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The Beat: Jennifer Horne and Thomas Hardy
Jennifer Horne served as the twelfth Poet Laureate of Alabama from 2017 to 2021. The author of four collections of poems, Bottle Tree, Little Wanderer, Borrowed Light, and, most recently, Letters to Little Rock, she also has written a collection of short stories, Tell the World You’re a Wildflower. She is the author of a literary biography, Odyssey of a Wandering Mind: The Strange Tale of Sara Mayfield, Author, described as “mesmerizing” and “a beguiling tale of madness and literature” by Publisher’s Weekly. She has edited or co-edited five volumes of poetry, essays, and stories.
Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840, in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England. Hardy is best known for his novels, including The Mayor of Casterbridge, Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure. His first book of poems, Wessex Poems, was published when Hardy was in his late 50s. He published seven more collections, and over 1,000 poems in his lifetime. In January of 1928, he died peacefully at his home in Dorchester, Dorset, England.
Links:
Jennifer Horne
A Map of the World (Jennifer Horne's website)
Bio and work at The Poetry Foundation
A review of Letters to Little Rock at Alabama Writers Forum
"Two Poems by Jennifer Horne" at Deep South Magazine
Thomas Hardy
Transcript
Welcome to The Beat. Today we’ll hear Jennifer Horne read her poems “Lines;” “College Tour;” “Look Forward To;” and “Hot Springs High.” She’ll follow with a poem by Thomas Hardy called “Her Father.”
Jennifer Horne:"Lines"
In North Carolina, my neighbors
had a red phone booth in their yard
amongst the camellias,
rhododendron, hellebores.
The British kind, enclosed
like a many-windowed room,
with TELEPHONE at the top, the kind
I used to stand in every Sunday
when I called from my year abroad in Oxford
and sometimes cried with homesickness.
When you were dying in Arkansas
and I was off teaching in Carolina,
it was snowing hard, and dark,
and I couldn’t get to the phone booth.
I’d found an old phone in a closet.
I picked up the heavy receiver,
put my finger in a numbered circle
and dialed, six-six-four-three-six-oh-eight, thinking if you
were anywhere reachable, it would be
at the number I’d memorized at age six,
going off to first grade.
I told you what a good father you’d been,
wished you peace and freedom from pain.
I told you it was OK to go, the way you told me
I could spend a year away from home
in a country you’d never seen
among people you’d never met
because you trusted I would find my way,
because you knew I needed to go,
because although you didn’t like yard work
you were a natural gardener, always
encouraging me in the direction of growth.
What lines still connect us—
invisible and taut—beyond
the red box, the squat black phone,
the slim silver magic you learned?
Without a grave to visit, I walked
the local cemetery, spoke
to any stone that spoke to me.
Once—I swear it—I found
golf clubs on a grave, and thought
to speak of it next time you called.
"College Tour"
I can see you hunched at the steering wheel,
black leather gloves holding tight,
peering ahead, willing the car to stay on the frozen road,
your good wool coat, your checked wool hat
talismans against mishap,
taking me north through the Ozarks
from Little Rock to far-away Missouri
through sudden snow on rollercoaster roads
with unseen drop-offs.
I was quiet so you could concentrate
quiet like both of us reading a book in the same room
but never did I worry you wouldn’t get us through.
I knew. I’m driving now, halfway lost
somewhere north of Atlanta, picturing
your steady hands on the wheel:
black gloves, near white-out of snow,
your love expressed in getting me
where you hoped I wouldn’t go.
"Look Forward To"
Always have something to look forward to,
you’d say, even if it’s just a peppermint,
tucked in a jacket pocket. You’d produce
the pinwheeled sweets, leaving a restaurant,
reminding us of pinwheels from the dimestore,
bought with allowance money, shiny quarters,
a way to catch the wind, befriend the hour.
You’d say the treat was in the looking forward
as much as in the crunch or slow dissolve,
a promise to yourself that dullness passes,
that little sparks of dazzle light the path
better than any brilliant, one-time blast.
"Hot Springs High"
You wore the ring on your right hand,
the boy from Caddo Gap made good.
You drove us through the old neighborhood.
You’d saved to buy that modest band.
The high school boy was now a man,
ready to live as a man should.
You wore the ring on your right hand.
The boy from Caddo Gap made good.
Now it is mine. Now I can,
in its light heft, feel how it stood
for all you’d done, and all you would.
Turning it idly to ponder, plan,
you wore the ring on your right hand.
The boy from Caddo Gap made good.
"Her Father" by Thomas Hardy
I met her, as we had privily planned,
Where passing feet beat busily:
She whispered: "Father is at hand!
He wished to walk with me."
His presence as he joined us there
Banished our words of warmth away;
We felt, with cloudings of despair,
What Love must lose that day.
Her crimson lips remained unkissed,
Our fingers kept no tender hold,
His lack of feeling made the tryst
Embarrassed, stiff, and cold.
A cynic ghost then rose and said,
"But is his love for her so small
That, nigh to yours, it may be read
As of no worth at all?
"You love her for her pink and white;
But what when their fresh splendours close?
His love will last her in despite
Of Time, and wrack, and foes."
Alan May:You just heard Jennifer Horne read four poems from her book Letters to Little Rock: the poems were “Lines;” “College Tour;” “Look Forward To;” and “Hot Springs High.” Horne followed with the poem “Her Father” by Thomas Hardy. She was kind enough to record these poems for us at her home in Alabama. Jennifer Horne was Poet Laureate of Alabama from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty-one. She’s published four books of poetry: Bottle Tree, Little Wanderer, Borrowed Light, and, most recently, Letters to Little Rock. She’s also written a collection of short stories called Tell the World You’re a Wildflower and the literary biography Odyssey of a Wandering Mind: The Strange Tale of Sara Mayfield, Author. Horne has edited five volumes of poetry, essays, and stories.
Thomas Hardy was born on June second, eighteen forty, in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England. He worked as an architect during much of his early career as a writer. He’s best known for his novels, but much of Hardy’s early work was poetry. After his poems were initially rejected, Hardy turned to fiction, and he published more than a dozen novels, including The Mayor of Casterbridge, Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure. Later in his life, Hardy returned his focus to poetry, partially due to hostile reviews. In fact, one critic called Jude the Obscure "the most indecent book ever written." Hardy’s first book of poems, Wessex Poems, was published when Hardy was in his late fifties. He published seven more collections in his lifetime, totaling nearly a thousand poems. Thomas Hardy died in January of nineteen twenty-eight. He was eighty-seven years old. You can find books by Jennifer Horne and Thomas Hardy in our online catalog. Also, look for links in the show notes. Please join us next time for The Beat.
