4 Summer 2021 Applegater
BOOK REVIEW
HAMNET
Poetry Corner
A Novel of the Plague
Maggie O'Farrell
Alfred A. Knopf
New York, 2020
Plasticene Age
by Lisa E. Baldwin
leb.97527@gmail.com
Floating islands of discarded plastic
in seas that are rising and losing their brine,
colored by algae that bloom in the shallows,
red and bright green like a grandma in Advent,
decked out for Jesus who still hasn’t come—
BY CHRISTIN LORE WEBER
It was an accidental misconception.
Brought into the world in a sloppy chem lab,
suckled on greed and grown fat
on addictions and throw-away ethics,
plastic is everywhere.
On peaks in the Rockies,
and deep ocean trenches,
in winter snowfall and hurricane rains,
in the bellies of pelicans, bony and famished,
plastic abides.
Every micro-nano-tiny-bit adds a little heat
to the greenhouse,
adds a little weight to the burden.
Each single-use toss-out is another abuse
on domestic fowl and wild mammals,
chickens and quail, orcas and blues.
Plastics gas and foul the air, killing
blue skies and starry nights.
Our cities shed plastic like dead hair and skin cells,
into the soil, into the drains,
into our food, and our shrink-wrapped brains.
It sloughs off in our bodies
from hips, knees and tits.
It flows in our arteries and veins.
Plastic: our legacy, shame and demise.
That’s it.
Pleistocene is over.
Plastic is King.
Lisa E. Baldwin, a fifth-generation Oregonian, has lived in the Lower Applegate
community of Jerome Prairie since 1966. Baldwin is also a past president of the Oregon
Poetry Association and is an active member of the southern Oregon poetry community.
Have a submission for Poetry Corner, either by an Applegate resident or about the
Applegate? Email it to Applegater poetry editor Paul Tipton at ptipton4u2c@gmail.com.
BOOK REVIEW IN BRIEF
Secret Diary is a fine fictional tale
of an Applegate area pioneer
By Margaret Myers
C. Ellen Watts has published the sequel to The Secret Diary
of Emily A: Gold Miner’s Daughter. That story took place
mostly in the Squaw Lakes area of Jackson County, east of
Applegate Lake. It described pioneer life through the eyes of
a child and was both informative and entertaining.
In The Secret Diary of Emily A: Beyond These Mountains,
“Emily A” chronicles her life from the age of 16, describing
the life of a pioneer woman starting in 1909. This novel depicts the perseverance of the
pioneers, how rugged, loyal, and committed they were in accepting their way of life.
I highly recommend this book to all people of all ages. It’s a great book!
Margaret Myers
myersmaggie74@gmail.com
A stunning skill of the writer Maggie
O’Farrell is her ability to describe a
scene with such vivid precision that her
readers see it too. How does she do that?
I wonder as I read the first page and then
as I continue, page upon page, all the way
to the end. Some reviewers recommend
having a tissue available for that moment,
but I had a completely different reaction
than tears. Awe. Awe is what I was
feeling—rendered motionless by pure awe.
The names “Hamnet” and “Hamlet”
were interchangeable in the sixteenth
century when William Shakespeare wrote
his play, and history records that the
playwright had three children—Suzanne
and the twins, Hamnet and Judith. The
boy, Hamnet, died in 1596, age 11. About
four years later his father wrote the play,
Hamlet. Into this scant data, O’Farrell
inserts her imagination for storytelling
and characterization, and the result is
this book.
Whether or not you are a Shakespeare
fan, this book has the power to draw
you in and fascinate you. If you know
Shakespeare’s plays and poetry, you will
enjoy searching for connections between
this story and what remains of his life’s
work. But the book is complete without
that. O’Farrell catapults us into the
final century of the bubonic plague, still
cropping up here and there in Europe and
England. “The pestilence” they call it when
they talk of it at all. They haven’t had a case
of it in several years. But they keep an eye
out. We find ourselves on Henley Street
in Stratford at the home of a glove maker.
“A boy is coming down a flight of
stairs. The passage is narrow and twists
back on itself. He takes each step slowly,
sliding himself along the wall, his boots
meeting each tread with a thud…It is a
close windless day in late summer, and the
downstairs room is slashed by long strips of
light. The sun glowers at him from outside,
the windows latticed slabs of yellow, set
into the plaster.”
Here is the beginning of a story of a
family in the English countryside, a family
of complex and intriguing characters with
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• Long-time Applegater editor
deep secrets and raw but often hidden
emotions. It could be any family, though,
and that makes it easy to slip into the house
on Henley street and watch the goings on
from the shadows. So often I wanted to
warn them—“Be careful! That one has
it in for you!” Or, “No! Don’t leave right
now! Something awful is about to happen
upstairs. You’ll never forgive yourself.”
While the title points towards the only
son, Hamnet, the conflict we experience
is centered in the heart and mind of
Agnes (or Anne, as she is better known by
history), the playwright’s wife. More than
anyone else in the novel, Agnes left me
breathless. She is magical. She shimmers.
She’s other-worldly and knows things
others don’t. Therefore, she is constantly
seeking for her place, her role in the family,
in the town, in the world at large. She’s a
forest creature, an herbalist, an empath,
a healer, wounded as she is. Maybe she
expects too much of herself. I kept wanting
to warn her. Even now I can’t stop thinking
of her, believing that any woman will
recognize her, sometimes with awe, other
times with foreboding. When we first meet
her on page 16 she is with the honey bees:
Agnes is circling the skeps, listening
for whatever the bees are telling her;
she is eyeing the swarm in the orchard,
a blackish stain spread throughout the
branches that vibrates and quivers with
outrage. Something has upset them….
Later and for the rest of her life, she will
think that if she had left there and then, if
she had gathered her bags, her plants, her
honey, and taken the path home, if she
had heeded her abrupt, nameless unease,
she might have changed what happened
next… she might have headed off what
was coming.
Hamnet is a dazzling read!
Christin Lore Weber
storyweaver1@gmail.com
Voices of the Applegate
Pause continues for
Voices of the Applegate
We are sorry to say that, due to the pandemic,
Voices of the Applegate is still on hold.
You can keep in touch with us on
Facebook (Voices of the Applegate). 
If things change during the next few months,
we will certainly let you know. 
We hope you will all stay healthy and
hopefully we’ll see you soon.
Holiday Literary Services
holidayliterary@aol.com ● 541-708-1620
Joan Peterson • 541-846-6988
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