Ned Hayes's Blog, page 4

Poem: what they did yesterday afternoon, by Warsan Shire

Poem: what they did yesterday afternoon,

by Warsan Shire

these are what my prayers look like;
dear god
i come from two countries

one is thirsty
the other is on fire
both need water.

later that night

i held an atlas in my lap

ran my fingers across the whole world

and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.

— Warsan Shire

Poem: what they did yesterday afternoon, by Warsan Shire was originally published on Ned Hayes

River of Words

River of Words is the most recent dramatic monologue written and performed by me, for St. David’s Episcopal Church in Portland Oregon for the Easter Vigil Service in April 2020.

The piece is based on the Hebrew Bible story of Mose’s Exodus.

River of Words was originally published on Ned Hayes

Poem: Darkness

Andrew Grace

Placing your foot in a bucket of darkness,

three miles to home: ostrich farm, oat field

pimpled with buttonweed, Rayleigh Scattering dissolved

by mist above. Two hours you spent rivering

a womb-humid artery for floodwater to pass through

& now passage back through steamy membrane of June.

Language between a mother & father on a lit porch

densely sways like a horse bowing but not grazing.

You pass, imagine them saying, “Night is a combine

& we sit like field stones waiting to be scooped up,

rimracking the whole machine.” Anything can be transmitted

over this open frequency, poem, grocery list, prayer, divorce.

She might confess, “Jeffery, I love myself,

yet when it is my turn to speak, I have nothing to say.”

In a glade scoured clean of light, the span moon makes

can be covered over by a fingernail; a hornet’s nest’s worth

of cold in the lungs would be worth all the Seyfert

Galaxy. Past the house, coffin-long trajectories

of spit precede unsure footing. You whisper

your earliest memory of song which held no rhythm,

no harmony, only waverings of voice-litany of sweat

& sawfly, ditch of ragweed you seem to be sinking in to.

Only dark & those restless, unfractured sounds tensing night

do you allow yourself to be sure of-boozy drawl of bees,

wet cricket flex, hollow-noted organ of a train running the line

to a country eroded, rinsed clean, even now.

-Andrew Grace

Poem: Darkness was originally published on Ned Hayes

Poem: A Litany in Time of Plague

A Litany in Time of Plague (1600)

Adieu, farewell, earth’s bliss;

This world uncertain is;

Fond are life’s lustful joys;

Death proves them all but toys;

None from his darts can fly;

I am sick, I must die.

Lord, have mercy on us!

Rich men, trust not in wealth,

Gold cannot buy you health;

Physic himself must fade.

All things to end are made,

The plague full swift goes by;

I am sick, I must die.

Lord, have mercy on us!

Beauty is but a flower

Which wrinkles will devour;

Brightness falls from the air;

Queens have died young and fair.

Dust hath closed Helen’s eye.

I am sick, I must die.

Lord, have mercy on us!

Strength stoops unto the grave,

Worms feed on Hector brave;

Swords may not fight with fate,

Earth still holds *ope her gate.

“Come, come!” the bells do cry.

I am sick, I must die.

Lord, have mercy on us!

Wit with his wantonness

Tasteth death’s bitterness;

Hell’s executioner

Hath no ears for to hear

What vain art can reply.

I am sick, I must die.

Lord, have mercy on us!

Haste, therefore, each degree,

To welcome destiny;

Heaven is our heritage,

Earth is but a player’s stage;

Mount we unto the sky.

I am sick, I must die.

Lord, have mercy on us!

Thomas Nashe (1567 – 1601)

Poem: A Litany in Time of Plague was originally published on Ned Hayes

Poem: Full Moon, March 2020

Full Moon March 2020

Ted Kooser (former US poet laureate)

The moon was in self-isolation, too,

and wearing a white mask as it passed us

in an aisle of the night, keeping a distance

not acknowledging us. It was pushing

a cart heaped up with stars, far more stars

than any moon could ever need, the cart

sparkling, a few little stars falling out,

left behind as the moon rolled past,

on its way towards eternity’s checkout.

