What is poetry, anyway?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

After a couple dozen or so years that have been focused largely in the revision of fiction and then the roots of Dover Quaker Friends Meeting, itself a challenge to conventional New England history, I’ve found myself revisiting my trove of poetry.

It’s part of a big cleanup project that’s accompanying our downsizing move from New Hampshire to the far end of Maine, and I’m at a point of trying to discard everything I no longer need and put in order anything else I feel is of value.

As a result, several central full-length collections that had been presented piecemeal as chapbooks at my Thistle Finch editions blog are now released as ebooks at Smashwords.com and its affiliated digital bookstores. You’ll be hearing more about those as the year progresses.

In their place in the Thistle Finch lineup are new chapbooks of sets of my more recent poems, meaning ones from this century, though their origins go back further.

The task has come as a revelation, watching the evolution in my style and underlying voice. Each stage, reflecting geographical moves in my life and the upheavals of my closest relationships, edged me away from narrative-driven content to increasingly image and confetti centered clusters. Don’t ask me to explain them, they just are, whatever.

For me, poetry is a kind of mysticism – one foot in the inexplicable wondrous, the other in everyday life. Prose, of course, is more secular.

My newly released chapbook Aquarian Leap leads off the new run at Thistle Finch. Frankly, looking back over these, I’m not sure what to make of them other than the wild energy they inhabit. I certainly wouldn’t – or couldn’t – draft them today.

These poems, in some manner, still reflect the working of my multi-layered, mercurial thought process. (Never mind my heart, all the more elusive and often contradictory!) I love those lucid moments – sharp, brief – when everything, including thought and emotion, is centered, full, and stilled. Rarely, however, does my intellect flow in such a focused narrative. That requires more effort.

More typically, it flashes on something and then leaps to another, seemingly miles away. Some say this is characteristic of my natal sun sign. That is to say, the typical Aquarian will hear one subject and shuffle through fifty-two logical connections in a flash, and then blurt out something that will leave everyone else in the room wondering, “Just where did that come from?” (Except, perhaps, for another Aquarian, to whom it will seem perfectly logical.)

Often, my writing was constructed and amplified and then distilled from notes, many of them scratched out on a daily commute or on a hike in the woods, or sometimes even a twist while journaling. Curiously, when I assembled these into collage-poems, I was conscious of an underlying logic. That is, many snippets did not fit the emerging sense and must be laid aside. But a few others did, leading to what I hope is an internal thesis/antithesis/synthesis that’s ultimately beyond any surface or attempted cleverness. I prefer for my work to discover and uncover rather than invent.

The result in this set and a few ahead feels more like confetti. So there!

Something similar happens in disciplined meditation, such as traditional Quaker worship, where routine thoughts are patiently laid aside while one’s awareness clears and sinks to a more intuitive and integrated state. Perhaps some of that also infects these pieces.

I should confess to a few works by two poets, G.P. Scratz and Aram Saroyan, I’ve long admired, poems that defy explication or understanding yet spring from the intuitive burst that takes us beyond apparent meaning – and closer to a jewel-like condition.

Or even the freedom of dancing, which I find in a similar vein in the work of Philip Whalen, especially.

Consider the linguist’s Wolves and Consonants. (My reading of “Vowels” in a book title my elder daughter was reading.)

The growling of wolves adds a whole new way of following the Voice here.

As for any effort to define poetry itself? I guess I prefer the wilder side. Go figure.

You can find Aquarian Leap at Thistle Finch editions.

Getting the rest of the story about one of my heroes from adolescence

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

One of the joys of blogging has been the way it’s opened connections I wouldn’t have otherwise found.

An example of that came after an email exchange with Paul Glover, who had come across my references to Hub Meeker, who had been the fine arts columnist at my hometown newspaper, the morning one that later gave me an internship as my first professional stint.

Hub had a position that was long my dream job, but a rarity in American journalism. Fine arts coverage is marginal, at best, and these days often limited to press releases rather than performance reviews. Even the Washington Post is a near zero on that front.

And there I was in the same newsroom, sometimes even going to lunch or dinner with him.

You can imagine.

Shortly before my graduation from college, Hub moved on from Dayton and eventually from sight altogether. And his position went to another, more established figure, rather than me, despite my own little fan club in the room. At this point, I’m thinking it would have turned out disastrously.

(I need some time for that thought to sink in.)

