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      July 7, 2017WhiteoutWilliam Trowbridge

      In 1845, Rear Admiral Sir John Franklin and a crew of 124 embarked on a fatal voyage to find the Northwest Passage. On word of their failure and death, England still hailed Franklin as a hero of the Empire.

      For fear of succumbing to the ways
      of savages, the officers eschewed
      blubber for tinned meats that leaked
      lead from the seams, refused parkas,
      choosing flannel coats that got soaked,
      then froze. They turned their backs
      on dogsleds and igloos, which also stank
      of “going native”—something their store
      of Bibles, novels, carpet slippers,
      silverware, and button polishers
      assuredly did not. Finally, in place
      of blubber, protection from the scurvy
      that wracked their bones, the still-living—
      snow-blind and starving, their ship
      bound fast in Arctic ice—gallantly
      ate the dead till the last survivor froze.

      from #55 - Spring 2017

      William Trowbridge

      “I was an athlete in high school, planning to go into pre-med in college. The poetry I was forced to read in English class—William Cullen Bryant’s ‘To a Waterfoul’ for example—convinced me that I never wanted to read another poem, much less write one. I was going to be Dr. Kildare, not Percy Dovetonsils. Then, in the last semester of my senior year, I was assigned to read, of all things, the first book of Paradise Lost. I don’t think I understood more than three-quarters of what I read, but the power of the language, even of the parts I didn’t understand, grabbed on and held. I never realized sound and rhythm could work such a spell. I’m glad the lesson stuck.”

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