The Penny Poet of Portsmouth by Katherine Towler

     Dawn again,
and I switch off the light.
On the table a tattered moth
shrugs its wings.
     I agree.
Nothing is ever quite
what we expect it to be.

—Robert Dunn

Katherine Towler's deeply affecting and thoughtful portrait of Robert Dunn is subtitled "A Memoir of Place, Solitude, and Friendship". It's an accurate label, but one of the things that makes the book such a rewarding reading experience is that it's a memoir of struggles with place, solitude, and friendship — struggles that do not lead to a simple Hallmark card conclusion, but rather something far more complex. This is a story that could have been told superficially, sentimentally, and with cheap "messages" strewn like sugarcubes through its pages. Instead, it is a book that honors mysteries.

You are probably not familiar with the poetry of Robert Dunn, nor even his name, unless you happen to live or have lived in or around Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Even then, you may not have noticed him. He was Portsmouth's second poet laureate, and an important figure within the Portsmouth poetry scene from the late 1970s to his death in 2008. But he only published a handful of poems in literary journals, and his chapbooks were printed and distributed only locally — and when he sold them himself, he charged 1 cent. (Towler tells a story of trying to pay him more, which proved impossible.) He was insistently local, insistently uncommercial.

Nightmare Magazine issue 11

art by Lena Yuk

The August 2013 issue of Nightmare Magazine contains my story "How Far to Englishman's Bay", which is all about why people from New Hampshire should be careful when they travel to Maine.

The story will be available online for free next week, but why wait when you can have it for $2.99 and also get stories by Jennifer Giesbrecht, Robert McKammon, and Clive Barker, plus part 2 of a great interview with Joe Hill. There's also an "Author Spotlight" interview with each writer, including one conducted with me by Erika Holt, who asked some fun questions.

I'm especially pleased to be in an issue with an interview with Joe Hill, because years and years and years ago, back when I was young and easy under the apple boughs, I interviewed Joe about his short story collection 20th Century Ghosts, at that time only available from PS Publishing in the UK. Back then, he was just a mysterious short story writer who seemed to have popped up out of nowhere, and I interviewed him because I wanted to know how somebody from out of nowhere had written such excellent fiction. It turned out he'd grown up in Maine, but like any sensible person, escaped to New Hampshire.

Thanks to John Joseph Adams for publishing the story, and for helping come up with the title, which I like very much. Although now that I think about it, I should have just called the story by our NH state motto: "Live Free or Die". Too obvious, though. And too much like a Die Hard sequel.

Work in Progress

While many of my friends (particularly the ones with Twitter and Facebook accounts) have been at BEA or heading to WisCon, I've spent the week spent doing little other than grading student work and then in the evening, when the brain had fizzled, watching various cable TV shows or movies like Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life and Stargate. I've spent 12 years telling myself that during the next term I will figure out some way to create more simple, clear, and efficient methods of grading. And each term, I've failed; indeed, each term, I seem to increase the grading burden on myself.  I have seen the enemy, and it is me.

More than most terms, I noticed some of my students' creativity. For instance, one wrote of a gospel song called "Go Down Mosses". Another wrote that, "Without a patriarchal society, women could have voted from the gecko."

Their creativity, and my brain's fizzlement, seems have had an effect on me. I spent the morning today working on a new short story about a hapless man who gives a lecture about colonial New Hampshire history, a subject about which he knows little. It includes these paragraphs...

The Indians weren't nearly as good at agriculture as the Europeans would eventually prove to be, so they had to move around a lot. One day, while moving around, the Indians saw some strange white-skinned creatures. The white-skinned creatures made weird sounds with their mouths and smelled funny. They seemed pretty helpless, frankly.

