Fiction
Excerpt from "Walking Through Brambles: a narrative of
circumspection"
I stood on the balcony the following day and watched the winter birds
jump between gargoyles on the parapet. Their dark forms looked like
black spheres balled up into tiny fists of feathers. Their songs
were low and short, but mostly they kept quiet and flew in small,
tight patterns from tree to shrub to fence without making the
slightest sound. The garden and adjacent meadow provided sparse
cover and made no effort to hide them within its own tawny grasses.
Instead, the dark birds took shelter near the ground in leafless
brush resembling nests of crumpled wire.
The winter birds held the earth’s spirit. They lived and moved where
nothing else would. I stood inside the doorway and watched them
twitch and peck at seeds and pieces of cracker that I had dropped
for them earlier. They stayed for only a moment. Their eyes moved
about searching for predators that I could not imagine against the
still landscape. Aside from a neighbor’s cat creeping around a light
pole or a hedge of blue-blossom, the dark birds gave the earth its
only motion. They told of the earth’s former personality; they
declared its compassion, warmth, and color.
The birds flew off and gathered in the nearby meadow. When they were
still, I could not distinguish them from the shadowy pieces of turf
turned up by the neighbor’s broodmare. The wind was calm and quiet.
I could hear nothing, not even the clock from inside the doorway,
not even a random scraping of branches from the ash and cypress
against the building. Nothing in the garden or in the meadow moved.
The sheer absence of sound and motion gave the moment an eerie
tension. The dark birds and the pale landscape created a loneliness
that wasn’t entire-ly unpleasant. It made me want to sleep, to
envision myself stuffed within a warm bed piled with downy quilts
and pillows. Time never moved more slowly. Fatigue lingered in the
coldness as I fell asleep uncovered in an overstuffed lounge chair
in the middle of the room.
I don’t remember dreaming. I only remember waking and feeling
frustrated with my own loneliness and isolation. I wanted to feel
eager again. I wanted to feel renewed and invigorated. I wanted the
artist to be alive, to touch my hand and pull herself into my
embrace. I wanted to feel her desire instead of my own. I wanted to
feel her passion instead of mine. I wanted her wants to be satisfied
in me that I might forget my own wishes and rediscover them anew in
her.
Non Fiction
Identification and Storytelling:
The Appeal of Franklin Burroughs’ Narrative Essays
In his collection of personal essays entitled, Billy Watson’s
Croker Sack, Franklin Burroughs utilizes the genre’s
most prevalent rhetorical strategy of identification through story
telling. Unlike the formal essay that may appeal to an audience’s
specific interests and curiosities, Burroughs’ personal essays
often appeal to a general audience’s ambivalence between right
and wrong and the environment in which their daily routines are
perceived, rationalized and accepted. He envelopes his readers in a
milieu of personal secrets, selective histories and keen perceptions
of everyday life. Through his candid literary demeanor and his
intimate conversational rhetoric, he positions himself as the
everyman.
Burroughs does not assert or praise his credibility; but instead, he
reminds his readers of their universal kinship and the experiences
common to everyone. He attempts to communicate a reasoning that
will casually blend the entire human race into one heterogenous
family. Mainly through stories and anecdotes--the genre’s
primary rhetorical devise--Burroughs identifies with a general mass
audience through a reverent conversation of life’s minor
generalities and a candid disclosure of his own failures and
emotional fragility.
According to Holman and Harmon’s A Handbook to
Literature, the personal or informal essay is characterized
by “the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes
and experiences, confidential manner)...unconventionality or novelty
of theme...and freedom from stiffness and affectation” (Holman
193). In his forward to The Art of the Personal Essay,
Philip Lopate writes that “the conversational dynamic--the
desire for contact--is ingrained in the form, and serves to
establish a quick emotional intimacy with the audience”
(Lopate 2). These observations are evidenced throughout Burroughs’
collection as he discusses life’s personality from the
perspective of the provincial New Englander. His collection
consists of five essays all evaluating and reacting to the
complexities of life and death in modern but rural America. He
describes a local dimension of life that is free of the world’s
abrasive competitiveness, and he involves his readers in
his world--a separate reality where he can confess his own
fears and inadequacies.
