Poetry of distances, the art and ecology of Monhegan Island, a new bookstore/bar in Jamaica Plain
First witch hazel, then snowdrops, then the crocuses, which appeared in the mulch a few days ago in gardens in the neighborhood. Spring is trying harder. Welcome back, thanks for being here, and onwards into New England Literary News.
Esther Lin’s Undocumented Distances
In her debut collection of poetry, Cold Thief Place, out this month from Maine-based Alice James Books, Esther Lin tracks the path her parents took fleeing Communist China, to Africa, to Brazil, where Lin was born, to the United States, where she lived as an undocumented immigrant for 21 years. The poems report and reimagine and collage together distances — place distance (the miles between here and elsewhere), people distance (the space dilating between us), time distance (before lives in the now of our bodies). Lin’s crystal shards are glinting, sharp, assured. “Red Guard. Red tape. / What facts. What luck. / A xeroxed photo in my desk.” Lin explores, perhaps above all, what we can and cannot know about ourselves and about our origins, which is to say, in part, our parents. “When I say strange I mean / how even as / you were dying / and I asked / what were / the happiest / of your days / and you didn’t say / us I knew that / already / I didn’t mind / you said / the revolution / nobody / says that.” She shows us the unbridgeable distances, the sustained state of displacement. When a Homeland Security agent asks why she wants a petitioner to be her petitioner, “The truth is my father saved three thousand dollars, / the market rate for men / who petition for illegal women.” Lin is a co-organizer of Undocupoets, a group promoting the work of poets who are now or have been undocumented in the U.S., raising consciousness about structural barriers undocumented poets face in the literary community. These poems of presence and absence resonate with force right now. “Illegal immigration / is the absence of a paper / and the presence of a person.”
Exploring the Art and Ecology of a Tiny Island in Maine
About sixty people live on Monhegan Island, a square mile of rock and moss and forest off the coast of Midcoast Maine. The number swells in summer. Its austere light and faraway-so-close out-of-time atmosphere have seduced artists and writers for generations. A new book relays the story of Monhegan, its landscape, its changes, and particularly its wildness. Art, Ecology, and the Resilience of a Maine Island, edited by Barry A. Logan, Jennifer Pye, and Frank H. Goodyear III (Rizzoli Electa), gives intimate look at the place, ecologically, artistically, and personally. The book includes work by painters like Rockwell Kent, who knew the density of the pines and depth of the blues; Edward Hopper, whose ruddy Monhegan paintings give a sense of tumble-down; and George Bellows, whose trees look animate, at gentle flicker in the wind. As David Foster, director emeritus of Harvard Forest, writes, Monhegan couples “an unfolding legacy of artistic exploration with an unrivaled commitment to the preservation of community and land.” The book includes old maps and old photos, and small essays by residents, scientists, historians. It’s the photographs by Accra Shepp that are, for me, the highlight of the book. In atmospheric large-format panoramas, he shows us the contours and the textures, the moss glow, the fissure in the rock, the paint-smocked artist in the kitchen. His images, and the book as a whole, reveal the human press on place, and the natural world’s press back.
The book accompanies an exhibit of the same name on view through June 1 at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art; it will open at the Monhegan Museum of Art & History on July 1. For more information, click here. Photographs by Accra Shepp.
Kickstarting a New Bookstore/Bar in Jamaica Plain
A new bookstore/bar is trying to get off the ground in Jamaica Plain. The Book Pub, now raising funds on Kickstarter, is, according to founder Shannon Spellman, a LQBTQ/women-owned hybrid space, bringing together a bookstore, a café, and craft beer bar. Spellman’s aim is a welcoming third space that fosters community, a space with “no rush, no chaos, and no overwhelm.” Kickstarter funds will go towards securing a retail space and buying equipment for the pub and café, and Spellman also plans to host author events, storytimes for kids, writing classes, and other events. For more information, click here.
Omar El Akkad in Brookline
A quick event highlight this week: on Friday, March 28, the Brookline Booksmith hosts Omar El Akkad in conversation with Teju Cole as part of its acclaimed and long-running Transnational Literature Series. In his new book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (Knopf), El Akkad reckons with the lie the West is girded by, and who is and is not treated as human. “For now, it’s just so much safer to look away, to keep one’s head down, periodically checking on the balance of polite society to see if it is not too troublesome yet to state what to the conscience was never unclear,” he writes. The conversation takes place Friday, March 28 at 7 pm at the United Parish in Brookline, 210 Harvard Street, Brookline. The event is free, but registration is required. To register, click here.
Bookseller’s Best: Staff Picks from New England independent booksellers
Sophie at Belmont Books in Belmont, Massachusetts, recommends Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell (Riverhead): “I read this entire book in one sitting and have not been able to stop thinking about it since. Inspired by the environmental and biological effects of pesticide runoff in Argentina, Fever Dream does, in fact, read like a fever dream. Disorienting and atmospheric, it grips you and refuses to let go.”
Books of Note Out This Week
James Baldwin: The Life Album by Magdalena J. Zaborowska (Yale).
Silent Catastrophes: Essays by W.G. Sebald, translated from the German by Jo Catling (Random House).
Sister Europe by Nell Zink (Knopf).
Thanks for being here. This is a pleasure to do, and it is work. If you can afford to pay, please pay.
As a jazz fan, I enjoyed the serendipity of the phrase "deep blues." Nice also to see comments. Something one almost never sees in the invisible arts coverage on the Globe's website ("0 Comments"). Maybe one reason its considered disposable....And you're still writing some of the best poetry commentary out there, NIna!
If possible, you should visit the exhibit in the Bowdoin Art Gallery. Some really remarkable work is in there, not just in art, but also in photography and in analysis. I tripped across it by accident and enjoyed it immensely. A fantastically well curated exhibit.