Looks can be deceiving, as they say. (The Europeans say. I don't know if Indians ever said, "Looks can be deceiving." The very British W.S. Gilbert once wrote, "Things are seldom what they seem. Skim milk masquerades as cream." I doubt the Indians were very concerned with whether their skim milk was pretending to be cream or not. It was a big deal for the British, who once, in 1859, were on the verge of war because of it, but by that point most of the Indians had been killed, and any Indian you found probably would have been perfectly happy with either skim milk or cream, or anything else with a few calories or a bit of nourishment. It wasn't like the dairy farms of New England were owned by an Indian cartel. It wasn't like anything in New England was owned by Indians. They don't actually believe in owning things, which was very convenient for the Europeans, who did believe in owning things, and so they came here to a place where nothing was owned, and they staked their claim. And so the Indians couldn't own New England. And we see that in the, to descend into academic jargon for a moment, nomenclature. Lakes and mountains and rivers were given Indian names, but New England is New England.)

In the beginning, the British European people were very nice to the people who were already here. They introduced the Indians to tea and cricket and the BBC and other jolly good things. They said "tut tut" and "pip pip" and "cheerio" and the Indians thought they were very funny, even droll. The Indians decided the British European people had been sent as entertainment, and perhaps what they did was float around the world in their giant wooden contraptions and amuse folks who had more difficult lives. The British said things like, "You know, old boy, it's a good thing we're not Flemish. The Flems have gone a bit overboard in some of their encounters with heathens. Take the Congo for instance. Nasty business, that. Chopping off hands. Decapitation. No, it won't do. Very good you got us, I'd say. Oh no no no, old boy -- put the milk into the cup first, then pour the tea."

Most of the Indians couldn't speak English, and so what they heard were just funny noises -- so funny, in fact, that the Indians laughed too hard and spilled their tea and the British were forced to kill them.

Thus, the Indians learned not to laugh. You can see the legacy of this lesson if you visit a cigar store, where the Indian doorman never laughs.

New Hampshire to Become Rap Mecca

In an attempt to promote racial, ethnic, generational, and aesthetic diversity in a state best known for its rock, the New Hampshire Department of Cultural Resources is devoting $7.50 (half its budget) to an effort that encourages the Granite State's citizens to create what Governor John Lynch called, "That hipping-hopping music, so popular with the young folks nowadays."

Because the indigenous music of New Hampshire is something akin to sea shanties played on kazoos and small accordions, there will be a steep learning curve. But the state's commitment is strong. Van McLeod, Commissioner of Cultural Resources, said, "In honor of the great strides New Hampshire is making toward becoming one of the big playas, I'm officially changing my name to MC Loud, at least for today."

The first product of the state's new initiative takes up the gauntlet thrown down by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys:

Eric Schaller and the Art of Illustrating VanderMeer

New Hampshire is a small state, so we only have a few daily newspapers. We're most notorious for the Union Leader, but the state paper that's won a Pulitzer (among other awards) is the Concord Monitor.

And today the Illustrating VanderMeer exhibit that I helped put together at Plymouth State University got a big feature story in the Monitor, with a particular focus on New Hampshire's own Eric Schaller.

The web version has the full text, but I was blown away when I opened up the paper and saw it was almost the entire front page of the arts section:

And just a reminder that Jeff and Eric will both be in Plymouth on the evening of November 23 for a reading and discussion. Huge thanks to David Beron瓣 and Jennifer Green at Plymouth State for their work in putting the exhibit together, and special thanks to the Public Relations department at the University as well for helping it continue to get great coverage.

And if you haven't yet bought Booklife or Finch, the only acceptable excuse around these here parts is, "I'm waiting to buy them at one of Jeff's events so he'll sign them for me and they can then become treasured family heirlooms." (Except that's not an excuse, either, because you need reading copies, copies you don't mind getting all grimy on the subway or warped from reading in the bathtub. And you need copies to give away to people, because you're going to read both books and want to share them, but you're not going to want to give away your own copies. So stock up while supplies last. Remember what happened to military-style rifles when President Obama got elected? Who were the happy people then? People who had ten WASR AK-47s that they'd only paid $350 for back when demand was low. Sure, their friends said, "Why do you need ten of those damn things?! How many can you shoot at once?!?" Well, where are those friends now? That's right, mewling and puking in the gutter. And you know what? It's going to happen soon with Jeff's books. Trust me. His books are assault weapons. High-end ones, not crappy WASR AKs. And not as heavy, regulated, or expensive. At least as much bang for the buck, I guarantee you. Easier to carry onto airplanes, too. Really, in almost every way imaginable, Jeff's books are better than assault weapons. You have no excuse not to hoard them. And now that I've given you your free advice for the evening, it's time for me to go watch Project Runway...)