Recollections of boyhood and descriptions of the landscape are
inherent in Burroughs’ essays. The innocence of childhood and
nature “undefiled” is discussed in a homey,
unpretentious rhetoric that appeals to the simple, unrefined,
child-like qualities of his audience. He elaborates on the hillside’s
weeds and grasses and in a neighborly editorial on the weather, he
discusses nature’s routines and his own droll attitudes of
home. “Crackers limp as old lettuce,” an expression
bordering cliché is placidly expressed by a narrative voice
which at times can be equally cliché or banal--simple,
unashamed but heroically sincere (Burroughs 5). It is easy for one
to imagine the author as a quiet, non-threatening figure draped in
loose fitting overalls, standing upon the seat of his tractor,
gazing at the valley before him as he describes “our fields,”
in the following detail:
The stitchwort, vetch, buttercup,
bedstraw and blue-eyed grass...thriving amid the adversities of soil
and climate, their inconspicuous beauty seems reflective of rural
New England, and it is pleasing to learn that people here once found
more than aesthetic solace in them (Burroughs 9).
He further appeals to his and his audience’s commonness in
describing his “Southern boyhood” that was filled
with “that strange Wordsworthian hunger for landscape”
(Burroughs 10). Certainly by the end of the tenth page, readers can
identify with Burroughs’ natural, uncomplicated
self-portrait.
Throughout most of his book, Burroughs presents himself (as Edmund
Waller may have noted 350 years ago) as the self-sequestered man. He
is alone and removed from the rest of the world where he can observe
man and nature unnoticed. And it is during this seclusion when
Burroughs receives these random and quixotic perceptions and
insights into everyday life. Lopate again in his forward to The
Art of the Personal Essay informs us of the essayist as one
who “claims unique access to the small, humble things in life”
(Lopate 5). Burroughs certainly attempts to portray this
affection early in his collection and it is evidenced throughout the
entire book. Lopate also notes that “this taste for the
miniature becomes a strong suit of the form: the ability to turn
anything close at hand...into a grand meditation adventure”
(Lopate 9).
Burroughs is very much attuned to the quiet, ambient side of life,
and although he doesn’t embellish as much as other narrative
writers may, he more closely scrutinizes the miniature and
discusses what most of us would consider unnecessary. This is
particularly clear as he describes his activities on the opening day
of duck hunting season.
The day faded on into ordinariness; it
would regain a little of its special quality only after supper, when
I would go out into the barn, pluck the teal and dress them, watched
by Mink and Mrs. Pino, our two semi-domestic cats. Then would clean
the gun, swabbing out the barrels until they shone like mirrors when
I held them to the light and looked through them. Would carefully
save a few of the flank feathers and a wing for trout flies; would
reward the cats with a visceral morsel; would wrap and label the
ducks and put them in the freezer. That would be it, an annual
observance completed (Burroughs 103).
By omitting the subject of the final four phrases, Burroughs omits
himself to suggest that even he
is perhaps too obvious to mention and too ordinary to even care.
This is a clear rhetorical strategy that reiterates the event’s
repetitive calculation. It also appears from this final sentence
that even the author, caught up in the rush of tradition and local
patriotism, honors an observance of which he is morally uncertain.
He therefore confronts, with some reservation, the moral challenges
and social obligations that most people will at some time encounter.
But his stories, more than anything, present the author as a
regular-kind-of-guy. He is simple, honest and kind. The natural
intimacy of his narrative is powerfully inviting to the individual
who also perceives himself as a regular-kind-of-guy.
Burroughs is fascinated with milieu and the pace at which he moves
his thoughts within it. His rambling stream of consciousness is not
specifically a rhetorical treatment but is certainly a rhetorical
style that allows him to ponder his own perceptions and color them
according to his current mood or voice. Each essay within the
collection relates significantly to this milieu and to the author’s
place within the natural world. This is particularly evident in the
following passage from Burroughs’ third essay.
It always seemed to be somewhere in the
middle of a summer afternoon. Floors being cooler than rugs or beds.
I would lie on the floor in front of an oscillating fan, its breeze
passing over me, going away, hesitating at the end of its arc,
returning (Burroughs 47).
