Book Report: At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf

13. Tara Ison, At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf (2023) (9/8/26)

Tara Ison was a mentor in my MFA program at Antioch University. We didn't work together, but I attended her workshop, her reading. So when this book was published, I bought it. And finally I've read it.

I found it interesting, especially for the unusual perspective it gives, on unoccupied France during WWII. A France that was being fed stories from Vichy—collaborators, if you will, with the Germans.

The story is of 12-year-old Danielle, a Jewish girl in Paris, whose father is killed after the Germans roll in. Her mother decides the safest haven for her is in a village near Limoges, with a Catholic couple who once worked for Danielle's grandparents. There, she becomes Marie-Jeanne—Jeanne d'Arc becoming her own namesake savior.

I could say what there's too much of: Catholic liturgy, Marie-Jeanne's thoughts. Yeah, mostly those two.

But that doesn't get at what irritates me about the book. 

Partly the writing: so many run-on sentences. Too much in-the-head.

But that's not it either.

The fact that the protagonist was 12? By the end she's 15, but a sheltered 15. In any case, she sounds much more worldly than she could have been.

I honestly can't say just what the irritant was, but I do know that it's something I'll be looking for in my own book about a different WWII situation.

I love Tara Ison, her smile, her hats. I kind of love this book, even though it just rankles me. I won't forget it. I guess that's a testament of sorts. 

Dirty Dancing

I like to take daily long walks—five miles or more—and one thing that keeps me going is podcasts. I've got a few favorites: Ezra Klein, Strangers on a Bench, Poetry Unbound, Melody or Witchcraft, Desert Island Discs, the Poetry Space, On Being. And lately, I've really been enjoying What Went Wrong: conversations about some of our most iconic, or most popular, or most unlikely movies, and the back stories about how they almost didn't get made, or might have been made very differently.

The other day I scrolled to a movie that I dearly love, Dirty Dancing. I don't remember when I first saw Dirty Dancing, but I do know that when Netflix went out of business and they let people just keep the last two discs they'd ordered, I put a lot of thought into what those two discs should be. 

Well, okay, "a lot of thought": I thought, well, I love Wings of Desire, so there's one. And . . . hmmm . . . I also love Dirty Dancing. Done.

And no regrets. I do enjoy watching both those movies every so often, different though they are. But also not so different: they're both about passion and meaning, what it is to be human. And sure, there are certainly other movies I'd also enjoy watching again and again. But I only got to keep two. Those others, whatever they are, are probably streaming somewhere, right?

Anyway. I very much enjoyed hearing the down-and-dirty on Dirty Dancing in What Went Wrong—the casting issues, the scant $5 million budget, the scramble for music rights (within that budget!), the search for a director, the search for a production studio, and it went on. They also mentioned a series of Netflix documentaries, The Movies That Made Us, the first installment of which is . . . yes, Dirty Dancing! So I watched that this evening. Each treatment gave me a different perspective, both on the movie itself and on the moviemaking industry. I'm beginning to think every movie I see is worth all that money. It's not an easy business.

I'll end with the movie's finale. 

And here's some of the "dirty dancing" itself:

Patrick Swayze especially was a joy to watch. He died too young. But I'm glad he lives on in Dirty Dancing.

Two poems, by two Jims: Harrison and Moore

I ran across these two poems today, both speaking of time and what matters, and I love them and want to keep them around. The first one in particular. My new goal in life is to keep wagging my feet above the abyss.

Bridge

by Jim Harrison (1937–2016)

Most of my life was spent
building a bridge out over the sea
though the sea was too wide.
I’m proud of the bridge
hanging in the pure sea air. Machado
came for a visit and we sat on the
end of the bridge, which was his idea. 

Now that I’m old the work goes slowly.
Ever nearer death, I like it out here
high above the sea bundled
up for the arctic storms of late fall,
the resounding crash and moan of the sea,
the hundred-foot depth of the green troughs.
Sometimes the sea roars and howls like
the animal it is, a continent wide and alive.
What beauty in this the darkest music
over which you can hear the lightest music of human
behavior, the tender connection between men and galaxies. 

