A poet and his daughter collaborate in ‘Night Sky’

THE NIGHT SKY, by Frederick Morgan, photographs by Gaylen Morgan, introduction by Emily Grosholz, Story Line Press, Ashland, Ore, 58 pages, $60.

The New York-based poet Frederick Morgan, who turned 80 last year, has been coming to Blue Hill with his family since the late 1940s. His daughter Gaylen accompanied him on many of these trips. For the past 15 or so years, she has spent more time in the area, deepening her Maine roots.

A couple of years ago, Gaylen proposed a collaboration with her father. At 50, she had begun a career in photography, attending the New England School of Photography where she received rigorous professional training. Morgan’s enthusiastic response led to “The Night Sky,” a collection of 15 of his poems accompanied by 16 black-and-white photographs by his daughter.

As poet and critic Emily Grosholz notes in her perceptive introduction, Morgan’s poems are meditations on the themes of transition and thresholds. “May Night” is infused with an “end of the affair” quality, describing lovers about to lose the “great game.” The poem “Dolores” continues the exploration of relationships that lead to doubt:

You weren’t quite divine,

you see, for all your beauty,

for all that marbled reticence

masking the inner fires – .

In “The Parting,” the one poem in the collection that conjures Maine, a man stands in a pine wood on a path by the water, “one last lobster boat/throbbing in from the bay,” preparing to bid a friend farewell. Talk of death, some final words, the passing of a flask – the scene brings to mind an era when people had the time and the grace to make proper adieus.

To help the reader visualize the setting of this poem, Gaylen Morgan chose a photograph of one of those shadowy paths found along the Maine coast. The photographer discovered many of her subjects in the Blue Hill area. The funerary statue that accom-panies “Hypatia,” for example, was photographed in a cemetery in the village of Deer Isle.

Some of the photographs were made before the collaboration idea arose; others were created specifically to accompany poems in the book. The photos follow the poems they illustrate, which is a felicitous arrangement, creating a kind of textual/visual dialogue. After reading the exquisite “Actaeon,” one of several poems based on myth, in which a man suffers metamorphosis and death for having glimpsed a naked deity, one turns to an equally exquisite photograph of a nude figure stretched on the ledge of a glassy Maine quarry. (This reader involuntarily turned his head so as not to be turned into a stag.)

Frederick Morgan is a formalist. Even when he isn’t rhyming, the stanzas and lines display an admirable consistency. The book’s final poem, “The Priest,” is perhaps the most freely composed, yet even here the verse is immaculately composed. The concluding quatrain evokes the search for self after a father’s passing:

On the day of his death I left home,

went wandering alone through the forest:

learned strength, self-dominion from the black pine,

quietude from the night sky.

Gaylen Morgan is also a formalist in her art. She is a great admirer of beautiful (as opposed to shocking) photography – Eugene Atget, Abelardo Morell, Ralph Eugene Meatyard are some of the camera artists whose work she studies. The photographs in this book range from traditional landscapes to intriguing abstract images.

“The Night Sky” is available at Blue Hill Books, the Clark House Gallery and directly from the publisher. All 15 poems are included in a book of Frederick Morgan’s poetry, “The One Abiding,” also published by Story Line Press. Gaylen Morgan exhibits at the Clark House Gallery and other Maine venues, as well as in Cambridge, Mass., where she winters. Some of her work can be viewed online at www.gaylenmorgan.com.