When in the door still glancing back your eye You see fresh light demur upon the bed And hear the lonely wind knock at the pane Think then how small the room you leave behind How shrinks the colder passages of time But though this room to smaller eyes grows small And you cannot return and nestle in A wider world and strange must grip your heart So larger steps a larger hope can win
Todd Anderson (Stuff of the Rind, Sand and Sail, The Reluctant Prophet) writes the newsletter Mirth to share a behind-the-scenes look at his writing process as well as to offer readers the first fruits of his poetry and reflections. He grew up in the forests of small-town Ontario, contending against nature in all its beauty and harshness. His training as a literary scholar of Latin and English literature inflects his love of poignant turns of phrase, but it is the influence of his family and their myriad adventures together that infuses his story-telling and poetry with its substance and power. Todd lives and writes in Ottawa with his wife and six children. If you are interested in supporting Todd’s work, please follow the links below to donate or buy his books.
What love could render It has done As on a flaming skillet Fat doth run Infusing broth or meat With flavour sweet To serve the tongue
Todd Anderson (Stuff of the Rind, Sand and Sail, The Reluctant Prophet) writes the newsletter Mirth to share a behind-the-scenes look at his writing process as well as to offer readers the first fruits of his poetry and reflections. He grew up in the forests of small-town Ontario, contending against nature in all its beauty and harshness. His training as a literary scholar of Latin and English literature inflects his love of poignant turns of phrase, but it is the influence of his family and their myriad adventures together that infuses his story-telling and poetry with its substance and power. Todd lives and writes in Ottawa with his wife and six children. If you are interested in supporting Todd’s work, please follow the links below to donate or buy his books.
Todd Anderson (Stuff of the Rind, Sand and Sail, The Reluctant Prophet) writes the newsletter Mirth to share a behind-the-scenes look at his writing process as well as to offer readers the first fruits of his poetry and reflections. He grew up in the forests of small-town Ontario, contending against nature in all its beauty and harshness. His training as a literary scholar of Latin and English literature inflects his love of poignant turns of phrase, but it is the influence of his family and their myriad adventures together that infuses his story-telling and poetry with its substance and power. Todd lives and writes in Ottawa with his wife and six children. If you are interested in supporting Todd’s work, please follow the links below to donate or buy his books.
When I was sixteen, my brother fell down a disused well, Gone before my eyes without a shout, as dust and chaff plumed In the afternoon sun, ready to rise just as he set. I ran as much by fear of what my father would extract For my neglect as by concern for my brother, collapsed In the wilderness, hours from homeward field or sober help. What drink had done since my mother passed, had done to all; All shared its sharp relief; all shared its languid pressure: For him, to daze the day; for us, to pause on the road home. I cast into the well his name – light-in-darkness snuffed out – But for tumbling stones and loose gravel, it rendered back silence. “Lucas! Lucas! Lucas!” I sent down the name; it echoed Back the same with no suggestion that its owner heeded. I hesitated as I had done some years ago at night, When wolves caught my brother’s leg beyond our fevered camp light, Dislatched at last not by my frantic pleas but wild charge And rage of my father, hairy arms and bludgeoning hands Applying blow upon drunken blow – tears and blows flowing Together and mingling with heated fur and snarl and teeth. Beyond that day he limped his life, wary of wolf and kin, And we two were tethered between beast at home or abroad, Coiled at the margin of our lives, taut with attention. I ran. The land between well and farmhouse tendered no grace; Earth tugged at boot and knee, stretched my hot lungs with hotter miles. Sunk on the porch, ire neatly corked and cradled, my father Roused with disdain. “What?” Poised to repeat, he saw my broken face. Words sheared off at their harsh exit from a frowning mouth, As hammer-tapped casings cleave and leave with rifle blast. “Where?” he fired, and stunned I stood, astonished and afraid. “An old well in the back forty. Dad, he fell; he fell hard.” “Get the truck,” he growled and rounded the house to the barn. I circled to it as he hauled hempen rope, dark with age, And I saw years shed away and him at sea grasping tight Lowering lines for ammo boxes while Guadalcanal Burned – day and night lowering while shellfire lit hot the sky. To the far fields; then on foot, my hands empty and him surging To the spot and not a word between us but all was said. He knew the well. He dug it. I could hear it as he called For his fallen son, in the low way men weep as they shout: Guilt pouring out like interlocking machine-gun fire. Then in went the rope, and he turned sharp to me and I swear My father had never pleaded for anything before And all his pleading I received in one fatal, panicked glance, As though mates locked forever beneath Ironbottom Sound Might be pulled up if only we had courage to descend. I took my grip and closed my eyes and felt the cloistered air, Down, down with the musty rope and musty well and fieldstone barbed Until I felt, slumped in frigid water, my brother’s body, Wedged by some miracle against the rotten boards that fell. “He’s alive!” I roared up the shaft, and back came, “Hold my lad! If ever you loved your father, hold. If ever you loved Your brother and sweet mother, tie the rope and hold fast!” My arms shook with cold and my hands fumbled in the dark As I wrapped the frail boy’s limbs around my own, face to face. “Hold, lad – hold fast and I won’t let you go, but hold I say!” So I held, and as we rose from that wat’ry grave, I heard Steady as the rising, my father’s voice call out apace: “Hold sweet child. Hold. Forgive me lads and hold. Hold fast my boys.”