~*~

Turns out Paul knew Hub from a different perspective, a stepson of sorts, though falling in that range of family relationships that currently lack an exact word that fits.

He related that Hub had recently died and was wondering if I had any memories

or stories of interest that I could send his way in British Columbia.

So here’s my quick stab.

~*~

Naturally, you’ve stirred up so much more.

For starters, I’m not sure what high school he attended or even college. Ohio University? As for a major? Or even how he got hired at the Journal Herald, though Glenn Thompson had an eye for the unusual. Glenn hired me because of a letter to the editor I had submitted and then talked me into changing my major at Indiana University, from journalism to political science.

I graduated from Belmont in ’66 and gather that you’re a decade or so younger. Do fill me in.

The art institute, as you probably know, was undergoing a major shift at the time, from a collection that had included samurai armor and an Egyptian mummy in its displays to instead focus on picking up first-class works in a particular style or period rather than second-rate works by big names. Hub was happy to proclaim the purchase of pre-Columbian pieces at a time when nobody else was aware of their glories.

The DAI was also on the cutting edge of the arts scene, including its degree-producing art school, which several of my friends attended. Or, as my high school art teacher once said during a visit to her home when I was home from college with my girlfriend (from the other side of town), it was the kind of place that displayed the constructions of my girlfriend’s mother and her close friend slash mentor. Don’t know if she called it rubbish, but she certainly didn’t see it as “painting.”

By the time of Kent State, Dayton was already in a downward economic cycle — National Cash Register had laid off almost all of its workforce and was demolishing its factories, and General Motors’ five divisions were all getting hammered, too. The dysfunctional school board’s refusal to work on racial imbalances led to court decisions that, well, pretty much destroyed public education in town.

You were lucky to escape.

You touch on your parents’ marital difficulties. From meeting Hub’s wife a few times, I got the feeling that their relationship was rocky. Yes, she was British and daffy and likely neurotic — a smoker? — all with their charms, and, yes, quite pretty (brunette?) to my 20-year-old eyes. I later wondered how much of that factored in the decision to move to Rhode Island. Looking back, I do believe she really was hitting on me late one afternoon, though I rather brushed it off at the time. (Gee, I was still virgin. Hard to admit that, even now.) (Ditto, for another encounter, at school a few months earlier.)

I’m also wondered how Hub managed financially after leaving Dayton. Writing is rarely lucrative, even for some major authors, as I’ve learned from one friend who envied my steady income while I envied his New York Times critical acclaim. Well, Paul, you know the arts scene. Did you continue in that vein or find another path?

Being together 50 years, though, is quite an achievement. I always saw Hub as a gentle soul. I hope he was that in your relationship, too. Stepping in as the new male authority figure is rarely smooth, as I found in my own remarriage.

I am impressed by your efforts on the memorial service and hope it brings comfort to your mother, you, and the rest of those closest to you.

Oh, yes, and thank you for visiting the Red Barn. I was surprised to see I had mentioned Hub five times over the past dozen years.

~*~

This must have been in a follow-up dispatch:

Hub had what for me was a dream job on a newspaper. His wasn’t just a column – ideal enough – but one covering the fine arts, all of them – visual, literary, and performing – just as they were becoming important in my own adolescent life.

At the time, Dayton was a thriving industrial hub that also had a heavy Air Force presence. It wasn’t someplace you thought of as having an artsy side, even as the ‘60s took shape.

Glenn Thompson, editor-in-chief of the morning newspaper, one of a moderate Republican stance, believed in raising readers’ visions a bit higher. Somehow, in recognizing Hub’s potential, he created the State of the Arts beat.

For Hub, this was an opportunity to discover creative work in many veins, and in doing so, he nurtured a growing scene. Vanguard Concerts surfaced to bring top-notch chamber music to town; an opera company was formed, presenting some up-and-coming stars along the way; his coverage of new architecture was cited by, I believe, it was Time magazine. The local art museum was hailed by the New York Times as, “Dayton, Dayton, rah-rah-rah,” no doubt influenced by Hub’s columns.

He did get to cover the arts elsewhere, too. Some of his columns reveled in the richness of London, which had all of five symphony orchestras.

Turning to Cincinnati, with its zoo, he opened a report with “Hip, hop, hippopotamus, it’s the zoo. Where …” and then took us behind the scenes with a world we’d otherwise never see. The story was accompanied by a page-wide photo of a giraffe’s neck stretched out to an ice cream cone.