Again, Burroughs’ story appeals to our sense of calm-ness--a
stagnation in time where he pauses to study the rhythm of an arcing
fan to a degree that permits him to reflect on the transience and
immediate purpose of his own life. His description of the plain
implies that the author is never beyond the common and ordinary,
that he is merely a random creation of nature and a victim of its
indifference. But his narrative also suggests a balance and
proportion for a life that is consumed with business and worldly
responsibilities. Consider how his audience might relate or identify
with the following passage.
So I would relapse into the Upper
Peninsula, making it my refuge for another empty summer afternoon,
while the fan hummed and the cicadas outside buzzed their parched,
whetstone song, lapping and overlapping itself in slow waves,
until at last dusk fell, a faint coolness seeped out from the grass,
and the toads and crickets took over (Burroughs 48).
Even if his reader never makes it to the mountains in Wyoming or
the backwoods of Kentucky, he has no trouble envisioning the comfort
and peace of the places Burroughs describes.
Aside from these hum-drum normalities of life, Burroughs admits his
failures and accepts his inadequacies as another facet of life and
another dimension of nature. His life and reputation is circumspect.
He is bound to provincial exclusion. His rhetoric is plaintive
and describes a man bullied by ambition and made common by
circumstance and history. This attitude develops as his past is
remembered while fishing one morning in a small New England
pond.
I was bookish and introverted as a boy,
lived more in theory than among facts, and always waited on a time
when my circumstances would at last conform to what was prescribed
by authors, and deliver me from an identity which, whether measured
against my own standards, or against the modest and sensible expectations
of my parents, was ignominious. I read all about fishing:...the
throwline, the cork, and a cricket or caterpillar on the hook came
to seem too much like what I feared my life would be--something
local, undistinguished, and limited, beneath the notice of
literature and without shape or certification (Burroughs 54-55).
While we are meant to understand Burroughs’ disillusionment
with life, we are also intended to relate to his queerish boyhood in
order to find a perspective for our
queerish natures. Lopate explains it this way. “The trick is
to realize that one is not important, except insofar as one’s
example can serve to elucidate a more widespread human trait and
make readers feel a little less lonely and freakish” (Lopate
6).
Further insight into Burroughs’ audience can be seen in how the
author represents himself and in his subtextual description of the
reader with whom he attempts to identify. In the previous citation,
Burroughs confesses a fear in becoming or remaining “local,
undistinguished and limited.” But a more attentive reading
suggests that Burroughs, in his effort to identify, may actually
alienate or distance himself from his general audience by suggesting
that they too are “local, undistinguished and limited.”
If we initially accept Burroughs’ appeal to an unsophisticated
and general mass audience, we must also accept his reader’s
general and unsophisticated identitiy within his respective
community. Consider for a moment how the local school principal may
perceive himself within his own community and also consider how the
local minister, sales clerk or secretary may identify with
Burroughs’ “uncertified” classification. Is it
unfair for us to assume that his readers have similar perspectives
of their own provincial limitations and inadequacies that Burroughs
infers?
Perhaps the most accurate analysis of Burroughs’ audience lies
in the nature of his confessions itself. Perhaps these personal
confessions are intended not exclusively for a general readership
but for Burroughs himself. For most personal essayists, writing is
therapy--purging, through confession and self-confrontation, the
loneliness and despair that they often see in themselves. In this
respect, it is reasonable to believe that Burroughs is still
reaching within himself for a deeper understanding of the local and
undistinguished persona that his essays display. It is equally
reasonable to suspect that, Billy Watson’s Croker
Sack is a testament of the author’s attempt to
identify with himself and not solely with an
unsophisticated, unassuming and undistinguished regional audience.
Burroughs himself may indeed be the collection’s primary
audience.
Burroughs’ rhetoric is free of fancy terms, specialized jargon
and gothic analogies and metaphors. Rather his anecdotes and stories
become his predominant rhetorical pulse. Within these stories he
appeals to his audience’s romantic moods and is able to use
their sensitivities to justify their telling. In some instances, his
milieu of melancholy and nostalgia is so morose that one reads his
confessions with a measure of pity and responsibility for the author’s
bad luck and failure to succeed. Perhaps Burroughs is only
interested in communicating what Gore Vidal has said about narrative
literature. “The true confessors have been aware that not only
is life mostly failure, but that in one’s failure or pettiness
or wrongness exists the living drama of the self” (Lopate
9).
