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KIRKUS REVIEW:
Two women journey to
Colonial America and are accused of witchcraft in poet
Secord’s debut novel in verse.
“Don’t think these
skills were simple, / they were an art, a craft, a
mystery, / yet when the men took notice, / they doubted
diligence and named it
witchery,” reads the closing verse of this book’s title
poem. The skills to which the poet refers are
those adopted by
17th-century women to nurture their communities—skills
that outsiders distorted and called malevolent
acts. This novel
initially hurls the reader into the heart of London,
England, at a time of plague. Lydea Gilbert and her
niece, Kate, tend to
the sick with little success, and after losing loved
ones, they decide to journey across the ocean. In
1636, they board a
ship called the
Trueloveand
set sail for Massachusetts, accepting a period of
indentured servitude to
pay for their passage.
They’re made to work for a merchant, Hutchinson; his
wife, Anne, is later put on trial for heresy.
Lydea and Kate then
travel on to Connecticut where they go their separate
ways, with Lydea going to stay with her cousin,
Thomas, and Kate
marrying John Harrison, a grower of hops, barley, and
tobacco. In 1654, Lydea is accused of being a
witch by families she
“nursed through pox,” and in 1668, Kate, too, is dragged
from her bed and charged with witchcraft. In
a final note, the poet
reveals that the characters of Lydea and Kate are based
on real women, the author’s ancestors, who
lived in and were
persecuted by Puritan society.
Secord powerfully
captures the precariousness of the lives of women
healers in the space of a deceptively simple
quatrain: “My pockets
carry sentimental pieces. / These womb-shaped bags hang
below my skirts / hiding needed things,
tools for nourishing,
/ locks of my children’s hair and linen strings.” These
brief lines speak volumes about Lydea’s
maternal benevolence
and the need for her to conceal her practices from those
around her. The work presents poems
from the separate
perspectives of Lydea and Kate, and these first-person
accounts shape two psychologically distinct
characters. The
younger Kate’s vulnerability is palpable on occasion: “I
thought that I could live / without her presence, but
being with child /
again, I wish I could feel her hands.” Secord is also
expert at communicating atmosphere, as when, on
their arrival in
America, Lydea observes: “The air smells / ever green,
and trees outnumber men,” a stark contrast to the
“many funeral pyres”
of the London they left behind. Some readers may be
initially skeptical of a novel written entirely in
verse, but Secord
maintains a strong storyline throughout, and her poetry
adds a deeper sense of mysticism. From its
opening line, “We kept
the small alive from day to day, / kept households warm,
kept bread made,” this book is a
passionate celebration
of historically undervalued daily endeavors of women,
and a vital reminder of what victims of
persecution endured.
A smartly conceived and emotionally
stirring poetic tale.
“When Laura Secord discovered
Lydea, her ancestor found guilty of witchcraft, she set
out to understand the women of colonial America . . .
Secord has woven an extraordinary fact-based and highly
empathic story of the women living in a world literally
and figuratively on the edge. These are poems of the
daily labors of women and their silent, and at times not
so silent, struggles to survive. Power, and the
difference between its overt and covert expression, is
at the core of many of these poems, as well as a
confrontation with a spirituality that transcended, and
maybe even transformed, Puritanism. Secord writes with
clarity and tenderness, precision, as well as passion,
and as if she knows the only way forward is to confront
the past. These poems ask us to look at how we stand on
the shoulders of the women who walked before us and
whether we are creating a path for those who will come
after us.”
—Laura McCullough, Women & Other Hostages, winner Miller
Williams Prize, 2016
Excerpt:
An Art, a Craft,
a Mystery
We
kept the small alive from day to day,
kept households warm,
kept bread made,
while men sat in the
meetinghouse
in ceaseless debate
on sin, redemption,
destiny.
Their grace came through
women’s works—
watching fires and
keeping coals ablaze,
and their salvation by
women’s hands,
gathering each day’s
yeasted scraps
for tomorrow’s meal, a sacred pact.
Don’t think these skills
were simple,
they were an art, a
craft, a mystery,
yet when the men took
notice,
they doubted diligence
and named it witchery.
