I had a summer that didn't use much of my mind, so then I lost words. And my body, too, began to dwindle, only I gained weight in the process.
So when Jessica Lowenthal invited me to the reception honoring Julia Bloch, the new director of Creative Writing at Penn, I had many concerns. One: my wrong hair. Two: my wrong shoes. Also (like I told Jay Kirk and then Greg Djanikian and maybe even Tom Devaney and Avery Rome and Stephen Fried, but not my students Nina and David, or maybe I did, because I don't know, I was feeling irresponsible, and did I tell Al Filreis, too?, but I know I did not so burden Jamie-Lee Josselyn, Lorene Carey, Max or Sam Apple, at least I hope not), I had lost my personality. Left it somewhere. In the summer.
(Perhaps that's a good thing?)
But I went anyway, talking to my son by phone while in transit so that I would not turn back because, as I have noted, everything about me was not quite right, and if I'd not been talking with him, I'd have talked myself back onto the train and headed reverse west, for home.
Then I crossed the threshold at Kelly Writers House (there's always a little thrill involved) and everything changed. The place was just, well, filling up. With faculty members I respect and love, and students I adore. Soon (or, it actually happened first) Jessica herself was taking me on a tour of the new Wexler studio, and bam. I didn't look right, but something happened. I felt as if I belonged.
Then the star of our evening, the star of our program, stepped forward and faced a crowded, beaming room and began to read poems from
Valley Fever (Sidebrow Books) and
Hollywood Forever (Little Red Leaves Journal & Press, the Textile Series) and I, sitting there in the front row, began to feel a hot little prickle inside my head. Like the blank nothing of my thoughts was getting Braille-machine punched by all the delicious oddness of Julia's phrasing and syntax, occasionally repurposed lines, jokes I got and maybe didn't always entirely get (because, as I always say and forever mean, I am just not that smart). Julia was talking and then (I heard this) she was singing, but without any change in the pitch of her voice. Singing by exuding whole phrases in one long breath, then stopping (beat/beat) and starting again. It was like being driven in a car with the windows down, at night, when there is a lot of open road but also some bright red traffic lights.
Damn, I thought.
What do I mean, how can I explain this? These coupled and uncoupled ideas, the surreality of words you assume have been fashioned from parts, the winnowed down ideas that, when toppled and stacked, say something.
Mean something. Even if you can't actually always articulate what you have been stung by, you know you have been stung.
Here is half of "Wolverine," from
Valley Fever, a poem I instinctively love, also a poem I will ponder for quite some time.
Wolverine
I was only pretending
to be epiphanic
she said, tossing the whole
day over the embankment.
Is the heart collandered
or semiprecious
filled with holes
and therefore filled with light —
....
This afternoon, following a morning of work and a conversation with a friend, I read Julia's two books through, cover to cover. I hovered. I felt that warm thing happen again in my head, that invitation I will, as a writer and reader, always accept—to slam and scram the words around, to make the heart inside the brain beat again.
Thank you, Julia, for making my brain heart beat again.
And. You are going to be terrific. You already are.
At the Pennsylvania Library Association Convention on Monday, Stephen Fried and I talked, with considerable conviction and some debate, about nonfiction and its various permutations. We talked about research—why and how we do it, why we love it, how we wouldn't exist without our libraries and primary sources. As always, Stephen was impressive—his deep need to know, his great defense of nonfiction, his glorious insistence on getting to the root of the matter. To read the document through. To hold the thing in one's hand. To locate, for each fact, a context.
But perhaps it was the drive to and from Lancaster that I treasured most—the winding way through farm country, the roadside attractions of Bird-in-Hand, the horses on the roads before us, and the talk, the always talk, about what we do and what we yearn to do, the students we've taught, the questions about what yet lies ahead.
A long-time friend. Treasured.
Thank you, Karl and PaLA, for inviting us.
On November 6th (or thereabouts) writers and illustrators from across the great state of Pennsylvania will be stepping inside libraries to celebrate the impact libraries have on our lives and to remind our communities of the importance of safeguarding these essential institutions going forward. I have been paired with Downingtown High School (West) and librarian Michelle Nass, and what a day we are cooking up—four presentations on the Berlin Wall and the library research that led to that book's creation, and an afternoon among high school book clubbers who are reading Going Over.