At times, Burroughs’ dependence upon his readers’
sympathy is excessive. After all, as Donald Harwood puts it, “we
all have our little sorrows” and certainly Burroughs, like the
rest of us, must deal with his personal traumas alone (Harwood 33).
But as Lopate further explains, the personal essayist “is not
necessarily out to win the audience’s unqualified love
but to present the complex portrait of a human being” (Lopate
8). And so Burroughs’ stories reflect the complexity of the
human character, and the rhetorical treatment he uses
to identify with his audience, mainly gentle first-person story
telling, reflects the complexities of the poetical
character--something that even the most common among us hopes to
possess.
Burroughs’ text is rich with simple and plain observations made
extraordinary only by the care of their telling. The author elevates
his subject through his personal rhetoric and his intuitive vision
of the common man. And the common man who becomes acquainted with
Billy Watson’s Croker Sack doesn’t necessarily
escape in a rhetoric of elevated proportions but is shown how
his ordinariness is made grand in the perspective that Burroughs
gives it. Irish essayist Hubert Butler explains it this way: “I
am more inclined to apologize for writing about great events, which
touched me not at all, than for tracing again the tiny snail track
which I made myself” (Lopate 10). Great or insignificant
events in themselves cannot dictate the types of rhetorical
treatments that a writer may employ in achieving his or her
purposes. But in the genre of the personal narrative, the primary
rhetorical emphasis is placed on the writer’s ability to
identify with his audience. And according to Burroughs’ style
and subject matter, one cannot overlook his perspective of the
little, ubiquitous happenings that many of us no longer notice. For
this reason, Burroughs identifies easily with his readers, and his
story-telling style assures him of a certain reader loyalty and
trust that other writers may not enjoy.
Poetry
A Meditation
The bay breezes through my room,
and a pen rolls across the bureau
so, so slowly
while a note glides lightly, gently
to the foot of my bed.
Green springs trickle through the bamboo
knocking against the porch
as though it were wrapped
in a pillow.
The bright night illuminates;
and just beyond the tide’s reaching touch
the dunes bow softly into the hillside.
jasmine and willow sway above the pond
where a turtle—
high priest of this garden,
rests like me on a ripple
of introspection:
a meditation, a prayer
a thought not born into speech.
A toad bellows low in the reed beds,
fireflies linger in the air;
and a dandelion ascends
as some do in September
rising into the dark light.
The fat yellow moon pulls his eyelids down,
the warm silver ghost cups me in her hands,
bliss dripping like dew from her fingers
and I succumb to her relentless serenity—
the unsparing comfort of sedation.
Like footsteps on the bare floor,
the clock taps out a beat—
the pulse of nature,
of some divinity
nesting somewhere near;
a mass for the living
blessed in its subjectivity,
mercy and compassion.
And almost like a memory
from a terrace down the hill,
a spanish guitar floats its voices here
unplugged from the dissonance of age
coming humbly, joyfully home—
all of life's perfections
distilled to its finest hour
is now.
The wind loosens the drapes
unfolding like wings in the doorway
as the restful turtle hums
and a leaf drifts by
so, so slowly...
Veils
I wake up
in the dark house
and without a bump
I find the chair by the window.
Warm rain on the glass
distant train whistle
seedcorn due--
fields of it.
Nature not asleep;
a tiny spider dashes from beneath the sink
as if he were pulled by a string
in the natural light from which I see no source
and I look away to the farm.
My oak chair creaks
and my feet on the bare tile
can feel the cool crumbs of dust
so undisturbed
this quiet night.
Unlit but warm
cooler floor than bone
old oak chair but earnest
sleeping neighbors unaware of evening?s other shadow.
And the warmer air of harvest
begins to taste
or sound like willow or silk
on summer's rainy window.
Ambience like old pajamas
just light enough for sleeping;
a breeze lifts the window veils
and I look away to the farm.
Vigil
I remember the way I came
walkingstick in hand
booted loosely, lazely
dewdamp grass touching my knees
tasseltops shining
smelling like jam.
The whole valley was green
preening birds preparing
quick and subtle movements
like wind through a pipe
unseen whistle singing
from baby thrush and wren.
Cold river rocks
vanishing steam from slower currents
cloudy like tea or musk
dicentra at my fingers
sun behind and moist air
like blackberry on my mouth.