Poem: Full Moon, March 2020 was originally published on Ned Hayes

THIS SIDE OF PARADISE: A LETTER FROM F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, QUARANTINED IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE

f. scott fitzgerald in the late 1920s.

(the best quarantine-themed literary parody from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency)

by NICK FARRIELLA

Dearest Rosemary,

It was a limpid dreary day, hung as in a basket from a single dull star. I thank you for your letter. Outside, I perceive what may be a collection of fallen leaves tussling against a trash can. It rings like jazz to my ears. The streets are that empty. It seems as though the bulk of the city has retreated to their quarters, rightfully so. At this time, it seems very poignant to avoid all public spaces. Even the bars, as I told Hemingway, but to that he punched me in the stomach, to which I asked if he had washed his hands. He hadn’t. He is much the denier, that one. Why, he considers the virus to be just influenza. I’m curious of his sources.

The officials have alerted us to ensure we have a month’s worth of necessities. Zelda and I have stocked up on red wine, whiskey, rum, vermouth, absinthe, white wine, sherry, gin, and lord, if we need it, brandy. Please pray for us.

You should see the square, oh, it is terrible. I weep for the damned eventualities this future brings. The long afternoons rolling forward slowly on the ever-slick bottomless highball. Z. says it’s no excuse to drink, but I just can’t seem to steady my hand. In the distance, from my brooding perch, the shoreline is cloaked in a dull haze where I can discern an unremitting penance that has been heading this way for a long, long while. And yet, amongst the cracked cloudline of an evening’s cast, I focus on a single strain of light, calling me forth to believe in a better morrow.

Faithfully yours,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

(the best quarantine-themed literary parody from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency)

THIS SIDE OF PARADISE: A LETTER FROM F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, QUARANTINED IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE was originally published on Ned Hayes

365 Books by Women Authors

For over a century, International Women’s Day has been observed — and this year, the New York Public Library blog has compiled 365 books by women authors from across the globe to keep the celebration going all year long. I’ll be posting one book from this list every day of 2020 — and I hope you find some old favorites and some new discoveries. And I hope that readers can draw strength and inspiration from these 365 books — and the women who wrote them — in the year ahead.

Here’s the NYPL List, which includes a vast range of women authors.

And if you’ve ever heard someone say they “just couldn’t find” a great woman author to read, now you have not one, but 365 suggestions.

1. Leila Aboulela, The Kindness of Enemies

2. Susan Abulhawa, The Blue Between Sky and Water

3. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

4. Etel Adnan, Sea and Fog

5. Marjorie Agosín, A Cross and a Star

6. Ama Atta Aidoo, An Angry Letter in January and Other Poems

7. Naja Marie Aidt, Rock, Paper, Scissors

8. Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

9. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow

10. Elizabeth Alexander, The Light of the World

11. Svetlana Alexievich, Voices From Chernobyl

12. Clare Allan, Poppy Shakespeare

13. Sarah Addison Allen, Lost Lake

14. Isabel Allende, Eva Luna

15. Ruth Almog, Death in the Rain

16. Karin Altenberg, Island of Wings

17. Julia Alvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies

18. Tahmima Anam, The Good Muslim

19. Maya Angelou, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

20. Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, Being and Things On Their Own

