{"id":136664,"date":"2020-10-21T13:01:40","date_gmt":"2020-10-21T17:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=136664"},"modified":"2021-03-17T12:33:46","modified_gmt":"2021-03-17T16:33:46","slug":"video-beautiful-campus-photos-grace-poet-robert-farnsworths-toward-halloween","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2020\/10\/21\/video-beautiful-campus-photos-grace-poet-robert-farnsworths-toward-halloween\/","title":{"rendered":"Video: Beautiful campus photos grace poet Robert Farnsworth&#8217;s &#8216;Toward Hallowe&#8217;en&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 2015, poet Rob Farnsworth, then a senior lecturer in English and now retired, agreed to read his poem \u201cToward&nbsp;Hallowe\u2019en,\u201d which we recorded and illustrated with fall campus photography to create an audio slideshow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignwide size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/150326_Rob_Farnsworth_Poetry_01071.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1620\" height=\"1080\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/150326_Rob_Farnsworth_Poetry_01071.jpg\" alt=\"\u201cWhy does one write poems? An answer to atavistic hunger?\u201d poet Rob Farnsworth muses as he leads a discussion on the poetry of William Carlos Williams in a Pettigrew classroom. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)\" class=\"wp-image-93885\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/150326_Rob_Farnsworth_Poetry_01071.jpg 1620w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/150326_Rob_Farnsworth_Poetry_01071-400x267.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/150326_Rob_Farnsworth_Poetry_01071-900x600.jpg 900w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/04\/150326_Rob_Farnsworth_Poetry_01071-200x133.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1620px) 100vw, 1620px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>In 2015, Rob Farnsworth leads a discussion on the poetry of William Carlos Williams in a Pettigrew Hall classroom. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Timely for evoking autumn colors, and timeless for its existential wit, the poem recounts a moment of awe at the sight of a maple tree suddenly let go its red leaves. Awed by the sight, the poet describes what comes next: a feeling of acute and inexplicable joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s the joy of being <em>released<\/em> \u2014 from having to suss out what just happened (or what might), &#8220;from having to stitch effect to cause,&#8221; says the poet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The joy of just watching the leaves fall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-vimeo wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"An illustrated reading of &#039;Toward Hallowe&#039;en&#039; by Robert Farnsworth\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/143932905?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Toward Hallowe\u2019en<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I woke in painted stillness and stepped<br>out on the porch. The silted altitudes were<br>motionless, and although it hadn\u2019t rained,<br>the light was melancholy, damp, made<br>for still black boughs and brilliant leaves.<br>One of those days that deserves its very<br>own name: Latin for air-without-motive,<br>autumn-holding-steady. I stared into<br>the trees, as a child looks into a picture<br>said to contain a tiger\u2019s smile, a five-<br>pointed star, a domino, a hand \u2014 when with<br>a sound like distant applause (fainter<br>than the softball crowds who had rejoiced<br>all summer beyond the trees), one whole<br>maple\u2019s wild red leaves poured down<br>across the street. No wind, no bird, no<br>squirrel, just a steady shower of leaves<br>from a stolid tree, so sudden and unanimous<br>it seemed deliberate. Standing there,<br>my arms embossed with bedding wrinkles,<br>I was pierced with recognition acute<br>and inexplicable as the sweet, focused<br>ache a finger held inches from my forehead<br>provokes. I didn\u2019t know why&nbsp;\u2014 but that<br>was joy&nbsp;\u2014 release from having to stitch<br>effect to cause, from having to name each<br>five-fingered leaf or separate day. They<br>would fall away in good time, from places<br>in a picture of the past, into a hushed,<br>mysterious storm of bright red leaves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>\u201cToward Hallowe&#8217;en&#8221; first appeared in Robert Farnsworth\u2019s book <\/em>Honest Water, <em>published by Wesleyan University Press in 1989. Farnsworth is a senior lecturer emeritus in English at Bates.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2015, poet Rob Farnsworth, then a senior lecturer in English and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":136659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"bates_author_byline_override":"","_estimated-read-time":"","_post-template":"\/usr\/local\/webserver\/webpve\/htdocs\/new-www.bates.edu\/wp-content\/themes\/b\/news\/single-big-header-image.php","_header-color":"#000000","_photo-credit":"Phyllis Graber Jensen","_header-effect":"parallax","override_related_with_tag":"","_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,9946,14,223],"tags":[10920],"class_list":["post-136664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-exclude-from-loops","category-faculty-staff","category-slideshow","tag-robert-farnsworth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136664"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136797,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136664\/revisions\/136797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}