First Sight by Philip Larkin

Lambs that learn to walk in snow

When their bleating clouds the air

Meet a vast unwelcome, know

Nothing but a sunless glare.

Newly stumbling to and fro

All they find, outside the fold,

Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,

Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies

Hidden round them, waiting too,

Earth’s immeasurable surprise.

They could not grasp it if they knew,

What so soon will wake and grow

Utterly unlike the snow.

This little lyric by the 20th century English poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985) is perhaps one to give us courage as we look forward into the uncertain year before us, feeling perhaps very like the lambs, meeting ‘a vast unwelcome.’ But in the second stanza we have the promise — ‘….there lies/Hidden around them, waiting too,/ Earth’s immeasurable surprise.’

Amid all the unknowns and uncertainties of the year ahead, Covid still with us, the threats of climate change, the challenges to our humanity posed by the abused of the world, we are blessed as a community to be able to look to our library, a place, in the words of T.S. Eliot “at the still point of the turning world … Where past and future are gathered.” This, the beginning of a new year, seems a perfect moment to review what is in store for us in library programs, to celebrate the wealth of talent that this community is blessed with and take a moment to acknowledge the generosity of so many who are willing to share that talent with us.

Here are just some of the offerings for 2022 in our Sunday Evening Lecture Series:

Stonington resident Professor Stuart Vyse, a behavioral scientist, teacher and author of many books, has a gift for presenting complex subjects in a way that is at once scholarly and entertaining. Many will remember his highly informative talk last year on his book “Superstition: A Very Short Introduction,” so we look forward to welcoming him back on March 13 when he will give a talk, in collaboration with the Stonington Historical Society, on the history of The Steamboat Hotel, a house on Gold Street in the borough whose fascinating story he has been researching over the past few years.

Then in August, Professor Vyse will discuss his latest book, “The Uses of Delusion: Why it’s not always Rational to be Rational,” which will be published by Oxford University Press in May.

In April to celebrate Poetry Month, we have two poetry programs. The first, on April 10, will be a reading by former Merrill Fellow, poet and biographer Peter Filkins from his new book of poems ‘Water/Music.’ Pre-pandemic, Peter gave a talk to a packed audience at the La Grua Center on his biography of H.G. Adler, Holocaust survivor and renowned author.

We are very grateful that he has agreed to return to Stonington to read at the library. As it has been for many years, this April program is a collaboration with the Merrill House.

The second, on April 24, will be Kenneth Bleeth presenting a program on Chaucer. Stonington neighbor, Chaucer scholar and Professor Emeritus of Medieval Studies at Connecticut College, Professor Bleeth has devoted his life to the study of Chaucer, and it is difficult to imagine anyone more qualified to share with us the riches of “The Canterbury Tales.”

Here are the familiar, seasonally fitting, opening lines of The General Prologue:

When that Aprill with his shoures soote

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veine in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephyrus eek with his sweete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tender croppes, and the yonge sonne

Have in the Ram his halve cours yronne,

Chaucer’s take on Larkin’s “Earth’s immeasurable surprise” some 600 years earlier!

On May 8 we go from poetry to a close cousin, the visual arts. Our guide will be another friend and neighbor of the Library, the distinguished Professor of English Literature, author and art critic, Willard Spiegelman. The title of his talk is ‘“ow I Became An Art Critic By Looking,” a description of his time writing about art for the Wall Street Journal in the weekend Leisure & Arts section. Many of his essays have been published in his book “If You See Something, Say Something.”

As Harvard literature professor and painter Peter Sacks wrote, “he brings a literary scholar’s gift for close reading to what one might call ‘close looking.’”

Which makes a perfect segue to our July 10 program on Elizabeth Bishop, once described by Robert Lowell as the poet ‘with the famous eye’. Stonington resident Jonathan Post, Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA and noted author of many books and studies of both 17th and 20th-century poets, will discuss his new book on the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, his second in Oxford’s ‘Very Short Introduction’ series. His study of ‘Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Poems,’ published in 2017, was called ‘a little gem’ in the TLS, and in 2019 he generously gave a PowerPoint illustrated talk in the Library on the Sonnets.

The February Book Notes will be devoted to Elizabeth Bishop, it being her birthday month, and they will include a discussion with Professor Post that will highlight not only Elizabeth Bishop’s connection with Stonington in her lifetime, but the way this community became involved in the writing of the book, keeping this most loved poet a living presence among us today.

(Most of the library’s lectures and programs can be viewed on YouTube).

As you see, we have much to look forward to, ‘What so soon will wake and grow/ Utterly unlike the snow.’ I wish you, with all my heart, a happy, hopeful and healthy New Year. Thanks to you and your generous support, the library will continue to serve the community and enrich our lives as it has always done.

Belinda de Kay is the emeritus director of Stonington Free Library.