Research Catalog

Title

Selling the farm : descants from a recollected past / Debra Di Blasi.

Author

Di Blasi, Debra, 1957-

Publication

[North Carolina] : C&R Press, [2020]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

142 pages :o : illustrations, photographs; 22 cm

Summary

Raised in a family of seven, in a small ramshackle farmhouse without plumbing, author Debra Di Blasi maps a candid and eloquent memoir of a Midwest childhood both land rich and dirt poor, both heaven and hell. Surrounded by creatures big and small, rolling fields and pastures, weedy lawn, deep woods and shimmering waters, she wrestles with the complexity of a crowded family shaped by place and doomed to tear itself apart. SELLING THE FARM explores the difficult intersection of grief and love, and the many contradictions in nature, life and death, and memory itself. Her lyrical recollections move from season to season with language visually and aurally shaped to reconsider the ways that we bear witness to any place and time-and to ourselves amid all. As personal and global extinctions loom in the foreground, and family farms become increasingly scarce, these elegiac ruminations remind us how much has been-and will be-lost to us all.

Subjects

• Autobiographies
• Biographies
• Farm life > Biography

Genre/Form

• Biographies.
• Autobiographies.

Note

• Place of publication from publisher's website.

Contents

Machine generated contents note: In Memoriam -- I will rebuild the house -- Overture -- As I live and breathe -- Autumn: It's all there -- Farm objects, animate or not -- We wrought destruction where we could -- My brother taught me how to track animals -- The pony named Smokey -- We learned to distinguish the mew -- Autumn begged destruction -- The clays along the creek bed -- If you don't mind might I suggest -- Winter: Each time I dredge the farm -- Not in spring but when the snows fell languorous -- When a cow died my father wrapped an iron chain -- You couldn't stop the winter cows from calving -- That year winter stormed so dense -- Where did the dogs go in winter? -- All of the birds and foxes -- The hill of the pasture in front of the house -- When did the season's first snowfall not stagger me -- A crow swooped down from a live branch -- In those polished days -- To be first to lay down your tracks -- Interlude: Night Maybe death's the farm at night -- Last night I dreamt those we called Indians -- Just around the northwest corner -- Thereby I enter impervious night -- From: Here To: There -- Brightest nights starlight swept -- Days like this -- Sure, I can summon the farm -- One night, coming home late and careless -- The night repeats itself -- Olbers' Paradox -- Summer: It was difficult, in that light -- First, the bumblebees fussing at dandelions -- Then the roads -- Again, the roads -- They're vultures, really -- After life is life -- I once rescued a young pig -- It wasn't just the land that drew us -- That fractured day -- I cannot take back the killing -- Summer rewarded -- The roof shingles were green -- All over America fathers were mowing -- Sliver of a day: A picnic -- As if a two-year-old drew a line -- The friend I had was a town child -- Summer heat radiated the sweet undulating stink -- It's never the new house I recall without effort -- Again memory's echo -- Spring: A farm is a microcosm -- I have been absent -- Names of the wild plants escape me -- Spring rained heavy and interminable -- A rock pile grew -- Spring meant thaw -- This is not you here in my memory -- Aside -- Do the trees remember us? -- Is spring then about forgetting? -- Epilogue: It was a universe -- While I write, my father dies -- Elegy: Wallace's Line is "a hypothetical line dividing animals -- There is no right language for grief -- There's a bird trapped in the attic -- Someone must have left a door open, so... -- ... now there's a bird trapped in the attic -- That bird will not stop singing -- Listen to me, there's a bird trapped in the attic! -- We are that bird's lice -- Will someone please, please, please let the bird out of the attic? -- Someone left the door open, so, finally.

Call Number

JFD 21-2053

ISBN

• 9781949540130
• 1949540138

LCCN

2019957445

OCLC

1162517436

Author

Di Blasi, Debra, 1957- author.

Title

Selling the farm : descants from a recollected past / Debra Di Blasi.

Publisher

[North Carolina] : C&R Press, [2020]

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

still image

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Research Call Number

JFD 21-2053