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irginia
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apitol
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onnections
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ummer
2017
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time. When you consider degrees of separation, to think I was sitting
on the lap of someone who was alive when Lincoln was alive blows
me away.
I didn’t realize something else until a former student, who is a
history buff, pointed this out to me a few years ago. Since she never
really left Upshur County West Virginia, she was actually born in
Buckhannon,Virginia, becauseWestVirginia didn’t become a state until
1963. She was probably aware of the celebrations when that happened.
Good heavens! One picture, such connections, such history. Where you
come from, who your family was and is, what your family did and does
for a living, how you were or are connected to your community are all
important social issues. Even though we don’t talk about such things as
much as they used to, we need to.
A Compressed World
By Edgar H. Thompson
We text. We twitter. Even those of us who luxuriate in words need
compression. A few years ago I reread a favorite book of mine,
Coming
into the Country
by John McPhee in preparation for a paper I was
writing for delivery at a conference. When I first read this book, nearly
35 years ago, I was amazed that McPhee was able to give me a sense
of what it was like to be in Alaska in only 400 pages, which I thought
was an incredible feat. When I finished my recent rereading, I thought
he could have cut the length of the book by about 170 pages and still
accomplished his goals.What happened to my original perception? Like
all of us, I didn’t need or want as much elaboration as I used to need.
It is not that we don’t want art. It is not that we don’t want quality and
precision in language used in what we read, listen, see, or experience.
We are busy; we multi-task. We want language created by others to
be presented in a more compressed manner. To this end, in my mind
poetry can accomplish this goal; however, it is often overlooked as an
artistic tool that can achieve these goals because people have so many
misconceptions about poetry. For instance, many people believe rhyme
and a perceived cadence or rhythms are required for word structures that
we call poetry. An example:
Alone, alone, all all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
Some very good poetry does use these tools, but poetry is not only
about rhyme and cadence. Poetry is about compression. It is like what
Hemingway said, the actual words used should suggest as much about
what is not there as what is.
Some people don’t like free verse. Free verse doesn’t not mean
that rhyme and rhythm or cadence are unimportant. Rather, instead of
putting words into a preconceived form, rhyme, or rhythm structure,
the actual form and rhythm—and maybe rhyme—created is guided
by the actual meaning of the words, the meanings that are created by
the juxtaposition of certain words with others, all of which is guided
by the overall message the writer is trying to communicate. The words
find their own natural order or pattern. What the writer is trying to do
is to get readers to actually read and understand the words the way the
writer sees them, to create a replication. To the degree that the reader’s
replication is accurate or congruent with what the writer intended, great
for the writer. However, even if that match is not perfect, an elaboration
of where the reader was is caused by the words the writer put down on
paper, which is also a success. The idea here is to go beyond where we
were, where we are, to a new place or understanding. A buddy of mine
who was a retired actor, director, and producer did not like the whole
notion of free verse and blew it off as not being poetry. However, when I
gave him the explanation I just presented above, he changed his mind. I
taught him something he had not considered, and if I remember, he even
published some free verse after that.
So now what? What I propose is that instead of writing essays or
stories about the world, maybe we need to write a series of poems on
topics of interest or concern and publish them inwhat I will call Chaplets,
small booklets about eight pages long. Ted Badger, who ran Bear House
Press—he published my four poetry chapbooks—encouraged writers
several years ago to publish very short collections about eight pages
long. When he made this suggestion, it didn’t make sense to me. Now,
it does. You can write on eight different topics or treat one topic from
eight different perspectives. Such an approach would accomplish what I
have suggested in this piece, short artistic commentaries or expressions
on topics of interest or need, practically or muse-driven.
Examples
What follows are four pieces I recently drafted. They are not
finished. The first reflects my thinking about the challenges of being
retired and still having no control over my time. The second one tries
to capture what it is like waiting for the muse to strike or for a sense of
direction to occur when none has—regardless of age. The third one is
a retelling of a poignant story my wife told me that made me stop and
think about what I have to be thankful for. The last one is about the
unexpected challenges of aging. None of these may interest you at all,
but one or two might give you something to think about. Since reading
all four takes so little time, what do you lose by taking a few moments
to read them?
Whittlin’
When I was a kid I used to sit in front of Critchfield’s
Esso and whittle away, shards of wood flying
through the air, sometimes with words said,
other times not, my attention on
nothing but making smooth, clean gouges
in wood, the strips flying clear, no splinters.
I thought being retired meant
we could do what we wanted to do.
My friendWalt told me so.
Why, we could go to DeathValley
and work as caretakers at Scotty’s
Castle for three months, but no we can’t.
Why not? No time! No time?
If we can’t at this point do what
we want to do, what else is there?
It is time to whittle down
our schedules so we are flying
clean, no words, no splinters.
Simplicity. No Splinters. Simplicity.
Time. Simplicity. No words.
Simplicity.
Time.
in this particular issue, in 1950. I was born in 1949, and I am between
six months and a year old, and I am sitting on the lap of my great-
grandmother Miles. She was 90. My cousin Emma, who was four,
was also in the picture. When I used to talk about history instruction
with students, I taught each semester, I asked them to look carefully at
this photograph. Then I asked them who was President of the United
States when my great-grandmother was born. They said consistently
they didn’t know, but then they looked at the date and thought about
my great grandmother’s age, and would come up with 1860. They
quickly realized that Abraham Lincoln was president when she was
born. I also pointed out that she would have been around five years old
when Lincoln was assassinated, so she would have known something
important was happening by the reactions of adults around her at this
See
A Compressed World
, continued on page 20
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