Bernardston poet Jim Bell’s poems are long and lean. One or two words to a line, they run down the page unhampered by punctuation. Sometimes the short lines create a sense of urgency that propels you along in a hurry. Other times, because you realize each word has been chosen so carefully, they do the opposite, slowing you down as you consider them. Sometimes one line takes the line before it and twists it, as if Bell were turning it in the light to have a better look. Or a line might take a giant leap, pushing off from the one before it into a meaning you hadn’t expected. These shifting facets mirror and reveal the shifting complexites of love, family, addiction and, invariably, pole vaulting.
To say that a lot of Bell’s poems are about pole vaulting is like saying that Robert Frost wrote about New England. For Bell, pole vaulting is more than a sport; it’s a way of looking at the world. It’s the thing that saved him.
Bell’s third book of poems, “After a Long Season,” was recently out from Lily Pool Press in Northfield. Lily Pool also published Bell’s second book, “Landing Amazed,” in 2010. His first book, “Crossing the Bar,” was published by Slate Roof Press in 2005.
All three books were designed by master printer Ed Rayer of Northfield, who also runs Swamp Press, a letterpress printing operation, and designs the covers for Slate Roof Press books. Rayer’s design in all three books uses thin rules to reinforce Bell’s pole vaulting imagery. In this third book, the rules have been freed from merely horizontal or vertical placement and appear, at times, diagonally, intensifying the sense in many of the poems of being catapulted through time and space.
Bell coaches indoor and outdoor track at Pioneer Valley Regional School and pole vaulting at Northfield Mount Hermon School. He called on colleague Hope Phelan, elementary school art teacher for the Pioneer Valley Regional School district and his assistant indoor track coach at the high school, to create cover art for the book.
His job as a coach is bigger than sports, Bell says. Coaching is, of course, about getting each student to do their personal best, but it’s also about, “Getting them to take care of each other.”
“My job is to be a role model,” Bell says. “Not to be some guy who’s screaming and yelling at them.”
The poem, “Young,” is an apology to the young people he works with, Bell says, and to all young people.
“measure/ your/ steps/ by how/ many/ you love/ in a day,” the poem begins.
The poem goes on to apologize for not changing the world more during the 1960s.
In the title poem, “After a Long Season,” Bell touches on one of the threads that runs through the collection, how to accept aging, especially as an athlete used to relying on his physical strength, stamina and agility to perform the sport he loves.
“my one/ chance/ at living/ was/ getting/ old,” Bell writes in the poem.
He laughs. “And you can take that two ways.”
“Getting old,” could be a metaphorical phrase meaning that he was growing tired of his life, or, literally, an admission that the only way not to die is to get old.
Bell and I met back in April, the day after the Trump administration ordered the bombings of a Syrian airbase in retaliation for a sarin gas attack in Idlib province. News of the bombings had made us both feel low. I expressed my outrage that Trump could seem to muster sympathy for what he referred to as the “beautiful babies” who had been “cruelly murdered” in the gas attack but, as evidenced by his travel ban that would exclude Syrian refugees from entering the U.S., not for the babies whose families were trying to flee the war-torn region for safer countries.
The world was a mess, I said, using a crasser term. “And yet we keep on writing poems.”
In that moment, the fact that we would go on writing poems seemed ludicrous.
“The job of the poet is to resist,” Bell says. “It always has been.”
The poet’s job is to be, if not the conscience of our culture, at least a moral compass, Bell explained, adding, “Poets are at the top of the food chain, morally.”
When I ask if he’s been writing new poems since completing this third book, Bell replies, “I have new poems. But I’m in a place where—”
He pauses to consider where exactly he is, then continues, “I can’t say I’m waiting for the muse but I’m wondering whether I’m going to do something different with writing.”
He might write something autobiographical, he says, not that the poems aren’t already informed by autobiography.
“It might be really subversive of you to start writing paragraphs,” I suggest.
Bell chuckles. “Yeah, it would be.”
“It could be like poetry in a camouflage suit,” I say.
Bell shrugs. “My process in everything is to think things through for a long time and then all of a sudden rush into it.”
“Kind of like pole vaulting,” I say.
Where to find it
Purchase Jim Bell’s books “After a Long Season” and “Landing Amazed” from Lily Pool Press by contacting lilypoolpress@gmail.com or ask from them at local bookstores. “Crossing the Bar” can be ordered through Slate Roof Press at www.slateroofpress.com.
Trish Crapo is a writer and photographer who lives in Leyden. She is always looking for poets, writers and artists to interview for her columns. She can be reached at tcrapo@mac.com