Small Patches of Light

Small Patches of Light

Bruce Majors

Finishing Line Press

There will be no darkness tonight. – The Message of Snow

There is darkness a plenty in Bruce Majors’ latest collection of poems, but there are also the “small patches of light” which give the book its title. These rays of sunshine, moonbeams, and moments of hope periodically pierce the darkness of depression. To see that light, the author wrestles though bleak depths in a life long battle. In his poem “Responding to Melancholy,” which Majors inscribed as “After Jane Kenyon,” noting the struggles of another poet, he addresses this darkness personified.

…there is a gaping black hole in my chest

where you placed your hook.

Although that darkness is with him always, he struggles without ceasing, perhaps prays without ceasing, buoyed up by a spiritual center and the incredibly beautiful landscape where he resides in rural Tennessee. His poem “Eden” includes a description of that land “where stars storm the night sky.” That land includes outdoor activities which seem to have been a part of his life for all time.

“…after setting jugs for catfish,

it occurred to me,

this could be Eden.”

Always though, like an inhabitant of “The Wasteland” as portrayed by T.S. Elliott, he feels a shadow fall. It obscures the light in a way perhaps best described in Majors’ poem “Wasted Night.”

“My boatload of dreams sinks

like loggerheads, to wallow in the murky bottom

lying indisposed among weeds.”

There are many poets who could tell this tale. Few could tell it as well as Bruce Majors.

Its Day Being Gone

Its Day Being Gone

Rose Mclarney

Penguin Books

I’m still here. I can’t stay away from the hard images. - Facing North

Rose McLarney’s poems speak of the fragility of the land and of its resilience. They tell of the strength and vulnerability of its inhabitants. These are the hard images of which she speaks in the lead poem of her striking new collection.

Her poem “Imminent Domain” begins with the image of South American women who won’t leave their land to make room for a hydroelectric dam, and then compares them to the Appalachian families evicted to make room for Fontana Dam, and the many reservoirs of the Tennessee Valley. She tells of how she “…swam over houses in Carolina,” in a voice worthy to speak for people dispossessed. She ends by saying how she too felt the urge to control flowing water and built dams of her own as a child, This poem is typical because McLarney can’t stop her poems with one insight, she gives us the whole picture in words and images which made this, her second book, a prize winner in the National Poetry Series and earned publication by a major house. Each poem tells a story of life on the land, filled with struggles, yet well lived.

A full list of publications which have featured McLarney’s poems is not possible here, but Kenyon Review, New England Review, Slate, Orion, and the Missouri Review are among her noteworthy publication credits. For her first book, The Always Broken Plates of Mountains, she received the George Garrett New Writing Award given by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. As a result of receiving the award, she read from her book at the Celebration of Southern Literature in Chattanooga. At this reading she startled the audience with her presence, the clarity of her vision, and the lyric beauty of her poems. The new book, Its Day Being Gone, is better yet.

Narrow road to the Interior

Narrow road to the Interior

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)

Translated by Sam Hamill

Shambhala Press

…every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

This book deserves attention for the sheer beauty of the poetry and loveliness of the images. Some Japanese scholars say that Haiku began and ended with Basho. He is often recognized as the author who perfected this form, but is also noted for his Haiban, a form which includes prose passages with linked Haiku.  The travel journal, Narrow Road to the Interior, is one of these. It may be his best known work, but his other travel journals merit a close look, particularly The Knapsack Notebook. Although this Shambhala edition takes its title from the best known of the works, it includes all four travel journals as well as an extensive selection of Haiku. It is perhaps the most complete collection of Basho’s writings available in translation.

Matsuo Basho served a Samurai household until the master of that house died. Although he studied Zen, poetry was the focus of his life’s work. He traveled widely, sometimes on horseback, but more often on foot. A number of followers studied poetry with him, and some gained students of their own. The translator refers to them as the Basho school of poetry.

Translator Sam Hamill co-founded Copper Canyon Press, which poets might well regard as the Holy Grail of publishing houses. It is the only major publisher devoted entirely to poetry. He is an influential poet in his own right. 

Aldo Leopold: A Standard of Change

Jim Pfitzer

When Jim Pfitzer steps onto the stage in this one man show, he does not so much portray Aldo Leopold as become the noted conservationist who pioneered the land ethic and the academic field of wildlife management. Pfitzer read and reread Leopold’s seminal work A Sand County Almanac before he developed the production. He then reviewed papers and letters only available at the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin and at the archives of the University of Wisconsin where Leopold taught.

Pfitzer had not yet determined the final form the production would take until he spent an extended time visiting “The Shack” where Leopold gathered the experiences that led to his classic book. He saw Sandhill Cranes there at sunset and credits that experience, in that specific location, with the inspiration to finalize the production. In the show he recites parts of Leopold’s essay, “Marshland Elegy,” a farewell to the cranes, which Leopold believed would soon become extinct. In his lifetime, they were a vanishing species.

Just as Leopold’s hard work as a conservationist paid off in restoration of the landscape, and a public commitment to conservation, Pfitzer’s hard work paid off in a presentation which has delighted audiences from Chattanooga to Baraboo and from the Geography of Hope Conference at Point Reyes, California to the Bonaroo music festival at Manchester, Tennessee. Pfitzer will certainly present his show in Chattanooga again. Don’t miss the opportunity to see this inspiring performance.

As Published in the Chattanooga Chat, newsletter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society, Chattanooga Chapter