Deborah Tall

In this book, Tall, raised by parents who tell her very little about family history and who seem to have no living relatives, is driven to research her family and discover their origins. Her journey takes her to the Ukraine and what is left of her Jewish family in a very small village–so small it isn’t even a shtetl.

The writing style is that of a lyric essay–the text lives at the edge where poetry and prose meet. There is a lot of white space on the pages. It means that Tall didn’t have to add little physical details and actions to conversations. She summarizes sometimes instead of creating scenes. The book is full of non sequiturs. Instead of traditional transitions, she structures the book into tiny chapters. She re-uses chapter names to create connections across time and space. I’m fascinated by this style of writing and believe it forces the reader to be more assertive, to engage more with the text. The writer doesn't spoon food all the details to the reader.

A beautiful book. I think it would be most appreciated by family historians/genealogist, poets, and readers used to literary texts.… (meer)

This is a wonderful autobiography chronicling a young American writer's journey from the U.S. to a small Irish island, where she lived for over five years with a prominent Irish poet. This is simultaneously a fascinating study of island life and its accompanied poverty, and the development of a young woman from college graduate to serious poet. She analyzes her intentions in making such a drastic lifestyle change as well as the course the relationship takes in response to her sacrifices, and the result is a beautifully poetic description of a life in isolation.… (meer)

In the mid 1980's, poet and writer, Deborah Tall moved to the Finger Lakes region to teach at William Smith. She found herself living in the heart of Seneca country, near the densely rich 'Longhouse Road' (Route 5 & 20) that crosses the middle of New York State and fell in love with Lake Seneca and the region. Her book, ten years in the making, is an attempt to explore the many layers of history that abide here: from the past and present of the Seneca, one of the leading nations of the Iroquois League, to the fabled Mary Jemison, captive who preferred her captors way of life; from to the unusual numbers of religious visionaries (Joseph Smith being the most successful) to the equally unusual number of early women's rights advocates. Along the way she finds herself wondering if there is something about this area that encourages innovative thinking. She does not flinch from the ugliness and cruelty and outright betrayal of the new United States - including George Washington - toward the Iroquois when the lang-grabbing speculation and general greediness got rolling. Nor does she flinch from describing the ways in which we have abused the rich land of this area using it as a dumping ground for every kind of waste that the military generates - including nuclear. Nor does she flinch from a frank assessment of the reasons why Geneva as a city, on the north side of the lake is a miserable and failed one while Ithaca to the South is an attractive and successful one. She explores too the concept that poetry is tied to landscape and that, in a way, that is what all poets do, interpret what is right before their eyes in the most concrete possible way, and that this requires making a commitment to a single place in order to make as deep a study of it as one can in a lifetime. To that end she explores all of her responses to her discoveries. My favorite chapters explore the intriguing idea, most eloquently written about by Bruce Chatwin, that one of the ailments of modern humankind, particularly Americans, is that they have, most of them, no relationship at all to where they live. They know nothing of the past history of the land upon which their home was built, and don't care to know either. It doesn't even occur to them that it matters. Whereas for native people of an area, and that would now include white folks who stayed put and have farmed a parcel of land for over a century, literally apprehend the world in a totally different and much richer way than we can comprehend. Places are named differently, for things that happened there, or that tend to happen there. If you live in a place for a long time you start to do that, even unconsciously as 'place where trees blow down' or 'place where wildflowers bloom first' or 'place where I always get lost' and 'the mysterious twenty foot wall in the middle of nowhere' (these are all the unconscious names I've given to places where I walk on our back forty. To take such a person who is rooted in this way off their land is literally to kill their inner spirit. And yes, most Americans' own spirits are damaged to destroyed utterly from our casual and vagrant attitude towards the land. I loved Tall's effort to get inside this difficult reality, her pain at knowing she may not ever get very far herself in that kind of rootedness and I greatly admire her decision to STAY PUT and do her darndest to 'become part of it.' *****… (meer)