Planting by the Moon: On Life in a Mountain Hamlet

Between 1971 and 1984, Stillman lived in a remote village in the northern Catskills. To ensure that the place remains undiscovered and ungentrified, his book gives it the fictional name Gilead then proceeds to celebrate the unique friends and experiences he enjoyed there. A curious mixture of journal entries and poems, the book is divided into three sections (whose titles come from different houses Stillman inhabited), but the anecdotes bubble along with little apparent order. An account of folk remedies for rattlesnake and mad-dog bites leads appropriately into a thoughtful poem about death in winter, when the frozen ground resists attempts to dig a grave. Elsewhere, though, an earthy verse about adultery (``Earl Gets Caught'') stands beside observations on the beauties of nature as acute and eloquent as those of Thoreau. Stories about logging and getting lost in a snowstorm have grim overtones, but others (about the uses of cow magnets or a dull chain saw that is less effective than ``an over-the-hill beaver'') are richly comic. Stillman's diverse topics include cock fighting, colorful local idioms, the delights of country auctions and rural sex education. Throughout the collection, his real protagonist is a place and the sense of community it fosters. (Jan.)