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Inspired by daguerreotypes, tintypes, stereopticon slides, snapshots, and even yearbook photos, the poems in The White Train offer stark, sometimes sensual portraits of those no longer able to speak for themselves. In an evocative and resonant voice, John Spaulding explores history through the work of photographers over a hundred-year period, including Southworth and Hawes, Roger Fenton, Timothy O'Sullivan, Robert Howlett, Frederick Evans, Lewis Hine, and many anonymous amateurs. Even in their most overt references to pictures, Spaulding's poems are worlds unto themselves, abundantly filled with sounds, smells, and feelings that cannot be photographed. Flashes of haunting imagery, moments of biting humor, and an overlay of reverberating stillness cause these poems to "spill out of their historic darkness" and disarm us. "One of the things I am trying to explore in these poems is the nature of time and the nature of history. Today we seem to forget about the past at a faster rate than ever before. More and more our focus is on the present and future. Yet the past doesn't forget us—these voices continue to call us. It is up to us to listen—we need to stop and be silent—to open our hearts and minds to the voices of the past all around us. Their lives still matter. I am trying to listen to their voices and honor their lives."—John Spaulding
A Clock from Another Time (1962 yearbook photo)
There is a sense in which
we come to feel at home in the world,
in our bodies, in our lives.
This never happened to me.
As each year of my life passes
I feel more and more of an alien,
more and more the unlikely choice.
Alone here, inside my body,
I continue to watch and wonder,
as the distance grows
between the world and me,
like a clock from another time.
As a child watches other children
to learn how to behave, so
I watch other people from my window,
their perfect bodies,
their beautiful hair, their lives
unfolding like flowers.
I cover my mouth when I speak.
Keep my eyes on the ground when I walk
as though a quick line were drawn
around all my faults.
Who would want such painful shyness?
Embarrassed by my own life,
I have invented a new normality,
a standard of one
in a world you never see,
where silence is king and I am queen.
For who could think of anything to say
when there is everything to say,
and who would want to say anything at all
when to say everything is not enough.
Look for me there,
ask for me in that world,
where everyone is welcome,
on the other side of shyness.
“A Clock from Another Time” (1962 yearbook photo) published in The White Train: Poems by John Spaulding. Copyright © 2004 by John Spaulding. All rights reserved.
John Spaulding is the author of the poetry collection Walking in Stone. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Atlantic Monthly, Iowa Review, Poetry, and other publications. A native of Vermont, he is mental health director at the Phoenix Area Indian Health Service.
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