Todd Anderson (Stuff of the Rind, Sand and Sail, The Reluctant Prophet) writes the newsletter Mirth to share a behind-the-scenes look at his writing process as well as to offer readers the first fruits of his poetry and reflections. He grew up in the forests of small-town Ontario, contending against nature in all its beauty and harshness. His training as a literary scholar of Latin and English literature inflects his love of poignant turns of phrase, but it is the influence of his family and their myriad adventures together that infuses his story-telling and poetry with its substance and power. Todd lives and writes in Ottawa with his wife and six children. If you are interested in supporting Todd’s work, please follow the links below to donate or buy his books.
She led my storms beyond the door While I sat broken by the news. Rising from the tear-stained floor, She led my storms beyond the door, As neighbours mused at all she bore And tracked through snow her every bruise; She led my storms beyond the door, While I sat broken by the news.
Todd Anderson (Stuff of the Rind, Sand and Sail, The Reluctant Prophet) writes the newsletter Mirth to share a behind-the-scenes look at his writing process as well as to offer readers the first fruits of his poetry and reflections. He grew up in the forests of small-town Ontario, contending against nature in all its beauty and harshness. His training as a literary scholar of Latin and English literature inflects his love of poignant turns of phrase, but it is the influence of his family and their myriad adventures together that infuses his story-telling and poetry with its substance and power. Todd lives and writes in Ottawa with his wife and six children. If you are interested in supporting Todd’s work, please follow the links below to donate or buy his books.
Warning: this post discusses sensitive matters related to mental health and depression.
More than ten years ago, before my wife and I moved to Ottawa, I remember sitting with my guitar and composing a song which has mystified me ever since the day I scrawled it on loose-leaf. Today’s analysis will consider briefly the lyrics and music and discuss the idea of inspiration.
The Cliff
Upon the cliff in summer time The wind is fair the seagulls cry I find your place a sacred stone Which moss replaced used for a throne And it is wet trembles in my hand You cannot speak I cannot stand The morning flees a naked band Of colour streams across the strand You walked these woods alone The trees held out their hands The leaves played with your hair The darkness crept in there
The yellow clouds that bickered north Brought piercing rains to cut my soul Tin hedges clapped beneath the brine The sea’s red foam churned overnight And as the wake made a dash For freedom’s eye in a piece of glass You strode the crag in a burnished dress Felt sunset’s brush paint cheek and sash You left the world alone The sea welcomed you in The long train of gin Whistled in the bones Oh in the bones
The wretched hike the winter gales The icy teeth and frosted nails Upon my skin I wear your scarf The ocean’s roar a mane of rime Encircled here I feel your doubt The ghostly mood the demon shout Of lover’s guilt of unsaid grief An empty bed a kitchen cleaned Your tracks were fresh and as I reached That sacred spot my hand was slow You never glanced I let you go
The occasion for this song is perhaps the most mystifying part of its composition. Thematically it is completely unrelated to anything in my own experience, nor was it a response to an emerging event in the world. It was not even a response to a vivid encounter with nature nor the product of drugs or other substances. Instead, it came to me all at once as pure inspiration. I don’t mean the kind that sets apart sacred texts, but borrowing from the ancient idea of a muse that uses the poet as a vessel, I confess that I supplied no particular agency or explicit intellectual labour in its production.
