60
BOOKSHELF
In this issue, two sports journalists deliver impassioned portraits of their subjects – former NBA coach Phil Jackson, and the would-be NFL stars from Dunbar, an underserved community in Ft. Myers. Also, a tribute to an iconic figure in the sailing world for more than a half-century and a narrative about a visit to Cold Mountain, not only a destination, but a mythical haunt.
Seeking the Cave By James Lenfestey ’62 | Reviewed by Audrey Alt
SEEKING THE CAVE Author: James Lenfestey ’62 Publisher: Milkweed Editions About the Reviewer: Audrey Alt is Choate’s Development Communications Specialist.
Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology probably isn’t the first work you’d think would come to mind while reading about a poet’s pilgrimage to China. Yet it was the opening lines of Masters’ “Fiddler Jones,” one of the fictional eulogies in that anthology, that I was reminded of at various points throughout Seeking the Cave (Milkweed Editions, 2014) by James Lenfestey ’62. The lines are: The earth keeps some vibration going. There in your heart, and that is you. In 1974, living a hectic and stressful life, Lenfestey sought solace in the World Eye Bookshop in Greenfield, Mass., and one day its owner, Charlie Miller, handed him Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by T’ang Poet Han-shan, translated by Burton Watson. That day and that book changed his life, and more than 30 years later, Lenfestey journeyed to China to visit the ancient home and uncover the mysteries of his spiritual guide. In this part travelogue, part poetry collection, Lenfestey, as well as his readers, discover much more. Humbly and respectfully, Lenfestey takes us from Minneapolis to Japan and finally to China, introducing us as he goes to his traveling companions, who are related in various ways and devoted in varying degrees to the poetry of China and Han-shan. “It’s as if you are in love with someone else,” Lenfestey’s wife tells him as he departs. Lenfestey’s narrative about his trip to Cold Mountain (the name of both the destination and the taken name of the poet Han-shan, who called the mountain home) is broken up into three sections and then again into short chapters. Lenfestey inserts poems throughout the chapters; sometimes these poems are his own, sometimes Han-shan’s, and sometimes others’, well-known and less so. Lenfestey’s language is lovely in its storytelling, simple and truthful, and at
certain points, the inserted poems can seem disruptive. However, what these poems provide beyond themselves is the opportunity to pause and reflect: when Lenfestey’s recollections give way to poems, they make room, too, for his readers’ own reflections. Early in Lenfestey’s work, Abbot Minghai, an old friend of one of his traveling companions and a devoted Buddhist, explains, “You could say that the activities of a Zen monastery don’t depend on words, only sounds. As the meditation hall resonates, so does the rest of the monastery.” Lenfestey adds, “Perhaps the rest of the world resonates, too.” And later he writes, “Poets forge the marriage of right sound and right sense in the furnace of desire. Only then can they strike the bell that reverberates around the world and over the drifts of time.” Lenfestey talks of singing, too, as he describes his mother’s passing (“…my sisters, my wife, and I sang her into heaven at ninety-four”) and as he describes himself – and everyone: “Inside all of us is singing. My own song grew loud enough for me to hear it in these last few years…” This is a quiet book, and it is unassumingly thought-provoking if you allow it to be. While Lenfestey’s particular journey took him to China and to Cold Mountain, Seeking the Cave is a universal tale. After all, don’t all people have their own Cold Mountain they are seeking? The reader’s journey to discover what is constantly resonating, reverberating, and vibrating inside him or her, to finally name that very personal song, can be as rewarding as Lenfestey’s.