Poetry from a Favorite Novelist

I didn’t know that one of my favorite novelists wrote poetry until I received Lynn Sharon Schwartz’ new book of poems, No Way Out But Through (University of Pittsburgh Press.) Ms. Schwartz’ novels include Leaving Brooklyn, which tells of the life-changing experience of a teenage girl from Brooklyn making her first forays into Manhattan (where the sky looks bluer than in her own home borough), and Disturbances in the Field, that follows a group of Barnard graduates into their later lives.

Her poems have the wit and grace of her prose, and one of them, “Collecting Myself,” got me laughing out loud. The poet asks what “flawed vision” prompted her to buy a book of bilingual Russian stories –

. . .page three turned down
a year now, something by Gogol –
traveler, inn, horse, the rest a blur. . .

Those few lines seemed to sum up for me every story written by a 19th century Russian – Gogol, Gorky, Turgenev, Chekov – all their stories seemed to have those elements. I also recognized the books I’ve bought that I thought would “be good for me,” or  “improve my mind,” or “teach me more about writing,” or some other noble goal, but I never finished.

There are also insightful and witty poems about relationships, as in “First Loves,” when she tells of marrying the first boy she met who read books and could converse about them, and later thinks “It was like buying the first house that you see. . .”  Happily, she realizes  “. . .sometimes that works out quite well,” and concludes that there are times when “it seems a stroke of luck, miraculous.”

There is real wisdom in these poems, though they are never didactic and always entertaining, holding you in the spell of language, each word sounding the right note. The title of the book is itself a meaningful message, reminding us that in every challenge, no matter how we try to skirt around it, in the end, there is “No Way But Through.”
 

 

 

1

Bill Hampton Gets Hall of Fame Call

Photographer / Brian Brosmer

Former Crispus Attucks guard will be inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame

Here are two women who grew up in Indianapolis talking about their father: Tanya: “He’s a lot of fun. We danced, and we still dance! When I come back to Indy we put on Marvin Gaye and Al Green and we dance. Here, he was an athlete and he had two girls who are very girly – not the athletic type. He has a good, kind heart. We were spoiled.”

Tina:  “Our dad just adored us. He was very thoughtful, and he expected a lot. We took ballet, but he showed us how to drive a nail and use a saw. He’d be out there in the backyard turning cartwheels with us. He wanted us to be strong. When we didn’t make good grades or do our chores we had privileges taken away. We couldn’t just go anywhere we wanted to go, we had a lot of guidance.”

Their dad, Bill Hampton, will be inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.

Read the full article on townepost.com

0

All the Way Home: Author Dan Wakefield on Returning to Indianapolis

Dan Wakefield. Photo by Tony Valainis

Photo by Tony Valainis

I wrote this piece for Indianapolis Monthly in October 2012. Evan West recently profiled me in the January 2017 issue. In light of that, I thought it worth re-sharing my side of the story again.

Here’s an excerpt:

Many people firmly believe that “fiction” really is “fact.” I still have people come up to me and say, “Hey, that must have been wild when you and ‘Gunner’ got kicked out of the Meridian Hills swimming pool because he had a beard!” In fact, I never knew anyone in Indianapolis who had a beard in 1954 (the year the novel was set), and I imagine that anyone who did would have been called a Commie and run out of town. But now I just smile when the scene is mentioned and say, “Yeah, that really was wild!”

My buy diazepam 10mg tablets publisher sent me on a book tour that summer of 1970 and wanted to add Indianapolis when a local TV station offered to pay all the expenses. I reluctantly agreed, but the plane was forced down at an emergency airstrip in Pittsburgh due to a bomb threat. The flight was scheduled to go to Indy, Kansas City, and San Francisco, and the caller had told TWA, “That flight will never get to Indianapolis.” As we passengers waited in a concrete blockhouse pondering whether to accept the airline’s offer of continuing on when the bomb was not found or returning to New York, I confessed my fears to a woman standing next to me.

“I’m from Bloomington,” she said, “and I’ve heard about your book; if I were you, I’d go back to New York.”

Read the full piece at Indianapolis Monthly

0
Dan Wakefield

Dan Wakefield

Skip to content