Our Island
A Fourteen-Month Journal of Life on Swan’s Island, Maine, in the Seventies
by
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“Gleason and Buddy were putting in the long bank of under-windows on the north side of our house when I went over. Mardie made me pancakes, coffee and an egg for breakfast. We unloaded the truck and put the stuff into the Bagg’s house. Gleason saw me lower the golf clubs down and commented several times on it during the day. The last time, he was driving out around 4:45 p.m.: ‘Better take those golf clubs over to Mertic and have him salt them down. You won’t be needing them for a year.’ Earlier, Gleason and I looked at the round septic tank that Bud Staples had set on the ground—and we talked about the best place to put a flat tank. Later, we figured out what I should order when I went to Ellsworth with the truck (U-Haul) on Monday. He figured the deck alone would cost $1000. I asked him for a bill soon so I could tell if I was going to be arrested for bank robbery or not.
The sun came out around noon and we caught glimpses of the Sisters islands during the early afternoon. Mardie napped and read a book of Sappho’s poems. The kids played around and finally got a Monopoly game going.
The three dogs are trying to work things out (Little Bear and Gillespie’s Mushroom and Holly). Little Bear is jumpy and aggressive, snaps at Mush and Gillespie whacks Mushroom. The fog came back in heavy around 3:30 p.m. and it got wet and a bit raw. I talked with Gleason sitting in his truck before he left for the day and he broke out a bottle of apricot flavored brandy! (‘You want a drink, Buddy?’ Buddy nods yes. ‘Get the bottle!’ Buddy reaches under the seat and pulls out a paper bag with a pint in it. ‘Just one,’ Gleason says. But he gave me another before they drove off.”) p.2
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About the Book
About Junkins’ novel Orchards of Almonds:
“Don Junkins’ semi-autobiographical novel, Orchards of Almonds, blossoms with a Camelot-studded cast of characters that includes Kennedys alive and dead, LBJ and company, Reagan, and dozens of California politicos, academics, Viet Nam protesters and movie stars. . . . Junkins—as much the poet in design as in language—has achieved another triumph of deftness, irony and grace.”
Allen Josephs (On Hemingway and Spain)
“I was bowled over by Puss. I have never read, in any other literary work, such a profoundly pure and honest and dead-on rendering of the young girl. And that coupled with her extraordinary father/daughter relationship, it moved me deeply. He did for that relationship what Hemingway did for father and son in ‘Indian Camp.’”
Linda Miller (Letters from the Lost Generation: Gerald and Sara Murphy and Friends)
About the Author
Former UMass football player, record holder; 10 year Director of MFA writing program at UMass; Winner of three National endowment of the Arts awards; Former poetry editor: Massachusetts Review, North Dakota Quarterly, New American Review; $1000 New Letters Poetry Prize; over fifty poetry residencies and readings; translator of Euripides’ Andromache for Penn Greek Drama Series; fifteen articles on Ernest Hemingway and his work; taught at universities in China, Germany, Ukraine; author of seventeen books; work re-printed in ten anthologies, including the New Yorker Book of Poems.
He lives in Deerfield, Massachusetts with his wife, Kaimei Zheng, with whom he has translated a volume of Li Bai’s (Li Po) poems.