A PERFECT THROW
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Wife of the Jew
“The Wife of the Jew” section of A Perfect Throw emerged from research that I was doing as a freelance journalist about Nevada and northern California nineteenth century history. I’d published accounts of Cornish and Welsh miners, Chinese railroad workers, beer making founded by German brewmasters, lumber ships, riverboats, pioneer schoolteachers—a variety of personal and ethnic histories about settlers and events that were instrumental in creating the culture that evolved on the deserts, in the mountains and along the waterways after the Gold Rush that began in 1848. Among the hundreds of fascinating documents was a Nevada newspaper tidbit about a section of a diary written by a Welsh miner’s widow that had turned up amid other books at an estate sale in the 1950s. It wasn’t information that I was able to use in any of the articles I was writing but corresponded to other accounts about hardrock mining in desolate areas of Nevada and tempted me to begin a poetical account based on oral and written immigrant experiences that I’d accumulated in my research. Among magazine features that I’d published were two or three about European-born Jewish peddlers who traveled from one isolated community to another selling, buying and trading everything from spools of thread to Bowie knives. Eventually many of these peddlers became store owners. I decided to merge two histories—that of a Welsh miner’s widow and that of a Jewish peddler—into one long narrative. Since I was still freelancing as well as working for an alternative weekly the writing of “Wife of the Jew” came together slowly over a period of four or five months. Individual sections appeared in various magazines and journals but the chapbook-length “Wife of the Jew” didn’t appear as a beginning-to-end entity until A Perfect Throw was published in 2013. Uh? Poetry?
It was a serious conversation about immigration and cultural values: Syrian refugees, Mexicanindocumentos, the Diaspora. Newcomers to a strange land always had to struggle, to reinvent themselves, to adapt without losing their integrity, their sense of who they were and who they wanted to be. I mentioned having written about immigrants to the American West: miners from Cornwall in England, from Wales, from Montenegro in the Balkans, German beermakers, Chinese railroad workers. Peoples from separate cultures that clashed but also merged, as did a Welsh miner’s widow and a Jewish peddler who established a life together despite hardship and discrimination in a desolate Nevada wilderness. Those with me were fascinated, they wanted to read what I’d published, but when I said it was a section of a poetry volume called A Perfect Throw: “Oh! Poetry…” Not history, not fiction, but… poetry. No longer were they interested. Poetry was, well, poetry. Novels could tell fascinating stories . Nonfiction could relate engrossing true accounts. But…poetry? It was, well, different. Unfortunately poetry is different for many who write poetry. One academic trend advocates transforming language (often to something unintelligible). Often members of linkedin, goodreads, google poetry groups debate whether prose poetry is really poetry. Or Christian verse is reallypoetry. When I mention that the portrayals in an award-winning poetry chapbook of mine are members of a Mexican semi-pro baseball team people think I’m bullshitting them. Or that the first section of poems in the volumeMonkey Screams are Vietnam War testimonies. To both poets and non-readers of poetry such poems are three-headed cats—something not to be meddled with because they don’t conform to the murky ambience that shrouds real poetry, as if a definition of real poetry exists. Certainly it didn’t seem to for the group I mention above. Nor for many readers (and writers for that matter.) This lack of definition creates a nebulousness that in most people’s perception seems esoteric, akin to mysticism or dreams. Better a predictably entertaining romance novel. Or self-help guide to making money. But…poetry? How about a soap opera instead? They Still Play Baseball the Old Way
My intention when I began writing the poems in They Still Play Baseball the Old Way was to present the Mexico I know and live in through portraits of the members of a ragtag semi-pro baseball team. The Mexico I know is not tourist-centered beaches and archeological tour sites. It is a studio apartment on a deadend street called Astronomos in a workingclass Mexico City barrio. It is dusty unpaved streets leading to the ballpark in Tamuín where my neighbor Edmundo umpired town team games. It is the wonderful little waterfalls in the highlands of Chiapas where campesinos brought their goats to drink.. It is Gregor, the plumber, who could fix anything, including marital disputes. It is Angel who, despite his name, was an intrepid scamp with a heart as big as his ego. It is La Abuelita on her knees praying to the Virgin that her kidnapped daughter be returned. It is poverty and pain and delight and the energy to cope with life’s improbable consequences. And it is baseball, played with passion if not always with skill. But with a joy akin to love. Uh? Poetry?
It was a serious conversation about immigration and cultural values: Syrian refugees, Mexicanindocumentos, the Diaspora. Newcomers to a strange land always had to struggle, to reinvent themselves, to adapt without losing their integrity, their sense of who they were and who they wanted to be. I mentioned having written about immigrants to the American West: miners from Cornwall in England, from Wales, from Montenegro in the Balkans, German beermakers, Chinese railroad workers. Peoples from separate cultures that clashed but also merged, as did a Welsh miner’s widow and a Jewish peddler who established a life together despite hardship and discrimination in a desolate Nevada wilderness. Those with me were fascinated, they wanted to read what I’d published, but when I said it was a section of a poetry volume called A Perfect Throw: “Oh! Poetry…” Not history, not fiction, but… poetry. No longer were they interested. Poetry was, well, poetry. Novels could tell fascinating stories . Nonfiction could relate engrossing true accounts. But…poetry? It was, well, different. Unfortunately poetry is different for many who write poetry. One academic trend advocates transforming language (often to something unintelligible). Often members of linkedin, goodreads, google poetry groups debate whether prose poetry is really poetry. Or Christian verse is reallypoetry. When I mention that the portrayals in an award-winning poetry chapbook of mine are members of a Mexican semi-pro baseball team people think I’m bullshitting them. Or that the first section of poems in the volumeMonkey Screams are Vietnam War testimonies. To both poets and non-readers of poetry such poems are three-headed cats—something not to be meddled with because they don’t conform to the murky ambience that shrouds real poetry, as if a definition of real poetry exists. Certainly it didn’t seem to for the group I mention above. Nor for many readers (and writers for that matter.) This lack of definition creates a nebulousness that in most people’s perception seems esoteric, akin to mysticism or dreams. Better a predictably entertaining romance novel. Or self-help guide to making money. But…poetry? How about a soap opera instead? |
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