How Things Fit Together
by Kevin Oderman
University Press of New England, 2000
Reviewed by Tony Cook, university editor.
Kevin Oderman is a professor of English and creative writing at WVU. How Things Fit Together won the 1999 Katharine Bakeless Nason Literary Publication Prize in Nonfiction, given by the prestigious Bread Loaf Writers' Conference of Middlebury College.
Reading the 15 essays which constitute this volume, one is reminded of great American writers such as Wendell Berry, Eudora Welty, Ernest Hemingway, and Henry David Thoreau. These writers seem to possess a preternatural ability to see and reveal to others the organic structure of life and to construct metaphors which speak wisely on the relationships between humankind and the rest of the natural world.
While it belongs to this literary panicle, Oderman's voice differs from those of many other writers who find inspiration in nature. Rather than drawing firm conclusions about the interplay between humans and nature, his perspective remains tentative and impressionable. When he writes of shooting a magnificent caribou buck, then clumsily butchering it and hanging its antlers in the family garage to rot—every glimpse of the decaying trophy over the years reinforcing the memory of the long-ago hunt—he seems to be asking himself: Why was I in that place, at that time, to do what I did?
Translating experience into memory, and memories into a life story, is the seed of Oderman's writing. That in mind, this book's title seems more speculative than declarative, not offering a explanation of "how things fit together." Rather, posing the question: How do things fit together?
The book takes its title from the opening
essay, a meditation based on James Agee's A Death in the Family.
Oderman tells of his lifelong relationship with this novel, first
encountered during his youth as a volume which bore an illustration
of a Morris chair on its cover. The chair, solidly constructed
in the Arts and Crafts style, impresses Oderman as a thing more
lasting than the life of its owner.
A structural analysis of such chairs follows, with descriptions
of mortise-and-tendon, tongue-and-groove, dovetail, and butterfly
joints—simple construction techniques which transform boards
into furniture that can stand the test of time. But, as with
the lives of those who sit in them, the chairs cannot hold out
against unforeseen calamities. The final paragraph of the essay
relates an ironic anecdote about friends whose houseguests broke
up and burned their heavy Mission furniture in order to keep
warm. I
n his other essays, Oderman travels in Greece, Turkey, Utah, Wyoming, Alaska, and his native Oregon. There are accounts of fly-fishing, camping, shopping, visiting museums, taking ferry rides, and other activities that have impressed themselves in the author's memory. Always, the act of remembering is suffused with reflection on the "why." The memories are related in clear prose, yet there remains an interpretive haze surrounding them. Oderman writes: "Often, of course, we fall under the spell of clarity. An idea well stated is so much less messy than a thing, than something happening." In the haze, he seems to believe, we find something nearer to truth.
How Things Fit Together can be interpreted as an extended essay on the art of composition: of literature and of a life. What to include, what to ignore, how to state the thing clearly, what to edit out—for Oderman these acts of composition parallel the living, remembering, and accounting of one's actions and emotions that make up a human life itself.
Wild Sweet
Notes:
Fifty Years of West Virginia Poetry, 1950-1999
Edited by Barbara Smith and Kirk Judd
Publishers Place, 2000
In 1998, Patrick Grace and Mark Phillips
of Publishers Place Inc., decided to produce an anthology of
West Virginia poetry written during the past 50 years. The two
contacted Barbara Smith, former chair of humanities and professor
of literature and writing at Alderson-Broaddus College in Philippi,
and Kirk Judd, a Huntington-based poet known for dramatic readings
and his work with the grassroots writers' organization West Virginia
Writers Inc.
Accepting the formidable task of sifting through the writings
of 175 poets, including 120 who are alive and productive, Smith
and Judd selected more than 330 poems by more than 130 West Virginia
poets for publication in Wild Sweet Notes. The book takes
its title from a line in the poem "Appalachia" by the
late Muriel Miller Dressler.
Poets with ties to West Virginia University are among those selected.
These include WVU faculty members Gail Galloway Adams, Lloyd
Davis, Winston Fuller, James Harms, and Norman Jordan. Among
the WVU alumni whose work appears are Lenore McComas Coberly,
Mary Lucille DeBerry, Harriet Emerson, Dreama Wyant Frisk, Mabel
D. Gilmore, Jeff Mann, Bonni McKeown, Doris Miller, Valerie Nieman,
David B. Prather, Bonnie Proudfoot, Bob Snyder, Twyla S. Vincent,
and Randy Wilkins.
The editors also used the resources of the West Virginia University
Libraries and its special collections on Appalachian culture
to locate works by West Virginia poets of the 20th century.
But, this book is not just a showcase for talents developed at
WVU. Like the poems themselves, the poets represent a broad cross-section
of West Virginia. Some are self-educated; others have multiple
graduate degrees. Some are educators; others are nurses, homemakers,
technical writers, full-time freelancers. All the poets in Wild
Sweet Notes were born or lived at least five years in the
state, published at least one poem in a national forum for poetry,
and are considered "established" by at least two other
nationally recognized West Virginia poets.
No matter whether one is a reader of literature or an aficionado
of poetry, the poems in Wild Sweet Notes will tug at the
heartstrings of those who know the Mountain State. Consider some
of the titles: "Three Women on a Porch" (Gail Galloway
Adams), "Saturday Night Jamboree" (Debra Conner), "Back
Roads by Night" (Peter Makuck), "The Burying Ground"
(Rosemary Marshall), "Coal Miners Off Duty" (Bonni
McKeown), "Steel Mill Ornithology" (Tim Russell), "The
Old Family Album" (Jessie Tresham).
With insights into Japanese flower gardening and hog butchering,
into mother-daughter relationships and horse trading, in verse
that is wistful or bright or drenched in rural beauty, this anthology
surprises and delights. Its appeal extends to readers young and
old, to anyone who responds to natural beauty and truth.
When the book was published last year, Governor Cecil Underwood
invited all the contributors to a reception in their honor. He
ordered every middle school and high school library in the state
to make a copy available, calling Wild Sweet Notes "a
source of tremendous inspiration for West Virginia's students
and adult lovers of literature." The West Virginia Library
Commission purchased a copy for each public library.
Wild Sweet Notes is available from bookstores or by calling
Publishers Place Inc. at (304) 697-3236 or 1-800-394-6909. The
432-page book sells for $19.95 in softcover, $29.95 hardbound.
Publishers Place Inc. is a nonprofit consortium which encourages
publishing in West Virginia. More information is available at
www.publishersplace.org.