John and the Hired Girl

I've been working on a new poem within my Skimino Cycle titled "The Hired Girl."  As the title indicates, the poem focuses on the hired girl that John and Mary Ratcliffe hired to help work on their farm.  According to depositions from friends and neighbors in John's Civil War pension file, John and Mary hired multiple girls to help out, to some of whom John apparently (according to the depositions) took a liking.  That he had an affair with one is definitely known-- Mary names Melissa Hendricks in the divorce papers that she filed in 1873.

I don't know much about Melissa, which is making it difficult to capture her personality and voice in the poem.  She was rather "flat" in the first draft-- commenters who read the first draft said as much, and I have to agree with them.  Here's one little bit of information I know about her:  she was 18 years old in 1870, which means she would have been around 20 or 21 when the adulterous act occurred.  She was listed in the 1880 census as unable to write, but interestingly, she was not listed as illiterate (can one know how to read, but not write?).  She was living with her parents in 1880.  Not much in the way of facts around which to build a personality.

Each of the poems in the Skimino Cycle has required a fair amount of imagining to build the story around the facts.  But, the others involved people (mostly John and Mary) for whom I have enough information from which to create a well-rounded character.  This is not the case with the hired girl.  I am having to create her personality and character almost from scratch, and ultimately based upon how I think she related to John and Mary.  The problem right now is that, as a character, she is mostly a reflection of other people, without any real personality of her own.  I think she turned out that way in the first draft because I was trying to avoid making her come across as either exploited by John or as a seductress.  The result, however, was that she came across as "flat" and without any sort of feelings or thoughtful expression-- in a way, as dull and unintelligient.

The poem is narrated by the hired girl-- we are in her head as she goes about her activities.  The physical setting is the kitchen of the farmhouse, which is where I envision much of her interaction with John occurred.  The kitchen seems like a good setting-- the family hearth; the focus of much daily activity; where John would rest after returning from his trips out onto the prairie for hunting, fishing, and trapping (activities in which he engaged a lot, according to the pension file depositions).  If Mary is out in the fields, managing the daily activity of the farm, the kitchen would be a good location for John and Melissa to spend time.  Friendship and then intimacy could develop there, but also because it's a family space, Mary would have opportunity to interrupt and observe the relationship between them.  And, because ultimately the kitchen is Mary's kitchen, there is a violation of space even if there is not yet a violation of trust.

So, where to go with Melissa's character?  The difference in ages between her and John would suggest that she might see him as a "father figure" type, someone older and wiser from whom she can learn.  Someone who is more mature and perhaps understanding than the younger men of the community.  Perhaps she has a learning disability (which is why she can't write) or some other disability that makes her less attractive to younger men, but which John, with his war wounds (physical and perhaps mental), can empathize and see past.  They find solace in each other; they spend time together; they share a mutual understanding of each other's condition; and this leads ultimately to physical intimacy.

Two Poems in Poetry Quarterly

The Spring 2012 issue of Poetry Quarterly has been posted on-line, and two of my poems are in it:  "Outside the Abundant Life Chapel" and "The Food Truck." 

The Abundant Life Chapel is located in Charleston, West Virginia.  I was in Charleston in 2010 for a conference.  I was giving a workshop on a Sunday afternoon, and since I had no conference-related activities in the morning, I decided to attend meeting for worship at the Charleston Friends Meeting.  I arrived at the meetinghouse early, so decided to walk around a bit until others arrived to open the meetinghouse.  As I walked past the Abundant Life Chapel, the sound of gospel music flowed through the walls and the closed doors.  The bass was thumping a lively beat and it sounded like the congregation was rocking.  The impression stuck with me through the day; by that evening, I was writing out the words of the poem.