So I sit on the edge, wagging my feet above
the abyss. Tonight the moon will be in my lap.
This is my job, to study the universe
from my bridge. I have the sky, the sea, the faint
green streak of Canadian forest on the far shore. 

This is the photo of a young Jim Harrison that accompanied the FB post. It's kind of perfect.

I had not heard of the next poet before today, but I've looked into him a bit and like what I see. In 1975, he was at La Guardia airport when a bomb exploded, killing twelve. He later wrote, "I realized, in the aftermath of the bomb, how arbitrary fate can be. Spending the night in La Guardia in the midst of that chaos, destruction, grief, and hysteria changed the nature of my work. Since then, I have felt that life is much more about the interruption of plot than about plot. What choice did my poetry have, but to reshape itself around these interruptions? I try to see as clearly—even calmly—as I can how things are. Sadness is at the heart of this clarity, but, strangely, consolation as well . . . we are all in it together." The following poem may well inspire me to seek out more of Jim Moore and his work.

The Need Is So Great

by Jim Moore (b. 1943)

Sometimes I just sit like this at the window and watch
the darkness come. If I’m smart, I’ll put on Bach.

I’m thinking now of how far it always seems there is to go.
Maybe it is too easy that I speak so often

of late last light on a December day,
of that stubborn grass that somehow still remains green

behind the broken chain link fence on the corner.
But the need is so great for the way light looks

as it takes its leave of us. We say
what we can to each other of these things,

we who are such thieves, stealing first
one breath and then the next. Bach, keep going

just this slowly, show me the way to believe
that what matters in this world has already happened

and will go on happening forever.
The way light falls on the last

of the stricken leaves of the copper beech
at the end of the block is something to behold.

And, okay, a third, final poem, named by David when I asked what his favorite is—because it fits the overall theme here: of having a mind and a heart and beholding the wonder of it all:

Messenger

by Mary Oliver (1935–2019)

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

The Weight of Time

Not long ago, Pádraig Ó Tuama posted in an email (Poetry Unbound?) a musing about time, and in it he included a poem he'd written, "The Weight of Time." One of the stanzas irked me, and continues to irk me:

1993 was a terrible year for me, an old guy said.
I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t born, came a reply.
The speaker got annoyed,
but the young guy said,
you’ve had your time —
my generation’s being destroyed.

First, the line "you've had your time." Um, no. Anyone who is alive has whatever time there is. We all only get this one span of time. Of precious life. You've had your time? What will that young guy feel when he gets to be seventy, eighty?

Certainly, too, you could look back to a similar "young guy" in the 1960s—who could easily have been the older speaker—and he also might well have said, "My generation's being destroyed." In this country, it has been true for many, throughout our history. The current generations might consider themselves lucky that they don't have a Civil War, a World War, a Vietnam, to get conscripted into, if they had perspective. There are many ways of surviving the odds.

Then there are the young people who complain about older folks who are remaining in their houses, now paid off, rather than moving somewhere smaller and letting young families take them over. But when I look at options around here, we'd have to pay more than we could get for our house, and for something smaller. Why should we do that? Haven't we paid our dues, earned some peace? Shouldn't we all get to be where want to be—assuming we've made it there—until it's no longer viable? Is it us "boomers'" fault that humans keep procreating, keep filling the planet? (And I say that as someone who did not.)

Of course of course, we're all egocentric, invested in our own stories, our own pains and joys, and we think we are the most important. And maybe that's also what I'm objecting to: that selfishness. Aren't we all in this together? Apparently not.

Though part of me thinks it's the media that are creating all the bellyache. That people aren't really as generationally divided, as dyspeptic, as selfish, as the "pundits" make up stories about. Because they've got to sell their papers. Which doesn't mean people don't believe the stories they're told. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sad. I wish critical thinking was actually taught in the schools.

Anyway, I'm keeping my house. I will do my best to stay healthy as long as I can, another ten, maybe twenty, but most likely not thirty years. Soon enough, the newest generation of young adults, whatever it calls itself, will have a crack at all I own. Most of it, they'll toss out. The house, though. I do hope some young family, someday, falls in love with it and makes it their own. Just not yet.

I know I'm being a crank here, but honestly. "You've had your time"? That's such bullshit.