Williams’ account is carefully braided, the rise of the Great Salt Lake and its threat to the bird refuge skillfully juxtaposed against the rise of a deadly cancerous tumor in her mother’s abdomen.  With each rising lake interval, Williams parallels her mother’s peril with that of every species threatened by the flood.  This metaphor is carried throughout the book, as she weaves fragmented strands of the two narratives together to contemplate natural cycles, the inevitability of death, and the unnatural systems our culture employs to prevent them both.  We experience first hand the anxiety and heartbreak of every threatened bird, every stage of her mother’s disease, and are left with the intimate knowledge of mourning the loss of wildlife and place intertwined with the loss of one’s mother.  Williams’ emotional journey illustrates both our reluctance to accept even the most natural of changes, and the lengths to which we go to resist them.

Refuge is a lyric work, a contemporary form published nearly a decade before the lyric essay’s widespread recognition.  And perhaps that’s what made it so successful — it was prose poetry before its time, structured in a way that enabled history, biology, and geography to enhance a personal narrative.  This literary craft blog post explores how Williams skillfully transitions from one story strand to another, using white space, common words, images, and ideas as points of contact for effectively weaving one section into another.

Williams introduces the metaphor between the flooding of the bird refuge and her mother’s death from cancer in the Prologue of the book:

Most of the women in my family are dead.  Cancer. At thirty-four, I became the matriarch of my family.  The losses I encountered at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge as Great Salt Lake was rising helped me to face the losses within my family.  When most people had given up on the Refuge, saying the birds were gone, I was drawn further into its essence.  In the same way that when someone is dying many retreat, I chose to stay. (p. 4)

The early establishment of this metaphor provides the well from which Williams will draw to nourish the connective tissue binding her scientific and observation-based sections on the bird refuge and the Great Salt Lake with her more candid personal reflections on family, illness, and death.  For instance, in her second chapter, after having introduced the reader to the Great Salt Lake and the connection that she and the lake have to the refuge, Williams is able to seamlessly transition into the discovery of her mother’s illness:

… The long-legged birds with their eyes focused down transform a seemingly sterile world into a fecund one.  It is here in the marshes that I seal my relationship to Great Salt Lake.

I could never have anticipated its rise.

My mother was aware of a rise on the left side of her abdomen.  I was deep in dream.  This particular episode found me hiding beneath my grandmother’s bed as eight black helicopters flew toward the house.  I knew we were in danger. (p. 22)

Here, Williams employs white space and the word rise as the thread that connects these two fragments together — fragments that might otherwise seem disjointed, were it not for her prior establishment of the symbolic relationship between the two.

Williams uses the same technique later in the book to transition from her personal narrative to a section that discusses the history of Mormon religion and its connection to the land.  In this instance, Williams describes a scene in which her family learns that surgery and chemotherapy have failed to eliminate cancer from her mother’s body.  Her mother, originally opposed to undergoing treatment, unleashes anger at Williams and Williams’ father, saying, “I could have handled this, why couldn’t you?”  Williams is heartbroken, crippled with guilt:

… We had wanted a cure for Mother for ourselves, so we could get one with our lives.  What we had forgotten was that she was living hers.

I fled for Bear River, for the birds, wishing someone would rescue me.

The California gulls rescued the Mormons in 1848 from losing their crops to crickets.  The gull has become folklore.  It is a story we know well… (p. 68-9)

Again, the insertion of a little white space, coupled with the use of a common word between the sections (in this case, rescue), enables Williams to gently pivot from an emotionally charged family scene to a relevant historical anecdote about one of the refuge’s resident birds.  The effect is not only an effective transition from one narrative to another; it is a mechanism for the slowing of pace, and the relief of tension in the prose itself.

Williams utilizes white space well in Refuge, the vacancy of words allowing the reader to draw the connections between her fragments for him or herself.  We recognize it as a pattern, the more difficult the circumstances become, the more white space we see.  Toward the middle and end of the book, as the stakes for the refuge rise, along with the tension in her family, Williams’ prose become more fragmented.  The white space increases, and the connective tissue between sections is grounded in images and ideas:

Mother.  She is preoccupied.  Yesterday, on the telephone, she said she didn’t think she could make the family backpacking trip in the Tetons scheduled for summer.