21. Natacha Appanah, The Last Brother

22. Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment

23. Chloe Aridjis, Asunder

24. Bridget Asher, All of Us and Everything

25. Margaret Atwood, Oryx & Crake

26. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

27. Mona Awad, 13 Ways of Looking At a Fat Girl

28. Basma Abdel Aziz, The Line

29. Mariama Bâ, Scarlet Song

30. Annie Baker, The Flick

31. Toni Cade Bambara, Those Bones Are Not My Child

32. Sara Baume, Spill Simmer Falter Wither

33. Jo Ann Beard, The Boys of My Youth

34. Gioconda Belli, The Inhabited Woman

35. Karen Bender, Refund

36. Fatima Bhutto, The Shadow of the Crescent Moon

37. Imogen Binnie, Nevada

38. Elizabeth Bishop, Geography III

39. Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

40. Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers

41. Lluba Merlina Bortolani, The Siege

42. Carmen Boullosa, Before

43. Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

44. Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

45. Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

46. Lauren Buekes, The Shining Girls

47. NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

48. Octavia Butler, Kindred

49. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

50. Leonora Carrington, The hearing trumpet

51. Anne Carson, Nox

52. Ana Castillo, Black dove : mamá, mi’jo, and me

53. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee

54. Eileen Chang, Half a Lifelong Romance

55. Jade Chang, The Wangs vs. The World

56. Paulina Chiziane, The First Wife

57. Susan Choi, American Woman

58. Kate Chopin, The Awakening

59. Sonya Chung, Long for This World

60. Caryl Churchill, Top Girls

61. Sandra Cisneros, Loose Woman

62. Hélène Cixous, The Hélène Cixous Reader

63. Lucille Clifton, Mercy

64. Colette, Cheri

65. Lindsey Collen, The Rape of Sita

66. Simin Daneshvar, Sutra & Other Stories

67. Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions

68. Edwidge Danticat, Claire of the Sea Light

69. Meaghan Daum, Unspeakable

70. Lydia Davis, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

71. Dola de Jong, The Tree and the Vine

72. Grazia Deledda, After the Divorce

73. Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

74. Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day

75. Shashi Deshpande, Writing from the Margin and Other Essays

76. Marosa di Giorgio, Diadems: Selected Poems

77. Viola Di Grado, Hollow Heart

78. Emily Dickinson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson

79. Joan Didion, Democracy

80. Dolores Dorantes, Style

81. Rita Dove, On the Bus With Rosa Parks

82. Carol Ann Duffy, The Bees

83. Emiliya Dvoryanova, Concerto for sentence

84. Yasmine El Rashidi, Chronicle of a Last Summer

85. Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero

86. George Eliot, Middlemarch

87. Mona Eltahawy, Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution

88. Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

89. Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Textbook

90. Louise Erdrich, LaRose

91. Laura Esquivel, Pierced by the sun

92. Tarfia Faizullah, Seam

93. Athena Farrokhzad, White Blight

94. Melissa Febos, Abandon Me

95. Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

96. Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend

97. Rosario Ferré, Memoir

98. Anne Finger, Call Me Ahab

99. Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower

100. Melissa Fleming, A Hope More Powerful than the Sea: One Refugee’s Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival

101. Leontia Flynn, Profit and Loss

102. Paula Fox, Desperate Characters

103. Lauren Francis-Sharma, Til the Well Runs Dry

104. Ru Freeman, On Sal Mal Lane

105. Rivka Galchen, Atmospheric Disturbances

106. Mary Gaitskill, The Mare

107. Petina Gappah, The Book of Memory

108. Elena Garro, First love ; &, Look for my obituary

109. Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist

110. Ruby Langford Ginibi, Haunted by the Past

111. Janine di Giovanni, The Morning They Came for Us

112. Patricia Glinton-Meicholas, A Shift In the Light

113. Angela Mangalang Gloria, The Complete Poems of Angela Mangalang Gloria

114. Louise Gluck, Faithful and Virtuous Night

115. Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist

116. Jorie Graham, Erosion

117. Linda LeGarde Grover, The dance boots

118. Paula Gunn Allen, America the Beautiful: Last Poems

119. Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

120. Fariba Hachtroudi, The Man Who Snapped His Fingers

121. Marilyn Hacker, Names

122. Katori Hall, The Mountaintop

123. Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Lonliness

124. Barbara Hammer, Hammer!

125. Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun

126. Githa Hariharan, Almost Home: Finding a Place in the World from Kashmir to New York

127. Joy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

128. Eve Harris, The Marrying of Chani Kaufman

129. Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route

130. Shirley Hazzard, The Transit of Venus

131. Bessie Head, The Collector of Treasures

132. Amy Hempel, Reasons to Live

133. Cristina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans

134. Christine Dwyer Hickey, The Cold Eye of Heaven

135. Akiko Higashimura, Princess Jellyfish

136. Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

137. Hilda Hilst, With My Dog Eyes

138. Arlie Hochschild, The Second Shift

139. Alice Hoffman, Survival Lessons

140. Linda Hogan, Mean Spirit

141. Sara Sue Hoklotubbe, Deception on All Accounts

142. bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

143. Jodie Houser, Faith

144. Keri Hulme, The Bone People

145. Dương Thu Hương, Paradise of the Blind

146. Hồ Xuân Hương, Spring Essence

147. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

148. Ulfat Idilbi, Grandfather’s Tale

149. Naomi Jackson, The Star Side of Bird Hill

150. Margo Jefferson, Negroland

151. Elfriede Jelinek, Women As Lovers

152. Gish Jen, Typical American

153. Amryl Johnson, Sequins For a Ragged Hem

154. June Jordan, Directed by Desire

155. Janine Joseph, Driving Without a License

156. Mieko Kanai, The Word Book

157. Han Kang, The Vegetarian

158. Ghada Karmi, Return: A Palestinian Memoir

159. Mary Karr, The Liar’s Club

160. Kazue Kato, Blue Exorcist

161. Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey

162. Hiromi Kawakami, Manazuru

163. Porochista Khakpour, The Last Illusion

164. Ausma Zehanat Khan, The Unquiet Dead

165. Vénus Khoury-Ghata, A House at the Edge of Tears

166. Suki Kim, Without You, There Is No Us

167. Jamaica Kincaid, See Now Then

168. Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

169. Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior

170. Natsuo Kirino, Out

171. Katie Kitamura, Gone to the Forest

172. Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

173. Anna Kordzaia-Samadashvili, Me, Margarita

174. Sana Krasikov, One More Year

175. Megan Kruse, Call Me Home

176. Jean Kwok, Girl in Translation

177. Kang Kyong-ae, From Wonso Pond

178. Selma Lagerlöf, A Manor House Tale

179. Yanick Lahens, The Colour of Dawn

180. Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland

181. Laila Lalami, Secret Son

182. Nella Larsen, Passing

183. Jeanne Marie Laskas, Concussion

184. Radmila Lazic, A Wake for the Living

185. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

186. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Random Family

187. Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird

188. Jill Leovy, Ghettoside

189. Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems

190. Yiyun Li, Kinder Than Solitude

191. Rosa Liksom, Compartment No. 6

192. Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue

193. Gloria Lisé, Departing at Dawn

194. Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star

195. Marjorie Liu, Monstress: Awakening

196. Inverna Lockpezer, Cuba: My Revolution

197. Joan London, The Golden Age

198. Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

199. Dulce Maria Loynaz, Absolute Solitude

200. Valeria Luiselli, Sidewalks

201. Fiona Maazel, Woke Up Lonely

202. Suah Mae, A Greater Music

203. Nguyen Phan Que Mai, The Secret of Hoa Sen

204. Janet Malcolm, Forty-one False Starts

205. Alia Mamdouh, The Loved Ones

206. Dacia Maraini, The Silent Duchess

207. Dawn Lundy Martin, Life In A Box Is A Pretty Life

208. Bobbie Ann Mason, Clear Springs

209. Ronit Matalon, The Sound of Our Steps

210. Ayana Mathis, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

211. Jane Mayer, Dark Money

212. Imbolo Mbue, Behold the Dreamers

213. Eimear McBride, A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing

214. Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

215. Charlotte McDonald-Gibson, Cast Away

216. Francesca Melandri, Eva Sleeps

217. Rigoberta Menchu, I, Rigoberta Menchu

218. Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs

219. Ai Mi, Under the Hawthorn Tree

220. Jung Mi-kyung, My Son’s Girlfriend

221. Qiu Miaojin, Last Words From Monmartre

222. Amanda Michalopoulou, Why I Killed My Best Friend

223. Lydia Millet, Sweet Lamb of Heaven

224. Gabriela Mistral, Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral

225. Minae Mizumura, A True Novel

226. Nadifa Mohamed, Black Mamba Boy

227. Lorrie Moore, Bark

228. Marianne Moore, The Poems of Marianne Moore

229. Cherrie Moraga, Heroes and Saints & Other Plays

230. Nancy Morejón, Querencias/Homing Instincts

231. Toni Morrison, Sula

232. Scholastique Mukasonga, Cockroaches

233. Bharati Mukherjee, The Tree Bride

234. Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums

235. Alice Munro, Family Furnishings

236. Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head

237. Eileen Myles, School of Fish

238. Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

239. Maggie Nelson, Bluets

240. Guadalupe Nettel, Natural Histories

241. Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You

242. Hualing Nieh, Mulberry and Peach

243. Dorthe Nors, Karate Chop

244. Sara Nović, Girl at War

245. Alissa Nutting, Tampa

246. Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, I Do Not Come to You by Chance

247. Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water

248. Silvia Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

249. Yoko Ogawa, Revenge

250. Nnedi Okorafor, Binti

251. Chinelo Okparanta, Happiness, Like Water

252. Sharon Olds, What Love Comes To

253. Yewande Omotoso, The Woman Next Door

254. Wendy C. Ortiz, Excavation

255. Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic

256. Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

257. Kaori Ozaki, The Gods Lie

258. Ruth Ozeki, All Over Creation

259. Cynthia Ozick, Foreign Bodies

260. ZZ Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

261. Grace Paley, The Little Disturbances of Man

262. Morgan Parker, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce

263. Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog

264. Shahrnush Parsipur, Kissing the Sword

265. Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

266. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

267. Anna Politkovskaya, A Russian Diary

268. Katha Pollitt, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights

269. Dorit Rabinyan, All the Rivers

270. Dawn Raffel, Carrying the Body

271. Claudia Rankine, Citizen

272. Laura Restrepo, Isle of Passion

273. Parisa Reza, The Gardens of Consolation

274. Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

275. Adrienne Rich, Collected Poems, 1950-2012

276. Alifa Rifaat, Distant View of a Minaret and Others Stories

277. Suzanne Rivecca, Death Is Not An Option

278. Riverbend, Baghdad Burning

279. Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Hiroshima in the Morning