I'm delighted and honored to be involved. It's a huge program, thoughtfully developed and executed by a team of librarians—including Margie Stern, the Coordinator of Youth Services in the Delaware County Library System—and eagerly participated in by those many of us who have relied on libraries throughout our careers (and long before "career" was a word we even entertained).
This weekend, the 2014 Pennsylvania Library Association Conference gets underway at the Lancaster County Convention Center. I'm grateful to have been joined with writer/teacher/editor/friend Stephen Fried (Thing of Beauty, Bitter Pills, The New Rabbi, Husbandry, Appetite for America) and Neal Bascomb (The Nazi Hunters, The Perfect Mile, Red Mutiny) for a Monday, 2:00 panel on nonfiction. I'm grateful, too, for the chance to hang out with the guardians of books, otherwise known as librarians. Thank you to Karl R. for the invitation.
If you are at the event, I hope you'll find us.
Yesterday the
Temple University Press fall catalog arrived and
Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River, now released as a paperback all these years after it first appeared in hardback form, is featured among the pages.
Later this year, on July 15th, I'll be with my dear friends at the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center, leading a river-oriented writing workshop. On September 29, I'll be joining Stephen Fried and Neal Bascomb at the Pennsylvania Library Convention, for a nonfiction panel;
Flow will be part of that story. On October 14 and 16, I'll be giving two keynote addresses in honor of the Schuylkill's place as 2014 River of the Year, at Montgomery County Community College and Trinity Urban Life Center, thanks to my friends at Schuylkill River Heritage Area. Next year, in April, I'll be traveling to Washington DC, to meet the 7th and 8th graders of St. Albans Lower School, where
Flow is the required summer read, and, later, to Pentagon City, VA, to conduct a writing workshop (
Flow and
Handling the Truth inspired) for
New Directions in Writing (more on that soon). Other events are in the making.
In celebration of this paperback dream fulfilled, I would like to extend an invitation to you. Write, in the comment box here, a favorite memory of a river—any river, any state. Your comment doesn't have to be long. It just has to
mean something. Three of you who comment here (and who live in the United States) will win a paperback copy of
Flow. The contest ends June 27th.
The Temple University catalog page, in full:
Flow:
The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River
Listen to a podcast, of Beth Kephart's keynote address at the Bank Street College of Education, 9 November 2013.
"Beth Kephart's Flow is just a sumptuous book — haunting, poetic, lit up with gems of beauty and history. We engorge ourselves on materialism. The legacy of our generation will be our consumerism. But Flow and its exquisite evocation of the Schuylkill River reminds us that nature still trumps everything. Which makes the book all the more beautiful and all the more rare."
—Buzz Bissinger, author of A Prayer for the City and Friday Night Lights
The Schuylkill River — the name in Dutch means "hidden creek" — courses many miles, turning through Philadelphia before it yields to the Delaware. "I am this wide. I am this deep. A tad voluptuous, but only in places," writes Beth Kephart, capturing the voice of this natural resource in Flow.
An award-winning author, Kephart's elegant, impressionistic story of the Schuylkill navigates the beating heart of this magnificent water source. Readers are invited to flow through time-from the colonial era and Ben Franklin's death through episodes of Yellow Fever and the Winter of 1872, when the river froze over-to the present day. Readers will feel the silt of the Schuylkill's banks, swim with its perch and catfish, and cruise-or scull-downstream, from Reading to Valley Forge to the Water Works outside center city.
Flow's lush narrative is peppered with lovely, black and white photographs and illustrations depicting the river's history, its people, and its gorgeous vistas. Written with wisdom and with awe for one of the oldest friends of all Philadelphians, Flow is a perfect book for reading while the ice melts, and for slipping in your bag for your own visit to the Schuylkill.
Reviews
"Only a poet and writer of Beth Kephart's lyric talent could give us a voice worthy of the great Schuylkill River. We have waited eons to hear the story she (and the river is a 'she') tells us, and Flow is worth the wait: Here is a song enriched with falling leaves and ascending souls; a poem composed of time and wind, fish and flotsam; and a riveting narrative of some of America's greatest heroes as well as some of our history's worst mistakes. Flow is seductive, thrilling, irresistible, life-changing. You cannot help but be swept away."
