The Land Remembers : The Story Of A Farm And Its People / Ben Logan.

Published in 1975, The Land Remembers is a memoir by Ben Logan that describes growing up on Seldom Seen Farm, located in southwestern Wisconsin’s hill country, in what is called the  state’s “driftless area.”  Set in the 1920s and 1930s, it describes a way of life that is guaranteed to make today’s readers nostalgic for something they never experienced.

The hard work demanded of all members of a family living off the land is never downplayed, but Logan makes the experience seem idyllic nonetheless.  What escalates this memoir to classic status is the author’s descriptive prose.  His memories are vivid and poetic.  Growing up with his father, mother, three brothers and a hired hand, the focus makes each member of the family an essential part of his unfolding story.

Divided into four sections, each corresponding to the seasons, the book captures the rhythm of life on the farm throughout the year.  It’s a delightful read from first page to last.  Logan returned to the farm in the second half of his life, and before his death in 2014, he ensured its continued existence by placing it into a land trust.  When he died at age ninety-four, he’d proved that rural life had much to offer in extending one’s longevity.  For those interested in such memoirs, The Land Remembers is guaranteed to enchant even if such a life story seems almost mythical in retrospect.

Desktop

This desktop, an uncle and aunt’s
gift to a graduating high school senior,
class of 1970.

Below, its drawers crammed with
adjectives and adverbs, nouns and verbs,
alphabetical and illustrated.

Portable and light enough
to rest on one knee, it has remained
a trusted writing surface.

Desiccating glued joints, fragile
and falling apart, no longer ensure
structural viability.

But despite its unhinged covers,
Webster’s New World Dictionary still
supports my vocabulary.

Humble Pie

Cranking it,
with the wind at my back,
I reimagine
myself sixty years younger,
a boy again
intent on being the fastest
on two wheels.

In this race
against no one but myself,
with the trail
mine alone and that next hill
my arbitrary
finish line — already conjured,
a victory trophy.

But humble pie
is served on the next curve
as stepping from
brush, a fawn materializes,
playful and
nonchalant; with a bound,
it’s no contest.

Utopia Avenue / David Mitchell.

This novel opens in the Swinging 60’s, during the Summer of Love. It describes the birth of a British rock band called Utopia Avenue, its rocky rise, early successes, and the tragedy that derailed the band.  The four members of the group come from differing musical influences: jazz, rock, folk and R&B.  The varying influences blend into a unique sound that ultimately strikes gold.

Woven into the story is their interactions with actual rock stars of the time.  These include Keith Moon, Brian Jones, Leonard Cohen and David Bowie.  These characters add a jolt of reality that makes the band’s rise feel believable, but they do not dominate the storyline.  By focusing on the experiences of each individual member of Utopia Avenue, their personal lives scrub away the glamour of stardom to make the story so interesting.

Mitchell is an author who frequently introduces supernatural elements into his stories.  Those tropes are present here as well, but for the most part the story remains firmly rooted in reality.  At times the book seems to be merely a cliché describing the times, but its unexpected end elevates it to guarantee readers are haunted by the story long after the last page is turned.  Having grown up during the 60’s myself, I found this novel a sheer pleasure to read.  

The author is to be commended for his ability to capture what the rock world was like in 1967, when the future seemed so bright that one “needed to wear shades.” At the same time, it graphically depicts how life’s harsh experiences colored the songs Utopia Avenue created during their brief fictional claim to fame.  They are a band one wishes to have been able to see perform live back in the day.

Cloudburst

Now this is a cloudburst

Visibility
reduced to near zero
Puddles
swelling exponentially
Pea-sized hail,
the sound of a fast ball
meeting bat
Interstate steaming
A mere second
between each crackle
and boom
In the back seat
our newly arrived guests
from Oregon
are white as sheets,
thinking this is
surely the world’s end
Not knowing
that within moments
we’ll accelerate
into full sunshine again

The Midwest introduced

Miss Iceland / Auour Ava Olafsdottir

Auour Ava Olafsdottir is an Icelandic author who is a playwright, poet and history professor.  If this novel is any indication, she is also a gifted novelist.  In Miss Iceland, set in 1963, she takes the reader into the world of a Finnish budding female novelist, Hekla, who is trying to overcome the sexism of the time in order to get her work published.  To do so, she often needs to resort to assuming a male pseudonym.  She shares an apartment with a childhood friend, Jon John, a homosexual who, like Hekla, does not fit into the society he lives in.  Even more than the book’s protagonist, his life story is a heartbreaking one.

Olafsdottir does a marvelous job of capturing the bigotry and sexism of the time, which she does with a poet’s sensibility.  Details are delivered in succinct digestible bits, overlaid with the richness of her prose.  My only complaint is that Hekla remains a character who seems so focused on her writing that one does not get a full sense of the person she truly is.  But the other characters described are sure to resonant with most readers.  The depth they add to this novel is greatly appreciated.

Jon John’s and Hekla’s friendship shapes and strengthens both of them.  Theirs is an unusual “marriage,” but one that makes sense considering the tenor of the times.  It is a story that often infuriates modern readers as they witness the harsh conservatism that dominates public opinion, but it also shows the determination of the human spirit to overcome such odds.  By focusing on her home country, Olafsdottir presents a fresh perspective on this topic.  She is a writer that an American audience will appreciate being introduced to.

Love / Roddy Doyle

In Roddy Doyle’s latest novel, two men in their late 50’s reconnect to spend an evening talking in various Dublin pubs.  Fueled by alcohol consumption, four letter words are regularly exchanged.  Even so, with awkwardness and evasiveness, these childhood friends, after decades apart, begin to reveal their lives’ truths beneath the generalities.  One of them, Joe, has recently left his wife for a woman both men were enchanted with back in their bachelor days.  Always the dominant member of the pair, he commands the conversation, even if he seems at a loss to fully explain why he left his wife for a woman he barely knows.

Davy is the friend listening, and the novel is presented from his perspective.  In flashbacks interspersed through the conversation, we learn about how he met his wife Faye, and their longtime relationship.  Like Joe, he has secrets that the novel is slow to reveal.  But while Joe seems incapable of articulating his late mid-life crisis, Davy appreciates what life has presented him with, even if his marriage is far from perfect.

At times, the repetitive aspects of the two men’s conversation seem a detriment.  But like any clever poker player, Doyle knows how to hold the cards close to the chest.  In the novel’s final section, a shift in its focus changes everything, and the secrets hinted at throughout are cleverly woven into the story to complete it.  Doyle deftly delivers a finishing punch that makes the reader sit up and applaud a job well done.

First Love, Recalled

Today, I looked into someone’s eyes
and believed,
solving a bafflingly puzzle with ease.
Words replaced by touch,
a conversation conducted in a glance.
An entire symphony
conveyed by entwined scents alone.
Heat and cold banished,
the sheets serve no purpose at all.
Even if tomorrow’s
uncertainty refused to declare that
this is how it will be,
past regret still haunts the possibility.

High Summer’s Ethanol

Full as it is,
the moon has not had too much
to drink tonight.
Loud as it sounds, that loon hasn’t
had one too many.
The breeze’s gibberish sobers and
makes sense somehow.
A falling star’s trajectory has passed
every sobriety test.
Let the record show, this perfusion
as flowers exhale is
only a test run before intoxicating
dawn’s barstool bees.
No, it is either this poem’s father or
its words that have
succumbed to High Summer’s ethanol,
blurring the way to bed.