280. Merce Rodoreda, The Time of the Doves

281. Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

282. Vedrana Rudan, Night

283. Mary Ruefle, The Most of It

284. Dale Russakoff, The Prize

285. Nelly Sachs, Glowing Enigmas

286. Elif Şafak, Ask

287. Trish Salah, Wanting in Arabic

288. Sonia Sanchez, Does Your House Have Lions?

289. Sappho, The Complete Works of Sappho

290. Noo Saro-Wiwa, Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria

291. Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis

292. Åsne Seierstad, The Angel of Grozny

293. Shanthi Sekaran, Lucky Boy

294. Julia Serano, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive

295. Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton

296. Sonia Shah, Pandemic: Tracking Contagions from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond

297. Kamila Shamsie, Kartography

298. Ntozake Shange, Freedom’s A-Calling Me

299. Solmaz Sharif, Look

300. Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji

301. Kyung-sook Shin, Please Look After Mom

302. Sun Yung Shin, Unbearable Splendor

303. Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book

304. Ana Maria Shuah, The Weight of Temptation

305. Bapsi Sidhwa, Ice-Candy Man

306. Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead

307. Zadie Smith, Swing Time

308. Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars

309. Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

310. Marivi Soliven, The Mango Bride

311. Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

312. Susan Sontag, Styles of Radical Will

313. Ahdaf Soueif, The Map of Love

314. Gertrude Stein, Fernhurst, Q.E.D., and other early writings

315. Ruth Stone, What Love Comes To

316. Aoibbhean Sweeney, Among Other Things, I’ve Taken Up Smoking

317. Mary Szybist, Incarnadine

318. Wislawa Szymborska, Monologue of a Dog

319. Elizabeth Crane, When the Messenger Is Hot

320. Amy Tan, The Valley of Amazement

321. Yoko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear

322. Valerie Taylor, The Girls in 3-B

323. Teffi, Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea

324. Lygia Fagunda Telles, The Girl in the Photograph

325. Ece Temelkuran, Book of the Edge

326. Lynne Tillman, No Lease on Life

327. Taeko Tomioka, Building Waves

328. Tereska Torres, By Cecile

329. Monique Truong, The Book of Salt

330. Marina Tsvetaeva, Moscow in the Plague Year

331. Magdalena Tulli, In Red

332. Dubravka Ugresic, Thank You For Not Reading

333. Sigrid Undset, Gunnar’s Daughter

334. Chika Unigwe, On Black Sisters Street

335. Kirstin Valdez Quade, Night at the Fiestas

336. Jean Valentine, Little Boat

337. Lara Vapnyar, There Are Jews in My House

338. Marja-Liisa Vartio, The Parson’s Widow

339. Josefina Vicens, The Empty Book

340. Alice Walker, The Color Purple

341. Park Wan-suh, Lonesome You

342. Jesmyn Ward, Men We Reaped

343. Sarah Waters, Fingersmith

344. Shannon Watters, Lumberjanes

345. Laurie Weeks, Zipper Mouth

346. Eudora Welty, The Optimist’s Daughter

347. Phyllis Wheatley, The Poetry of Phyllis Wheatley

348. Zoe Wicomb, You Can’t Get Lost In Cape Town

349. Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege

350. G. Willow Wilson, Ms. Marvel

351. Charlotte Wood, The Natural Way of Things

352. Virginia Woolf, Orlando

353. Alexis Wright, Carpentaria

354. Sarah E. Wright, This Child’s Gonna Live

355. Sylvia Wynter, The Hills of Hebron

356. Xuē Xīnrán, The Good Women of China

357. Can Xue, The Last Lover

358. Tiphanie Yanique, Land of Love and Drowning

359. Samar Yazbek, Cinnamon

360. Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

361. Monica Youn, Barter

362. Kang Young-sook, Rina

363. Hsia Yu, Salsa

364. Jessica Zafra, Twisted

365. Haifa Zangana, Dreaming of Baghdad

(List compiled by Gwen Glazer, Sara Beth Joren, Lynn Lobash, Tracy O’Neill, and Nicholas Parker. )

365 Books by Women Authors was originally published on Ned Hayes

The Ghost Stories of Charles Dickens

The holiday season sees a million variations on Charles Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol, yet this marvelous supernatural tale all too often overshadows the ghostly echoes that permeate Dickens’s entire oeuvre. Here’s a brief overview.

In John Irving’s book of personal essays, Saving Piggy Sneed, he describes living with the Great Royal Circus in northwest India. One evening, after a circus performance, he was surprised to see children entranced by a televised version of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. These Hindu children didn’t celebrate Christmas, yet they knew the story well – it was “their favorite ghost story.”

We think of A Christmas Carol as the preeminent story of the holidays, but at heart, it’s a ghost story. Dickens told us this fact in his little preface:

I have endeavored, in this Ghostly little book, to raise the ghost of an idea [in] my readers… may it haunt their houses pleasantly.