—Sy Montgomery, author of The Journey of the Pink Dolphins and The Good, Good Pig
"Kephart...provides an intimate meditation on the Schuylkill’s story."
—Philadelphia Style
"In this autobiographical treatment, Kephart uses short lyrical essays and black-and-white photographs to let the Schuylkill River recount its life, it’s origin in creation and geography, its place in history, the famous personalities who graced its shores and crossed its water and its place in the hearts of Philadelphians who rely on it for water, recreation and solace."
—The Patriot-News
"Flow is a poetic meditation on the Schuylkill River’s place in Philadelphia’s history, transporting you back in time."
—Filmbill
"In her new book, Devon’s Beth Kephart poeticizes Philadelphia through the keen observations of its eldest resident, the Schuylkill River, which has long served as the city’s source of water, power, industry, and beauty. Flow adapts the river’s motion, winding past local events and retelling them with an imaginative and poignant voice."
—Main Line Today
"Kephart's well-researched essays provide historical nuance...a prescient contemporary account of the city's history. But it is the narrative poetry, in the taut female voice of the river, which makes this a book to descend into, slowly, with all senses at the ready....Kephart is a master not only of descriptive memory, but of constructing an existential vocabulary."
—The Philadelphia City Paper
"[I]t goes proudly on your coffee table to advertise your intelligent indie reading."
—aroundphilly.com
"I’ll see the Schuylkill differently on my ride home tonight, and maybe it’ll be a closer friend now."
—UWISHUNU
"From the first footsteps of Native Americans, to wars, progress, industrialization, and beyond, the river serves up commentary with a mix of plain-spoken facts, dramatic embellishments and historical illustrations. The result is an engrossing and unusual take on the area."
—Arrive
"An admirer transforms her glimpses of the life of the Schuylkill — once wild then pressed into human service, and now rediscovered for its remnant beauty— into spare prose that is often moving, whether or not you live in Philly."
—Orion
"In this autobiographical treatment, Kephart uses short lyrical essays and black-and-white photographs to let the Schuylkill River recount its life, its origin in creation and geography, it’s place in history, the famous personalities who graced its shores and crossed its water and its place in the hearts of Philadelphians who rely on it for water, recreation and solace."
—The Patriot-News
"I can’t imagine a more beautiful book about a river than Flow."
—University City Review
“Kephart gives the Schuylkill a voice, a memory, a melancholic sensibility. She has given us a finely-tuned and moving work of art, an exquisite book of loss and wanting. In 76 narrative poems and nearly as many short historical essays, Kephart returns the ‘hidden river’ to its place in our hearts.”
—Context
"What a gem!... I could not have asked for a more beautifully written, poetic and personal story of the Schuylkill River.... You may want to read this during the summer, when you can relax and absorb its powerful tale."
—St. Albans Lower School blog
Readers of this blog know just how much I adored Buzz Bissinger's forthcoming memoir
Father's Day. I wrote about it here not
once, but
twice. I read passages out loud to my students. I told a seatmate on a train. I just kinda—well, did my thing.
There goes Miss Crazy Effusive again.Philadelphia-area readers and thinkers and hearts (that's all of us, right?) now have a chance not just to meet Buzz and hear him talk about the making of the memoir, the glories and heartbreak of fatherhood, and the art of the rave (don't you want to hear Buzz talk about the art of the rave?), but to support a really important cause—the
Spells Writing Lab, a literacy-focused organization that offers after-school tutoring, weekend writing workshops, in-school assistance with student publications, and professional development opportunities for teachers. If that's not enough to persuade you, consider the composition of its advisory board, which is rocked by Stephen Fried, Elizabeth Gilbert, Carol Saline, Lisa Scottoline, Lori Tharps, and Caroline Tiger, among others.
The event is taking place at the Loews Hotel on 1200 Market Street, Philadelphia, on May 10, 2012. It begins at 6:15, and Anyone Who is Anyone will be there. (I hope to make it, too.) More information can be found
right here.
Sounds like a great event.