Songs of the Sea & Fo’castle

The Greenland Whale Fisheries

The American Folk Experience

The Greenland Whale Fisheries

by John Fitzsimmons | The American Folk Experience

~Traditional 

‘Twas in eighteen hundred and fifty-three
And of June the thirteenth day,
That our gallant ship her anchor weighed,
And for greenland bore away, brave boys,
And for greenland bore away.

The lookout in the crosstrees stood
With spyglass in his hand;
There’s a whale, there’s a whale, there’s whalefish he cried
And she blows at every span, brave boys
She blows at every span.

The captain stood on the quarter deck,
And a fine little man was he;
“Overhaul, overhaul! Let your davit tackles fall,
And launch your boats for sea, brave boys
And launch your boats for sea.

Now the boats were launched and the men aboard,
And the whale was full in view.
Resolv-ed was each seaman bold
To steer where the whalefish blew, brave boys
To steer where the whalefish blew.

We stuck the whale the line paid out,
But she gave a flourish with her tail,
The boat capsized and four men were drowned,
And we never caught that whale, brave boys,
And we never caught that whale.

“To lose the whale,” our captain said,
It grieves my heart full sore,
But oh! to lose (those) four gallant men
It grieves me ten times more brave boys
It grieves me ten times more.

The winter star doth now appear,
So, boys we’ll anchor weight;
It’s time to leave this cold country
And homeward bear away, brave boys
And homeward bear away.

Oh Greenland is a dreadful place
A land that’s never green
Where there’s ice and snow, and the whalefishes blow
(and the) daylight’s seldom seen brave boys
But the daylight’s seldom seen.

 

If you have any more information to share about this song or helpful links, please post as a comment. Thanks for stopping by the site! ~John Fitz

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I am indebted to the many friends who share my love of traditional songs and to the many scholars whose works are too many to include here. I am also incredibly grateful to the collector’s curators and collators of Wikipedia, Mudcat.org, MainlyNorfolk.info, and TheContemplator.com for their wise, thorough and informative contributions to the study of folk music. 

I share this scholarly research on my site with humility, thanks, and gratitude. Please cite sources accordingly with your own research. If you have any research or sites you would like to share on this site, please post in the comment box.  

Thanks!

 

Source: Wikipedia

Edit links
This article is about the folk song. For whaling in Greenland, see Whaling § Greenland.
Greenland Fisheries
Tune for Greenland Fisheries
Problems playing this file? See media help.

"Greenland Whale Fisheries" (also called "The Greenland Whale Fishery", "Sperm Whale Fishery", or "The Ballad of the Greenland Whalers") is a traditional sea song, originating in the West Indies but known all over the Atlantic ocean.[1] In most of the versions collected from oral sources, the song opens up giving a date for the events that it describes (usually between 1823 and 1853). However, the song is actually older than this and a form of it was published as a ballad before 1725.[2] It has been given a Roud number of 347.[3]

The song tells of a whaling expedition that leaves for Greenland. The lookout spots a "whalefish", and harpoon boats are launched. However, the whale strikes the boat with its tail, capsizing it, and several men are killed. The captain grieves over losing his men, but especially for having lost his prey. He then orders the ship to sail for home, calling Greenland a "dreadful place".

Like most traditional songs, "Greenland Whale Fisheries" exists in different versions.[4] Some change details (such as the date of the expedition), and others add or remove verses. Some modern versions, including the ones recorded by Judy Collins and Theodore Bikel, The Chad Mitchell Trio, and later by The Pogues, flip the captain's expression of grief to make him regret losing his catch even more than losing his crew.

In the version popularized by The Weavers and Peter, Paul and Mary, a shanty recorded by Alan Lomax from a Bahamian fisherman[5] is appended, which begins, "When the whale gets strike, and the line run down, and the whale makes a flounder with her tail, and the boat capsized, and we lost our darling man, No more, no more Greenland for you you, Pray Boys, No more, no more Greenland for you."...."[6]

Folk singer Paul Kaplan recorded a song with the same tune under the title "Call Me the Whale". Following a similar chronology, it tells the story from the whale's perspective.[7]

In the Futurama episode "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz", Bender, in an ironic state of soberness, sings a snippet of the song.