Christmas Carol is not Dickens’s only eerie tale. In fact, Charles Dickens grew up with ghost stories and he told them everywhere. He told talked of the supernatural as an integral part of the engine that drove his storytelling. “Dickens’s celebration of ghosts,” writes Irving, “…is but a small part of the author’s abiding faith in the innocence and magic of childhood.” For those of us who know Dickens well, ghosts seem to be ever present.

Ghosts first appear in Pickwick Papers, Dickens’s episodic novel. This early book features Mr. Pickwick, Alfred Jingle, Serjeant Buzfuz, Sammer, The Fat Boy, Mr. Winkle and more (doesn’t Dickens have marvelous character names? They’re better than anything in the Simpsons). Embedded in Pickwick Papers is a story called ‘The Lawyer & the Ghost’. There are also multiple tales told by The One-Eyed Bagman – first is ‘The Queer Chair’, about a wayfarer haunted by unusual furniture, and then there’s ‘The Ghosts of the Mail,’ a story of a mail coach carrying unearthly passengers.

More ghostly tales haunt later sections of the Pickwick Papers. ‘A Madman’s Manuscript’ takes us into the insane realm of a man haunted by spectral presences (this psychological horror story would be right at home alongside John Langan’s or Laird Barron’s current work). And the last of the ghost stories in Pickwick points at the future: ‘The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton’ focuses on a miserly character on Christmas Eve who is woken from his curmudgeonly ways by a supernatural figure. The seeds of Scrooge were planted early!

Nicholas Nickleby, Dickens’s third novel, also includes a pair of ghost stories. ‘The Five Sisters’ is a sad fable, while ‘Baron Koeldwethout’s Apparition’ is funny and entertaining during an otherwise slow part of the novel.

In 1843, after Nicholas Nicklebywas published, the idea of Christmas Carol came to Dickens in a flash and he scribbled it down in a frenzy. Christmas Carol combines the best of Dickens. It is not merely a ghost story, but also a comedic tale (like Pickwick) and a redemptive parable (like Nickleby or later, Oliver Twist) G.K. Chesterton, years later, summed up the appeal of the story: “A Christmas Carol is a happy story because it describes an abrupt and dramatic change… the story owes much of its hilarity to the fact of it being a tale of winter and of a very wintry winter. There is much about comfort in the story; yet the comfort is never enervating.”

After the success of Christmas Carol, Dickens kept writing Christmas-themed pieces, but it took 5 more years until he returned to ghosts. In 1848, he delivered The Haunted Man for the holidays. In this tale, a man named Redlaw is haunted by his past and again faces new decisions about his future. Redlaw is reminiscent of Scrooge, but the story doesn’t have the soft focus of Christmas Carol – there’s a harder and more malevolent edge to the ghostly visitation, and a sense of fear appropriate to a truly horrific paranormal story.

Yet Dickens never succumbed to the foreboding that haunted his characters. By 1850, he produced A Child’s Dream of a Star, the story of a girl ascended to heaven as an angel, who awaits the arrival of her brother. Many readers think this story gives insight into Dickens’s own childhood, specifically to his happy days at St. Mary’s, when he was lifted briefly out of deprivation. In the Dickensian, Walter Dexter mentions that “In A Child’s Dream of a Star, [Dickens] refers very touchingly to those days… From an upper window on one side of the house, the Church and Churchyard of St. Mary’s were visible, just as described in this charming story.”

That same year Dickens also produced a short piece called A Christmas Tree, in which he writes about the different types of ghosts one might encounter during the winter season. Other ghostly apparitions emerge in Dickens’ library of work, most published in magazines he edited. Those stories include ‘To Be Read at Dusk,’ ‘The Ghost Chamber’ (which Dickens himself described as “wild”) and ‘The Haunted House.’

