Abbey’s Road

Edward Abbey

I usually skip the introduction to a book, even a nonfiction book, but as I thumbed through the opening pages of Abbey’s Road, looking for the start of chapter one, I noticed correspondence embedded in the text. Specifically, it was Abbey’s letter to the editors of Ms Magazine (which Abbey spelled Mizz Magazine), followed by an equally witty and cutting response from Gloria Steinem herself. Neither letter saw print in the magazine, but Abbey preserved them for posterity in the pages of his book.

His introduction includes correspondence to and from a number of persons, both famous and unknown. One such correspondent apparently confused him with the notable playwright Edward Albee and chastised him for his recent departure from his usual style.

Further comments in the introduction mark Abbey as a defender and promoter of western literature and nature writing in general. He specifically mentions Joseph Wood Krutch, great granddaddy of western conservationists, and other nature writers, but he reserves the heir to Thoreau honor for Virginia (and Puget Sound) resident Annie Dilliard. He then takes exception to Dillard’s constant invocation of the Deity, stating that use of the simple word mystery (without capitalization) would suffice.

Beyond the introduction, the book is divided into three unequal parts, with part one, a travelogue, being the longest. Here we see Abbey in his element, the untamed wilderness and cattle ranches of the American Southwest, with trips further afield to the Great Barrier Reef, Aboriginal Australia, and an uninhabited island off the coast of Mexico. He also recounts a rafting trip on the Rio Grande River. Aside from the uninhabited island, he encounters a variety of interesting people along the way, including a barmaid whom he is not quite successful in convincing to travel with him across the Outback. That story though, is pure Abbey.

Part two is devoted to polemics, essay style writing which takes a specific view and gives no credence to any opposing argument. Despite his years supporting himself as a park ranger, cowboy, fire tower lookout and teacher, Abbey shows no respect for the Park Service bureaucracy nor its sister agency in the Department of Agriculture, the U.S Forest Service. His comments are equally likely to infuriate cattle ranchers, university administrators, feminists, and gun control advocates. Abbey loved the American West, and was equally at home bird watching or hunting deer. He took the construction of Glen Canyon Dam as a personal affront. In this section Abbey confronts the powers that be in the spirit of his better known fictional work The Monkey Wrench Gang. 

The third and shortest part is devoted to personal history. It lacks the lyric passages of his nonfiction book, Dessert Solitaire, my personal favorite of his works, but perhaps gives more insight into the man, his life’s work, and his motivations. It includes a story of a hiking trip with his young daughter, child of the wife who died of leukemia. This particular story shows a tender side to a man normally regarded as a grizzled old curmudgeon. 

Abbey’s Road provides a retrospective of his life up to that point in time. His best known books were already written, but more were yet to appear. I recommend it highly to anyone who loves the outdoors, and is at least willing to suspend judgment about his anarchist politics.

The Art of Haiku
Stephen Addiss

If you enjoy short poems or delightful visual art, this book is for you. It was my first introduction to haiga, visual art specifically created to accompany haiku. Addiss illustrates his work liberally with exemplary poems and samples of visual works created to accompany them, stressing the point that they were created to be enjoyed together. He traces the history of short form poetry in Japanese society, beginning with tanka, a five line form poem popular early in the previous millennium and continued into the present day, and contrasts it with the Chinese style poetry which was popular in the imperial court. He follows this with biographies of the three acknowledged masters of Haiku and Haiban, Basho (17th century), Buson (18h century)and Issa (19th century). The chapters on these three include illustrations of their artwork, as do the sections on Zen poets and early 20th century haiku poets. He ends the work at World War II, stating that Haiku has since become a world wide phenomenon, and a description of it in recent years would fill another book. I found it a delightful read.

I did experience some difficulty navigating between the text and the illustrations on my Kindle Fire. Apparently the publishers originally placed the illustrations in the center of the book and the clickable links in the Kindle edition were difficult to operate with touch screen. The screen size also made some of the illustrations difficult to view. I will try looking at it with the Kindle App on my laptop, 

I have now acquired a hardbound copy. Although I am happy with the other books in my kindle library, I like the size and accessibility of the illustrations in the bound copy better than the ebook, in this particular case.

Moon Over Taylor’s Ridge

Janie Dempsey Watts

Little Creek Books

When Avie returns home to Taylor’s Ridge, a small community near Ringgold, Georgia, to settle her father’s estate, she finds her childhood home thick with relatives and neighbors she remembers. Some are friends and others are decidedly not. Aunt Ardelia is spying on her and everyone else in the community. Her brother and half-sister have plans of their own for daddy’s estate and particularly the land. Her son, Joseph, seems to be stronger and handling his asthma better as her husband, a continent away in California, is distant and preoccupied with work. The storekeeper Xylia seems to be the only friendly face in the crowd.

Into this scenario steps Will, a new friend of Cherokee heritage, happy to befriend Avie and Joseph. As Xylia assists Joseph in his search for the legendary Cherokee silver mine on Taylor’s Ridge, Will provides insight into the culture of a people brutally removed from their homes and shipped to Oklahoma after gold was discovered at nearby Dahlonega. This culture is still an undercurrent in the Southeast, and Avie discovers just how significant it is to our country, its traditions, and her family. She faces a dilemma, as she confronts an unworkable present, an uncooperative family and a possible new romance. In the end, she finds the strength to face her fears, to fight for what she believes and to take brave steps into a brighter future.

The role of the moon, I leave for the reader to find in the pages of this book. Moon over Taylor’s Ridge is a riveting tale, through which Janie Dempsey Watts weaves the strands of interrelated narratives. Read this book today.  

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