Where I Lived and What I Lived For

I taught for nine years at the New Hampton School, an independent boarding school in central New Hampshire (from which I also graduated as a student). During my first three years, I lived as a dorm parent in the oldest building on campus and one of the oldest in town, Randall Hall. Randall was a legendary building, having been hauled across town at the beginning of the 20th century brick by brick and rebuilt. By the time I lived in it with 30-35 junior and senior boys (mostly hockey players), it was in desperate need of repair.

During my third year in Randall, I had become, by default, the dorm head, in charge of everything having to do with the dorm. There are few things in the world I hate more than being an administrator, and so I did what I have always done with such positions: used it to get the heck out! I lived the next six years in an apartment in a house owned by the school.

Despite its historical value, Randall could not ultimately be saved. Structural engineers reported that any work was likely to collapse the building. Estimates of what it would take to refurbish it to make it safer and more efficient ran to the tens of millions of dollars, and the only promise was that the ultimate effect would be a building that remained less than ideal. So New Hampton made a very difficult decision: to tear Randall down and build a new structure in its place. And that's what they did, and beautifully so. The new Pililas Math-Science Center fits remarkably well with the three antique buildings around it, and is a massive improvement over the previous facilities. I toured it back in June, and was amazed that the building I had known so intimately had metamorphosed into this.

It was strange to stand where my apartment had been -- the space is now an airy stairwell. It was where my cats, Vanya and Masha, had sat on big windowsills and looked across at the building that housed my classroom. (One year, I was assigned to a room that looked right back at my apartment, and so I would sometimes require my students to wave to the cats.) I wrote a really bad novel in Randall one year, going downstairs to a tiny office and working on an ancient computer so I could get away from the noise of the third and fourth floors, where the students lived. Often, as a warm-up, I would write reviews on Amazon.com, which ended up being good training for this blog. (It's amusing to me now that the novel, which I thought was the important project at the time, turned out to be awful, but without having done the reviews, I might never have created this blog, which has been an important part of my life for the past six years. Oh, and we seemed to have turned 6 two days ago. Happy birthday, blog!)

I learned most of what I know about teaching at a boarding school while living in Randall, because, as anybody who's done it can tell you, there's nothing like the insanity and exhilaration of the first three years. There were many moments where I was within inches of a nervous breakdown, but they were also in many ways the best -- or, perhaps, most intense and vivid and passionate -- years of my life.

So here's to you, Randall Hall. The first thing that got demolished was the apartment I'd lived in during my second and third years. (The last person to live in that apartment was one of my fellow members of the class of '94, and one of my best friends.) Here's a video I discovered this morning of the demolition--

NH Theatre Events

Posting here has been light because at the moment I'm in rehearsals for The Winter's Tale in Sandwich, New Hampshire. It's the realization of a lifelong dream -- I am getting to play the King of Bohemia! (Otherwise known as Polixenes, but I insist everyone refer to me as the King of Bohemia. I rule over many caf矇s and have my own line of designer liberal guilt.) For anyone who happens to be nearby, the show runs August 11-16 at the outdoor stage of the Sandwich Fairgrounds at 2pm, rain or shine.

Also, I haven't yet had a chance to write about my experience as a participant in the first of the Write On Golden Pond playwrighting/screenwriting workshops offered by Whitebridge Farm Productions here in central NH. I've known workshop leader Ernest Thompson (winner of one of them Oscar thingies for writing an obscure indie flick called On Golden Pond) for longer than either of us would care to admit, and for five or six years I participated in an informal playwrighting group he led, so I more or less knew what I was getting myself into, but the workshop exceeded all my expectations -- easily one of the best I've participated in, and having been a playwrighting major at NYU for three years, I've been in a lot of workshops.

