The Turpentine Tree E-Book

Lynne Hjelmgaard

• Herausgeber: Seren
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 43

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

The Turpentine Tree is an enduring symbol of memory, fragile but enduring the passage of time and still persisting: in the title poem, Lynne Hjelmgaard describes it 'a coppery faux god / with wildly twisted branches'. It might slip into the void, but here it is for now 'flying into the eye of the storm.' Hjelmgaard employs strong, sensuous imagery to capture moments from across her remarkable life. These are portraits of family, friends and relationships – of Hjelmgaard's uprooted life, including a life at sea, the subsequent displacement, widowhood and search for connections. Often the remembrances in poems are sweet-bitter, recalling friends and lovers lost, including the writer's late partner Dannie Abse. These explorations of loss are extremely moving, but the poems also communicate the value of a rich bank of memories which range around from spectating on a girl being punished at camp ('Summer Camp'), a Florida roadtrip with friends ('1969'), or an 'Evening Flight from Copenhagen.' Very often the speakers are in transit, travelling through, and so the poems hold onto intense, lucid or epiphanic moments. There's an honesty, easiness and at times humour about the language. Vulnerability and strength walk side by side to give an extraordinary depth of experience for the reader. There's a visitation from her dead lover; her husband's spirit is safe in her wardrobe in a plastic bag; her father's ghost is on a WWII battleship in Norfolk Harbour and later waits for her in a crowd of strangers at Miami airport. These snapshots are sometimes based on real photographs, or at other times are imaginary photographs; Hjelmgaard questions 'Did we really exist? Yes – / the photograph answers' ('The Photograph Answers'). Threaded throughout all these memories is the gorgeous vividness of nature – the sea, animals, and creatures – which take speakers out of human concerns to a more connected relation with the world. The Turpentine Tree is about intangible presences which open up memory and move beyond it, towards a universal interconnectedness. How far back does grief go? What is lost, what can be found? Is memory transferred between us without words, years later, is the unsayable felt?  (from 'On the Atlantic Coast of Spain') 'Lynne Hjelmgaard is truthful yet unrepentant. An American poet, determined to be alive.' - Robert Minhinnick, author of Diary of the Last Man 'These poems keep a distinctive balance between distance and closeness – a  wide span across decades, between continents, hand in hand with crisp small moments that encapsulate a life. Closeness, too, in the intimacies at the heart of this collection, held with a lucid sensitivity that's never sentimental, staying true to individual relationships while melting into universal themes of love, loss, letting go and celebration.' -   Philip Gross, author of The Thirteenth Angel 'Who is this person from so many places? Lynne Hjelmgaard grew up in Stuyvesant Town NYC, lived in Denmark, in Paris, in England, in the Caribbean -- did she really sail on a boat? What is she telling us? Everything she carries within, at any time. A unique, unusual life reflected on in poems of intimate address to the reader/companion. Delicate, beautiful, detailed from an amazing memory. Childhood, womanhood, children, aging, loves, mixed as everything is in the one body/mind. Tender and magical.' - Alice Notley, author of For the Ride

Leseprobe

The Turpentine Tree

for Finn, Conor, August, Mia and Maris

Seren is the book imprint of

Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

Suite 6, 4 Derwen Road, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 1LH

www.serenbooks.com

facebook.com/SerenBooks

twitter@SerenBooks

The right of Lynne Hjelmgaard to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

© Lynne Hjelmgaard, 2023

ISBN: 9781781727195

Ebook: 9781781727157

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Books Council of Wales.

Cover artwork: by Richard Adams: ‘The Turpentine Tree’, oil on canvas.

Printed in Bembo by Severn, Gloucester

Contents

I Something Of You, Something Of Me

That Summer In Maine

Stuyvesant Town

Little Landscapes Of Silence

Father Naked

What Saturday?

Summer Camp

Open And Closed Spaces

Night Journey: On The Greyhound Bus

Something Of You, Something Of Me

Grandma Mary

From A Wardrobe

II What We Had Was Love

The View

About Her

Enter: The Bluest Bay

What We Had Was Love

Evening Flight From Copenhagen

Honey

‘You Are Cold – In Erotic Gaiety – Or Unhappiness’

I Thought I Revealed Nothing

In Paris

For Dannie

In The Walled Garden

Absence

Sometimes I Forget How Much

When Dawn

Look At Him

Bandits

Ghost Patterns

They Move Further And Further Away

Deluge

III A Standing Ground

Your Journals Have

1969

The Copenhagen Hair Salon

Bird Seconds

Grandkids

What She Gave Me

Your Late, Late New Year’s Card

Blaen Dhol

A Love Affair Between A Border Collie And A Wire-haired Sausage Pup On A Small Building Site

Two Photos

A Standing Ground

There You Were

The Photograph Answers

Annalise

April

IV The Turpentine Tree

I’d Like To Speak Of This Memory

Fragments, The Sea

Departing Reedsville, VA.

On The Atlantic Coast Of Spain

The Turpentine Tree 1

Heading East

Whale

World Travellers

A Sailor’s Lament

The Turpentine Tree 2

Into The Valley Of The Trough

Acknowledgements

Notes

‘but the knowing and the rain

the dream and the morning

the wind the pain

the love the burning’

W.S. Merwin, A Step At A Time

ISomething Of You, Something Of Me

That Summer In Maine

There was the dramatic ferry voyage over

to the island, the shelter of my father’s shoulder

against a brisk wind and sea; the enjoyable way

he bit into his apple, an extra large bite.

Never seen anyone’s head touch a ceiling

until the young doctor arrived.

Lying in bed with fever I was apprehensive

but curious. His tall, kind presence filled the room.

Don’t step on anthills! I was running away

from a goat who was sniffing in the woods.

Ants were crawling up my legs. It was a dream

standing still, invading ants consumed me,

the goats my enemy. I was the centre of the world’s

discomforts. My sister came to the rescue, not without

laughter and tears. It all happened: my mother

caught in a thunderstorm, sunlight breaking

through the pines, the long shadows

in the cabin, waiting for her return.

Stuyvesant Town

Father mellowed

into sweetness

in old age. Gentleness

has such power.

Mother forms lonely

fragments

in memory.

I think of her mostly

with questions, sometimes

as a child,

seeing them

from some great distance,

but knowing

the care I needed

was there.

How to describe

this confusion,

at the same time

who were they?

How did I come

to belong

to them, as a child does?

Yet they opened

a way forward,

gone from me

a long time before

they were

gone from me.

And I left them also.

Little Landscapes of Silence

Certain pebbles are just the right shape

for skimming across water,

a universal past time,

like walking up and down the same streets

over and over again,

greeting the neighbours when you have to.

I used to walk with him on the lower East side,

try to keep up as we searched

for his grey Studebaker Packard.

Where’d I park the damn car?

I felt a presence on the edge of my bed,

early in the morning, just before they called.

I’d never heard the noise the moon makes,

does the moon make noise?

There was the push to get there in time,

slipping on ice after landing in D.C.

My father’s body is lying on the table

in a dimly lit room

already out and about,

making its way in the universe.

Father Naked

Father naked. That first embarrassment

as a child, of seeing him in the shower,

not daring to look, confused and excited

but also afraid. I used to meet him

at the top of the subway stairs at 6pm –

wait for his ghost-like face to emerge

from the crowd, wait for his smile,

his hand, to hear my quiet voice

next to his forceful one. A voice

whose resonance could affect my mood,

whether curious, consoling, cursing,