"The Food Truck" was inspired by the Hispanic food trucks that have appeared along the Route 1 corridor in Howard County, Maryland, where I live.  No doubt, they are elsewhere.  They can be found in industrial park parking lots, on the side of the road, and any location where Latinos may gather to eat, socialize, wait for work. I wanted to write something about them, but I was having trouble identifying the specific theme.  The reality of farmers in Mexico and Central America being forced out of farming by the flood of cheap American corn seemed the perfect backdrop for the poem, and the food truck operator became a farmer who had left his farm for better economic prospects in America.

The Spring 2012 issue of Poetry Quarterly is available at http://poetryquarterly.com/?page_id=7

Enjoy!

Flying Paper Plane Poems in Baltimore

To go along with my previous post, here's video of our paper plane poem escapade in Baltimore.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHtx2K82Ahs

Paper Plane Poems

The editors of the journal Do Not Look At The Sun have a knack for coming up with quirky and interesting themes for their issues.  The theme for the Spring 2012 issue is "Paper Plane Poems."  Dylan, Kathy, and I helped with distribution by flying paper plane poems at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore.  It was a great day for it-- slight breeze, lots of people milling about prior to the Orioles-Phillies baseball game.  Lots of baseball fans, but how many also enjoy poetry?  Not sure, but one Phillies fan helped fold and fly a poem.

Two More Poems in The Copperfield Review

The Copperfield Review is turning out to be a great place for me.  I've got two poems in the latest issue, Spring 2012:  "David Sang in Welsh Today" and "Separated in Death, Even as in Life."  Just about all of the historical poems in my Skimino Cycle have been published there. 

Check out the poems as well as the Copperfield Review's new look at http://copperfieldreview.com/?p=527

A bit of a break from poetry

I knew this was going to happen.  It's happened before.  I've been teaching this semester-- population geography at University of Maryland, Baltimore County-- and just like in the past, I'm busy enough preparing lectures, reading essays, and grading tests, in addition to my full-time work as well as family, that I don't have time to write poetry.  Or, don't make time to write poetry.  But, just so you don't think the inkwell has gone dry, I'll share links to what I have been writing. 

Last Monday, the Census Bureau announced the list of urbanized areas and urban clusters for the 2010 Census, as well as urban and rural population and land area information.  I wrote the news release. 

A blog post describing how we define urban areas was posted today on the Census Bureau's Random Samplings blog.

I'll have an entry about the Census Bureau's activities at the 2012 Association of American Geographers conference posted in the Census Bureau's Research Matters blog.  That entry was actually written in mid-February, but due to delays in releasing the Research@Census web site led to a backlog of blog posts.  Mine should appear in the next few weeks (I hope)-- suitably edited into past tense by the blog editors.

It's not poetry, but it'll do.

Enjoy!

Up by Four More in the First Quarter

Well, the first quarter of 2012 has gone well!  In addition to the three poems published in The Copperfield Review, I just got word that I'll have two poems in issue # 4 of Symmetry Pebbles-- "Walking Along the River Fuji, the Poet Basho Finds a Child Abandoned by Its Parents" and "Patuxent River Story."  Although the word "river" in each poem's title suggests some symmetry, the two are quite different.  "Walking Along the River Fuji," consists of two tankas, with the whole poem inspired by a passage in Basho's "Records of a Weather-exposed Skeleton" in which Basho and his traveling companion come along a small child abandoned by its parents.  I've read Basho's book a couple times, but what struck me this last time was the matter-of-factness with which Basho leaves the child behind rather than taking it with him.  "Patuxent River Story" is from my U.S. Route 1 series, and is about the prostitutes that are pushed from one county to another in the Laurel, MD area.

I've also got two poems that will appear in an upcoming issue of Poetry Quarterly-- "The Food Truck," which also is part of my U.S. Route 1 series, and "Outside the Abundant Life Chapel," which draws upon a brief moment when I stopped outside the Abundant Life Chapel in Charleston, WV while walking to the Charleston Friends' (Quakers') Meeting.  Given how clearly I could hear the thumping bass while standing on the sidewalk, I can only imagine the amplitude of spirit that must have been present in the chapel.

You can find these poems here on my blog.  I'll post the links when the journals are published.