Threshing
Francis Masat
this small universe
for Louis C. Hack
A jar full of pond-stuff
dwells on our windowsill.
Duckweed covers the surface
like miniature lily pads.
Beneath the green surface
a limnologist’s dream exists:
the realm of the hydra,
the world of the paramecium.
The sun penetrates the depths,
lighting the innermost reaches.
Translucent pea-size snails
graze on spirogyra leaves.
Filamentous bands glow
an eerie indefinable green.
A tadpole wiggles past,
a bulbous black monster
to its companion denizens.
To break away is tempting,
but transcendence wins.
In an ageless balance
of water, light, and air,
all of life’s cycles are here—
living and dying in the depths
of this small universe.
ISBN 1-59661-137-5
45 pages/$9
Threshing is a powerful book of growing up in the plains during the years of the Great Depression. These poems reveal the other side of childhood, the one Norman Rockwell didn’t cover. They are gritty and honest, yet filled with tenderness. In the background there is always an acute presence of the earth’s beauty. We are fortunate that Masat left the plains and has emerged as a strong and compassionate poet and that he has shared his journey with us.
—Elsa Colligan,
Author, The Town of Poetry
The lines of Threshing herald the real and the precious in every moment, and like all truths, have a stunning effect on the soul. Masat opens his scrapbook, and oddly, we fall out. He shows the transformation of every day and memory, into jewels. By doing so, he brings us closer to the beating heart of every moment. He’s a compass that ever points home—his boat will gently rock you calm.
—Karen Corcoran Dabkowski,
Editor, The Blue House
The Midwest evoked by Masat’s Threshing is both tough and tender. The images pulled from the natural world reflect the extremes of Midwestern life, of heat and cold, of wind, flood, and drought, but the people in the poems are battlers, and Masat’s clear love of life in all its baffling complexity keeps you reading.
—James Newton,
Poet, Author, Teacher
In Threshing, Masat traces his riverbank roots and captures the vanishing heartland of America. These sharp-edged poems resonate with amazing precision and stunning intensity. Noisy railroads morph into quiet grassy patches, sandy prairie rivers recede into dusty fields, and lilac blossoms evoke a stinging switch. Beneath complex currents of change and loss, the poignant possibility of rebirth breaks through the debris of a prairie town.
—Dr. Antoinette (Toni) Libro,
Poet, Professor Emerita, Rowan University, New Jersey
Taken from the Summer/Autumn 2011 issue of PEGASUS, the journal of the Kentucky State Poetry Society
Book Beat, by Elaine Palencia
.
Francis Masat, Threshingc. 2010. 45 pp. $9.
Masat celebrated his current home in A Taste of Key West, reviewed here in 2009. Threshing recalls a
Midwestern boyhood of hard work and family problems tempered by nature. “Streams and ponds and lakes: / they are
my enduring weakness. / Mixed with golden summer days, / a lifetime can pass by unnoticed,” he declares, as he turns
to the land for solace and meaning, honoring a place that endures beyond human attempts to tame it: “grain elevator /
bleached white / erect / alone / waiting in the debris / of a prairie town.” We know he will not stay. The romance of
transportation in such poems as “Gandy Dancers” and “Chicago Bus Stop” shows the way out of a hard life. The
“heartland heartbroken” gives him “A craving for the secret places —” and it will obligate him to return. “I stop on
the iron bridge / at dusk. / Memories of the other / times before flow through me / like the river flowing below.”
A handsome collection.
This collection uses layers of images to show what the interventions of chance and
achievement yield in the life of a prairie child. Grief and renewal live in these poems
alongside failure and success in the spectrum of human experience.
Raised and educated in the Midwest, Francis Masat is Professor Emeritus, Rowan University
of New Jersey. He lives in Key West, where he is a wildlife rescuer and community volunteer.
His poetry appears in more than 100 journals and anthologies. Threshing is his third book of
poetry.