{"id":3921,"date":"2022-07-28T09:36:54","date_gmt":"2022-07-28T13:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/?p=3921"},"modified":"2022-07-28T09:36:56","modified_gmt":"2022-07-28T13:36:56","slug":"a-poem-for-a-thursday-187","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/2022\/07\/28\/a-poem-for-a-thursday-187\/","title":{"rendered":"A Poem for a Thursday #187"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Laura Seaman<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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B. H. Fairchild is an American poet. He was born in Texas in 1942 and grew up in Texas and Kansas. His poetry explores the “empty landscapes of his birth and the lives of its working-class residents.” Barbara Berman in the Rumpus <\/em>said of Fairchild’s poetry, “Gritty meets exalted and gets the shadows just right.” I love the description and the beauty he conveys in the scene described in today’s poem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had to look up the word “Dumka.” According to Collins English Dictionary <\/em>it is “a piece of Slavonic music that typically has abrupt changes in mood from sadness to joy.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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His parents would sit alone together\n on the blue divan in the small living room\nlistening to Dvorak's piano quintet.\nThey would sit there in their old age,\nside by side, quite still, backs rigid, hands\nin their laps, and look straight ahead\nat the yellow light of the phonograph\nthat seemed as distant as a lamplit\nwindow seen across the plains late at night.\nThey would sit quietly as something dense\n\nand radiant swirled around them, something\nlike the dust storms of the thirties that began\nby smearing the sky green with doom\nbut afterwards drenched the air with an amber\nglow and then vanished, leaving profiles \nof children on pillows and a pale gauze\nover mantles and table tops. But it was \nthe memory of dust that encircled them now\nand made them smile faintly and raise \nor bow their heads as they spoke about\n\nthe farm in twilight with piano music \nspiraling out across red roads and fields\nof maize, bread lines in the city, women\nand men lining main streets like mannequins\nand then the war, the white frame rent house,\nand the homecoming, and afterwards, green lawns\nand a new piano with its mahogany gleam\nlike pond ice at dawn, and now alone\nin the house in the vanishing neighborhood,\n\nthe slow mornings of coffee and newspapers\nand evenings of music and scattered bits\nof talk like leaves suddenly fallen before\none notices the new season. And they would sit\nthere alone and soon he would reach across\nand lift her hand as if it were the last unbroken\nleaf and he would hold her hand in his hand\nfor a long time and they would look far off \ninto the music of their lives as they sat alone\ntogether in the room in the house in Kansas.\n\nThe Dumka\nB. H. Fairchild\n\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
B. H. Fairchild is an American poet. He was born in Texas in 1942 and grew up in Texas and Kansas. His poetry explores the “empty landscapes of his birth and the lives of its working-class residents.” Barbara Berman in the Rumpus said of Fairchild’s poetry, “Gritty meets exalted and gets the shadows just right.” I love the description and the beauty he conveys in the scene described in today’s poem. I had to look up the word “Dumka.” According to Collins English Dictionary it is “a piece of Slavonic music that typically has abrupt changes in mood from sadness to joy.” His parents would sit alone together on the blue divan in the small living room listening to Dvorak’s piano quintet. They would sit there in their old age, side by side, quite still, backs rigid, hands in their laps, and look straight ahead at the yellow light of the phonograph that seemed as distant as a lamplit window seen across the plains late at night. They would sit quietly as something dense and radiant swirled around them, something like the dust storms of the thirties that began by smearing the sky green with doom but afterwards drenched the air with an amber glow and then vanished, leaving profiles of children on pillows and a pale gauze over mantles and table tops. But it was the memory of dust that encircled them now and made them smile faintly and raise or bow their heads as they spoke about the farm in twilight with piano music spiraling out across red roads and fields of maize, bread lines in the city, women and men lining main streets like mannequins and then the war, the white frame rent house, and the homecoming, and afterwards, green lawns and a new piano with its mahogany gleam like pond ice at dawn, and now alone in the house in the vanishing neighborhood, the slow mornings of coffee and newspapers and evenings of music and scattered bits of talk like leaves suddenly fallen before one notices the new season. And they would sit there alone and soon he would reach across and lift her hand as if it were the last unbroken leaf and he would hold her hand in his hand for a long time and they would look far off into the music of their lives as they sat alone together in the room in the house in Kansas. The Dumka B. H. Fairchild<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poem-for-a-thursday"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3923,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3921\/revisions\/3923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}