Sunday, November 15, 2009

Before the Storm


[Vor dem Sturm (1878)]


Vor dem Sturm
by Theodor Fontane
“The German War and Peace"
(apparently)
I picked it up in Edinburgh
& was immediately
beguiled

the heroine seemed real
Renate von Vitzewitz
stagey action
understated
like real life
her tragic early death
a psychic blow

[Theodor Fontane (1819-1898)]

The Pioneers
by James Fenimore Cooper
I had a plan to read them all
The Leatherstocking Novels
dutifully ploughed through
the first few
but this one

[The Pioneers (1823)]

The drifting snow
of its opening pages
the meeting on the road
the little town
in the Big Woods
It all seemed true
or if not true

[James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)]

infinitely desirable
but why?
Then John Meade Falkner,
The Nebuly Coat
not one of his
most celebrated works
(Moonfleet

The Lost Stradivarius
)
but this one had
the atmosphere
of strange but vital friendships
formed in musty towns
deep conversations
a world one longed to enter

Three times it's happened
– 3 obscure books –
I've never dared reread them
Would it happen again?
Do I want it to?
I wonder
It was comforting, entrancing, mystical

like waking on your own
in the blue room



[John Meade Falkner (1858-1932)]

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