A second writing workshop is coming up in two weeks, and I can honestly and enthusiastically recommend it for anybody interested in dramatic writing. It's an intense, immensely fulfilling experience. Also, I'm told financial aid is available. And New Hampshire in the summer is beautiful. (Well, when it's not raining. But even the rain is beautiful!)

Souter on the Case of House v. Books

There's a lot of stuff I've liked about former Supreme Court Justice David Souter over the years -- he's a solitary, independent-minded fellow from New Hampshire, after all.

And he's got a passion for books. When the Washington Post ran an article a few months ago about his life at home, it included this sentence: "Souter is a ferocious reader -- he has thousands of books piled up in the farmhouse -- and friends said he is eager, finally, to organize them into a library."

Organizing your books into a library may not be as easy at it sounds when you live in a colonial farmhouse, though. Justice Souter recently had to find a new house:

Gilman said Souter told him one of the reasons he decided to move was because his Weare house wasn't structurally sound enough to hold the thousands of books that make up his library.

"He said there was just so much weight from the books, it would be too much for the house to support," Gilman said.

My opinion of Justice Souter only rises -- when your books threaten your house, side with the books!

NH Governor Signs Marriage Equality Law

Because of what is called, I believe, in technical jargon "bureaucratic wrangling", it took a little bit longer than expected -- but yesterday the governor of New Hampshire, John Lynch, finally signed into law a bill allowing same-sex marriage.

This has a direct effect on the lives of some of my family and friends, so it was pretty big news. That the state went for the idea does not surprise me too much -- we're notoriously conservative economically up here, but socially relatively liberal -- but Lynch's support is a surprise, even if it took a lot to get him there. The added language providing super-duper-double-extra-gay-proof-yay-for-God protection against churches having to perform same-sex weddings is mostly window dressing to mollify people who think their churches are suddenly going to be overrun with people they hate (Gene Robinson will be comin to yer cathedral, spreadin teh gay on yer altar!), but as the commenters at John Scalzi's blog (and elsewhere) have been discussing, the added language is a little bit more than redundant and may, depending on how the law is interpreted in the coming years, have some significant inequalities hidden in it. Nonetheless, it's a great step forward for us until there is full federal recognition of couples' rights.

Cool beans! (as we say up here in the frozen north).

New Hampshire Nears Equality

In January of 2008, civil unions for same-sex couples became law in my home state of New Hampshire. This was a wonderful advance for us, and I had friends and close family members who were civilly unified. Now, it looks like we're about to take the next step toward full equality. From Governor Lynch's press release yesterday:

This morning, I met with House and Senate leaders, and the sponsors of this legislation, and gave them language that will provide additional protections to religious institutions.

This new language will provide the strongest and clearest protections for religious institutions and associations, and for the individuals working with such institutions.
It will make clear that they cannot be forced to act in ways that violate their deeply held religious principles.

If the legislature passes this language, I will sign the same-sex marriage bill into law. If the legislature doesn’t pass these provisions, I will veto it.

We can and must treat both same-sex couples and people of certain religious traditions with respect and dignity.

I believe this proposed language will accomplish both of these goals and I urge the legislature to pass it. [emphasis added]

The additions the governor has proposed to the bill are pretty specific, mostly aimed at giving churches the freedom not to participate in marriage ceremonies, and generally unobjectionable. There's some discussion of the language at the Blue Hampshire blog, with mixed feelings and concerns among the commenters, but I can't imagine any of our legislators think the language is worth fighting a veto for, so I expect the legislature will pass the additions without any problem.

The Concord Monitor summed things up well in an editorial:

Assuming legislative leaders can rally yet another positive vote, gay couples and families will no longer be treated as second-class citizens by New Hampshire law. That's not true of federal statutes, of course, but the growing number of states and courts to come to this conclusion will surely get Washington's attention.

Even if he hadn't wanted to veto the gay marriage bill, Lynch could have let it become law without his signature. Instead, he has chosen to get out front. History will surely show that he was on the side of justice. He has made a powerful statement in support of individual liberties and nondiscrimination.

Thank you, Governor.

