The good folks at Utah State University Press have made an offer to publish The Poetry of Place in June 2005. We are overjoyed to have a home for this extraordinary project. We will hunker down in NW Arkansas for the next few months as I finish the book.
155 days or so later, we drove back into the restful and pleasant burg of Bella Vista, AR, the home to our furniture, my wife's parents, and a small house we bought last summer. 5 months to the day that we left to head north toward Kansas and the first October interviews, we eased the dependable, honorable, and lovable Winnie Cooper into the driveway and put it in park one last time. Oh, she didn't know what was coming, and, 2 days after making the decision to let her go, we're a little surprised ourselves.
But as the major traveling for the book has ended - we still have one-off trips to Lubbock, Salt Lake City, and Chicago - we simply no longer need the rolling tin can home on wheels.
We toyed with keeping her. We've talked about storing her, keeping her for later, for next summer when we might want to sprint up to Cape Cod for a week or something. But it's a pricey little item and we'd like to get some money back out of her at a spectacularly good time to be in the RV marketplace. She's a 2004 model, it's spring, it's clean and lovely, loaded with features.
We will never forget her, of course. This trip has been the single grandest journey of our lives. The scope of it continues to amaze us. And for nearly all of it we lived in Winnie, snaking up and down the Rockies, wounded but still protected from the howling rain and wind of an Oregon winter, resting on the desert floor more than 200 feet below sea level in Death Valley, spending the night in a rest area in Mississippi. Oh sure, I'm nostalgic now that the "For Sale" sign is on her, but there were dark moments.
It's a small space to live in. Sure, it's got a fridge, oven, microwave, shower, bathroom, dinette, couch, queen sized bed, closets, and cabinets. But it's not like living in a house where there is space between these things. It's not like in a house where you can actually turn around in the shower, for example. (Some days I washed my front; other days my back.) There's nowhere to get away from the wife (or, the husband, as my wife will tell you). There's no basement, no attic, no corner in which you may go and sob when the confinement gets to be too much. (Yes, I know one can go outside. But I'm so sensitive to temperature changes that it's hardly ever an option - unless I'm smoking a cigar...then it's all right.)
Oh, and the plumbing. I've battled with the notion of this story for a few days, and it's clear to me that my gentle readers don't need many details. But, when living full time in an RV, there is the occasional need (like every 3 f&*%ing days) to empty the tanks, a gray one that holds water from the sinks and shower, and the black one that holds - well - the waste and sewage from the toilet.
See, I knew you were too dainty. Several of you just gasped. One of you put your hand over your eyes, and one just turned away from the screen.
A few days ago I was down in a crouch making the necessary connections to empty our tanks and get on to the next town. It's something we've done more than 50 times, so it's not some great technological challenge. There's a big hose, a big spout, and a big hole in the ground (usually called a dump station - love that terminology). There are two handles down there, one for the black tank and one for the gray, and while emptying the black tank, I could tell there was something wrong. The flow was not satisfying. I didn't hear the pleasant "woosh" that lets you know that matter is running freely.
What was worse was that when I tried to close the black tank, the handle would not close. It would almost close, but when dealing with raw sewage, almost isn't enough.
As in every thing we've done these past months, my wife and I each have our duties in any particular task. I buy the groceries, but she did all the cooking. I drove a lot more than she did, but nobody could have navigated us better. I held the remote control to our DirecTV system, but she told me which numbers to press. She will hate me for this, and I am sure to suffer punishments unknown, but in this particular job - the emptying of the tanks - my wife's duties are to put things away once I have done the dirty work. Sure, she rinses the hose as well, but you know what? I wouldn't mind running some clear spring water on a hose every once in a while, and then placing the hose in a bin. That sounds like a little slice of heaven, a walk in the park, an ice cream cone on a summer day. Especially to a guy who handles human waste and pulls the black handle!
Anyway, my wife was behind me, waiting with her little water hose when I made an executive decision. Because the waste wouldn't come to me, because the black tank would not empty, I decided to investigate.
Sure, turn away. This may be too rough for you. Maybe you're all a little squeamish. Go back to your pleasant thoughts and rose gardens. Run, if you must, but this was not an option for me.
