Voices of Dogtown
By
James R. Scrimgeour
Loom
Press
Lowell,
Massachusetts
ISBN:
978-0-931507-16-8
87
Pages
$15.00
REVIEW BY DENNIS DALY
James
R. Scrimgeour communes with spirits and he does it with wit and
wisdom. In Scrimgeour’s new poetry collection, Voices of Dogtown,
he conjures up the denizens of a long abandoned New England village
on the outskirts of Gloucester, Massachusetts. The few specters that
still haunt this plot of land, called Dogtown, are not happy campers.
Without any mollycoddling, the poet gives them voices and listens to
their grievances, all the while working into these poems a jumble of
scholarly citations, guidebook descriptions, ekphrastic commentaries,
and even conjectures from an earlier eminent poet. Consider this book
a topographical and historical adventure. At the end of his
introductory poem entitled Dogtown, Scrimgeour sets the tone,
“The
settlement at Dogtown was merely something
of
an eddy in the… history of Cape Ann.” (C&R, p.43)
“It
is the lonely highland of Cape Ann,
empty
of habitation, abandoned by the dogs
and
even by the cows that used to find
thin
pasture there, left to the ghosts
of
its deserted village. It’s where you’re off to…
when
the world is too much with you.” (Garland, p.57)
O.K.
We’re off…
In
short order the reader meets Tammy Younger, Queen of the Witches.
Foul mouthed Tammy does not suffer fools lightly. Her five timely
narrations inform and enliven the book. The first of those
narrations, entitled Thomasine (Tammy) Younger
(1753-1829)—Introduction, inserts eeriness into the landscape and
reveals the onset of a relationship between Tammy and Scrimgeour’s
persona, whom she calls “old geezer” throughout. Here Tammy
explains the soft spot she has for the poet,
f…in’
weird how I see so clearly into and through him,
an’
he sees into and through me—hafta admit it’s kinda nice
to
finally have someone tell our story from my point a view—
tho
I wish he wouldn’t clean up my language so much—
all
those f…in’ dots—aaarrrgggh!!! Whassee wanna do
sell
his book in the tourist shops—hmmmmm, might do
the
tourists some good to read somethin’ a little nearer
the
truth—an’ the geezer has an edge I kinda like…
The
hilly area chronicled by Scrimgeour is strewn with boulders left by
the last glacier as it recoiled from the sun’s new warmth. They are
accentuated by shrubs, bushes, new growth trees, and berry patches.
Even on hot days a mysterious chill (perhaps from nearby swamps)
seems to hang in the air appending melancholy inflections. Groupings
of smaller rocks signify abandoned cellars, each having a story to
tell-- sometimes known, sometimes unknown. Some of the larger
boulders the poet imagines as self-sustaining homes, scarred with
individual markings. Scrimgeour’s poem A Community of Boulders
begins this way,
large
and small, beige and grey houses
deposited
centuries ago by a retreating
glacier—homes,
rounded and smooth—
no
doors, front or back—cracks for
windows,
rare bluebirds resting on or
beneath
the eaves—wild shrub hedges
here
and there, bayberry bushes imported
by
colonists—with thorns and cluster
of
shiny red tear-shaped berries—guarding
the
non-existent doors…
A
second ghost that consorts with Scrimgeour (although grudgingly) is
the ill-fated Abram Wharf. Wharf, the most educated man in Dogtown
and a cousin of Theophilus Parsons, Chief Justice of Massachusetts
Supreme Court, played by the rules and for a while parleyed his
respectability into prosperity as a shepherd and a farmer. He married
young and apparently his own fortune declined as the town declined.
His sheep died and his own house became “hardly habitable.”
Scrimgeour’s piece Abram Wharf (1738 ca—1814) records Wharf’s
demise,
… one
day in 1814, Old Abram (aged 76 years)
“sat
by the fire sharpening his razor.
“’Sister,’
said he,
‘do
you think people who commit suicide go to heaven?’
“’I
don’t know; but I hope you will never do such a thing,…’
Was
her answer. ‘God forbid,’ was his solemn response.
‘Soon
he slipped the razor into his shoe, … went out,” (Mann, p.54)
and
“put [the] razor to his neck and crawl[ed] under a boulder
to
die.” (Dresser, p.15) Legend says no moss will ever grow
on
that rock…
Another
of the ghostly voices used by Scrimgeour to provide insight to his
readers is that of Captain Jack or John Morgan Stanwood. Stanwood’s
silky utterances demand attention. He insists that the poet read the
information embedded in dead leaves found at the site of his old
cobbling shop (or boo). The leaves, turned book fragments, then
reveal key background elements pertaining to the other characters and
Stanwood himself. Ol’ Abram, the suicide, for instance, believed
that Tammy Younger caused much of his misfortune with her malevolent
spells. Stanwood, through his leaves, clarifies the situation in
Scrimgeour’s poem entitled Fragments from the Book John Morgan
Stanwood Kept in the Corner of his Boo,
July
28, 1814
… had
a talk with ol’ Abram today—
I
almost felt sorry for him—a sad spectacle, so ol’
an’
feeble, so depressed—feelin’ evil in the place, he said,
silly
fool, still blamin’ ugly ol’ Tammy for his dead sheep,--
kinda
strange, I tol’ him, you believing in witchcraft,
even
though you don’t believe in your religion—
not
any more than I do…
Scrimgeour
gives Tammy Younger the last say as he concludes his book. Here his
Dogtown meditation take a quite serious turn. Tammy, in the piece
Thomasine (Tammy) Younger—Conclusion, ponders the nature of
eternity and, specifically, the hell of bitterness and spite she has
created for herself amidst the boulders of her former home, now
abandoned town. She seems tired of it. She says,
I
is getting’ soft—beginnin’ to think about thinkin’ kindly
of
others—mebbe, as I said afore—it’s getting’ close
to
closin’ time—
mebbe…
mebbe not.
Poems of place,
like Scrimgeour’s Voices of Dogtown, often proffer visions, ghostly
or not, of lost hard scrabbled cultures that wake readers to their
own mortality and tenuousness. Delicate, hopeful perceptions need the
damp cellars of historical grounding. Read this collection and it
will alter, or even redeem, you. Mebbe.
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