These scythes are just a few of the old farm tools we found in the barn and shed when we moved to Plummer’s Hollow in 1971. Other gems included a butter churn, a foot-operated grindstone and a chest-high, hand-cranked winnowing machine.

If the photo looks familiar, that’s because Phoenicia Publishing used it for the cover of Odes to Tools. In “Ode to Scythes,” I had written:

The scythes are emissaries
from a country
that no longer exists.

In fact, as I learned this past Saturday, that “country” is not completely vanished yet. The gentleman above, Martin Hardy, actually wielded those sythes (and also operated the butter churn, the grindstone and winnowing machine) as a boy back in the 1930s. His family lived in the old tenant house, the same house I live in now, for roughly the first four decades of the 20th century, living here year-round and looking after the farm while the absentee owners were in Chicago. To make ends meet, they grew oats, wheat, and other crops, kept a few dairy cows and sold the milk and cheese once a week in Tyrone. They stored the milk in the springhouse to keep it cool the rest of the week.

Though we’ve met many Plummer family descendents over the years, their attachment to the mountain is mainly a sentimental one. What memories they have are based on the few weeks they spent up here each summer. It was wonderful to meet a former year-round resident who actually grew up on the mountain the same as I did. Mr. Hardy was born in 1922, but he seems as if he could easily be 15 years younger. He recalled taking walks south along the mountain toward Altoona for fun, just as my brothers and I did, and like us, they kept chickens in the shed (the building behind him in the photo, which also houses the old tools). And while I have vivid memories of the Flood of ’72 (Hurricane Agnes), when we stood at a safe distance and watched floating trees slam into the decking of our access bridge over the Little Juniata, he remembered walking home from school during the Flood of ’36 and discovering that the bridge was completely gone. It was his grandfather, a skilled mason, who built the stone pediment that supports the present bridge, he said. It’s held up very well indeed.

I don’t think I ever shared this video for “Ode to Scythes,” the work of the British blogger and Buddhist priest Kaspalita. It was an unexpected gift, and very well executed, I thought — especially considering it was his first videopoem!

Mr. Hardy said they used a team of horses (one blind, the other sighted) to pull a mowing machine, and got out the scythes to mow the edges and the corners. I’ll bet our Amish neighbors in Sinking Valley still do much the same. I kind of question the poem’s premise now, in fact. A few decades from now, scythes may very well be common tools once again, and if any of us manage to live to 90, the tools people inquire about may not be hand tools, but things like iPads and the internet.

I was surprised and honored tonight to learn that poet Nicelle Davis has been distributing poems from my chapbook, Odes to Tools, as the first exercise in her new Living Poetry Project. The project’s goal: “to physically take poetry everywhere I go and share it.” She says some very flattering things about my book, but what’s even better, she went to the trouble to distribute its contents to people who might appreciate it. This is of course the very sort of thing I hoped might happen when I decided to license the poems as Attribution-Share Alike under the Creative Commons, rather than just applying a standard copyright. But it’s still very humbling to have people like one’s poems well enough to aid in their dissemination.

To bring Odes To Tools with me in my hometown, I decided to hand write Bonta’s poems onto Thank You Cards. I gave these “love letters to tools” to people who work with them everyday.

I met many kind, generous, and funny people while sharing Odes To Tools with my community. For this (and many other reasons), I’m grateful to Dave Bonta. His book has helped me connect with the physical, intellectual, and emotional aspects of my home—it has helped bring poetry closer to those who construct the home I love.

The gratitude is mutual. Thanks, Nicelle!

(Be sure to read the full post — it includes many more photos.)

I admire the precision of language and observation in this book, how the setting unfolds around the focus on the tool at hand, and how each poem, moving quickly and lightly, can also, if it wants, take on a large philosophical idea.

I love how there’s a life here, a personal history, work, a childhood.

Read the whole post here.

The same issue includes an Editors’ Note on Book Reviews in which they explain their philosophy about reviewing; evidently some poets have been belly-aching about “reviews that are less than wholly positive.” It is illustrated by a wonderful painting, unfortunately too small to make out in very great detail: “Marco Polo Forced to Eat Moths.”

Incidentally, Phoenicia Publishing is holding a fall sale: 15% off on all titles through October 1. See the site for details.

A great many poetry lovers already know and appreciate Dave’s writing, but […] Odes to Tools is also one of those subversive cross-over books, perfect as a gift for someone who loves tools but thinks they don’t like poetry. They’ll be surprised to find a poet who appreciates tools with his words in much the same way they take care of their own saws or planes: not wrapped in fancy fabric or elevated like sculptures, but held comfortably in the hands, thought about like friends, and cared for now and then with a little oil on a clean cloth.

The book is just $6.95, but if you’d like a signed copy, you’ll have to mail me a check or postal money order for U.S. $10.00. Send to: Dave Bonta, PO Box 68, Tyrone, PA 16686, USA. I have yet to put in a bulk order, so if you’re in a hurry, order it from the publisher or from Amazon (where you can get free shipping if you bundle it with other stuff).

I also recorded a free audio version of the book, just under half an hour long:

Download the mp3

In which I am flabbergasted by Beth’s secret plot to rescue some of my poems from a purely digital existence and give them a better life in print north of the border. We talk about the pitfalls of self-plagiarism, what writers can learn from musicians, the ins and outs of small publishing, and what the hell is up with chalk-line reels that aren’t blue. I read a few of the odes, and manage a plausible-sounding explanation for what I was thinking when I came up with the series.

Links:

• Phoenicia Publishing
• the cassandra pages (Beth’s blog)
• Odes to Tools series on Via Negativa
• Why I copyleft my writing
• Innvivo on Jamendo.com (this week’s theme music)

Podcast feed | Subscribe in iTunes

Boots are for those
who toot their own horns,
sporting as we know
the handy bootstraps,
which give the so-called
self-made men
a better metaphor for rising
to their own occasion.