I unhooked the sewer hose and the rest of the tale is too horrible to tell. Suffice it to say, when the black tank did "loosen" up, there was a mighty roar and a mighty suffering that befell us. Those clothes I was wearing that day are gone, left in a dumpster in a rest area many miles away. Those shoes. My coat. All victims of my hubris, my stupidity, my desire to tempt the RV God Winnebagus.
But you know, I got clean. It took some doing, a lot of soap and Purell. A lot of those little Clorox handi-wipes. I have more clothes. My skin is red and raw from the scrubbing, and most nights now I still wake in fright, still hearing the sound of the explosions, my own girlish screaming, the smell, the horrible realization that it was too late to hook up the hose. Sure, my wife ran a little water over the hose when it was all done, but we felt that maybe this was enough of all that.
It seemed a sign. We were within a day of "home" when Winnie broke my heart.
But I'd do it again. I'd do everything. I'd swing wide of that house we hit in Oregon (go back to November 16, 2003 if you want to relive that), and I'd leave the sewer hose on next time. But I'd do it all again. I just hope I don't have to.
Frederick Smock's writing room is spartan and perfect. A tiny wooden desk sits in one corner next to a large wood-framed window (a dozen panes easy). Out the window is the small street in front of Smock's apartment (in a 2 story home from 20s or so). Past Smock's street, but straight out the 2nd floor window, is Cave Hill cemetery, a sweeping and gigantic mid 19th century graveyard where Smock's grandparents rest.
In front of the desk is a rolling wooden chair with two overstuffed pillows. It's the kind of chair one could sit at for a while. The small writing surface is lit by a 9 inch lamp. A few small volumes crowd one side; in the middle is a stack of stapled pages.
The adjoining right hand wall has a single 48 inch tall bookshelf. It's full, but not overfull. The back wall, facing the window, facing the desk, features a tiny end table and a big red futon. I sit on the futon and face Smock in his chair and I notice for the first time a dark and large unframed oil nude against the room's fourth wall.
Smock paints, and later we will go through a doorway to see his painting studio. I ask him about the connectors between painting and poetry and he talks a bit about that.
I ask him about his long tenure as the editor for The American Voice, a splendid literary magazine - featuring work from U.S., Canada, and Latin America - that ceased publication in the late 90s. He tells me about some of the poets whose work graced those fine pages and then pulls out and gives me the terrific end of publication anthology - available through University of Kentucky Press.
I ask my favorite question, the one about a poet's "obligation" to capture something of his/her place in the world. He rejects "obligation," but confesses the job of writing about his part of the world is something that interests him all the same.
The room is quiet and still, and the peaceful space has taken me in. Smock's voice is even, and his motions are muted, tiny. He sips occasionally from a coffee cup. Sometimes his hands clasp. After we finish talking about his poetry and Louisville - and those two things are clearly at the heart of Smock's life. On one wall are about a dozen canvases (for a gallery show, his second ever). He admits freely he's an amateur, but his passion for it is pretty clear. The canvases are all landscapes, each packed with color, most with heavy, dark skies, far-off buildings, the occasional tree in the foreground. They are like a dozen versions of one image, each slightly different. He's working it out, placing and replacing the elements. I'd like to stick around and see the final canvas, where he gets everything where he wants it.
And I'm struck right then by the memory of a poem of his that I'm fond of, one from a literary magazine somewhere. "On the Fields of France" is nine lines long, just a whisper of a poem in some way. But - like most great poetry, and like most of Smock's - it's spare, minus all the things that might hold it down or puff it up. Each line a revelation. Each line a new opening, a new space in the poem, a new idea so unlikely and surprising that there's a breathless little turn down to the next line.
At the ultimate line - a revealing sort of filmic ending with just the moon pouring down - the poem disappears quietly. Its construction is so sure, that the removal of a single image would strip something. The movement of one word would render the mystery unsolvable.
I wonder how many drafts. How many sketches. How many canvases before it became whole.
We shoot some shots by the window, and then go down the stairs into the morning coolness. Smock has on a coat. As I get the camera focused, he looks away from me, across and down the street.
Tales from W.T. Pfefferle's year-long journey around the country assembling material for his new book project, Poets on Place (Utah State University Press, Spring 2005) © W.T. Pfefferle 2005
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