Brendan Galvin's book-length poem, Wampanoag Traveler, is told from
the point of view of one Loranzo Newcomb, a fictional
eighteenth-century natural historian, gardener, lone wanderer,
fabulist, and failed lover. A sort of Johnny Appleseed in reverse,
Newcomb traverses the American colonies, gathering seeds, botanical
specimens, and fauna for the gardens and collections of wealthy
patrons in England, and a host of observations for himself.
Wampanoag Traveler makes vivid a lost world in which science and
superstition, fact and tall tale are interlocked. The poem is
arranged in fourteen sections that deal variously with such
subjects as gardening, the mystical delirium that follows a
poisonous snakebite, failed love, hummingbirds and skunks, and the
young Newcomb's apprenticeship to a ""birdmaster"" who bears a
close resemblance to Audubon. The section, ""Some Entertainments
Sent with a Gift Snuffbox Carved from an Alligator's Tooth,"" which
was awarded a Sotheby's Prize by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney
through the Arvon International Poetry Competition in 1987, is a
poetic tall tale in which Newcomb describes raising a baby
alligator to dragon-sized proportions. My first alligator I dragged
out of a fish hawk's grasp when it was no longer than my foot, and
trained it up on crabs and herring until what I hesitate to call
gratitude appeared and strengthened in its nature at last, and I
could with patience inure it to reins and a light saddle. Through
much of the poem, a somber tone, a pervading sense of sadness,
underlies the naturalist's exuberant vision. Newcomb feels an
unpurgeable sorrow rise from his sense of isolation his preference
for gardening over people (""no easy admission""). He mourns the
fact that the American garden he loves is already being despoiled.
In the poem's last section, ""Envoy,"" Newcomb projects into the
future a history of the apple as a metaphor for American innocence
gone sour. Combining a vibrant early American sensibility with his
own contemporary sense of poetics, Galvin creates a life that
proceeded in a very different time from our own, fraught with
choices we no longer remember. In a remarkable tour de force, he
engages a voice from the past in a dialogue with a future that
becomes, magically and sadly, our own historical moment.
General
Imprint: |
Louisiana State University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
May 1989 |
First published: |
May 1989 |
Authors: |
Brendan Galvin
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 140 x 5mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
64 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8071-1542-8 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-8071-1542-8 |
Barcode: |
9780807115428 |
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