BEGINNERS FAITH IN THINGS UNSEEN (Concord Library)

In A Beginner's Faith in Things Unseen John Hay writes from the vantage point of eighty, and like no other American writer on what he calls "the real world."
Hay returns to memories of a boyhood divided between Manhattan and the deep woods of Sunapee New Hampshire, to a time when he knew "one should always be outdoors, with the unregistered and the unsigned." He writes with precision and beauty of pilot whale strandings on Cape Cod's Outer Beach - and of the attendant human confusion and greed - and on the sweep of a century in which "our modern, owned world is going deaf from listening to its own answers." Hay keeps company with Maine barn swallows and finds in the Lakota Sioux Grass Dance a way to listen to the wind. Always, through often uncannily affecting language, John Hay shows us just which ceremonies we all must attend to.

His approaching 80th birthday turns the author to reflecting on his reverence for nature. Hay (The Great Beach) first reminisces about his childhood in New Hampshire and Manhattan (he sees the latter as a spaceship). He writes of the rocky shores of Maine and the wind on the sands of Cape Cod, the decline of fisheries, the Grass Dance of the Lakota Sioux. Hay is profoundly affected as he watches pilot whales stranded on Cape Cod. Observing the transformation of a pond to a bog, he likens its rhythmic change to the beat of a human heart. Hay's essay about a journey to the Arizona desert is especially revealing of his spiritual sensitivity to his surroundings. From the Grand Old Man of nature writing, this is an eloquent valedictory.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Hay, who turns 80 this year, has established a reputation as a nature writer with such works as The Great Beach (LJ 11/15/63), winner of the John Burroughs Medal. In the present collection of essays, Hay returns to childhood experiences of nature, since, he writes, "First enchantments outlive all later judgments we make about the world." The essays suggest that we need to look at the world once again with the eyes of a child. Each piece combines memory, observation, philosophy, and anecdote. "Listening to the Wind," for example, leaps from storms to birds to the Grass Dance of the Plains Indians, from excitement at the beauty of geese flying overhead to a lament for a civilization that is "speeding everywhere and nowhere." Hay's enthusiasm for the natural world and its beauty is evident throughout. Some of these essays have been published previously in a different form. Intended as an "end-of-career" work, this collection will be of interest to both public and academic libraries.?Nancy Shires, East Carolina Univ., Greenville, N.C.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.