“Way down the street, there’s a light in his place…”

In August 2015, with little time for imagination to keep up with logistics, I left Washington and headed west, accompanying a loved one whose career was taking a promising turn. Together we 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.

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 installment every month for a year. At the request of a few supportive readers who enjoyed the monthly poems as I posted them on this blog, I’ve collected the entire sequence into a 62-page paperback, the most portable form I was able to manage. (I owe huge thanks to my friend Leonore for letting me adorn the cover with a photograph I found so beguiling that it’s framed on my kitchen wall.)

I’d love to put The Beallsville Calendar in the hands of people who want to read it. If you’d like a copy, please send $15 to me via Paypal at jeffsypeck -at- gmail-dot-com, or email me to find out how to send another form of payment via mail. Please make it $20 if you’re outside the United States. These prices include shipping. I wish I could give the book away, but printing and shipping are costly.

If you’re new to this odd project, feel free to fling yourself into the first drafts of each chapter: Prologue : September : October : November : December : January : February : March : April : May : June : July : August.

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’ve written the verse equivalent of a 24-minute drum solo, I’m tempted to hack and slash through last year’s poetic brambles—but no, I’ll let them be. This poem called me to look closely at sights and scenes that grew wild at particular places and times, and I’m glad about that. If you buy a copy, I hope you find something worthwhile in it: an image that grabs you, a notion that moves you, a passage that gives you a laugh, or something more subtle that leads to a moment of peace.