Stylized Speak

After three weeks of Bill Comp­ton stammer-​​blathering about lady­like pro­pri­ety, I’m some­how still inter­ested in styl­ized speech. Rather, how prob­lem­atic it is in the his­tory books. This isn’t exactly a com­plaint – more a lament. And one with­out a tidy answer.

The Purpose of Stories, 3

Let’s take this dis­cus­sion back to the book. I’ve thought a lot about porta­bil­ity lately, and even about own­er­ship of words. Maybe the only way the story I’m writ­ing will sur­vive its book­ness is for me to release it entirely. My ver­sion of the story is just one. Yours will be next.

The Purpose of Stories, 1

My good friend Kevin and I have a when-​​in-​​town friend­ship, so we don’t get a lot of time to bull­shit. Yes­ter­day, after the day spent catch­ing up, we finally got to. And I gotta tell you, bull­shit is profound.

Buoyed

Tues­day after­noon I went over to Pat’s place and dug through boxes-​​and-​​boxes-​​and-​​boxes of books with her hus­band, John. To give a sense of the rar­ity and qual­ity there, a good deal of her col­lec­tion will be donated to UNM’s library archives, and prob­a­bly another university’s.

What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate

Toward the end of Pat’s book, Wee­t­a­moo has some hard con­cerns about writ­ing, itself. Young Meta­com has learned to write the fig­ure A. He pro­nounces it for her, and explains the white men’s util­ity in writ­ing  –  and the Indian need, there­fore, to be con­ver­sant in it. I had to stop read­ing a while after I saw her response: …What if, when­ever we wanted a story, we could just reach out and read it from a paper, instead of wait­ing for the right time and place and the right sto­ry­teller to tell it to us? As it is with us now, when we learn a story, we must hear it again and and again, and repeat it to…

Next Levels of Dramatic Irony

Your expe­ri­ence as a stan­dard reader: Toward the end of Pat’s ren­di­tion of Weetamoo’s diary, the sachem-​​​​to-​​​​be is finally called for her adult­hood rite. The year is 1654. She’s been antic­i­pat­ing it most of the book; she’ll spend sev­eral days and nights in a sweat­lodge, tend­ing a fire and wait­ing for con­tact from the non­ma­te­r­ial world. In her two visions, a deer she’d uncer­e­mo­ni­ously killed leads her through the win­ter night to an impor­tant fish­ing area to the Pocas­set, down­stream from a water­fall. The sec­ond night, the deer leads her to an impor­tant fish­ing area, down­stream from a water­fall, where she encoun­ters older ver­sions of her­self with Meta­com, her sis­ter, and child. Meta­com is paint­ing blood­root on their…

I miss you, Pat

I’m read­ing my late editor’s Wee­t­a­moo (pro­nounced Weh-​​​​táh-​​​​moh) book, Heart of the Pocas­sets. It’s a heavily-​​​​researched, 95% imag­ined diary of the Pocas­set sachem at 14. Pat wrote it for Scholas­tic, for those lucky eighth-​​​​graders with an Indian His­tory unit. It’s sim­ple and refresh­ing, if light-​​​​weight for my needs. An easy lit­tle recap after the over-​​​​saturated and dis­turb­ing Mayflower. Weetamoo’s par­ents man­date that she find time each day to learn patience. Because the his­tor­i­cal Wee­t­a­moo didn’t read or write (her cul­ture didn’t use those tech­nolo­gies) it’s a sort of live-​​​​feed from her med­i­ta­tion time. After chores, and episodes with friends or neme­ses (like that ras­cally Wamsutta and Meta­com), she dwells a lot on the tribe’s prac­tices. Some­times it’s…

So Many Questions

Almost done with Mayflower. Help­ing me: I know a tremen­dous amount more about the region and the 17^th cen­tury than when I started. Not help­ing me: the absence of infor­ma­tion about the area I’m most inter­ested in. This morn­ing I’m look­ing for a map (or five) of tribal lands in 1605 (and 1620, 1650, 1675, 1690). I just want to know the names of what and who the hell I’m look­ing for. This absence of acces­si­ble infor­ma­tion may be a core moti­va­tion of my book, but it’s pro­foundly frus­trat­ing now as it was five years ago. Few peo­ple care about the losers, fewer about the lit­tle guys, and almost no one cares about the lit­tle guys…

To Plan the Plan

Let’s recap a moment. Fresh­wa­ter Dredge was about a year of work. Well­wa­ter Dredge, about three. So far, Trib­u­tary Dredge  –  at 20 poems, 1⁄2 Fresh­wa­ter’s length; 1⁄3 Well­wa­ter’s  –  has taken six months, and is only begin­ning to reveal its fun­da­men­tal secrets. Each takes an eter­nity because I’m approach­ing it as an explorer. That, and I don’t have the lux­ury of writ­ing full-​​​​time. From the begin­ning, the plan has been to seri­al­ize the release of this book. I wanted it to pro­ceed as a saga, a back­ward nar­ra­tive, an epic in digestible bits. And I didn’t want to lose your atten­tion along the way. This open­ing look at 17^th cen­tury his­tory has me recon­sid­er­ing. So much of what’s coming…

Interdisciplinaries

I’m begin­ning a new series here on the Book Arts end of this project. You can fol­low it via the book arts tag in the list below. Let’s get started! I got my bach­e­lors at a school that prizes inter­dis­ci­pli­nary work. The ethos was of encour­age­ment, exper­i­men­ta­tion, and the unique and nec­es­sary prod­uct of co-​​​​mingling gen­res. To a 19-​​​​year-​​​​old, this sounds great; your whole scholas­tic life, folks have told you to pick one, and now the sud­den free­dom to blend. Of course, it takes a few years to fig­ure out how to do that, and for many of us, the result (a the­sis by any other stan­dard) is ambi­tious, a lit­tle fum­bling, and some­times transcendent.…