The Dredge Cycle

Dredge Poetics

Local leg­end Lisa Gill asked me to open a new poet­ics series with a 30 minute co-​​lecture on poet­ics with Bren­dan Con­stan­tine! Oh man, oh man, oh man. I’ll be draw­ing from a bunch of ideas from here over the last 2 – 4 years, and may post the whole thing (with post ref­er­ences) when it’s done.

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…

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…

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,…

In Which I Reject Your Stories, pt. 2

« Part 1 I think our cul­tural rela­tion­ship with our dreams rep­re­sents our rela­tion­ship with spir­i­tu­al­ity. Let’s talk about some depic­tions of the uncon­scious in recent cul­tural mem­ory: Other Mother (Cora­line), Drop Dead Fred, Mau­rice (Lit­tle Mon­sters) and Betel­geuse. Of course, through them all, I’m think­ing of Mor­pheus, Hansel, Gre­tel, and the Witch. Since I’ve already cov­ered the Other House, let’s start with Drop Dead Fred. He’s the invis­i­ble best friend incar­nate. After a bad end to an unhealthy rela­tion­ship, Fred reap­pears to rein­voke Lizzie’s child­hood. Ultimately…

Off the Hook

One of the bet­ter bios I’ve read in a long time, in the back of Sand­man 6: [next to his pic­ture] This is Mark Buck­ing­ham, so you don’t have to be. Clever and, in a bizarre, almost round­about way, hum­ble. Appro­pri­ately, I’m think­ing today about an anony­mous man­u­script I got a few years back, that never panned. “This is this book you couldn’t write, so you don’t have to.”

Recurring and Returning

Augus­tus Cae­sar: Many dreams come through the Gates of Ivory, Lycius, and they lie. A few dreams come from the Gates of Horn, and they speak to us truly. – Gaiman On the long-​​​​procrastinated advice of my friend Anders, I’ve been read­ing The Sand­man. Yeah, I’m enthralled. By con­trast, Cora­line reads more like fan fic than Gaiman. Here, his insights line the land­scape, and his sto­ry­telling, a lit­tle shaky at first, quickly climbs to top-​​​​notch. There are a lot of things worth dis­cussing, from the…

Quartering the Rope

I’ve been think­ing about nar­ra­tives lately. Lee, my direc­tor, has handed over a pre­lim­i­nary list of poems he thinks will, “for dra­matic action, inten­sity, favorites, etc.,” make a bet­ter show. If we ran the whole book, it’d come to about 2 hours, which we agree is no good. So Lee picked 28 of 63 to start things off. Thing is, there are whole sub­plots miss­ing, or punched-​​​​into and –out of. That doesn’t bother as much as it fas­ci­nates me. I’ve read plenty of books that…