The Greenland Whalefishers, a Celtic punk band from Norway, is named after the song.

Recorded versions

References

  1. ^ "The Greenland Whale Fishery (Roud 347; Laws K21; G/D 1:9)". mainlynorfolk.info. Retrieved 2024-08-05.
  2. ^ R. Vaughan Williams & A.L. Lloyd (editors): The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, Penguin Books, 1959. p.115
  3. ^ "Vaughan Williams Memorial Library Roud 347 entry".
  4. ^ e.g. Vaughan Williams & Lloyd p.50. Version collected by Anne G. Gilchrist from the singing of W. Bolton, Southport, Lancashire, 1906
  5. ^ "Bahamas 1935: Chanteys & Anthems from Andros & Cat - Alan Lomax | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic". AllMusic.
  6. ^ Check-list of Recorded Songs in the English Language in the Archive of Folk Song, United States Work Projects Administration. District of Columbia - 1942,Page 435
  7. ^ Call Me the Whale Lyrics
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_Whale_Fisheries

    Source: Mainly Norfolk

    The Greenland Whale Fishery

    [ Roud 347 ; Laws K21 ; G/D 1:9 ; Ballad Index LK21 ; trad.]The Greenland Whale Fishery is a song about the Spitsbergen right whale fishing in the 1720s. A version collected from W. Bolton, Southport, Lancashire in 1906 by Anne Gilchrist was printed in A.L. Lloyd and Vaughan Williams’ The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs (1959).A.L. Lloyd sang The Greenland Whale Fishery in 1956 on his, Ewan MacColl and Harry H. Corbett’s album The Singing Sailor. This recording was reissued on their albums Singing Sailors (Wattle Records, Australia) and Off to Sea Once More (Stinson Records, USA).

    A.L. Lloyd also recorded this song for his and Ewan MacColl’s Riverside LP Thar She Blows! (where it was called Sperm Whale Fishery) and, for a third time, in 1967 for the album Leviathan! Ballads and Songs of the Whaling Trade. He commented in the latter album’s sleeve notes:

    This is the oldest—and many think the best—of surviving songs of the whaling trade. It had already appeared on a broadside around 1725, very shortly after the South Sea Company decided to resuscitate the then moribund whaling industry, and sent a dozen fine large ships around Spitsbergen and the Greenland Sea. The song went on being sung with small changes all the time to bring it up to date. Our present version mentions the year 1834, the ship Lion, its captain Randolph. Other versions give other years, and name other ships and skippers (there was a whaler the Lion, out of Liverpool, but her captain’s name was Hawkins, and she was lost off Greenland in 1817). We may take it that the incident described in the song is not historical but imaginary, a stylisation like those thrilling engravings of whaling scenes that were once so popular. But the song’s pattern of departure, chase, and return home, was imitated in a large number of whaling ballads made subsequently. It is the ace and deuce of whale songs.

    Ewan MacColl sang just three verses—5, 8 and 9—of The Greenland Whale Fishery in the musical score of the 1962 film Whaler Out of New Bedford.

    Philip Hamon and Hilary Carre of Sark on the Channel Islands sang The Whale Fishery on the anthology Sailormen and Servingmaids (The Folk Songs of Britain Volume 6; Caedmon 1961; Topic 1970).

    The Watersons sang a concise six-verse version of The Greenland Whale Fishery in 1965 on their very first record, New Voices. This wonderful recording was included on the Topic sampler Sea Songs and Shanties and on the French compilation Chants de Marins IV: Ballads, Complaintes et Shanties des Matelots Anglais, reissued on the Watersons’ CD Early Days, included on the 1993 Topic sampler Blow the Man Down: Sea Songs and Shanties and in 2004 on the Watersons’ 4 CD anthology Mighty River of Song.

