Scudder H Parker

There’s a comfortable vibe to this poetry. I’m not saying sweetness and light, just that they felt honest, written by a real person. Scudder H. Parker is not your typical poet (whatever that definition might be), as his background reveals him as having been a politician, minister, activist, and a young farm boy. Heck, he even ran to be the state’s governor once. As Gary Snyder often wrote of in his work, there is a sense of place in his words, and that place feels very much like rural Vermont. He brings all he’s been to the table, and it feels right.

His having served four terms in the Vermont Senate, helps explains the praise from former Vermont governor Madeleine Kunin, and a quote from U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy included on the back cover. “Anyone reading Scudder’s poems knows how special it feels to be home in Vermont.” The quality of his poetry also explains the praise from two former state poet laureates for Vermont. His long service as a Protestant minister and activist may well be responsible for some of the revealed sensitivities and kindness in his poetry.

These poems aren’t overreaching. They don’t require an extensive knowledge of ancient gods or classical literature, they are accessible. Many times, accessibility gets a bad rap in poetry circles, Yet, as a reader and a listener of a great deal of poetry by published and unpublished poets during more than forty years of bookstore readings and contests, it’s never a negative to me. Reaching for too much, seeking to impress by using longer and more esoteric words, with more complex structures, only showcases the weakness of some poets. I’ve been surrounded by huge crowds in large theaters for poets like Billy Collins and Gary Snyder, and in small crowds shoehorned into small bookstores and café for seemingly countless poets, and no matter the applause, good poetry and bad poetry always reveals itself as just what it is.

Though many Vermont natives would be tempted to disown me for my decades of California residency, I still feel such a strong tug back to my Vermont roots in Parker’s poetry. There’s a definite feeling of him sometimes looking back at his life and where that life has taken him. We older types cannot resist doing that at times.

His observations of nature remind me of some of the journals and other writings of Thoreau. They aren’t a hurried look while on the way to somewhere more important, they are almost studies of how the natural world looks, sounds, and smells. His poetry is rich in the expressions of an older man’s life and a young boy’s memories of his family’s rural roots. There’s a real elegance running through these poems that impressed me over and over. His connection to the land speaks powerfully in many of his lines. Reading my way through his collection, it was almost like a walk through some shady woods or down the street of a small Vermont town. I’ve missed that feeling for so long.

Let me close with a number of short bits from a few of his poems that stick in my mind.

“What We Learned”
“Shitkickers” was the name used for barn boots
we wore to grade school in North Danville.
We compared with pride, having kicked a fair amount
early each morning doing chores—pitching hay,
feeding cows, milking, shoveling out the gutter.

But when we got to high school, freshman year,
the name was used for us—the scent they couldn’t bear.
We learned to smell it on ourselves.
It became a word we used against each other,
wielding it without instruction.
_____

“Elms”
In college, Clay Hunt said:
“It’s not what you say,
it’s the way you that you say it.”

[This line always makes think of the first day I played tennis with a black UC-Davis professor. I’d just left a conversation with my bookstore staff about racial terms, and thought, here’s another opinion. I told him about our list of the terms we’d come up with and asked him what he preferred. He quoted that line from the poem above. With a shit-eating grin, I said, “I could use any term?” Returning his own version of my grin, he simply repeated the line. That was the beginning of an intriguing and hilarious relationship that lasted for more than ten years, on and off the courts.]
_____

“Davy Road”
A man in clothes the shape of sleep
_____

“Rock Harvest”
When I’m digging potatoes
and the fork hits rock, I dig for rock.
The logic of it seems clear to me.
_____

“The Old Home Day Parade”
Ralph Case Sr. sits in an aluminum folding chair.
The cold of ninety Vermont winters
hides in his afghan-covered knees
_____

“Chamois Shirt”
This Christmas, my daughter gave me
another shirt, which provoked
the problem of infinity—that is,
the time between the full use
of one thing, and the first use
of the next; the old shirt you love,
the other you may some day
feel your own.
_____… (meer)