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Poet Samuel Amadon reads from The Hartford Book at Real Art Ways. (Photo courtesy Sam Amadon / July 10, 2012) |
we never own up to much more than
being from Hartford
which is something no one from
Hartford would ever deny because
though we're all fucked
we've all been fucked before & for
so long that unlike the rest of you
we'd have to be crazy not
to know by now what to expect next.
Amadon's parents still live in West Hartford, just a few blocks over the city line. Amadon moved to Hartford proper after returning from school. He says he wrote these poems because he found himself talking about Hartford so much once he left — in Boston at college, and in New York for grad school. "I was always talking about Hartford because I loved it," he says. Even in places so close to Hartford, people didn't quite get it.
"I guess I was trying to explain what it's like, because people have a very different idea about what Connecticut is like," says Amadon. I mention a detail from one of the poems, a line that seemed almost too cinematic in its awful mundane hard-heartedness. In it, old people evacuate a burning nursing home, shuffling into the street to avoid the smoke, and the impatient drivers in the road honk at the evacuees. Amadon confirms that he witnessed it. But he's not judging anybody, even the jerks in traffic.
"This is a book that I wrote about loving Hartford," he says. "I love the assholes."