    A.L. Lloyd commented in the New Voices sleeve notes:

    How old is this song? In the Watersons’ version the date 1864 is given, which is thirty years too late for Greenland whaling, for by 1830 the Greenland grounds were fished out and the expeditions had transferred their attention to the seas of Baffin Bay. In any case, we know the song is very much older than it seems, for it was already in print as a broadside before 1725. The Dutch and English had opened up the Greenland grounds (where, by the way, they fished for right whales, not sperm whales) early in the sixteenth century so the song came into being some time between then and the opening years of the eighteenth. It remained a great favourite, being reprinted over and again by broadside publishers, and many versions of it have been collected from country singers during the present century. It’s one of the great sea songs.

    Mike Waterson and Louis Killen sang The Greenland Whale Fishery in 1965 in the BBC TV documentary about the Watersons, Travelling for a Living.

    The Pogues recorded Greenland Whale Fisheries in 1984 for their first album, Red Roses for Me, and Van Dyke Parks sang it in 2006 on Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys.

    Jon Boden sang Greenland Whale Fishery as the August 4, 2010 entry of his project A Folk Song a Day. He noted in the blog:

    My first introduction to The Watersons was on a Topic LP Sea Songs and Shanties that I borrowed from Winchester library at a tender age. I had heard Norma sing on the first Waterson:Carthy album but was absolutely knocked out by the ferocity of the sound the three siblings and cousin John could produce. This was one of [four] Waterson tracks on the album.

    This YouTube video shows the Exmouth Shanty Men singing Greenland Whale Fisheries at the Blackmoor Theatre Exmouth in November 2008:

    Lyrics

    A.L. Lloyd sings The Greenland Whale Fishery The Watersons sing The Greenland Whale Fishery
    We may no longer stay ashore
    Since we’re so deep in debt.
    So off to Greenland we will steer
    Some money for to get, brave boys,
    Some money for to get.
    It was eighteen hundred and thirty-four,
    On March the seventeenth day,
    That we hoist our colours to the top of the tree
    And for Greenland bore away, brave boys,
    For Greenland bore away    		 They took us jolly sailor lads
    A-fishing for the whale.
    On the fourth day of August in 1864
    Bound for Greenland we set sail.
    John Randolph was our captain’s name,
    Our ship the “Lion” so bold.
    We had fifteen men and they were brave
    For to face the wind and cold, brave boys,
    To face the wind and cold
    It was when we come to them icy grounds
    Our good ship for to moor.
    It was then that we wished ourselves back again
    With the pretty girls ashore, brave boys,
    With the pretty girls ashore
    Our bosun he goes up aloft
    With a spyglass in his hand.
    “It’s a whale, a whale, oh a whale-fish,” he cries,
    “And he blows at every span, brave boys,
    And he blows at every span.”    		 The lookout stood on the cross-trees high
    With a spyglass in his hand.
    “There’s a whale, there’s a whale, there’s a whale-fish,” he cried,
    “And she blows at every span.”
    Our captain walked on the quarterdeck
    And the ice was in his eye
    “Overhaul, overhaul, let your davit tackle falls.”
    And we launch our boats all three, brave boys,
    We launch our boats all three.    		 The captain stood on the quarterdeck,
    And a sod of a man was he.
    “Overhaul, overhaul, let your davit tackles fall.”
    And we’ll launch them boats to sea.
    Well, every keel had its bold harpooner,
    It’s pikeaneer a steerer also,
    And four jolly tars for to pull at the oars.
    And a-whaling we did go, brave boys,
    Oh a-whaling we did go.
    Well, our boats got down, and the men all in
    And the whale was full in view.
    Resolved, resolved, was them whalermen so bold
    To strike when the whale-fish blew, brave boys,
    To strike when the whale-fish blew.
    Well, the harpoon struck, and down went the whale
    With a flourish of his tail.
    And by chance we lost two men overboard.
    No more Greenland for you, brave boys,
    And we never caught that whale.    		 We struck that whale and the line played out
    But she gave a flurry with her tail.
    And the boat capsized, we lost seven of our men,
    And we never caught that whale.
    When the captain heard of the loss of his men,
    It grieved his heart full sore.
    But when he heard of the loss of the whale,
    It was half-mast colours all, brave boys,
    It was half-mast colours all.    		 Now the losing of seven fine seamen,
    It grieved the captain sore.
    But the losing of a bloody sperm whale
    Oh, it grieved him ten times more.
    The winter star did now appear,
    And it’s time our anchor for to weigh,
    To stow below our running gear
    And from Greenland bear away, brave boys,
    From Greenland bear away.
    Oh, that Greenland is a dreadful place,
    No longer can we stay.
    Now the cold winds blow and the whales do go
    And it’s seldom ever day, brave boys,
    It’s seldom ever day.    		 Now, Greenland is a horrid place,
    Where our fisher lads have to go,
    Where the rose and the lily never bloom in spring;
    No there’s only ice and snow.

