A Lesser Known Writer
If you know where to
look, you will find some great writers in Maine who may not be as well known as
the names you are familiar with. Names like Stephen King, Sarah Orne Jewett,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elizabeth Ogilvie, Kenneth
Roberts, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and (Charles) Wilbert Snow.
You can find unlimited
information about and access to the writing of these famous people. However,
there is one author in Maine which I have talked about before who you will not
even find listed in the Maine State Library index. His name is Alonzo Gibbs, a
writer born in Long Island, who spent many years living and writing in Maine
with his beloved wife, Iris. Perhaps his birthplace excludes him from “Maine”
writer lists, but I would certainly include him on my own favorite Maine
writers’ list.
I have found scarce
information about Gibbs, who lived just down the road from The Hilton
Homestead, my Uncle Carl and Aunt Freda’s farm, where I spent many happy days
of my childhood. His biography reads, born in 1915 in Long Island New York,
died in 1992, buried at Hillside Cemetery in Bremen, Maine. The way I see it,
if he’s buried in Maine’s soil, he is forever one of us.
I first discovered him
through my cousin, Mary Sue Weeks, who is the present owner of the farm in
Bremen. In the blog archives for April, 2012, you will see a brief description
of his work (Summer Reading—Maine Authors—Guest Blog, Sara Tavares). At that
time I promised to bring you a story he wrote about the Hiltons which is
included in his book In the Weir of the
Marshes.
I have an autographed
copy of that book and I will bring you a piece of that story here as well as
one other excerpt from that book. See a complete list of his work at the end of
this blog. I did not include those that are now out of print. You will most
likely find copies of his book where I found them, at Stone Soup Books of
Camden, Maine, which has a website.
From that book I found
out that many of the stories included in the book originally appeared in
literary magazines, Wetlands, Snowy
Egret, The Long Island Forum, the
Quarterly Kinsman, and in The
Christian Science Monitor.
The last page of this
book also contains comments about his books and poetry. These are some of them:
“The poems are clipped,
perfect and austere. They are epigrammatic and intense”—Howard Griffin, about Weather-House
About his poetry, Drift South—“I can compare the power of
your lines only to portions of the ‘Ancient Mariner’”—Rockwell Kent
About the poem: The Rumble of Time Through Town: “Mr.
Gibbs is well aware of the fragility and shortness of life, the sweetness and
tragedy. He writes well with a bittersweet tone, with depth and understanding
of the human condition”--Sanford Phippen, Maine
Life.
Bremen
Bygones
I found reference to his
book, Bremen Bygones, by Gibbs and
his wife, Iris, under Maine Civil War Monuments. This monument was erected by
the Patriotic Club of Bremen, a women’s group formed to raise money for the
memorial “In Memory of Her Sons/Who on Land and Sea Fought/To Preserve The
Union/1861-1865." It was placed outside the Bremen Union Church in 1916, one
year after Gibbs’ birth. The first picture shows the unveiling in 1916, and the
second picture is a present-day view. By the way, the church is still used on
special occasions. The Patriotic Club also still exists.
Excerpts
The story about my aunt
and uncle, Freda and Carl Hilton, is found under the chapter, “An Advent
Calendar of Garlanded Days” number 13:
“When driving south
toward their place you first see the snow-scumbled shingles of the family barn
across the road, and in the distance, if the day is clear, the Gulf of Maine
like a pewter plate set down amongst the faraway trees. Opposite, off to one
side, are locust trees planted by Carl when a boy. He could tell you that every
home in the old days had such trees nearby; they provided fence posts which
were almost impervious to decay. On a stormy day the snow clings to the rough,
deeply fissured bark of these thorny hardwoods, even high up amongst the
wintering branches. Or in winter-faded sunlight, bare twigs superimpose a
shadowy roadmap on the frosty clapboards of the house farther along.”
This paragraph reminds
me a lot of Robert Frost’s poem, Mending
Wall, which includes the lines “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall;”
and “ ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ “ I could easily see it in the form of
a poem.
Number
19 Excerpt
“Yes, the first snow!
And winds cruelly sharp and sturdy from the north.
“All night flakes have
fallen on our seacoast town. They came down softly at first on the trim spire
of the church or sifted in through the shutters of the belfry to turn to water
on the cast-iron bell. When the wind rose out of the ocean, the storm swept
across a neighborhood of Victorian Homes and carriage-sheds.
“Old sea captains are no
longer alive to hear the rattling windows. But the out-of-staters who have
converted one or another house into a Bed
and Breakfast know how the surging winds scrap along the clapboards.”
Works
by Alonzo Gibbs and Iris Gibbs
In
the Weir of the Marshes
Bremen
Bygones
Son
of a Mile Long Mother
By
a Sea-Coal Fire
One
More Day
The
Least Likely One
The
Fields Breathe Sweet
Weather-House
A
Man’s Calling
Drift
South
The
Rumble of Time Through Town
I sincerely hope I have
whetted your appetite for one of my new favorite writers, Alonzo Gibbs. Maybe
someday someone will write about that lesser known writer, Sandra Sylvester. I
sure hope so.
Thanks for listening.
