Writer in Residence

"A Place in the Sun"

By Julie Joosten

Jane Gregory’s poem articulates exactly my feeling of being in the late afternoon, late April sun today on April 29, 2015:

DOOM / MOOD

In the dumb mud of attention, dear Judge, mood was everything, up to a certain
point, a bunch of what there was. And on the lawn the least of what was known
of the bird was not the feather it left behind where everyone was using the word
labor against the rubble rubble thunder rubble and aspired to the condition of the
music of the condition that aspired to destroy you through music. But I have found
a place in the sun, I said, inaccurate place inaccurate besides, sitting here is no way
a place in the sun, a product of chance overheard as chants over our heads, above
the little distance between ____ & ____. O, say I came to the valley I crossed, I
crossed the valley I came to, let the world rent. Reckon what is absurd to the field,
what wreck declined down that hill, what progress degraded graced the grass the
light went gradually out of? Absurd to the field is this warning, (is this warning
you, Judge, on the lawn), or invention of the miracle I am afflicted with, impossible
to say field or call that field a meadow in the dark. I came upon a marsh in the
dark it came out of, can a field go on with a marsh in its middle, rubble rubble
thunder rubble, on the ledge that any ingress is I’m sure what business did this all
the livelong day, boom.*

*Jane Gregory, My Enemies (Northampton: The Song Cave, 2013) 30.

The views expressed in the Writer-in-Residence blogs are those held by the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Open Book: Toronto.

The views expressed in the Writer-in-Residence blogs are those held by the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Open Book.