Dheepa Maturi served as Tweetspeak Poetry’s Poet Laura for 2024. We learned quite a bit about the monarch butterfly, as she wrote several posts for the Tweetspeak-proclaimed “Year of the Monarch.” And we learned she cared deeply about the environment, and she helped readers celebrate Earth Day. We discovered how poetry could be applied to environmental and climate concerns.
And now we know what she’s been up to since then – publishing an ecothriller, entitled 108.
It’s sometime in the near future. The planet’s climate is in crisis, with the air in the cities almost unbreathable. Farmland has been affected as well, raising the possibility of famine. Agricultural production has been divided into 20 zones, and research has been underway to find ways to make those zones more productive.
After reading the short story “Abscond” by Abraham Verghese, I was convinced that it was at least partially based on his own life. When I read the biography on his web page, I knew I had guessed correctly.
Ravi is a young teen who is turning out to be one of the best tennis players of his generation. An only child, he lives with his parents in suburban New Jersey. His father is a surgeon who commutes daily into New York City, maintaining a unvaried schedule of returning home at lunchtime to eat and take a short nap. Ravi’s mother runs the household. His parents maintain a network of friendships with other Indian-Americans.
The day starts like any other day. Ravi’s father goes to work and returns home for lunch and his nap. Except this day, he never wakes up. And Ravi’s life changes forever.
Abraham Verghese
“Abscond” is Ravi’s story, and it is a story of family life, family upheaval, grief, and a boy having to grow up faster than his years. It’s also a beautiful story of how friendship and maintaining tradition steers a family through crisis. It brings tears to the eyes more than once.
Verghese is a doctor and vice chair at the School of Medicine at Stanford University. He is also a writer of fiction and non-fiction. His works include My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story, The Tennis Partner: A Story of Friendship and Loss, and the novels Cutting for Stone and The Covenant of Water. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2016.
I haven’t read Verghese’s novels, but if “Abscond” is any indication, then I have a fine reading experience ahead.
In visits to London, I’ve walked the short two blocks of Essex Street many times. It’s in the area called the Temple, and it connects the North Embankment and Fleet Street. I’d walk from the Temple tube station, travel up Essex, and arrive at Fleet. Historically, the buildings have been occupied by law offices; The Royal Courts of Justice site right on Fleet across from Essex. It was here that I located the offices of the character Trevor Barry in Dancing King and Dancing Prophet, counselor and advisor to Michael Kent-Hughes. I was completely charmed this week to read about the street at A London Inheritance, thinking “that’s where my character works!”
Historian Eric Strener has two articles this week, both about a famous figure of colonial and Revolutionary America named Samuel Brady. He was once a household name, but he’s largely forgotten today. He became famous for the rescue of a frontier woman, Jane Stoops, and became even more famous with what was called “Brady’s Leap,” which may or may not have been true.
At Front Porch Republic, writer and poet Benjamin Myers considers the Oklahoma landscape, remembering scenes from childhood, and how he came to internalize the concept of nature. You can see some of his books here; his poetry collection Black Sunday is a personal favorite.
I read The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth way back in college; I think I even glowingly reviewed it for the campus newspaper. Forsyth died this past week at age 86, and the tributes are pouring in. The Guardianhas a fine obituary; Nigel Jones at The Spectator writes about the Frederick Forsyth he knew.
Dana Gioia may be one of the most productive writers / poets working today. He has six poetry collections, seven essay collections, two translations (Italian and Latin), four opera libretti, 11 books for which he’s served as editor, and a contributor to several collections of essays and poems.
He came to poetry indirectly – through a 15-year business career. Yes, he quit cold turkey, to focus on poetry and writing. He was associated with New Formalism, which in the 1990s was considered counter cultural (poetry with rhyme and meter, and narrative poetry, were considered rather passe). He was named poet laureate of California. He was chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts; he championed poetry during his tenure. The recipient of numerous awards and recognitions, he’s also received 10 honorary doctorates.
In short, Gioia is a presence In American poetry. And he’s in an ideal position to produce a collection of essays entitled Poetry as Enchantment.
The book sat on a bookshelf in my parent’s bedroom for as long as I can remember. The shelf itself was a former window, occupied by an air conditioner when they became available in late 1950s New Orleans. When central air became possible, the window was reconfigured as a bookshelf.
The title of the book was The Battle of Liberty Place: the Overthrow of Carpetbag Rule in New Orleans, written by Stuart Omer Landry. It was printed by a local New Orleans publisher, Pelican Publishing, in 1955. This volume was apparently part of a numbered edition, except the number is left blank. If I remember correctly, a friend of my father’s at the publisher gave him a copy as a gift.
