Naming the Light: A WEEK OF YEARS (Creative Nonfiction) - Softcover

Deen, Rosemary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252065727 ISBN 13: 9780252065729

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 1996

Synopsis

Naming the Light is about places and people, books and music and travel, gardening and astronomy. Some essays examine Rosemary Deen's experience of finding herself well placed, at home in an old house with rambling gardens in New York's Catskill region. Others travel out to remote worlds, then bring them next door through the author's power of imagination.

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Reviews

These 44 short essays generally proceed as meditations from Deen's home garden in New York's Catskills mountains. Those that stick close to the daylilies and tomato plants may lose the ungreen-thumbed reader, but others venture to the ridge, the neighbors and the local fauna. These latter display Deen's discerning eye and ear for setting a scene (the veery "whistling down a rain barrel") and creating sometimes iconic character sketches. Most essays are ambitious musings that begin with something green and spiral out metaphorically to things cultural. At times, Deen riffs off her connections too hurriedly and esoterically, leaving a reader with a salad of images and literary references that obscure the main point. The best, including the last five essays, follow a well-marked path, have a strong anchoring metaphor or draw emotional power from personal history, as in "Lens," which uses a pair of 1920s eyeglasses that belonged to Deen's mother to examine the mother-daughter bond. The closing essay, "Theory of Descant," leaves all the others behind in its depth and reach. A picture of a heartbreaking scene in Rwanda is described not once but three times, around a moving discourse of what words can do, what is "unsayable" and how the effort of writing corresponds to the counterpoint of 14th-century polyphony. Deen is poetry editor of Commonweal and, in her best pieces, she ably translates her ear for poetry into a lyric prose.

Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

A lover of language and writing, Deen, the poetry editor of Commonweal and coauthor of The Common Sense (Boynton Cook, 1985), which concern innovation in writing instruction, arranges these essays into seven years, or sections, loosely focused on her experiences living in an old house in the Catskills, New York, region. She does not discuss gardening so much as complex metaphoric structures and literary allusions that bring deeper meaning to day lilies, herbs, and other nature-oriented subjects. Especially intriguing is her unique way of connecting nature and culture, e.g., she associates the garden maze with learning and then moves on to the cathedral at Chartres. Although Deen's metaphoric leaps are occasionally difficult to follow, her essays present delightful anecdotes, often about the unruly weeds, frogs, snakes, toads, and other creatures that make their way into her garden, sending the reader in unexpected directions. Recommended for thoughtful readers who love nature.
Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252065727
• ISBN 13: 9780252065729
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200