and their history.
This novel was an unexpected find and a pleasure to read. It is quiet, generous, and carries a depth beyond its length.
On James Baldwin by Colm Tóibín
On James Baldwin by Colm Tóibín
I am an unabashed Colm Tóibín fan in terms of is appearances on a multitude of podcasts. Tóibín is a witty, often outright funny, storyteller. And he has a wonderful ability to teach through telling such tales. On James Baldwin is a collection of essays that feels like an extended podcast conversation, or an intimate seminar. I imagine Tóibín seated in a small space, in front of an eager but sparse audience, telling with great enthusiasm all we need to know about James Baldwin.
This is not a biography nor a critical analysis of Baldwin’s writing, but an understanding of the writer. Who he was and how he came to be more than an icon; and why he was so right about so much. The book cum-seminar is quiet in a leisurely sense, proceeding as though there were no time limit. No one is waving from offstage telling Mr. Tóibín it’s time to wrap up. He stays with us for as long as it takes, inspiring us to read or reread Go Tell It on the Mountain and Giovani’s Room and everything else Baldwin wrote.
Threshold by James Longenbach
Longenbach wrote three well-known books about poetry, The Art of the Poetic Line, How Poetry Gets Made, and The Lyric Now, so it is easy to forget he was also a working poet. Threshold was his first collection, marking his step across a threshold into the world of a published poet. But the poems also create spaces where one crosses over or into: houses, woods, streams, the back of a school, and other ordinary, yet evocative haunts. He escorts us into those spaces with lines like:
“…in the grid / of shingled roofs,” or “As willows raise their skirts…” and: “Arms of land enclosing open sea.” One of my favorites is “Yellow fields parting in the wind.”
Longenbach leads us from our inner safety to places perhaps not truly dangerous, but certainly full of the unexpected. Full of life and death. Longenbach also pervades each space with a quiet that builds an elegiac tone. Sometimes he uses stillness to mark a space after death; other times he invokes the sound of water in a stream or against a shore; a delicate white noise which allows us space to watch children being children.
Reading always leads me over thresholds, into private seminars, and recalling memories so delicate I barely dare access them.