    Acknowledgements

    The Watersons’ version was transcribed by Garry Gillard. A.L. Lloyd’s version is from the Leviathan! sleeve notes.

    Performances, Workshops, Resources & Recordings

    The American Folk Experience is dedicated to collecting and curating the most enduring songs from our musical heritage.  Every performance and workshop is a celebration and exploration of the timeless songs and stories that have shaped and formed the musical history of America. John Fitzsimmons has been singing and performing these gems of the past for the past forty years, and he brings a folksy warmth, humor and massive repertoire of songs to any occasion. 

    Festivals & Celebrations

    Coffeehouses

    School Assemblies

    Library Presentations

    Songwriting Workshops

    Artist in Residence

    House Concerts

    Pub Singing

    Irish & Celtic Performances

    Poetry Readings

    Campfires

    Music Lessons

    Senior Centers

    Voiceovers & Recording

    ““Beneath the friendly charisma is the heart of a purist gently leading us from the songs of our lives to the timeless traditional songs he knows so well…”

     

    Globe Magazine

    Join Fitz at The Colonial Inn

    “The Nobel Laureate of New England Pub Music…”

    Scott Alaric

    Adventures in the Modern Folk Underground

    On the Green, in Concord, MA Every Thursday Night for over thirty years…

    “A Song Singing, Word Slinging, Story Swapping, Ballad Mongering, Folksinger, Teacher, & Poet…”

    Theo Rogue

    Songcatcher Rag

    Fitz’s Recordings

    & Writings

    Songs, poems, essays, reflections and ramblings of a folksinger, traveler, teacher, poet and thinker…

    Download for free from the iTunes Bookstore

    Now Available on iTunes!

    “A Master of Folk…”

    The Boston Globe

    Fitz’s now classic recording of original songs and poetry…

    Download from the iTunes Music Store

    Now Available on iTunes!

    “A Masterful weaver of song whose deep, resonant voice rivals the best of his genre…”

    Spirit of Change Magazine

    “2003: Best Children’s Music Recording of the Year…”

    Boston Parent's Paper

    Fitz & The Salty Dawgs Amazing music, good times and good friends…

    Listen here

    TheCraftedWord.org

    Writing help

    when you need it…

    “When the eyes rest on the soul…that’s Fitzy…”

    Lenny Megliola

    WEEI Radio

    The Old Tote Road

    by | July 25, 2019 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

    I clabber down the old tote road towards the red pine forest, leaning on my staff, skirting boulder-strewn ruts and small gullies carved out by two days of heavy rain. It is only a mile or so from our cabin, still, my wife makes me wear a pouch with an iPhone and an...
    Read More

    You Are All a Bunch of Punks

    by | February 3, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    Poetry without form is like tennis without a net. ~Robert Frost       Free verse poetry is not, as many assume, poetry without rules. It is a measured and thoughtful crafting of an idea into lines, spaces, and breaks intentionally and willfully crafted to heighten and...
    Read More

    Winter in Caribou

    by | August 12, 2014 | Fires in the Belly, Songs | 0 Comments

    I know your name. It’s written there.
    I wonder if you care.
    A six-pack of Narragansett beer,
    Some Camels and the brownie over there.
    Every day I stop by like I
    Got some place I’ve got to go;
    I’m buying things I don’t really need:
    I don’t read the Boston Globe.

