THE BEALLSVILLE CALENDAR
(2017)

In August 2015, with little time for imagination to keep up with logistics, I left D.C. after 21 years, accompanying a loved one whose career was taking a promising turn. Together, she and I made a home on an agricultural reserve along the Potomac River, surrounded by twelve acres of woods and overwhelmed by farmland, forests, small-town eccentrics, and wandering beasts.

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At the time, I had just translated a medieval calendar poem stuffed to the margins with ancient lore about nature, astrology, and country labors. Somehow a tiny whim grew into a commitment as our strange new home dictated a poem of its own, and on difficult terms: I would write a new metrical, alliterative installment every month for a year.

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At the request of readers who enjoyed the monthly poems as I posted them on my blog, I collected the entire sequence into a 62-page paperback.

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The Beallsville Calendar is probably the most personal thing I’ve written. It’s also the least polished, and certainly the most indulgent. Fearing I'd written the verse equivalent of a 24-minute drum solo, I was tempted to edit, prune, and reshape it—but then I decided to let it be.

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The Beallsville Calendar was never in widespread circulation. If you'd like a copy, email me. You can also read a 2024 review of the poem by alliterative poetry scholar Dennis Wilson Wise.

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