Sunday

May 20, 2012


Come to Harm

by Andrew Hudgins

We were driving from one state to another,
my father already there,
and we'd been singing hymns, hymns
soaring from the car

with our joy at passing on to glory,
where loss would turn to gain,
our wounds would heal — and in the silence
after our last refrain

my mother said she'd known, known
before the call had come,
her father had died. She'd felt his passing.
She'd known "He'd come to harm" —

as if Death had enticed him. As if
he had returned to drinking
and wed Death's hootchie-cootchie girl,
Death's crude seducer. Thinking

"True Tales of the Supernatural!" I wondered
how I could tell this story
and make friends shudder. Or failing that,
— I was this predatory —

how I could make them laugh. I flipped
"There's a world beyond this world"
to "My mother is a silly woman" —
and back again, as we hurled

through darkness singing songs of hope.
She told her sacred story.
We sang. We laughed. She died. I wept.
Her story isn't mine. I'm sorry

— and not — about how I have told it.
Who knows what's coming after?
There may be another world. There may.
There will be laughter.

"Come to Harm" by Andrew Hudgins, from American Rendering. © Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

On this date in 1609, publisher Thomas Thorpe made an entry in the Stationer's Register that said: Entred for his copie under the handes of master Wilson and master Lownes Wardenes a booke called Shakespeares sonnettes, and soon after, Shakespeare's sonnets were published (books by this author). There were no copyright laws during Shakespeare's time, and these may have been published without Shakespeare's consent. The manuscript is full of errors and appears to be incomplete, so some scholars think that it may be an early draft. Thomas Thorpe himself had an unsavory reputation, and was rumored to hang around scriveners—people who could read and write and hired out their services—looking for the opportunity to steal manuscripts. Regardless of how this edition came to print, we're lucky that it did; had it not, it's likely that only two of Shakespeare's sonnets would survive today.

It's the birthday of the author who's been called "the Shakespeare of the novel": Honoré de Balzac (books by this author), born in Tours, France (1799). He studied law at his father's insistence, but he preferred to write or pursue a variety of get-rich-quick schemes. He was a printer's nightmare: he would continue to change and expand his novels, even after they had been typeset, so they would have to be redone at great expense to the author. He was deeply in debt much of the time, and wrote for 14 to 16 hours a day to keep ahead of his creditors. He often wore a white dressing gown, and downed cup after cup of strong, black coffee. In one three-year period, he produced more than 20 works.

The product of all that work was a vast series—more than 90 novels and novellas—that he called La Comédie Humaine (The Human Comedy). He considered himself "the secretary of French society," and was so thorough that Oscar Wilde once said, "The 19th century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac."

The Krakatoa volcano in the Sunda Strait of Indonesia began erupting on this date in 1883. A German ship, the Elizabeth, was sailing past the island and reported seeing a column of smoke and ash rising some seven miles into the sky above the mountain. The activity continued for the next few months; locals held festivals to celebrate the volcano's rumbling and spewing and occasional fiery bursts. But on August 26, a series of explosions blew the mountain—and the island—apart. Sea water had gotten into the magma chamber, and when it came into contact with the molten lava, it was like cold water hitting a red-hot skillet. The resulting explosion was heard in Sri Lanka, 4,500 miles away; the tsunami it caused rose to 130 feet and killed over 36,000 people.

Krakatoa spawned a volcanic offspring before it blew up. Anak Krakatau, "child of Krakatoa," began to rise out of the sea in 1927. Today, it's about half the size of the original volcano, but it's growing every day. It's been spewing smoke, lava, and molten ash for the last several years.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

 

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