Haunting the Boston Athenaeum
Some notes on a trip to one of America's unique libraries.
Late last month, I made an excursion with my friend and sometime collaborator Thorsten Dennerline to the Boston Athenaeum. The Athenaeum is a private library in the center of Boston, just off the Commons. The library itself is on five floors, and the stacks are open to patrons. The collection features many volumes of Massachusetts and New England history, and they have impressive holdings on the Salem witch trials, hauntings in New England and spiritualism—just for starters. The library itself is beautiful—with equal parts Yankee self-seriousness and Hogwarts. Marble and plaster busts abound, and there are many nooks with nice chairs and work tables where one can study, read and write. Since the stacks are open, you can take books to a table and read them at your leisure while in the library, which is exactly what I did.
Some years ago, Thorsten and I collaborated on a book project. Thorsten created a number of images—beginning with photographs—which he printed and bound into a book. I then wrote a poem that corresponded to the photos rather loosely, but they were a sort of guide as I wrote the text. After I wrote the piece, he and I began the process of laying out the text. He added drawings after the text was in place, and then it was printed and bound. I think the final project, called The Wind, is quite special.
Our new collaboration will be based on things we found or encountered at the Boston Athenaeum, and the theme we are working with is—you guessed it—ghosts and hauntings. I thought I would document parts of the project here as we work together, so stay tuned.