Writing and a sense of place

 My friend Christopher sent me a copy of Barry Lopez’s essay “A Literature of Place.”

I replied with some poems by Lorine Niedecker, a poet with a strong sense of place.

And so a conversation began. We talked about writing and people who seem to be grounded in a place, almost rooted like a tree.

The conversation has gone on to other topics, and I’m just now remembering this:

Ezra Pound, after he’d gotten cranky and far less generous with his advice, told William Carlos Williams he ought to read George Crabbe’s poem “The Village.”

Crabbe, 1755-1832, was born in humble circumstances in Suffolk and was apprenticed to a farmer for a while. He later moved on to London and to other things, including medicine and poetry.

“The Village” is a long poem about village life, something that poets and novelists tended to portray in romantic light. Crabbe wanted to paint the village more honestly, more realistically.

I grant indeed that fields and flocks have charms 

For him that gazes or for him that farms; 

But when amid such pleasing scenes I trace 

The poor laborious natives of the place, 

And see the mid-day sun, with fervid ray, 

On their bare heads and dewy temples play;

While some, with feebler heads and fainter hearts, 

Deplore their fortune, yet sustain their parts: 

Then shall I dare these real ills to hide 

In tinsel trappings of poetic pride?

Crabbe’s village has a poorhouse, lonely widows and hungry people.

Pound gave a lot of advice to other writers, ranging from good to bewildering.

I’m not sure that Williams listened, but he wrote “Paterson,” a long poem about a place.