About the Book

Origins

It started inno­cently. A way to exor­cise dreams of my child­hood house. A means to face my upbring­ing, and class iden­tity. I Googled a few place-​​names – for accu­rate spellings, for pos­ter­ity – of Morses Pond, Fiske Ele­men­tary, to make sure so and so lived on Cliff Road. And I stum­bled on a Welles­ley 125^th Anniver­sary site, which would soon blink out, con­tain­ing a 1.5 pp town his­tory, cour­tesy of the His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety. It made me think sev­eral things:

1. White. Washed. Sure, it’s naïve to think it wouldn’t be, but still shock­ing to see your home­town doing it. Every day you don’t know the his­tory of your home, you’re impli­cated in the con­se­quences of that ignorance.
2. Time was abbre­vi­ated: the 19^th cen­tury mostly just hap­pened; most of it was very good. You got the impres­sion if they’d filled it in, it would’ve read the same way.
3. As a town res­i­dent of 18 years, none of it was famil­iar, even the white-​​washed parts. Seems his­tory lessons hap­pen only on the quarter-​​centuries. I was born just after one, and left just before the next.

So I started writ­ing these poems, about the town, based on my boy­hood. After a few months, the char­ac­ters – a boy, his sis­ter, their brother – started clar­i­fy­ing their own atti­tudes, expe­ri­ences, and opinions.

Structure

Essen­tially five parts:

Sec­tion 1: a, b, c (1960 – present)

a: Fresh­wa­ter Dredge
About the town, from the per­spec­tive of a townie grow­ing up.
b: Well­wa­ter Dredge
His brother’s per­spec­tive, about their house.
c: Estu­ary Dredge (for­merly Trib­u­tary Dredge)
Their sister’s per­spec­tive. Clar­i­fy­ing, deep­en­ing, com­pli­cat­ing everything.

Sec­tion 2: Reser­voir Dredge (1850 – 1885)

Prose-​​poems mas­querad­ing as news­pa­per edi­to­ri­als from the per­spec­tives of town res­i­dents. Con­cerned with all of Need­ham, from which Welles­ley incor­po­rated in 1881, and the strug­gle for incorporation.

Sec­tion 3: Salt­wa­ter Dredge (1600 – 1700)
The land’s per­spec­tive. Ques­tions of quan­tum time, lan­guage, geog­ra­phy & car­tog­ra­phy, col­o­niza­tion, pres­ence & absence, mem­ory & memen­tos… to start.

Themes

I don’t want to box myself in, so let me be a lit­tle cryp­tic. Time and history-​​keeping are cen­tral, some­times even char­ac­ters them­selves. The ways we per­ceive time, remem­ber events, and pass them down. And how we fail to – omis­sion is the cycle’s prin­ci­ple device. Huge ques­tions of loss (nec­es­sary, un/​intentional, un/​healthy) and spir­i­tu­al­ity have grown out of it as well.

Where from here?

I con­sider this book, to date, one of two sig­nif­i­cant artis­tic endeav­ors of my life. (The other being Destruc­tible Heart.) I’m in Mass­a­chu­setts, land of my first 22 years, to con­duct six months of on-​​the-​​ground research and inter­views, May-​​October 2011. This may be the first of sev­eral trips. We’ll see what comes.

Now you know about as much as I do. Still curi­ous? Have a look around. Still curi­ous? I love email.

This blog is an invi­ta­tion to con­tribute, chal­lenge, and form. Leave your mark on the book.