Interview with poet bg Thurston: The Many Lives of Cathouse Farm: Tales of a Rural Brothel"

 

I caught up with poet bg Thurston to talk about about her new poetry and prose collection " The Many Lives of  Cathouse Farm."  Judith Ferrara writes of her book,

"This compelling and singular collection is an expert weaving of history and poetry. The story of Cathouse Farm begins when poet bg Thurston spies "a small red farmhouse nestled behind tall sugar maples" which beckons her with its For Sale sign. Images presented throughout these pages elucidate Thurston's narrative of dwelling and landscape. We listen as the very house itself speaks in "Sister Houses, 1771" and "The Ruined House" and hear occupants, such as Sarah Weeks, who "labored long for all / these years on this forlorn farm, / birthed and buried our babies- / once within the same week." Section 3 links us to Prohibition-era owner George F. Rivers, who "set the property up as a speakeasy and rural brothel" and inspired persona poems that do not look away from these women's struggles. This book is a significant and fascinating accomplishment, full of curiosity, empathy and respect for the ghostly inhabitants of Cathouse Farm."

You write about this old farmhouse you moved to in Warwick, Mass. It reeks with history, and has many incarnations from the 1800s to 1990. The title mentions the brothel it once was— why did you choose to focus on the 'house of ill-repute' on the front cover?

The fact that our farm was a speakeasy and brothel during the Great Depression and Prohibition is what it is most known for. The big question was how a simple farmhouse in the middle of nowhere became such a place? Many properties in Warwick are still owned by descendants of the original owners. I wondered what became of the family who built this house and lived here for generations.

What was your situation before you moved to the farmhouse? In essence what drove you to live in the middle of nowhere?

My husband and I lived and raised our daughters in a somewhat suburban setting in Stow, Massachusetts. We had a couple of horses, a few sheep, and chickens. I always wanted to have a farm and more land on which to garden and raise sheep, so when my husband was thinking about retiring, we began looking for a property in Western Massachusetts.

The poems reflect the joy and tragedy of people who inhabited the farm over the years. Do you feel the energy—-the ghosts?

I do feel the lingering presence of some of the people who have lived here. I often think about the four generations of women in the Weeks’ family who were the first inhabitants of the farm. They likely had difficult challenges living out here from the 1770’s to about the 1870’s, between the Revolutionary War and Civil War era. All summer they had to prepare to survive the coming winter. How did they cope with the loneliness, the uncertainty, and the lack of modern medicine? Each one lost children due to illness or stillbirth.

We joke that the spirits of “the ladies” are happy ghosts. It was harder for me to imagine their lives and what circumstances might have brought them here. Very little is factually known about them at this point. I believe the Depression brought about its own struggles and opportunities for survival. I often wonder about their lives and dreams.

This collection is full of period detail--- how much research was involved?

The research for this book took about a decade. I originally found Sarah Weeks’ petition and the probate documents from when her husband, Caleb Weeks, died. I had been told incorrect stories about who built the house and looking through the deed registry documents helped verify names and dates. I visited Historical Societies and libraries in Massachusetts and New Hampshire to find information about the early inhabitants’ genealogy. I spent most of my evenings following threads on the Find a Grave site and Ancestry.com, to create family trees and verify Census data. What I could not find were photographs of the Weeks’ family. Even after photography came into existence, most farming families would not have been able to afford it.

Later photographs of the farm during the 1900’s were given to me by the family who visited during that time. Their stories enabled me to write the poems in that section of the book.

Do you think the farm has come full circle with your presence?

I hope so. What I’ve tried to do is acknowledge that even though the farm is known for its colorful moments in history, there was much more that came before and afterwards. For me, it’s a magical place, somewhere I always dreamed of living, and very much my home.

I would guess that you want readers to think about their own homes and their history.

I think everyone might have a different idea of what home means to them. I think it is a place that embodies where we have felt most loved. For me, a home is a luxury, a blessing, as well as a physical shelter. Hopefully, it is a place where we feel protected and where our dreams can grow.

Why should we read this book?

Good question! I hope people read and enjoy this book because it explores both an interesting history of a remote New England farmhouse, as well as the vulnerabilities, desires, and commonalities of all the people who were destined to live here.

Sky Meadow

We search all our days

for a place called home,

hoping that walls and windows

will keep us safe inside.

As our skin grows loose

over our bones and our sight

softens the landscape,

we discover home might be

hidden in a meadow

amid murmurs of green

and sun-gold blossoms rising

all around our feet. This

will be the place we return to

when we remember our lives,

knowing the shelter that held us

as the water-blue sky came down

with a peace that could hardly last.

The Silent Pendulum and Full Circle in Broken Identities, the new novella by Denis Emorine

 The Silent Pendulum and Full Circle in Broken Identities, the new novella by Denis Emorine

article by Michael Todd Steffen

Denis Emorine’s moving fidelity to his creative inspiration pulses at the heart of his new novella, Broken Identities (JEF Books, Arlington Heights, IL, ISBN 979-8284824-05-4). The book unfolds a sequel, a further denouement and conclusion to the coming of age of a writer begun in the 2017 novella Love at Half-Mast, where Emorine traces origins of “broken identities,” foremost that of his fictional subject, Dominic Lavarcher and his integral duality as a human being and his vocation as “the writer,” the alternative appellation chiming like a formal constraint throughout the two narratives.

Laetitia, Dominic Lavarcher’s wife, reappears here with her fairy-esque character as muse, metaphorically represented playing private recitations for her husband at a piano topless, with her breasts exposed to him. The trope has flown my imagination to the cinema and the possibility of a movie perhaps with the title “The Naked Pianist.” While arousing erotic tensions, the portrayal of Laetitia at the piano remains in a sensual rather than graphic character. In scenes beyond her home with Lavarcher and her piano stool, we are also made to understand her true beauty, not just to Dominic, yet also her devotional character to him. She is his, his alone, strictly immune to other hungry suitors. This is essential in delineating Lavarcher’s deep sympathies for his wife as well as the excruciating extent of his dilemma in carrying his work, as it must be, fully to the public. The depth of Lavarcher’s sympathies has been noted also for its nominal ambiguity by Cristina Deptula, in the revelation of the writer’s name, Dominic, betrayed for its more frequent feminine form, Dominique. (synchchaos.com/2019/08)

As the narrative is inevitably determined, the figure of inspiration is left to sink and fade at moments throughout the two stories with the realization of Lavarcher’s worldly success in publications and in presentations of his writing, public readings, notably with the emergence of a young Hungarian Literature researcher, Nóra. The young student’s coming to life in the writer’s presence and in his stirring desire makes an elastic and revisited topos. Emorine follows his subject as the writer oscillates. This goes like a pendulum, back and forth beside the piano of his exposed musician, between devotion to the original inspiration and its release in an expression of love toward the very work’s appreciation. There we meet, again, the figure of the young Hungarian student Nóra, the fresh clay of consciousness awakening under the intelligence conveyed by the author.

This ontological movement of Emorine’s fiction, between numinous, mnemonic origin and its naïve, “lively” and irresistible recipience, intersects with our civilization’s deepest foundations and iconography, in new seminal terms and oppositions, the politics of East vs. West, in reminiscence and therapy between Mother and child, and between the authentication of art through its intimate inspiration in contrast to its marketing epiphany in the rival world of publishers and university appointments.

Without giving away their charm and details, let it be noted this second story’s beginning, with a partial disappearance of the writer at the end of his wits, comes full circle with the story’s astonishing but convincing conclusion. A worthy read, for its charms, curiosity, resonance and much needed reminder (of the ever-vigilant light in darkness) under the flickering lamps of our busy desks