    But I, I think that I
    Caught the corner of your eye.
    But why, why can’t I try
    To say the things I’ve got inside
    To you ….

    Read More

    Dealing with Ether

    by | August 12, 2014 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

    Trying to only see what is in front of me my eyes are continually drawn away from this page and the work left to be done— my labored words etched and scratched away like fleeting mosaics in dry sand. I need a windowless cell to work the alchemy that shapes the...
    Read More

    The Queer Folk

    by | April 18, 2016 | Journal, Songs | 0 Comments

    True to my words of earlier this week, I finished this song last night, and at the time, I liked it--but in the clear light of day, too much of it seems forced, especially the rhymes. But that is part of the process. I think I am almost there. Let me get my saw and...
    Read More

    The Mystery Within

    by | August 15, 2014 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

    EJ wanted a banana tree for Christmas so that early morning brought a plastic bag, a few meager roots and no directions. I bought some potting soil and a square cedar box EJ placed deliberately by a westward window. He gently splayed the roots, pressed the soil, and...
    Read More

    The March Snow

    by | March 11, 2018 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

    An early March snow brought down all these branches Cracking and crashing throughout a long night, Piling them impatiently in the yard Like jacksticks in a child’s messy room. The stepladder I used to rake the ridge Stands like an awkward sculpture draped in white...
    Read More

    Guns, Me, and Rural America

    by | February 27, 2018 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

         Sometimes I start writing without knowing where I stand—unsure of even where I stand. I have to trust some innate wisdom or audacity will cull through the bullshit we are all heir to in what Hamlet laments is “this earthly coil” we are forced to face when we wake...
    Read More

    The Mystery in the Cradle

    by | December 25, 2013 | Journal | 0 Comments

    This picture is from Christmas eleven years ago when Tommy was only two weeks old, and now all of them—and Gio and Pipo--are playing charades or some such game in the dining room, shouting and laughing at each other's miscues and fortifying another enduring memory...
    Read More

    The English Soldier

    by | July 14, 2014 | Poetry, Raccoon | 0 Comments

    There is a soldier dressed in ancient English wool guarding the entrance to the inn. He is lucky for this cool night awaiting the pomp of the out of town wedding party. He is paid to be unmoved by the bride's stunning beauty or her train of lesser escorts. He will not...
    Read More

    How To Be Human

    by | July 24, 2015 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

    Mark Twain once wrote that it is good to be a good person, but it is better to tell people how to be good--"and a damn sight easier!" So much of my life is lived in response to the moment and not in a practiced and cultivated wisdom. I sat here this morning looking...
    Read More

    Make Something out of Something

    by | February 26, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    It's hard to make chicken salad out of chicken manure      Dirty hands are a good sign, so hopefully, you got some mental mud on your hands and created some content to work with today.  To a starving man, any food is good food--unless it...
    Read More

    Wisdom

    by | May 13, 2016 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

    Wisdom starts in non-action… The doing and non-doing are the equal balance. Without the luxury of contemplation there would not be a prioritizing of need versus want. Wisdom balances physical reality… Wisdom does not shuffle tasks out of view but finds a way to...
    Read More

    Weeds

    by | August 8, 2014 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

      Somewhere locked in this choke of weeds spread like a mangy carpet is the hardened vine of Pipo’s Concord Grape he planted in an eager spring three years ago. Gasping for air and sun and water perhaps it has found some way to hide from my flailing hoe and the...
    Read More

    Out of the Forge: April 6, 2017

    by | April 11, 2017 | Journal, Out of the Forge | 0 Comments

    Some nights I feel like I am singing in a mall. Tonight--in a fun way--it felt a bit like I walked into the Natick mall at Christmas time and pulled out my guitar in front of the Apple store and started to play, but like every night down at the inn it evolved into a...
    Read More

    Life Outside the Curriculum

    by | July 25, 2019 | Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    “My teachers could have written with Jesse James for all time they stole from us...” ~Richard Brautigan, “Trout Fishing in America”        My classroom is often a bit of a mess—a mass of sprawled bodies scattered around like casualties of battle, ensconced in various...
    Read More

    Weekend Custody

    by | August 21, 2014 | Out of the Forge, Songs | 0 Comments

    Jesse calls up this morning—
    “You can come downstairs now;
    You see the grapefruit bowl?
    Well, I fixed it all;
    I fixed everything for you.”