Every fall he and the outdoors writer headed off to the hilly part of Ohio to review the fall foliage. Their columns then ran side-by-side. Fun stuff, seeing the same event from different perspectives.

And then, in my sophomore year of college, I got to intern at the Journal Herald and actually meet the guy, go out to lunch – I remember the open-face cheeseburgers from one of those at an old-fashioned downtown dive, even share a staff party or two.

He admitted feeling he was on thin ice, trying to cover so much. I think the spirit of wonder and curiosity he conveyed made up for any lack of formal expertise. He did come from humble roots on the wrong side of the river, as I recall – well, my part of town wasn’t exactly classy, either. And then there were rumors of a used hearse Hub and his wife drove, perhaps somewhat scandalously.

And then, shortly after I transferred to Indiana University, the paper announced that Hub was off to Rhode Island.

It hit me as a shock. He had been a crucial influence shaping my own artistic tastes and outlook.

~*~

What I learned in return was that Hub had left journalism but done some writing along the way. Spent his later years in Canada and serving in community service of various strands. In the photo that was enclosed, both he and his longtime sweetheart look very happy.

Behind the first English ocean-going vessel built in the New World

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Most Americans, dare I venture, have vast gaps in their knowledge of the history we inhabit. And inherit, as well.

Even though I had visited the site several decades before I wrote my book Quaking Dover, the impact of the attempted Popham settlement came back with a whammy in the developments that followed.

More recently, a post-concert conversation with Fred Gosbee of the folk-music duo Castlebay thickened the plot.

Here we go with ten points.

  1. As far as North America goes, the French had already failed with their St. Croix Island settlement, 1604-1605. I’ve posted on that previously, since it was only a few miles from where I now live. Quite simply, New England winters can be brutal. The English established a toehold in Virginia, at Jamestown, 1607, and were attempting a twin in today’s Maine, at Popham. Again, weather would be a factor.
  2. Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the godfather of New England, as I describe in my book, was the major mover behind the project. As I’ve argued, he’s largely overlooked in his impact on what would become New England. The Native honored today as Squanto actually lived for a few years in Gorges’ manor in England, where he learned English. (Alas, he had been kidnapped. Another story, no matter that Gorges was appalled.) The Puritans would arrive in New England only because they ran a successful end play around Gorges, and then had King Charles I, fatefully, fall prey. Not that I’m particularly pitying the king.
  3. Back to Popham, 1607, where the settlers at the mouth of the Kennebec River somehow managed to build a seafaring vessel during their dark winter. Try to picture them felling and shaping trees in the depth of winter, and then framing them into a ship. Where did they get the sails, nails, and other essential items? They were barely surviving as it was.
  4. The ship, which they named Virginia or Virginia of Sagadahoc, was a pinnace, a small tender. Even so, once a supply ship arrived in 1608, they were able to use it to abandon the new colony and sail back to England. The small ship not only made it but later returned to the New World.
  5. The second and third “local” pinnaces (Deliverance and Patience) were built soon afterwards in Bermuda following the loss of Sea Venture, another story altogether. Let’s just say that conditions in Jamestown were dire.
  6. One of the Popham colonists, a young boy named David Thomson, was intrigued enough to return in 1623 to the mouth of the Piscataqua River and briefly lead the settlement in what’s now New Hampshire. That plays into my Dover book, even though he vanished before he could claim any title. His colleague Edward Hilton, however, stayed on and earned due rewards.
  7. Gosbee also told me that one of the Popham leaders had also received a major inheritance during his New World sojourn. Hearing the news of his windfall, he joyfully headed a return to Merry Old England on the new ship.
  8. The site of their colony later served the bunkers at Fort Popham and Fort Baldwin on the opposite side of the river, defenses against intruding vessels. The beach, meanwhile, is a very popular state park with some of the best swimming along the Maine coast.
  9. The Jamestown colony, meanwhile, could be the basis of a big, juicy, scandalous streamed series. Folks who are opposed to “woke” would be truly rattled by the turns in Virginia’s origins.
  10. A replica of the Virginia now has naval scholars wondering about some of the rigging. She is a most unusual vessel, from today’s perspective.
A replica of the Virginia of Sagadahoc plies the waters of the Kennebec in Bath, Maine, upriver from the site of the ill-fated Popham Colony. Can you imagine crossing the Atlantic in such a small craft?