Following this period, Dickens wrote two “serious” novels – Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend. But he followed up that literary heavy lifting with two quick short ghost stories – ‘Trial for Murder’ and ‘The Signal-Man.’ The first one is a fantastic atmospheric piece about a man on a jury who is haunted by the murdered man. It’s also interesting to note that the second one – ‘Signal-Man’ – was thought by many readers to have been based on a real apparition, one which made the headlines for years in the United Kingdom. There are many other ghostly stories that have been variously attributed to Dickens, but the final haunting novel that Dickens claimed as his own was his “spooky” and unfinished last work, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Over the years, I’ve loved reading deeply of Dickens’s oeuvre. It’s amusing and encouraging to realize that such a venerated novelist enjoyed his “childish” ghost stories. In our world today, Dickens would probably be considered a “genre” novelist because he enjoys three things that aren’t found in most of today’s ‘literary’ fiction — broad caricature, a sense of hopefulness (what we’d call ‘sentimentality’ today), and of course, those voices-from-beyond-the-grave that permeate his work. Dickens’s work is full of spooky happenings. His ability to see beyond the mundane and see the inspiration in the ghostly is what makes him such a universally loved storyteller.

FOOTNOTES

Irving was in India doing research for his 1994 novel Son of the Circus.

 See Peter Haining’s introduction to The Complete Ghost Stories of Charles Dickens for the exact citation.

A Christmas Tree was published in Household Words, the magazine Dickens edited for many years.

Dan Simmons’s novel Drood was my Christmas read a few seasons ago. Simmons novel is a marvelous tale of spooky happenings and obsessions in Dickens’s own life, narrated by his rival and friend Wilkie Collins. Drood tries to explain the sequence of events that may have inspired Dickens’s last work.

The Ghost Stories of Charles Dickens was originally published on Ned Hayes

Poem: Journey of the Magi (Read by T.S. Eliot)

A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.’

And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,

And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling

and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,

And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,

And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly

And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,

Sleeping in snatches,

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;

With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,

Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.

But there was no information, and so we continued

And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems, 1909-1962 (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991).
This poem has been shared here under fair use guidelines provided by The Poetry Foundation.

Poem: Journey of the Magi (Read by T.S. Eliot) was originally published on Ned Hayes

Poem: America, I Sing Back

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

America, I Sing Back
for Phil Young, my father, Robert Hedge Coke, Whitman, and Hughes

America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.

Sing back the moment you cherished breath.

Sing you home into yourself and back to reason.

Oh, before America began to sing, I sung her to sleep,

held her cradleboard, wept her into day.

My song gave her creation, prepared her delivery,

held her severed cord beautifully beaded.

My song helped her stand, held her hand for first steps,

nourished her very being, fed her, placed her three sisters strong.

My song comforted her as she battled my reason

broke my long held footing sure, as any child might do.

Lo, as she pushed herself away, forced me to remove myself,

as I cried this country, my song grew roses in each tear’s fall.

My blood veined rivers, painted pipestone quarries

circled canyons, while she made herself maiden fine.

Oh, but here I am, here I am, here, I remain high on each and every peak,

carefully rumbling her great underbelly, prepared to pour forth singing—

and sing again I will, as I have always done.

Never silenced unless in the company of strangers, singing

the stoic face, polite repose, polite, while dancing deep inside, polite

Mother of her world. Sister of myself.

When my song sings aloud again. When I call her back to cradle.

Call her to peer into waters, to behold herself in dark and light,

day and night, call her to sing along, call her to mature, to envision—

Then, she will make herself over. My song will make it so

When she grows far past her self-considered purpose,

I will sing her back, sing her back. I will sing. Oh, I will—I do.

America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke was born in Amarillo, Texas, and grew up in North Carolina, Canada and on the Great Plains. Hedge Coke has worked in factories, tobacco fields, waters and the food service industry since early youth. She finished her GED at 16 years old and went on to study photography, traditional arts, and writing in community education classes at North Carolina State University..

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Poem: America, I Sing Back was originally published on Ned Hayes