“I think I may have pulled some muscles in my stomach,” she said.

I want to believe her.

It rains and rains.  Great Salt Lake continues to rise.

Eudora Welty, when asked what causes she would support, replied, “Peace, education, conservation, and quiet.”

Mother, Mimi and Jack, and I are seeking quiet in St. George, Utah. (p. 133-4)

As disjointed as these fragments seem, the reader easily follows the prose.  The white spaces, the symbolic rain and rising lake, the need for quiet all paint a larger picture: Williams’ mother is dying, and there is nothing that they can do.  The conclusion, though not spelled out, is easily understood.

In Refuge, Terry Tempest Williams has masterfully illustrated the potential of the fragmented approach, the importance of finessing transitions, and the beauty of lyric prose.  Her use of white space, common words between sections, and relevant images are an effective mechanism for manipulating pace, conveying emotion, relieving tension, and solidifying theme in the body of her prose.

The post Terry Tempest Williams’ Refuge: A Lesson in Braided Form appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.

Kazin’s prose is dense and detailed in its narration, and the meat and bones of its themes — belonging verses finding oneself, preservation of immigrant culture verses assimilating into America — are embellished with specific images, particular characters, and well-placed dialogue.  Indeed, A Walker in the City is a study in the use of details to enhance one’s prose.  This literary craft blog post explores Kazin’s placement of details throughout his text, and how these features support the underlying themes.

One such scene, in which Kazin is describing the buildings and establishments around his old house on the block, is abundant with details:

The shoemaker is still there; the old laundry is now a printing shop.  Next to it is the twin of our old house, connected with ours below the intervening stores by a long common cellar.  As I look at the iron grillwork over the glass door, I think of the dark-faced girl who used to stand on that stoop night after night watching for her Italian boy friend.  Her widowed mother, dressed always in black, a fat meek woman with a clubfoot, was so horrified by the affair that she went to the neighbors for help.  The quarrels of mother and daughter could be heard all over the street.  “How can you go around with an Italian? How can you think of it? You’re unnatural!  You’re draining the blood straight away from my heart!”  Night after night she would sit at her window, watching the girl go off with her Italyéner — ominous word that contained all her fear of the Gentiles — and weep. (p. 80-81)

Not only does the introduction of a lovesick Jewish girl waiting on the stoop for her forbidden Italian boyfriend make the place seem more authentic, the details about her anxious Jewish mother reveal the very theme of Kazin’s memoir.  The fact that she’s a widow, has a club foot, and is always dressed in black — these details solidify the reader’s image of a traditional Jewish woman.  Taken together with the dialogue (“How can you go around with an Italian?  You’re unnatural!”), the specifics about the Jewish mother underscore the ongoing tension between generations about the boundaries of their community.  The inclusion of these details clearly illustrate for the reader, that Jewish immigrants who settled and raised families in America did so with the hopes of a better life, but dreaded the assimilation of their children and the abandonment of their own true heritage.  To them, Brownsville was Jewish, Brownsville was “us,” and the world beyond it was “them.”  But to Kazin, the girl on the stoop, and all of their peers, the world beyond held their dreams.  The world beyond was America.

The push and pull between Brownsville and Beyond, between Jewish and Gentile, and “us” verses “them” is carried throughout the book, but in no other place is this tension so beautifully illustrated as in Kazin’s discussion of Mrs. Solovey.  Mrs. Solovey is the wife of the pharmacist, a lovely Russian woman whose blonde-ness and dreamy demeanor is drawn in sharp contrast with her bitter and scornful husband.  Kazin is in love with Mrs. Solovey, “her air of not being quite related to anything around her” pleasing him most, as it distinguishes her from the dreariness that Brownsville represents.  Kazin writes, “[Their] store went to pieces, the two little girls in their foreign clothes played jacks all afternoon long on the front steps.  Mr. Solovey denounced us with his eyes, and Mrs. Solovey walked among us in her dream of a better life.” (p. 124).  In these details — Mr. Solovey’s scornful eye, his disregard for the family business, the Solovey girls contentedly playing jacks all day on the steps — Kazin illustrates the defeated nature of Brownsville life, and the way in which Mrs. Solovey is different.