Put simply, I don’t know what it means. Or, I don’t know what it is supposed to mean, or what the author’s intent is. In one respect, this is exciting, because it offers a rare opportunity to get out of the way in the interpretive process. But, this poem haunts me, not due to the tragic scene it paints (though this is heart-wrenching), but for some of the completely wild lines that make no sense but somehow place pictures in my mind:
“The morning flees a naked band Of colour streams across the strand.”
Now I can see the imagery of the sun painting the clouds in wonderful hues as it moves across the sky. But, what is a naked band of colour?
“Tin hedges clapped beneath the brine…”
What are these tin hedges? How are they beneath the briny water, and what does their clapping represent? Perhaps it is a reference to the churning water as silvery waves (that look somehow like hedgerows) crash into each other as they are tossed back and forth far below the cliff?
“And as the wake made a dash For freedom’s eye in a piece of glass”
I have no clue. The waves are pictured as trapped, and they are making a run for their freedom – but not just freedom, they are aiming for the eye of freedom found in a piece of glass. Perhaps it is best to think of the “eye” as a gateway or portal, like the eye of a camel, which makes the point that freedom has a very specific and narrow entryway. A piece of glass might refer to translucent bottles that wash up on the shoreline or a looking glass.
Now this last bit seems like a great candidate for the nonsense bin and we should perhaps not pay it much heed, chocking it up to bad poetry. Fine by me! What this gesture cannot account for is how these lines, and the rest of the odd phrases “long train of gin / whistled in the bones” still produce vivid pictures in the mind. How can our imaginations process such nonsense into something which suggests moral meaning or power? These waves, with all their strange dashing and clapping, seem exactly appropriate for the stormy emotional moment overtaking the subject of the poem.
I do recall one important moment in the composition of the song and it is the way my musical instincts changed in the last stanza. The mood intensifies. The music, simple as it is with basic major chords like A, E, and D (with a C# and B to transition the final part of each stanza), became even simpler, and I remember the heavy downstrokes of the D chord that opened the final stanza transitioning in the second line to an equally strong A. Back and forth between the two with nothing else. Even now as I play it, I remember how all the notes seem to open up and my voice grabs at the minor 6th interval of the D, which gives that tense or unpleasant feeling because the voice pulls toward resolution as a perfect fifth exactly on the phrase “upon my skin”. I’m not sure the recording above does it justice, but you get the idea.
And I think it is fitting. In a disjointed fashion – moving backward and forward in time – the speaker recalls a journey up to the cliff in search of the beloved (“the wretched hike”) in the middle of winter – having grabbed the subject’s scarf in a rush, which is a bittersweet protection against the elements. And then, surrounded by the frost and the shaggy mane of ice covering the cliffside, the speaker remembers all the mental anguish and markers of depression, including how it impacted their relationship.
I share this piece with you because I know others may be haunted and healed by it. It does not glorify or celebrate personal choice, nor does it conceive of these difficult matters in moral terms. My own journey through grief reminds me that most things are out of my control, which is not a call to complacency, but a pragmatic tonic. What grounds your actions? What ground mine? Hope is not always apparent, as this piece makes clear. Sometimes the music simply stops without explanation. But that doesn’t mean the experience of a poem or song like this offers no help. Sometimes it is best to wrestle with the past and weep so that we may move forward.
Todd Anderson (Stuff of the Rind, Sand and Sail, Collected Poems) writes the newsletter Mirth to share a behind-the-scenes look at his writing process as well as to offer readers the first fruits of his poetry and reflections. He grew up in the forests of small-town Ontario, contending against nature in all its beauty and harshness. His training as a literary scholar of Latin and English literature inflects his love of poignant turns of phrase, but it is the influence of his family and their myriad adventures together that infuses his story-telling and poetry with its substance and power. Todd lives and writes in Ottawa with his wife and six children. If you are interested in supporting Todd’s work, please follow the links below to donate or buy his books.
