Point of Connection

I was thinking a bit about the reactions to the excerpt from Marshall Washer. It’s funny, but I never really considered that anyone would find it depressing or a downer. I think that’s because when I read that passage, I hear the language, not the words, if that makes any sense, and I think the language is something to behold. I also think it’s because when I read about Marshall, I have in my mind very particular images of specific people I know. People I respect and admire.

In 1947, there were 11,206 dairy farms in Vermont. Now, there are 992, making even more milk than all those 11,000 combined. I believe Carruth wrote that poem sometime in the early 70’s, when Vermont had about 5,000 dairy farms left. You can see how he might’ve viewed Marshall’s farm as being doomed, but the truth is he didn’t know the half of it, because between then and now, another 4,000 or more Marshalls have hung up their milking machines. Those empty barns are everywhere, leaning into the ground.

Will says it’s only the farmer who’s doomable, not the farm. Maybe he’s right. I don’t know. Maybe every generation or two has its version of farming and Marshall just had the misfortune of getting caught between generations. Around here, there is undoubtably an increase in a certain type of farming. The value-added artisan producers are making money. They’re doing well. Expanding. And there are still a few small dairies making a go of it. But man. The work. I’m close enough to it to know what it takes, and it takes a lot. A whole lot.

There’s another reason I think that passage isn’t depressing to me. That’s because it speaks of a man who knows his knowledge is useless but holds onto it anyway. Cultivates it, even. Because of course it’s not actually useless; it is only useless to those who define it as useless, who do not understand or care how it fits into all the small folds of Marshall’s life. I bet Marshall knew all this, even if he never spoke it, though of course I can’t know for certain. I didn’t know Marshall. I only know people who remind me of him, or at least the version of him I know from the poem.

It’s funny, but when I chose those images of Rye working the cow hide I wasn’t thinking of how they related to the poem. Not consciously, anyway. But I see it now. Fleshing a hide. Stretching it. Drying it. Scraping it. Working it. And for what? To make cow hide sandals in a world of Nikes?

But here’s the thing, and Carruth mentions it right there in that excerpt, albeit in a different context. But to live on a doomed farm is worse. It must be worse. There the exact point of connection, gate of conversion, is – mind and life.

In other words, the thing that makes it worse – that point of connection, gate of conversion – is the very thing that makes it worth everything to begin with.

 

Another excerpt from the poem:

He sows

his millet broadcast, swinging left to right,

a half-acre for the cows’ “fall tonic” before

they go in the barn for good; an easy motion,

slow swinging, a slow dance in the field, and just

the opposite, right to left, for the scythe 

or the brush-hook. Yes, I have seen such dancing

by a man alone in the slant of the afternoon. 

At his anvil with his big smith’s hammer

he can pound shape back in a wagon iron, or tap

a butternut so it just lies open. When he skids 

a pine log out of the woods he stands in front 

of his horse and hollers, “Gee-up, goddamn it,” 

“Back, you ornery son-of-a-bitch,” and then

when the chain rattles loose and the log settles 

on the stage, he slicks down the horse’s sweaty

neck and pulls its ears. In October he eases 

the potatoes out of the ground in their rows, 

gentle with the potato-hook, then leans and takes

 a big one in his hand, and rubs it clean

with his thumbs, and smells it, and looks

along the new-turned frosty earth to fields, 

to hills, to the mountain, forests in their color

each fall no less awesome.