Soul
Mountain, Connecticut
Behind the
trees, I heard
the barking cries.
Two geese appeared,
long-necked shadows crossing the slough—
Aunt Lydea, my cousin Katherine—
to me their stories flew.
Southwark of
London, 1636
A Harpy
Lydea Gilbert
In our tenement we take in
work—spinning.
With my husband again off to sea,
I’m alone
with three wee-ones and niece,
Kate,
married to someone I never see.
No kitchen. We buy our meals from
the stalls in the streets.
Some evenings, I see that lone
woman with burnt-red scars,
and those eyes, always drifting,
part-crossed.
Called a harpy,
she’s hawking fruitcake squeezed in
the shape
of a rose, and then shoved on a
stick. Hear
her shout—
Hallo! Ha-pence,
ha-penny! Her eyes, how they mourn,
as she looks into me.
I am choking.
I tremble
and flee, slopping our stew on my
skirts and my sleeves.
Hasty Rose Ring
Lydea Gilbert
One rosy morn in spring I find my
man
home from the seas.
We
celebrate and sing.
Our babies climb his lap;
he kisses me.
With a shilling from spinning, I
buy us party treats—
a special feast for Richard’s seadog yarns.
As children screech and giggle, he
falls to coughing.
I’m hopeful wrapped in his arms. A stifled cough,
shaking, his body shivers.
I hold a sick man
at midnight, flushed with fever.
I’ve heard sad yarns,
this one comes true.
My mates were
ailing.
And still
you sing?
So glad to
see our babies, I want to be their treat.
I brew him tea and rub his back beside me.
Dawn finds me worried.
He spews his breakfast on me.
I wake up Kate.
Watch them,
I go to cure his cough.
I seek a chemist’s syrup I hope will treat
his weakening, made from ginger to
heal the man
I’ve longed for through two
springs.
I sing
a prayer for healing.
By
dusk, I see our family yarn
frays toward swelling grief.
Infested yarns
unravel all our joys.
Kate, get
these babies from me.
Come, your Da needs sleep.
They huddle up while Kate sings
a ballad of love and loss as Richard coughs.
He’s hellish hot and ringed with
red.
This man
is dying.
A curse I can’t begin to treat.
Time compresses.
Is this the death of which they sing?
I turn to see my wee’uns failing.
Can’t treat
them fast enough to save them.
All three coughing.
My Kate tries hard, we nurse them
together. Our yarn
runs to its hasty end, where red rings glare at
me.
Kate runs for help.
The Surgeon says,
It’s
plague, mam.
Shaken.
Can’t sing.
I’ve lost my man,
my babies.
No treatment worked by Kate or me.
We’ve lived the darkest tale, yet we’re not
coughing
After the Plague
Lydea
My husband, dead.
My babies gone.
All love:
a failing.
Why not me?
To glorify their tender
souls, I strive
to nurse those suffering
and work to tend the living.
Why not me?
My Hal, my Viola, my
Rosemary,
I nourish stranger’s
children in your names.
Sustain lives or witness
their passing,
Why not me?
Through scourge infested
alleys, Kate
and I cradle child after
child, still this bane
of buboes, chills and
fear subdues their frames.
Why not mine?
Keeping
memories alive, I cross
the lanes of hell.
Penance.
Why not me?
Passage
I.
Kate
Gilbert
Aunt and I walk through
our broken
neighborhood carrying herbs.
We try
healing disease with no cure. This
work
makes me forget, then re-live my
cousins’ dying.
Does she wish to pursue our lost
family?
Nurture in murderous
hovels— her solution to everything
crumbling.
We’ll nurse others, die or live.
II.
Lydea
So alone: Kate and I.
This tenement room
could not contain the pain
shooting like flames
down my neck and arms.
Even my face feels
smeared with sorrow.
I could not stand
my feet touching the streets,
after many funeral pyres.
Katherine touched my face.
Her hands burned me.
I knew I needed sea,
and cold salt-spray against what we
have seen.
I told Kate I was going to find us
food,
but went down to the docks, and
sold ourselves for
passage on ship Truelove
…to the
Colonies—worlds unknown, where family lives.
Gather our poor
things, we take to sea come the morning.
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