Her differences are further revealed when she comes to Kazin’s home, seeking a new dress from Kazin’s seamstress mother.  As she waits, she notices the young narrator studying French, and begins a conversation with him:

“I suppose you are learning French only to read? The way you do everything! But that is a mistake, I can assure you! It is necessary to speak, to speak!  Think how you would be happy to speak French well!  To speak a foreign language is to depart from yourself.  Do you not think it is tiresome to speak the same language al the time? Their language! To feel that you are in a kind of prison, where the words you speak every day are like the walls of your cell? To know with every word that you are the same, and no other, and that it is difficult to escape? But when I speak French to you I have the sensation that for a moment I have left, and I am happy.” (p. 127)

They continue conversing in French, during which Mrs. Solovey reveals that she is from Odessa, near the Black Sea, and has lived in Russia, France, Italy, and Palestine.  Kazin, surprised by her worldliness, asks, “Why did you come here?”

She looked at me for a moment.  I could not tell what she felt, or how much I had betrayed.  But in some way my question wearied her.  She rose, made a strange stiff little bow, and went out.  (p. 130)

Kazin never spoke with her again, and some time later, learned that she had killed herself with gas from the oven. 

It was raining the day they buried her.  Because she was a suicide, the rabbi was reluctant to say the necessary prayers inside the synagogue.  But they prevailed upon him to come out on the porch, and looking down on the hearse as it waited in the street, he intoned the service over her coffin. It was wrapped in the blue and white flag with a Star of David at the head.  (p. 131)

These passages about Mrs. Solovey employ the most effective use of detail.  Not only is she a character in Kazin’s childhood home, her specific characteristics, and the nature of her death symbolize the issues central to Kazin’s theme.  Mrs. Solovey is an anomaly in Brownsville, a blonde, worldly woman who likens speaking a foreign language to escaping a prison cell.  She, too, feels trapped by her existence in Brownsville, and longs for a better life.  But Brownsville suffocates her, in life and in death.  Suicide by gas, rain at the funeral, the Star of David draped over the head of her coffin — all of these details symbolize the oppression of this place.  And through these specifics, Kazin conveys his need to walk on.

The post Tracing the DNA of a Story to the Sentence Level: Use of Symbolic Detail in Alfred Kazin’s A Walker in the City appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.

From the beginning, Hall’s story is about shame and loss: the loss of a child, the dissolution of a future, the rejection by one’s peers, and loss of unconditional parental love.   Yet despite the odds, Hall cobbles a life for herself, a family of her own, and eventually returns to New England to offer compassion to her aging parents.  Then, twenty-one years after her exile, her lost son finds her.  As they forge a new path together with her two younger sons, the story evolves from one of grief, to one of joy, wisdom, and understanding.

Hall’s prose in Without a Map is beautiful and lyric, evoking a sadness that won’t let go.  Her use of present tense makes the reader live her story, feel the sting of her rejection, and accompany her through the haze of her expulsion.  But her beautiful sentences — the detail, the cadence, the movement of her words — are what pierce the reader’s heart.  This literary craft blog post examines Hall’s sentence structure in certain places of the text, and how she uses repetition, rhythm, and momentum to enhance the emotional impact of her message.

