Writing From the Threshold: Thoreau Amidst the Chaos at the Edge of the Sea
Gregory Orr writes in his book, Poetry As Survival, “The threshold is a place of transition; as such, it is a place of enormous vitality and activity as well as danger . . . In order to write well, a poet needs to go to that place where energy and intensity concentrate, that place beyond which chaos and randomness reign. The sea or the ocean is perhaps the essential image from the outer world for disorder, and one of the best examples of a threshold in the natural world is a beach.” Thoreau embraced the tension between the energy of the pounding surf of the Atlantic Ocean and the tranquility of the sandy beach in his writings about the Outer Beach in his book Cape Cod. He was fascinated by the natural science of the ecosystem, and of the dichotomy of life and death that played out on this threshold between the shipwrecked seamen who clung to life and the wreckers who found sustenance from the flotsam washed ashore from the shipwrecks. Drawing from the Nantucket Lifesaving Museum and the Nantucket Historical Association, we will examine The Shipwrecked Seaman’s Manual and the history of the “Humane Houses,” thresholds in and of themselves between death on a stormy sea and solace from the elements on the shore. We will look beyond Thoreau’s observations as a natural philosopher; he wrote, “Though for some time I have not spoken of the roaring of the breakers, and the ceaseless flux and reflux of the waves, yet they did not for a moment cease to dash and roar, with such a tumult that, if you had been there, you could scarcely have heard my voice for the while; and they are dashing and roaring this very moment, though it may be with less din and violence, for there the sea never rests.” We will present the modern physics of the gathering force of energy that builds to its threshold, to its point of bursting into a cascade of water or sound. Sojourners on the beach ourselves, we will look at the energy of the threshold that stirs the creative and imaginative force of the human heart.
Saturday, October 14, 2017
An Evening With Thoreau