O rain, weep not, it is thy wedding day. For thee skies wait, as guests in bright aisles Turn back brighter faces and rise attentive, Choraline music consecrating a shared witness. It is true, thy procession is a descent, But all water is destined so; young maidens With broken hearts pour rivers forth and mend. Besides, ye wear winter’s pureness; Warm aspéct will acclimatize at altar, Alter from voluble will to firm resolve, As Ontarian streets receive December showers And transmute the wondrous stuff to joyous ice.
Todd Anderson (Stuff of the Rind, Sand and Sail, The Reluctant Prophet) writes the newsletter Mirth to share a behind-the-scenes look at his writing process as well as to offer readers the first fruits of his poetry and reflections. He grew up in the forests of small-town Ontario, contending against nature in all its beauty and harshness. His training as a literary scholar of Latin and English literature inflects his love of poignant turns of phrase, but it is the influence of his family and their myriad adventures together that infuses his story-telling and poetry with its substance and power. Todd lives and writes in Ottawa with his wife and six children. If you are interested in supporting Todd’s work, please follow the links below to donate or buy his books.
I sought, O Lord, your servant Peace, Whom I expected soon at manger-side, But when I drew near that hallowed trough, The owner said that Peace had long since fed. So, I retired to cold lake-front, where you Were said to roam, but storms pursued me As I sailed and capsized my poor raft. Then in the distance, you Lord I spied, Walking with Peace upon the angry waves, And though I cried out for your hand, you took Another’s, joined his ship, and the squall dispelled. Hard to shore, I followed your bright shadow To a garden late at night, but Peace had gone. In shame I turned from your now crimson tears To search the town for her whom I had missed. At morn I saw her weeping by a tree, And hasted to inquire her sudden grief, But darkness hid my path, and when it fled, So too had Peace departed from that place. I wandered full of sorrow and despair Up through the rocky cliffs and countryside Believing my pursuit to be in vain; Then on a stony door I chanced to knock, Forsaking thus my search to rest my bones, And who should roll it back and greet me guest But Peace herself in shining linens dressed!
Todd Anderson (Stuff of the Rind, Sand and Sail, The Reluctant Prophet) writes the newsletter Mirth to share a behind-the-scenes look at his writing process as well as to offer readers the first fruits of his poetry and reflections. He grew up in the forests of small-town Ontario, contending against nature in all its beauty and harshness. His training as a literary scholar of Latin and English literature inflects his love of poignant turns of phrase, but it is the influence of his family and their myriad adventures together that infuses his story-telling and poetry with its substance and power. Todd lives and writes in Ottawa with his wife and six children. If you are interested in supporting Todd’s work, please follow the links below to donate or buy his books.
The boy was poor, to be sure, but as he felt Poverty an unstipulating state, And as he felt no shackles ‘pon his poor legs, Nor felt it did him a turn to act poor, And as he cherished some close acquaintance With the poorly done by and poorly kept, Nor wished in future to be free from these, And as he felt his poor stomach, knowing Not the riches withheld by his poor tongue, Could with no good conscience plead its poverty, Nor would the poor boy hear those poor grumblings, Or if he did hear them, would hear not grumble, But poor thankfulness for a previous meal Fondly and lovingly remembered, And as he felt his poor arms thick enough To lift and thin enough to squeeze through slats, Nor felt an arm might lift his poverty If it were thicker, since weighing more, More heavily would impoverish, And as he felt the poor crumbs of wealth fell Well within arm’s reach, so that he strained Only a little to fetch them to his lips, Nor wished to snatch up so much fallen wealth That other, poorer snatchers should so strain Their underprivileged arms as break them full, And as he felt his heart, unlike his pockets, Already filled to brimming, as half-way Houses and work houses and orphan houses Brimmed to the rafters with unshining souls, The poor boy curbed his expectation, Knew at that bleak house she offered enough.
Todd Anderson (Stuff of the Rind, Sand and Sail, The Reluctant Prophet) writes the newsletter Mirth to share a behind-the-scenes look at his writing process as well as to offer readers the first fruits of his poetry and reflections. He grew up in the forests of small-town Ontario, contending against nature in all its beauty and harshness. His training as a literary scholar of Latin and English literature inflects his love of poignant turns of phrase, but it is the influence of his family and their myriad adventures together that infuses his story-telling and poetry with its substance and power. Todd lives and writes in Ottawa with his wife and six children. If you are interested in supporting Todd’s work, please follow the links below to donate or buy his books.
Todd Edward Anderson 