    Everything’s for you…

    “Let me help you make the coffee,
    Momma says you drink it too.
    I can’t reach the stove,
    But I can pour it, though—
    What’s it like living alone?”

    Read More

    The Next Time Around

    by | April 16, 2016 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

            I wonder what the years have really taught me about writing and music. I have gotten so used to preaching and teaching that I am a bit looped by the thought of writing—as in how I wrote before (or how I will claim I wrote) before settling into this somewhat...
    Read More

    There is in an easiness

    by | June 8, 2018 | Journal | 0 Comments

    When I begin to think of myself. My girded shell squeezing Oysters in a jar; My oily viscera Jammed and joggled Into impossible places. My pancreas Is never where it should be; My esophagus cut cleanly Swirls in a diaspora. My tongue is a trapped In a tangle of...
    Read More

    China Journal: Part One

    by | July 23, 2015 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    I           The dull staccato throb in light rain on a dark night. Unseen barges make their way up the QianTian River—concrete shores marked by the arch of the bridge, the spans of beam stretched on beam, the impeccable symmetry of the street-lights broken by a stream...
    Read More

    Molting

    by | July 10, 2014 | Poetry, Raccoon | 0 Comments

    I am always molting; leaving my hollowed skin in awkward places, scaring people and making them jump. They touch me and think I’m real; then laugh and say things like “What a riot.” I’m tired of this changing of skins. I’d rather stumble on myself and be fooled; and...
    Read More

    The End Is the Beginning

    by | September 2, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    For the past twenty years this night has always been a bittersweet moment. I have never been hobbled by boredom or a lack of "things I love to do," so whatever supposed free time I have is rewarding in whatever I choose to do. The flip side is that I am teacher, and I...
    Read More

    Calvary

    by | August 23, 2014 | Out of the Forge, Songs | 0 Comments

    It seems like it ain’t been a long time,
    But I’m damn pleased your coming by again.
    It’s been a while since we sat down and rambled
    About this and that and why and who and then
    You said that you had to get a move on,
    Move on and leave a space behind.
    So I spent a while hitting all those old roads:
    Old friends and kicking down the wine.

    Read More

    Denise

    by | August 14, 2014 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

    There is something about coming hometo this empty house, yesterday'sheavy downpours scouringclean the alreadyweathered deckwhere I sitwishing for,wanting,you.
    Read More

    Chores

    by | May 15, 2016 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

    The day sometimes slip away from me, a huge pine half-bucked in the backyard, the kids old tree fort cut into slabs, a ton of coal waiting to be moved in a train of buckets to the bin. Sipping cold water on the back deck, sharpening the dulled teeth of a worn...
    Read More

    Concord

    by | July 14, 2014 | Poetry, Raccoon | 0 Comments

    The people, the music filledness of rush hour traffic skirting puddles work crews packing in laughswearingmudyellowed slickers lighting candle bombs. My sadness the euphoric detachment. I love this town. It breathes me.
    Read More

    Superman

    by | August 12, 2014 | Dawghouse, Songs | 0 Comments

    There’s a little blonde boy in a superman cape
    Racing around the back yard;
    Sayin’, “Daddy don’t you know I can fly to the moon;
    I’m gonna bring you back some stars.
    And after that I’m gonna save the world”
    Cause I’m superman today.”
    I scoop that boy right into my arms,
    And this is what I say:

    You don’t need a cape to be a hero
    You’ve got all the special powers that you need
    Your smile’s enough to save the world from evil
    And you’ll always be superman to me

