Maine's klaraste röst

Dice Head lighthouse, Castine, Maine. (lånat foto)

Philip Booth (1925-2007) var en poet från Maine och han var, enligt många, Maine's klaraste röst. Han var född i New Hampshire men kom att tillbringa en stor del av sitt liv i Castine, i ett hus som funnits i hans familjs ägo i fem generationer. Booth inspirerades av Robert Frost och D H Thoreau.

Reawekening in New England

In a house twice older
than I am, a man closing
on seventy, newly
recovered from going
half blind, I'm
home;

up before
sunup, still dreaming
three women, my back
braced by the grace
of an Eames chair,
I'm here:
                reunited
with Chekov, living
in books, feeling
for words, revising
this poem;
                    here's
where I am , up
against odds,
having
an ardent dawn.

Från diktsamlingen "Pairs" 1994.

Poeten som älskade havet

Bass Harbor Head Light, Mount Desert Island, Maine. (Foto: Captain Albert E Theberge, NOAA Corps).

Philip Booth (1925-2007) skrev helst om havet och kusten vid Maine. Booth hade sina rötter i staden Castine där hans mors familj hade bott under många generationer. Han har fått epitetet "Maine's clearest poetic voice".

Durward: setting his trawl....

Durward: setting his trawl
for haddock, and handling cod
a halfmile east of Seal Island,

twelve miles offshore in fog.
Then his new engine went out.
A Rockland dragger spotted him,

two days later, drifting drunk
off Mount Desert Rock. He was
down to his last sixpack.

After they towed him back in,
Ordway kept asking him what
- those two days- he'd been thinking.

Nothin. I thought about nothin.
That was all there was to it.
Ord said, Y´must've thought something.

Nope, I thought about nothin.
You know what I thought,
I thought fuckit.

Dikten finns i boken "The Maine Reader" i redaktion av Charles & Samuella Shain (Nonpareill books 2001).