Monday, March 30, 2009

Spring in Amagansett

I'm filled with pleasure about being home, back in the northeast, especially because coming home means coming back to our house in Amagansett, which we barely had time to begin to know before we left for California just after the new year began. Now it's a time of much rearrangement, unpacking, figuring out where things go, fetching stuff from Fire Island and from storage: a chance to consolidate and to make home in a more solid way than we've been able to the last few years.

It's funny that all this should coincide with the publication of Louise DeSalvo's new book, ON MOVING, a meditation on relocating, leaving old places and making home anew. Especially because Louise's book discusses, among the domestic disruptions and revisions of many writers, yours truly. I am moving, and my moving is being represented, all at once.

Last night I stood up in the garden, on the slope above the house looking down to the woods across the road. It was a little foggy, so that the lights of the house spilled out into the air in an unfamiliar way, and the trees (still leafless) were slightly blurred. In the vernal pools, the peepers seemed to be growing louder -- that sweet ringing annual chorus I just don't ever get weary of. I'd been spending all my time working, settling, and that moment made me just stop and pay attention to where we are.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

That's a good link to a puff for someone else ;)

I got the Thomas James book and my CW class were blown away by some of the poems in it - as I was too. Great book!

Philip F. Clark said...

Welcome back Mark; I look forward to the evening at Cooper Union, for the Cavafy readings. That will be a wonderful night of poetry. Stay here awhile!

David@Montreal said...

Mark
thanks for sharing your evening walk in the garden
evocative- we were almost there
enjoying the homecoming- they can often be insightful times of renewal and reordering,
and how much more so when you and Paul had brely arrived before heading off to the West coast.
homecoming and Spring- sounds pretty potent to me!

David@Montreal

Shopgirl said...

So glad you enjoyed the peepers serenade! To add to the synchronicity of it all, Louise DeSalvo will read from On Moving at Canio's May 9, one week after your reading here on May 2. We look forward to what new poems and chapters Amagansett, a "place of good water," will inspire in you and Mark.