Parts of my life I likely won’t be doing again

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

For me, this stage of winding down, or at least refocusing, includes recognizing realities of aging and finances while living in a remote area of the country. Here are some things I’d say are in my past, no matter how actively I pursued them:

  1. Hiking to the top of a mountain.
  2. Climbing a ladder more than a few steps.
  3. Hearing a full symphony orchestra in person.
  4. Ditto for attending an opera.
  5. Peyote, psilocybin, or acid. Not this far after taking up meditation.
  6. Some of the easier hatha yoga positions. Forget even attempting the harder ones.
  7. Writing and revising another novel.
  8. Sending out resumes.
  9. Camping in a tent or out in the open under the stars.
  10. Prolific orgasms.

Theirs was a booming and closely knit family

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Captain John and Esther’s adult children eventually built their own homes more or less within a half-moon crescent about a block away in each direction around our house.

John Shackford junior built on the southeast corner of what’s now Water and Middle streets. He married Elizabeth Batson (1790-1830), and probably remarried another Elizabeth afterward.

William built at the southwest corner of Shackford and Middle streets — just beyond the diagonal edge of our block. He married his sister-in-law, Sarah Ann Batson (1788-1837) in 1807, and then Mary Cutter Lincoln, who survived him. She was the daughter of Captain Jacob Lincoln, whose 1790 farm is now the Rossport by the Sea resort in Eastport’s Quoddy Village neighborhood.

Jacob Shackford, meanwhile, built at the southwest corner of Water and Key streets. He married Eliza D. Pearce/Pierce (1794-1869). She was the sister of Darius, husband of Jacob’s sister Hannah. Eliza was born in Rhode Island, like her brother, and died barely a month after her husband’s passing.

Samuel, probably the first male child born in Eastport, died in 1820 of yellow fever at Demerare, South America. He had married Elizabeth, daughter of Otis and Elizabeth Lincoln of Perry, before the Shackford siblings divided the holdings. His son Samuel received a half-share in Captain John’s will.  More on him later. Elizabeth, meanwhile, is the Mrs. Eliza Shackford who married Captain Silvanus Appleby on October 16, 1825, officiated by Charles Morgridge.

The repeated surnames among the spouses continues over the next generation or two. Finding siblings in one family marrying another set of siblings is not uncommon in the period.

Darius Hannah and her husband, Captain Darius Pearce/Pierce, built at 9 Shackford Street, a block northeast of our house. Born in Rhode Island to a prominent family, he came to Eastport and, after marrying, was a surveyor by 1833, the customs inspector in Eastport by 1841, and a merchant.

Daughter Esther and her husband, Joshua Hinckley, lived on Key Street, just to the west of Jacob. She died, 1880, in Dennysville. Joshua’s father, Matthew, had died at sea in 1809 near Sulawesi Tengah, Indonesia; he was born in 1752 in Georgetown, Maine. (Also born in Georgetown and living in Eastport was John Hinkley (1764-after 1850), son of John Hinkley. Cousins?) The Hinkleys, we should note, were among the early returnees to Maine amid the devastating travails of the French and Indian wars. Joshua and his wife, Esther, were living in Portland in 1823 and relocated to Eastport shortly afterward.

Sarah M. “Sally” and her husband, Captain John Lincoln, remain largely nebulous. I had even wondered if they died at sea. Many captains’ wives accompanied their husbands on long voyages, typically serving as navigators as their children grew up aboard ships. What I did eventually find was a real estate transfer dated October 15, 1832, where “Sarah Lincoln, widow of John Lincoln, shipmaster” sold her one-sixth share in the 1826 land purchase to her brothers William and Jacob and brother-in-law Darius Pearce/Pierce for $150. She was born in 1795 and died in 1846.

The Lincolns, who originate in Hingham, Massachusetts, include a branch that came north after Benjamin Lincoln, a celebrated Revolutionary War General, and two others purchased 10,000 acres in to Washington County. His son Theodore arrived to oversee those holdings and, in establishing a related timber industry, was an original settler of Dennysville. Other portions of the tract extended into what would become the towns of Pembroke and Perry. His brother Jacob, came to Moose Island, as noted. And their cousin Otis was an early settler of Perry. They’re the source where the Shackford marriages fit in. Another branch led from Hingham to the 16th president of the United States, should you be asking.

