JUST AN ORANGE

{I’ll be posting about Dandelion Wine each week. The sections are short and undemanding and they go through to the end of summer, just like the book. This is the first week, and while it’s already Thursday, you can catch up quickly. I’d absolutely love to have you join me with your own thoughts and ideas.}

{For a Summer Reading Schedule of Dandelion Wine, please click on Literary.}

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Of all the books about summer, I think that Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine must be the best. I read it for my sophomore English class in high school and promptly fell in love. Bradbury is at his best chronicling Douglas Spalding’s summer while weaving through little vignettes about the towns people that inhabit Doug’s life on the periphery, in the same space that all adults inhabit in every child’s life they are a part of. I love every bit of it. With faithful brother Tom at his side, Doug is the boy on the brink of growing up, which is a wonderful and terrifying place to be for anyone.

In some tribal cultures those adolescents are ignored for a time. They don’t exist, according to the tribe and are left to fend for themselves until they can prove they have managed to become adults. If we followed the same tradition in our culture I wonder how many people would still be hanging out in that no-man’s land? Too many, I suspect. Adolescence is a liminal space, a space that is really a nothing space, like a doorway; one is not in or out; one is not a child, nor are they yet an adult. It’s a tricky spot to navigate. I sometimes look back at my own adolescence completely amazed I made it through in tact.

The sequel to Dandelion Wine, Farewell Summer, deals more with this idea. I must say I was rather disappointed by it, as Douglas seems to lose all qualities that made him Doug in the first place. Despite what Bradbury says, that this second novel was written at the same time as the first, I don’t believe him. It lacks the magic. And while the transition from being a kid to a teenager is rough and awkward and full of pimples, I wasn’t impressed with Bradbury’s re-visit of Green Town.

But all that aside, here, now, in Green Town, Illinois, we have Doug and Tom, the Green Machine, the Happiness Machine, Col. Freeleigh, Bill Forrester and of course, one must not forget The Lonely One. And Douglas, though he is heading towards the door, is still the child whose mind is starting to navigate the world we all must inhabit for the long-run.

I was completely captivated by this interview on Fresh Air,  about a new book by  L.A. Times journalist Steve  Lopez about his friendship with a homeless schizophrenic musician named Nathaniel Ayers.

The Book is: The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music.

I came across this little gem while browsing through the bookstore on my birthday. The Blizzard Voices is by former poet laureate of the United States, Ted Kooser. Like Out of the Dust, this is a narrative told through poems. Unlike Out of the Dust, these stories are true accounts of a blizzard that ripped through the Great Plains for a few days in January 1888.

In the introduction, Ted Kooser says “The poems that follow are isolated voices heard in that blinding snowstorm we know as the passage of time. When the Alberta Clipper, roaring out of the north, rips apart a straw stack, only the frozen center remains and each of these memories is like that center, stripped of digression, picked clean of equivocation. What is left are the core narratives, spare and cold. Each clings to a concrete and specific detail, for memory works like that.”

The poems are titled either A Woman’s Voice or A Man’s Voice depending on the narrator of the event. Simply told are the tragedies next to the miracles that took place during that winter storm. It’s haunting in it’s brevity, but also in the reality that these things really happened. If you are looking for poetry that is accessible, this book would be a good place to start. But be prepared. When you have finished, you will sit and think for awhile about the fragility of life.

These poems were performed as a play by the Lincoln, Nebraska, Community Playhouse.

I think that we would understand and remember more of the past if it could be presented in such eloquent but simple ways. The base of this history are the true experiences of men and women who lived this event and told about it. Ted Kooser has taken those stories and shaped them for us.

At the end of last summer I found myself overcome by the towering tidal wave of The Twilight series. Coming out of nowhere, suddenly everyone I knew had the books in hand. I read through the three books in a period of weeks, inundated by vampires, werewolves and Bella Swan. I was intrigued. I posted a little bit about them. And then had a nice little email exchange with Kathryn about their merits.

Entertaining narrative, interesting idea, a few issues with some things, was what we said. Ultimately, said Kathryn, not literature. I emailed back a lament. Does anybody write literature anymore?

It was about that time that my sister was passing a book around our family that had nothing to do with vampires and the like. So, I read Out of the Dust, and I had an answer. Yes, someone still writes literature. And this someone was Karen Hesse.

Out of Dust is the story of 14 year-old Billie Jo, growing up in the Oklahoma Dust bowl. The book is written in free verse, so every story inside the story is a poem. Billie Jo’s life is not easy. But I loved reading about it. My sister said she felt like she was covered in dust as she read through the pages.

Writing in free verse requires more succinctness and containment compared to regular prose. But free verse poetry also allows for great expression and it is a perfect fit for a story about a time that was sparse, often bleak and limited. And still, there is light that sometimes shines through the dry and dusty, cracked earth.

We stood on the rented patio
While the party went on inside.
You knew the groom from college.
I was a friend of the bride.

We hugged the brownstone wall behind us
To keep our dress clothes dry
And watched the sudden summer storm
Floodlit against the sky.

The rain was like a waterfall
Of brilliant beaded light,
Cool and silent as the stars
The storm hid from the night.

To my surprise, you took my arm–
A gesture you didn’t explain–
And we spoke in whispers, as if we two
Might imitate the rain.

Then suddenly the storm receded
As swiftly as it came.
The doors behind us opened up.
The hostess called your name.

I watched you merge into the group,
Aloof and yet polite.
We didn’t speak another word
Except to say goodnight.

Why does that evening’s memory
Return with this night’s storm–
A party twenty years ago,
Its disappointments warm?

There are so many might have beens,
What ifs that won’t stay buried,
Other cities, other jobs,
Strangers we might have married.

And memory insists on pining
For places it never went,
As if life would be happier
Just by being different.

Last week, at my other blog, I wrote about Stories; stories that suggest themselves to us because we hear something or see something and suddenly we’ve spun a yarn around a little idea that turns out to be so much more.

Story is a term we apply to a wide range of things, basically a narrative of sorts. But a story can be fiction or not. In fact we constantly tell stories about our day, our week, our life, to other people. There are probably stories we like to tell. And the way we tell them evolves–not that the truth changes, but we learn how to tell it in such a way that others are interested.

Telling stories is essential. It is a way to transmit truths. It is a way to understand ourselves and others.

This week we are looking at stories. But not just any kind of story; the story that presents it’s self in a poem, or as the case maybe, a group of poems. Of course poems have an idea they wrap themselves around, and often that idea suggests a story. But this week is not about the idea. We’re focusing on the little vignette, something that could have happened to you, or your grandmother. Maybe it didn’t. But, it could have.