The first instance occurs in the prologue of the book, “Shunned.”  Hall has introduced us to the bones of the story: she was once part of a family and a community, and then she got pregnant.  Because of this mistake, she was shunned — ripped away from everything she ever knew and loved.  The pain and shock of her rejection is underscored by its contrast against her life until then.  She had been an insider, a beloved member of a tight-knit group, as evidenced by the intimate details she knows of those who shunned her:

I still can tell you that Larry had a funny, flat head.  That fat Donny surprised us in eighth grade by whipping our a harmonica and playing country ballads.  That he also surprised us that year by flopping on the floor in an epileptic fit.  That Claudia, an only child, lived in a house as orderly and dead as a tomb.  That I coveted her closet full of clothes.  That Patty’s father had to drag out muddy, sagging dog back every few weeks from hunting in the marshes; that he apologized politely every time to my mother, as if is were his fault.  That Jay wanted to marry me in kindergarten, and that I whipped Jay a year or two later with thorny switches his father had trimmed from the hedge separating our yards.  That his father called me Meredy-my-love, and I called him Uncle Leo.  That Heather’s grandmother Mrs. Coombs taught us music once a week, the fat that hung from her arms swinging wildly just off beat as she led each song. (p. xi-xii)

Not only do these details validate her standing in the community, the words create a sort of pattern following the beginning of every sentence with the word That.  “That Patty’s father had to drag… That Jay wanted to marry… That his father called me Meredy-my-love…”  The pattern Hall creates continues for two entire paragraphs — sounding almost like a chant — and produces a rhythm and momentum that carries her readers deeper into her story.  We are invested in her story because we have seen first hand how important she once was, and know that this belonging will soon be stripped away.

Hall uses this specific sentence structure again toward the end of the book, when she has returned to New England to care for her ailing mother.  In this instance, Hall is overcome with the emotion of seeing her mother suffer from advanced multiple sclerosis, and knows that her mother’s illness eclipses her own need to reconcile their past.  For a short time, Hall’s mother improves, and there is a brief window of relief:

Mostly, maybe, of guilt — for my helplessness, for the absolute promise of my own future life, for my desire to turn away from this hideous thing, this wrecker of bodies and lives.  Guilt that I have children to raise in happiness and a living to earn and a house to paint and books to read, that I am stretched too tight and tire and breaking from the sadness of watching my mother suffer.  Guilt that I feel sorry for myself.  Guilt that I cannot fix any part of her rupturing life, that the casseroles I bring and the overnights at my house and the long days at her house with my children are easing and not a cure.  (p. 156)

Again, Hall’s repetition of the words guilt, for, and that create a poetic rhythm to the prose, a succession of melancholy waves, with each instance of the word guilt sounding like the toll of a bell.  The sound and the feeling of the sentences mirror the emotion Hall is conveying with the details of her words: the pang of her guilt that she is okay while her mother is hurting, and the pain of her own exhaustion from caring for her mother under the weight of their past.

Hall also uses this sentence structure in the end of the book, as she describes her last encounter with her aging father.  Having been banned from his house, she no longer knows her father, and recalls him in her childhood memory:

Once, as he sat in the kitchen, my father happily fed toast to our dog, Sam, placing the pieces on the dog’s nose and telling him to wait until he said, “Okay!” Once, my father took us camping at a mountain lake.  I cried when I caught a little perch.  he cooked it in a heavy black pan over the fire, and we pulled the delicate, pure white skeleton, spine and hair ribs, from the hot flesh.  Once, my father hung and skinned a deer he had shot.  We children helped scoop the lungs and liver onto newspapers on the garage floor.  (p. 196)

The sharpness of Hall’s details, in tandem with her repetitive use of the word, once, create for the reader a more vivid experience.  The paragraph reads like a slideshow of intimate family portraits, with the word once triggering each new frame.  The effect is clear: Hall’s memory of her father from childhood is sharply contrasted with a man she no longer knows.  And having just glimpsed at the family photos — the photos in which Hall was still a cherished member of her family, and her father participated in her life — the reader mourns this loss as well.

Meredith Hall’s Without a Map is an example of how sentence structure can enhance the emotional weight of a story, by creating a poetic rhythm that complements the message of its words.  Hall uses this technique to her advantage, making the quality of her prose enrich an already compelling story.

The post Using the Cadence of Prose to Heighten Emotional Impact: Meredith Hall’s Without a Map appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.