    Read More

    Know Thyself…

    by | September 29, 2017 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

    Writing a Metacognition Know Thyself… Explore, Assess, Reflect & Rethink If we don’t learn from what we do, we learn little of real value. If we don’t make the time to explore, reflect and rethink our ways of doing things we will never grow, evolve and reach our...
    Read More

    A New Beginning

    by | November 10, 2013 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

     I guess if there is any constant in my life, it is new beginnings.  This blog--and this website--is another new beginning starting here late on a cold night on my back porch. I've been keeping a blog (in fact several blogs) since the first blogs made their way on to...
    Read More

    Hallows Lake

    by | August 2, 2014 | Journal | 0 Comments

    Foreward Thanks for taking a look at this "work in progress. It originally started out as an experimental one-man play. Maybe it still will be. Later I thought of making it into a novel, but it's hard to see it happening as there is (intentionally) no real plot, and...
    Read More

    Many Miles To Go

    by | August 12, 2014 | Fires in the Belly, Songs | 0 Comments

    I see it in your eyes
    and in the ways you try to smile;
    in the ways you whisper—I don’t know—
    and put it all off for a while;
    then you keep on keeping on
    in the only way you know:
    you’re scared of where you’re going
    and who’ll catch you down below.

    Read More

    What a Picture Tells

    by | May 6, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    "Zou Ma Guan Hua" You can't ride a horse and smell the flowers ~Chinese Proverb Sometimes I love just browsing through old folders of pictures of my kids when they were just kids in every sense of the word. Just seeing the pictures is a visceral experience for me as I...
    Read More

    The Shapes of Stories

    by | July 9, 2016 | Journal | 0 Comments

    While I have always been a storyteller of sorts, I am not much of a writer of stories--but I have always been intrigued by the relative simplicity at the core design level of most books and movies. A lot of it is tied to my love for Joseph Campbell's work on the...
    Read More

    Dad

    by | December 4, 2013 | Poetry | 0 Comments

    Moaning like a lost whale the thin ice bellowed behind us then cracked and rang as if spit from a whip. The sharp steel of my over-sized skates etched unspeakable joy into the slate-grey, reptilian skin of Walden Pond. Our mismatched hands gripped together in the...
    Read More

    A Hard Sell

    by | November 13, 2013 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

         As a teacher, I am tired of the word blog, probably because the word “blogging” is incredibly limiting and myopic, especially for someone whose teaching is centered around an online curriculum with blogs front and center on my academic table. I sat through a...
    Read More

    Redefining Literacy

    by | August 8, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

     My life is the poem I could have writ, But I could not both live and utter it ~Henry David Thoreau    The common man goes to an orchard to taste the fruit. The rich man man learns how to plant his own orchard. The poet, however,  grows an even better fruit and gives...
    Read More

    The Silver Apples of the Moon.

    by | January 29, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    Stories are a communal currency of humanity. ― Tahir Shah, In Arabian Nights The most powerful and enduring connection we share as a human race is our desire and need to share stories. We engage in the art of storytelling more than most of us ever realize; whether we...
    Read More

    Finally…

    by | December 10, 2013 | Essays, Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

    Just closed the lid, so to speak, on what seems to be weeks of school-related paperwork. I am excited to go to my classes tomorrow with only those classes on my mind--not the letters home to parents, the secondary school recs, the grades and comments to homeroom...
    Read More

    Another Day…

    by | July 7, 2016 | Journal | 0 Comments

    I've been somewhat lax about posting in here of late, but I have been giving myself a bit of a break from writing. In fact, I spent the last month or so just living--and that has been just fine with me. I set a simple goal for myself this summer to get in shape. PJ...
    Read More

    Thanksgiving

    by | November 28, 2013 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

    I am surprised sometimes by the suddenness of November: beauty abruptly shed to a common nakedness— grasses deadened by hoarfrost, persistent memories of people I’ve lost. It is left to those of us dressed in the hard barky skin of experience to insist on a decorum...
    Read More

    Contact John Fitzsimmons...and thanks!