The Light That Shatters Darkness, Artist/Curator Statement
Title
The Light That Shatters Darkness, Artist/Curator Statement
Subject
Coal Mining Exhibit
Description
Bond artist/curator statement, Martell background
Creator
David Bond, Beth Martell
Source
The Light That Shatters Darkness Exhibit
Publisher
Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Contributor
Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Rights
Use Restrictions: To quote in print, or otherwise reproduce in whole or in part in any publication, including on the World Wide Web, any material from this collection, the researcher must obtain permission from (1) the owner of the physical property and (2) the holder of the copyright. Persons wishing to quote from this collection should consult Special Collections Research Center to determine copyright holders for information in this collection. Reproduction of any item must contain the complete citation to the original.
Format
Text, JPG photograph in background
Language
English
Type
Poetry, photography
Identifier
The Light That Shatters Darkness Artist/Curator Statement, Exhibit Window #2
Original Format
Background is photograph of coal mine railroad yard
Text
Artist/Curator Statement
Many years ago I wrote a poem titled “Coal,” the first of several born of my experiences working the midnight shift above an underground coal mine in southern Illinois. For seventeen years I tolerated the chronic weariness of an unnatural work schedule, the repetition of inputting transcendental ciphers and weekly tonnages into an ancient computer that stalled as stubbornly as one of the mules pulling his quota of coal up the rails decades ago. The pay was that good.
And yet there was something else, something in the strangeness of the hours, that alien landscape of endless conveyor belts snaking to the coal preparation plant where giant shakers rumbled and hoppers belched black cataracts into rusted boxcars, the unworldliness of 300 feet below in a honeycombed earth where, to quote that early poem, “the beauty of the ninety degree crosscut/and the truth of the articulating crawler are all that really matter.”
It was this Keatsian blending of the natural and supernatural that forced me to write down my nightly observations of what I believed and still believe to be a unique, almost blessed, opportunity. I imagined myself in the place of the miners, men who knew the feeling of loneliness in the impenetrable darkness, the dangers of three-ton slabs of limestone and a machine nicknamed “The Ripper,” who heard the voice of poetry but could never put it into words. They were the sons and grandsons of miners, and they too appeared to know how fortunate they were to share something far beyond the ordinary.
I hope that these poems, complemented by Doc Horrell's photography, may give one an echo of that voice I heard during those long night shifts, as I tried to mine words hard as coal.
Many years ago I wrote a poem titled “Coal,” the first of several born of my experiences working the midnight shift above an underground coal mine in southern Illinois. For seventeen years I tolerated the chronic weariness of an unnatural work schedule, the repetition of inputting transcendental ciphers and weekly tonnages into an ancient computer that stalled as stubbornly as one of the mules pulling his quota of coal up the rails decades ago. The pay was that good.
And yet there was something else, something in the strangeness of the hours, that alien landscape of endless conveyor belts snaking to the coal preparation plant where giant shakers rumbled and hoppers belched black cataracts into rusted boxcars, the unworldliness of 300 feet below in a honeycombed earth where, to quote that early poem, “the beauty of the ninety degree crosscut/and the truth of the articulating crawler are all that really matter.”
It was this Keatsian blending of the natural and supernatural that forced me to write down my nightly observations of what I believed and still believe to be a unique, almost blessed, opportunity. I imagined myself in the place of the miners, men who knew the feeling of loneliness in the impenetrable darkness, the dangers of three-ton slabs of limestone and a machine nicknamed “The Ripper,” who heard the voice of poetry but could never put it into words. They were the sons and grandsons of miners, and they too appeared to know how fortunate they were to share something far beyond the ordinary.
I hope that these poems, complemented by Doc Horrell's photography, may give one an echo of that voice I heard during those long night shifts, as I tried to mine words hard as coal.
Files
Collection
Citation
David Bond, Beth Martell, “The Light That Shatters Darkness, Artist/Curator Statement,” SCRC Virtual Museum at Southern Illinois University's Morris Library, accessed April 23, 2024, https://scrcexhibits.omeka.net/items/show/58.
Comments