{"id":97567,"date":"2015-10-30T11:08:41","date_gmt":"2015-10-30T15:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=97567"},"modified":"2021-07-21T16:39:25","modified_gmt":"2021-07-21T20:39:25","slug":"an-illustrated-reading-of-toward-halloween-by-robert-farnsworth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2015\/10\/30\/an-illustrated-reading-of-toward-halloween-by-robert-farnsworth\/","title":{"rendered":"An illustrated reading of &#8216;Toward Hallowe&#8217;en&#8217; by Robert Farnsworth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Timely for evoking autumn colors, and timeless for its existential wit, a reading by Rob Farnsworth, senior lecturer in English, of his poem \u201cToward&nbsp;Hallowe\u2019en,\u201d illustrated by Bates photography.<\/p>\n\n\n<p><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><\/p>\n<h4>Toward Hallowe\u2019en<\/h4>\n<p>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<hr>\n<p><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 in English at Bates.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Timely for evoking autumn, and timeless for its existential wit, a reading by Rob Farnsworth, senior lecturer in English, of his poem &#8220;Toward Hallowe&#8217;en,&#8221; illustrated by the best of our fall photography. <\/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,"_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":[11010,133],"tags":[10920,10834],"class_list":["post-97567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-creativity","tag-robert-farnsworth","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97567","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=97567"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140991,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97567\/revisions\/140991"}],"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=97567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}