The Dredge Cycle

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…

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…

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…

No one stays / without invitation.

My girl­friend (Mary, to you comment-​​​​hounds) wrote this morn­ing with the only crit­i­cism she has after two read­ings of Well­wa­ter Dredge. It’s one line, at the end of the book: “Of course, in our town /​​ no one stays /​​ with­out invi­ta­tion.” She has a cou­ple inter­pre­ta­tions. One’s a par­tic­u­lar invi­ta­tion  –  say, to a party  –  the other, the invi­ta­tion the Eng­lish might have offered to Magos, the 16^th cen­tury sachem. That lat­ter read­ing sets up ques­tions of land own­er­ship and stew­ard­ship in the enor­mously com­plex metaphor of…

Central Questions

It doesn’t take a his­tory PhD to fig­ure Meta­com declared war on the Eng­lish in 1675 to fight the now English-​​​​favoring bal­ance of regional power. Power was land, reli­gion, guns and fol­low­ers. Let’s take that for given. There was, of course, another huge, com­plex fac­tor in the mix: Indigenous-​​​​English rela­tions. And as much as that had to do with the foun­da­tions of Amer­i­can racism, it was also wrapped up in ques­tions of debt. Accord­ing to Philbrick, the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­cans  –  the chil­dren of the Ply­mouth colonists, and…

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,…

Another Exploratory Question

Deeper dis­patches from Mayflower: Of the behav­iors the Pil­grims (and their Boston-​​​​area spin­offs, the Puri­tans) became known for, I’m start­ing to won­der which was more dan­ger­ous: their ratio­nal­i­sa­tions (the Pequot War of 1634  –  1638 was a nec­es­sary blood­bath to ensure Indian Coun­try didn’t unite against them), or their obliv­i­ous­ness (launch­ing a raid and killing Mass­a­chu­sett war­riors in the early 1620s would have no effect on Indige­nous trade and rela­tions.) Also just as inter­est­ing, at least to me, is the rev­e­la­tion that from the remains of the…

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…

Sudden Waking

Yes­ter­day an acci­den­tal phone call woke me at the wholly unciv­i­lized 9:00 hour. (It was a Sat­ur­day, and I’ve been woe­fully under­slept, c’mon.) I was in the mid­dle of a dream that strik­ingly resem­bled another from within six months, and very close to being caught where I wasn’t sup­posed to be, which may have meant some long-​​​​sought answers. The details aren’t impor­tant  –  I’m sure you don’t hon­estly care  –  but it prompted me to ask a neuroscience-​​​​inclined friend about a the­ory I’ve been brew­ing for a few years. It’s…

Directions to the Equator

If we are fac­ing the right direc­tion, all we have to do is keep walk­ing. Things are chang­ing and not chang­ing. Well­wa­ter Dredge is approach­ing the cask­ing stage, wherein I’ll send it to a few of my favorite pub­lish­ers. It’ll mature some in the months between my mail­ing and theirs. If any­one bites I’ll offer a more aged ver­sion, and that’ll be that. If no one’s inter­ested, I have plans, but I won’t announce them here. Mean­while, Pat con­tin­ues to amaze me. Not only does she…