[photo by Elinor Randall]
Hardwick, Vermont, is a hardscrabble town with amazing blazes of life, light, and poetry. Dave and I make regular trips to Galaxy Books there, stop at the diner for sandwiches, appreciate the rebuilding that the town keeps enduring as old buildings give way to new, often with some disaster as the provocation. David Budbill sets many of his poems there, calling the reimagined town Judevine. "Jeudivine" comes up often in town history and place names.
Not as well known is Harwick poet Martha Zweig, who swept through the MFA program at nearby Goddard College and has three published collections: Power (1976), Vinegar Bone (1999), and What Kind (2003).
She has the featured poem on Poetry Daily today -- click here to read it. I ran across one description of her work that claimed she was writing a blend of Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Actually I think she's more original than that suggests! Here's a taste from What Kind:
from THE FITTING
End up whether under stones or
star-studded, either way your rags
patch rags, dearie, she chats
& dismantles my dead I submit
for the dreams in their heads & in the
torques & locks of their other bones.
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