Even before getting to John and Esther’s grandchildren and beyond, I had many loose ends of potential owners of our house who may have led to Lucy M. Hooper of Boston and Brooklyn, New York, and also Anne Dodge and Mary Roberts, both of Boston, the ones who sold the house in July 1875. Trying to run the deeds from them and down to the Shackfords had me stonewalled.

Who were they and how did they come into its ownership?

All of it, of course, has relevance on the house we bought.

On to the Pacific Northwest via the prairie and Ozarks

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

My second brace of fiction, ultimately three books in all, addressed the dozen years in the aftermath of the hippie outbreak, though I’ve tried to fudge the era precisely. I do think much of it is continuing.

Naturally, for me, they were semi-autobiographical, even though the protagonist is now a woman named Jaya who winds up with a much younger lover who becomes her husband.

The pivotal piece is Yoga Bootcamp, with her now as a central character, along with the guru they sometimes called Elvis or Big Pumpkin. My residency in the ashram was a transformative period in my life, even in the face of details I’ve since learned. We were a rogue outfit in the period when yoga took root in America. This down-to-earth story will probably scandalize your local yoga studio instructor, but the experience did reshape many of our lives, hopefully for the better. I’ve certainly carried many of its lessons far through some other faith traditions.

The central piece is now compressed into Nearly Canaan, originally an ambitious triptych that comprised the hefty novels Promise, Peel: As in Apple, and With St. Helens in the Mix. At the outset, a sense of place was central as Jaya relocated from a small town on the prairie in the American Midwest to the hardscrabble Ozarks to the apple orchard country in the desert of the Pacific Northwest, but the central theme now condenses as the question of how much influence one person can extend over others, hopefully for the better. I can ask now whether it would have been more compelling if she’d been conniving and manipulative.

The third book, The Secret Side of Jaya, is a set of three novellas, each one set in the places she lived after leaving the ashram. Each one, quite different, is premised on hearing and seeing figures in a locale that others don’t. Maybe you encounter them, too, where you are.

You can find these books in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. They’re also available in paper and Kindle at Amazon, or you can ask your local library to obtain them.

Thinking of repeated-digit birthdays  

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

11 – In an American Midwest industrial city during a gray period. Boy Scouts and chemistry were everything in my world. Hiking and camping, especially. Much of the rest was a blur.

22 – My senior year at Indiana University, deeply head-over-heels with my first lover and spinning into hippiedelic as a promising young journalist. But just ahead was an unexpected change of events, pointing my route into Upstate New York and then yoga. See Daffodil Uprising, Pit-a-Pat High Jinks, and Yoga Bootcamp for parallels.

33 – Back in Ohio, in a Rust Belt small city, after four years of what I considered my Promised Land, the interior Pacific Northwest. My marriage was rocky, but I was gaining recognition as a poet, despite the exhausting hours I was working as a management-level newspaper editor in some admittedly exciting work. On the other hand, I was also moving into Wilburite Quaker circles of deep spiritual grounding. See Hometown News for parallels,

44 – Now in New Hampshire after a round in Baltimore and a stint as a field representative for a major newspaper syndicate, I was recovering from a divorce and crushing engagement. But I did have a first novel in print and a trove of manuscripts in hand, along with being active in New England contradance circles and about to explode into my second summer of love – the first having been nearly half of my life earlier. The Quaker practice now had a tinge of Mennonite, too.

55 – At last, I had remarried, this time with children, and relocated to what we called our City Farm in New Hampshire’s seacoast region – the place with my Red Barn. What a whirlwind! I was being widely published as a poet, had a decent income for a change, and enjoyed union representation as a member of a Newspaper Guild local. Both ocean beaches and mountains were at hand. Life had never been better, apart from my getting older.

66 – Finally retired, I could focus what I considered the Real Work of literature, mostly. The blogging was underway, as were the novels as ebooks. I was even applying my Mennonite part-singing abilities to more demanding scores as a founding member of the Boston Revels community chorus. I was amazed to be surrounded by such fine singers and grateful it was not an auditioned choir.

77 – In the throes of downsizing, I’m now residing in a remote fishing village with a lively arts scene on an island in Maine. Yes, I’m feeling my age but not complaining. It’s been a remarkable span, overall. You’re reading about it here on this blog.

88 or 99 – I wouldn’t bet on either. I’d much rather take each day as it comes. However much longer.