Document Type
Article
Abstract
[First paragraph]
Water transforms everything it touches: landscapes, lives & languages. This essay offers a true relation, or a sequence of contiguous reflections—some concentric, others eccentric—provoked by the strange story of Hope Atherton (1646-77), first minister of Hatfield, Massachusetts and protagonist of American poet Susan Howe’s Articulation of Sound Forms in Time (Awede, 1987): his involvement at the battle of Peskeompscut (May 19, 1676) and separation from Captain Turner’s men during their retreat, which became a rout; Rev. Atherton’s crossings of rivers & brooks, his fearful wanderings through woods, around marshes, swamps; his near captivity, miraculous signal escapes, deliverance from Nipmucks, Pocumtucks; Hope’s subsequent return to Hadley, then estrangement in Hatfield where he would be shunned by his congregation & thus perish an outcast; also thereafter Atherton’s liminal presence in various pamphlets, books published since 1906; his enigmatic significance among literary critics lately professed, and Hope’s mystery more recently discovered by serendipitous exchanges & research. From book margins to river banks, these happenstances have confounded and transfigured me with each re-articulation.
Repository Citation
Howard, W. S.. "Literal/Littoral Crossings: Re-Articulating Hope Atherton’s Story After Susan Howe’s Articulation of Sound Forms in Time." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 6, no. 3, 2006, pp. 1–22. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol6/iss3/11