P a m e l a T h o m p s o n
 “I tell you, the thread that bound us lies/ faint as a web in the dew./ Should I make you world, again,/ could I give back the leaf its skeleton, the air/ its early summer cloud, the house/ its noonday presence, shadowless,/ and leave this out?” —Adrienne Rich, “Mourning Picture” In this 1965 poem, Adrienne Rich writes in the voice of Effie, the little girl who is mourned in her father Edwin Romanzo Elmer’s luminous, unsettling painting. Perhaps he relied on this c1889 photo by J.K. Patch of Shelburne Falls to render Effie's image. |
 every past thing
During one week in New York at the turn of the last century, Mary Jane Elmer, the wife of a painter from rural Massachusetts, looks for her lost love and tries to reconcile herself to the past, until the present day—in the shape of two anarchists, her husband, his brother, and her niece—begins to make its own insistent claims. praise
“Every Past Thing shares with Emily Barton’s Brookland a perfectly surehanded sense of place and time, and with Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping a precise, unsentimental evocation of our deepest loves and family bonds. I’ve not been so moved by a novel in years; it seems to me truly stunning." —Andrea Barrett More... the facts
If I hadn’t bought up every last copy of Betsy B. Jones’s wonderful monograph Edwin Romanzo Elmer: 1850–1923 from the basement of the Smith Art Museum, those interested in the “facts” could go there to determine for themselves what really happened. More... emma goldman & justus schwab
Emma Goldman remembers Justus Schwab, proprietor of the saloon at 51 First Avenue. More... pam reads (video)
Excerpts from the reading at the Meekins Library in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, on October 18, 2007. |
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