John LeKay: According to
legend, Hobomoko (the Native American devil) carried a woman to
Purgatory Chasm after she had murdered a "white man". When the woman
began to fight, Hobomoko hit her head against a boulder and attacked her
with a tomahawk. The bowl-like depressions show where her head hit the
boulder, the ax-marks where the tomahawk struck, and the footprints in
the vein of stone where he carried his victim's body to the edge of the
fissure.
Do you know of this spot, (bowel-like depressions) where her head hit
the boulder and when and how did you first discover Purgatory chasm?
Susan Edwards Richmond: This story is actually not associated with the
Purgatory Chasm in Sutton, Massachusetts, near Worcester. We learned
about this second Purgatory Chasm when we traveled to Newport, Rhode
Island, last February. There is another rock formation there, this one
abutting the ocean, also called Purgatory Chasm. The legend you relate
is exactly the one we read about on our visit! This PC is also very
interesting but much smaller than the one that is the subject of my
poems. I wonder how many other PC's there are!
There is also a lot of chasm lore associated with the Sutton PC and that
is the material I mined for my poem. The chasm literature relates
several tragic accidents that occurred there--the most famous of these
being the deaths of Thordis Tapper (a high school-age girl), Mrs. George
Prentice (wife of a Wesleyan University professor), and Simon Such, the
voice in "Corn Crib."
I first encountered
the Massachusetts PC on the invitation of a friend. Neither one of us
had ever been there, but he had heard of it and was curious to see it in
person. We brought our families there one day, and our girls were
entranced. Wonderful rock climbing and caves! I found the place
hauntingly beautiful and was most intrigued by a series of markers
erected along the trail which named a number of the rock
formations--"Lover's Leap," "Devil's Pulpit," "Fat Man's Misery," "Corn
Crib," etc. These became the inspiration for the series. I later
returned many times to see the chasm in all seasons and was given
permission to research its history at the Reservation offices.
JL: Do you know if
these marked rock formations have any folklore or stories attached to
them?
- SR: This
is where I sort of morphed the mythology. I took the stories of
the accident victims, Thordis Tapper, Mrs. Prentice, and Simon
Such, and related them to the named rock formations, even though
they were not necessarily related in real life. I wove some of
their historical circumstances, along with geological theories
about the chasm and some other anecdotes, into a text that cast
the three as ghosts wandering the chasm, accosting the
occasional traveler.
- JL: Which
poem did you morph the story of Thordis Tapper into. Great
name by the way. How did she die?
- SR: The first poem
in which Thordis Tapper speaks is called "Lover's Leap" (not
among the ones I sent). The literature at the visitor center
says she fell to her death from the cliffs of Lover's Leap. I
embroidered on the character from there.
Thordis speaks to the Hiker (same character as in "Corn Crib")
in another poem titled, "Devil's Pulpit." It is also Thordis'
voice in the poem, "Attachment." In the manuscript, "Attachment"
is part of a longer three-part poem, in which each of the three
ghosts has its final say.
- JL: What
happened to Mrs. George Prentice (wife of a Wesleyan
University professor) Do you know how she died. How do they
know it was an accident?
- SR: Mrs. Prentice
fell from a chasm ridge where she and her husband had been
picnicking. She was not killed immediately, but died of her
injuries two weeks later.
I guess there is no certainty it was an accident, but that is
what the "history" claims. A similar ambiguity applies to the
death of Simon Such--according to newspaper accounts at the
time, investigators were not sure if he set out to commit
suicide or whether he got stuck in the cave and shot himself in
desperation when he realized he could not free himself.
Even with the tragedy of these peoples' lives, the focus of the
poems is on healing. To me there is nothing morbid about the
presence of these ghosts in the chasm, instead they felt to me
like lonely spirits, longing to communicate with the living as
much as the living longed to feel something touch them from a
larger world beyond.
JL: How much
time did you spend around purgatory chasm and how would you
describe the feelings you experienced, of being around these
lonely and longing spirits?
SR: After my
initial trip, I went back 6 or 7 times, at least twice more with
my family (my girls love it there!), and the rest by myself. One
trip, I just sat in the State
Reservation Office, and went through old files of newspaper
clippings and historic documents.
On my solo treks, I would spend a lot of time sitting near the
different rock formations or in other locations along the Chasm
Loop trail, watching and listening. I guess I was looking for
something myself, wanting to learn something about the continuum
of life. It was important to me to feel, in a tangible sense,
that everything that once was, still is. And thinking about the
spirits of these people lingering in the chasm helped me to do
that.
I have also been blessed with the presence of many
generous people in my life, including
my editor, Gary Metras, who guided me patiently through many
revisions of this book. I believe in the generosity I have
received as an almost supernatural power. The spirits in
Purgatory Chasm are lonely but they are also, for the most part,
empathetic and kind.
The natural world has always been a great solace to me, and part
of that comfort and connection, I think, comes from the stories
with which a place is imbued. I'm sure I have never been
anywhere where another human being hasn't been before me--there
are probably few places like that left--so every natural area
has a human dimension as well. In the process of visiting the
chasm, I created my own stories about Thordis Tapper, Mrs.
Prentice, and Simon Such, which had relevance to me in various
stages of my life.
JL: Did this
experience affect your creative process in any other ways?
SR: The poems of
Purgatory Chasm were the first I wrote about the mythology of a
specific place. My first chapbook, Boto, was inspired by stories
about an animal, the Amazon freshwater dolphin, but the place
the animal lived--the Amazon river basin--was remote. I never
went there. Those poems were more about, "what if," what if
there was an equivalent dolphin story for my time and my place?
Now I continue to be interested in looking at the relationship
between mythology and place, particularly natural places in my
own environment and the native animals that live there. Recently
I have been writing a lot of poems about birds, some related to
myths and stories and some more directly about personal
encounters.
JL: What kind of
birds are you writing about and can you please tell me about
your interest in the environment and where this came from?
SR: At the moment,
phoebes and kingfishers. Recently, snowy owls. I have a chapbook
called Birding in Winter, which has poems about many other
species. I have been interested in the environment since
childhood, bird watching, hiking, and canoeing with my family.
For
many years, I worked for an environmental communications company
and did a lot of projects for EPA, learning on the job.
JL: Do you have
any environmental problems with wildlife, water, pollution
in the area you live in?
SR: We have the same
problems any suburb has, I guess. There has been groundwater
contamination from a W.R. Grace property, but so far the plume
hasn't gotten into any active wells. Or so we're told. Too much
unplanned development so the town is very lopsided. No real town
center, lots of neighborhoods with very expensive homes, and a
busy business district lined with strip malls. We do have lots
of conservation land, however, and a pretty strong environmental
ethic represented on the town boards.
JL: What are your thoughts on nuclear power plants as a
source of energy?
SR: I don't believe
in using any source of energy that produces a deadly waste
product that doesn't degrade within thousands of years. No
matter how many safeguards one uses, or how careful one is about
containment, the risks far outweigh the benefits, in my view. We
can do better than nuclear and we should.
I think that as long as people believe nuclear power is a viable
energy solution, or that nuclear weapons are a viable defense
tool, for that matter, we will live in an extremely precarious
world.
JL: Are you working on any
other books of poetry?
SR: My recent work
continues to focus on birding, and the mythology behind birds
and bird names. A growing interest is also in local ecology,
food chains, and our food supply. These poems may be heading
toward a full-length manuscript in the future.
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