New Hampshire Thanks You, Mr. Bush

from The Concord Monitor:

Is Franklin Pierce due for a promotion? Pierce, the only New Hampshire man elected to the White House, is a perennial nominee for Worst President Ever. But as that office's current occupant finds his own reputation under attack from many historians and the public, Pierce could move up a notch from the bottom of the presidential rankings -- a boost Pierce partisans say is long past due.

"When I speak to groups, somebody always asks, 'How does it feel to know your man is no longer the worst?' " said Peter Wallner, author of a recent two-volume biography of Pierce. "I take a little bit of pleasure in the fact that (President George) Bush is viewed by them as worse than Pierce."

Actually, Pierce is generally not listed as the worst, but rather one of the worst -- James Buchanan, Millard Filmore, Warren G. Harding, and a few others make all the lists, and when the lists are ranked, Pierce is seldom number one. But still. Mr. Bush, we thank you for nudging his legacy a little bit farther from the bottom.

It's also interesting to note the maiden name of President Bush's mother, Barbara, is Pierce. She is a fourth cousin four times removed of Franklin Pierce. Mr. Bush has been making the rounds lately, "polishing his legacy" (excrement can be polished?), blaming everybody else for his failures, and perhaps now, citing his mother's ancestry, he could add one more excuse: "I couldn't help myself! It's in my genes!"

Home

I'm safely back in New Hampshire and beginning to settle in. Most of my time has been taken up with packing and unpacking -- moving into a house that was already fully lived in is quite a task. My father's aesthetic was not minimalist, and he'd lived here since the early '70s. I'm also discovering all the many joys of home ownership as I realize how much work needs to be done here (windows that really should be replaced before winter; dry rot that has to be dealt with; the many surfaces that need a coat [or five] of paint; the flying ants that have a secret entrance into one room...)

It's magnificently peaceful here, though, and more than anything else I needed some peace, so really I have no complaints.

Posting will resume within the next day or two. (During my absence, the entire internet seems to have gone insane, but I shall not confuse correlation and causation...)

Readercon is coming up next week, where it looks like I'll be on a couple of panels: one on "Triumphing Over Competence" (ways of finding -- and writing -- short fiction that is more than competent) and one on the career of James Patrick Kelly (for which I am currently now rereading Jim's first novel, Planet of Whispers, and will, I hope, have also reread Look into the Sun and a lot of the short stories by then. We shall see...)

For now, though, I shall leave you with an image from my back yard, a sign my father put up a long time ago and that has survived the passage of years surprisingly well:

NH Gives Us Another Poet Laureate!

Since leaving my home state, I've become something of a New Hampshire chauvinist. So it gives me great pleasure to see that the new U.S. poet laureate is Charles Simic, who has taught for many years at my own undergraduate alma mater, the University of New Hampshire (yes, I was at NYU longer, but UNH is the place that gave me a diploma, so I've got some loyalty to them). Last year, New Hampshire's Donald Hall was the poet laureate, and now it's Simic (who is, I must admit, a poet far closer to my tastes than Hall, but I have tremendous respect for Hall's work as an editor and promoter of poetry, and he's absolutely wonderful as a reader of his, or anybody's, work).

Selections of Simic's work are available online at the Academy of American Poets and the Poetry Foundation websites. I highly recommend his Selected Early Poems, the prose poems in The World Doesn't End, all of his essays and memoirs, and his book about our beloved Joseph Cornell, Dime-Store Alchemy.

It's only appropriate to end with a poem:

Fork
by Charles Simic

This strange thing must have crept
Right out of hell.
It resembles a bird’s foot
Worn around the cannibal’s neck.

As you hold it in your hand,
As you stab with it into a piece of meat,
It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird:
Its head which like your fist
Is large, bald, beakless, and blind.

Hog Wrangler

I am at the moment looking for a new job, because I've been at my current one for long enough, and so it is possible, even likely, that I will be saying goodbye to my beloved New Hampshire. Stories like this one make me all the more reluctant to go, because where else will I find a state where the former governor -- a man who was once the Chief of Staff to the great and powerful President George H.W. Bush; a man who co-hosted that fine contribution to American culture known as "Crossfire" -- accepts and celebrates his latest official title: Hog Reeve of Hampton Falls.