Vigil
all of dawn remembering
the way I came;
I smell the path fresh every morning
always remembering the way.
The Quantum Cycle of Life
I am a bubble
I am in a bubble--
a particle
a consciousness (aquiring qualia)
rising to the top
of the sea of humanity;
---
A lifetime of ages pass
atmosphere at last
and I am released into the light
---
I am a wave
I am
in
the wave--
a consciousness (qualia aquired)
a soul.
I am everywhere
at peace with the gods and angels.
After the Rain
After the rain
and under the yellow clouds
I rose to the words
of birdsong
whistling between the leaves of the
summer storm
with daisies
and aging blossoms of apples
and buttercups
I came to my home against
the Hills
where sun lit waterfalls filled
the streams below;
I heard still
as a little boy in his father's hat
and I climbed again
the Hills
and strode the neighbor's ground
with a lonely pride that only
children know.
The summer sounds were brimming
with Color:
the purpling blooms were
waving to the sea,
and cartooned pastels
robed the grasses
bending in the tide of twilight,
and I rose once more to
the whispering words
of Birdsong:
a watery font
with the summer scent
of Home.
Communion
Waiting for the late sounds
to blow the leaves and
porch bells slow
I listen to the play of
a far away hound
and my feet crunching stones
as I move;
Yet then will I sit
and feel the evening speak
what the angels sing to God.
The Warm Brook
Often the drip
falls with the canon--
Largo for the evening
plays the melody away
to the new-made night;
and the sticks that bow
from the hard trunk
make me dance and drift
on the warm brook,
hoping you'll find me
as your voice
and your wish
wakes the music in
my soul
to never sink alone,
and I can dance
to the canon's pace
like falling sticks on
a sterile stream.
Low Tide
The early morning waves
lit by the moon a blue-grey hue
glows the gentle sea
as it rolls upon the sand
I stand on.
The air that sounds small
upon the waving grass
moves through my clothes,
and on my face it stills
till my breath returns again
to the sea
the blowing scent of wasted youth
to dive at the foam in the waves
that pound the quiet eve's crabs
as they soak in the wash and loam,
and I breathe in the night moon
that lights me with its white;
too soft to touch
and too brief to kiss
it sends the wind through my hair
like the fingers of a patient girl
and whisps to me the scent of salt and musk
to savor the sand I still on
as the waterwind
and the sweet shoregrass
walks my wish to the deep again.
Summer Bragging
Popping beached jellyfish
was the favorite summertime game
longer sticks served best
and quicker strides before and the sting
were useful in bragging,
too eager to work or worry
we rode the waves
till our bellies scraped the sand,
and we raced the crabs
back into the sea,
saltwater always filled my mouth
and I'd quit playing
for a while
until another jellyfish
beached himself beside me.
October Dews
Its texture is compelling
like gathered frost along
the brush bottoms at dawn,
it makes me cool
and I breathe like a dragon
coal-sweat spray,
I wake with its alarm so early
and touch the tent top
that its beads may run
down my finger
wanting me to drink,
everything looks new and growing
in the haze and mist
as I walk upon green needles
and mossy smells
tickle
and compel with its feeling
my hands and mouth to touch.
First Light
And then the pond will warm
and morning's dust will float
beneath the still cold mist
and the smells like summer's dawn
will raise its breath to the
trees that shade you from
the sky
to sleep or run
until you wake or rest
and summer's first light
is gone to older kin;
and then the pool will boil
and nature's love for nature
will feed herself on her
as the grasses dry in
summer's dusk;
and the now noon steam
will make clouds high
to fly with the birds and dust
for a new place to wake
and another you
to shade.
Manipulation
Strong music plays little for me
in my snoring chair
thick will pillow
heavy with boring stuff:
sentimental fool
writing of treason that stains the soul
and warns the wet heart
I stick with my pen;
watery songs encourage the discontent
to cheer at the sky
like a freshly spoiled bride,
"Long live the king!
Kill the umpire!
Hail Mary full of it!"
Offend to be offended
slap the child's hand
and wash his dirty tongue;
and I'll burn the bones in the bedroom
while the nigger next door
trims his desperate snuff
and my memory sings from the alley,
"Don't spill the blood of Gethsemane,
the carpet's still too white."