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Sonata
"I believe every sunrise and I remember the smell of wet grass, the color of robins, and rustle of leaves on the big oaks that outlive nations, all this comes with each sunrise."
Sonata marks the sixth and final installment of Charles Bowden’s towering “Unnatural History of America” series. While his earlier volumes were suffused with violence and war, Bowden offers here a celebration of rebirth and regrowth. Rendered in Bowden's inimitable style, more prose poetry than reportage, he evokes panoramas that contain the potential for respite and offer a state of grace all but lost in the endless wars of man.
Bowden travels back in time to the worlds of artists Francisco Goya and Vincent van Gogh, the latter painting furiously against encroaching madness. “Van Gogh tries to dream a life of color,” writes Bowden. “Powder blue sheds, yellow stubble, pink skies—but the fears and dark things drag him down.” As Bowden’s vivid prose wrestles with the madness of the world, van Gogh’s paintings represent an act of resistance, ultimately unsuccessful, against depression and suicide.
Moving from the vibrant hues of van Gogh’s painted gardens to America’s southern border, Bowden returns once more to the Mexican asylum run by "El Pastor," Jose Antonio Galvan, who was first introduced to readers of the sextet in Jericho. Here, too, is the dream of a garden that will be planted in the desert, a promise of regeneration in a world gone mad. Poetic, elegiac, and elliptical, Sonata is the final, captivating book of Bowden’s monumental career.
Sonata marks the sixth and final installment of Charles Bowden’s towering “Unnatural History of America” series. While his earlier volumes were suffused with violence and war, Bowden offers here a celebration of rebirth and regrowth. Rendered in Bowden's inimitable style, more prose poetry than reportage, he evokes panoramas that contain the potential for respite and offer a state of grace all but lost in the endless wars of man.
Bowden travels back in time to the worlds of artists Francisco Goya and Vincent van Gogh, the latter painting furiously against encroaching madness. “Van Gogh tries to dream a life of color,” writes Bowden. “Powder blue sheds, yellow stubble, pink skies—but the fears and dark things drag him down.” As Bowden’s vivid prose wrestles with the madness of the world, van Gogh’s paintings represent an act of resistance, ultimately unsuccessful, against depression and suicide.
Moving from the vibrant hues of van Gogh’s painted gardens to America’s southern border, Bowden returns once more to the Mexican asylum run by "El Pastor," Jose Antonio Galvan, who was first introduced to readers of the sextet in Jericho. Here, too, is the dream of a garden that will be planted in the desert, a promise of regeneration in a world gone mad. Poetic, elegiac, and elliptical, Sonata is the final, captivating book of Bowden’s monumental career.
178 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 3, 2020
3 people are currently reading
30 people want to read
About the author
Charles Bowden
67 books184 followersCharles Bowden was an American non-fiction author, journalist and essayist based in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
His journalism appeared regularly in Harper’s GQ, and other national publications. He was the author of several books of nonfiction, including Down by the River.
In more than a dozen groundbreaking books and many articles, Charles Bowden blazed a trail of fire from the deserts of the Southwest to the centers of power where abstract ideas of human nature hold sway — and to the roiling places that give such ideas the lie. He claimed as his turf "our soul history, the germinal material, vast and brooding, that is always left out of more orthodox (all of them) books about America" (Jim Harrison, on Blood Orchid ).
His journalism appeared regularly in Harper’s GQ, and other national publications. He was the author of several books of nonfiction, including Down by the River.
In more than a dozen groundbreaking books and many articles, Charles Bowden blazed a trail of fire from the deserts of the Southwest to the centers of power where abstract ideas of human nature hold sway — and to the roiling places that give such ideas the lie. He claimed as his turf "our soul history, the germinal material, vast and brooding, that is always left out of more orthodox (all of them) books about America" (Jim Harrison, on Blood Orchid ).
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 16, 2021
My first Bowden, and it was something. I lost the words I thought I had. He paints a picture with words like an arrow leading us along towards something, I don’t know what, or where, or even why. He includes the personal and the landscape with the political and humanitarian, and he writes that “finally, my heart is illegal,” and I think we lost an important voice when he died, but of course, it is not that uncomplicated, he is misogynistic and negative and thinks and writes of war and murder after living in it for years. But really a powerful punch, that lent itself to a found poem. I actually have to go back and think about his more political words in these essays, it hurts so much to know more deeply the pain on the other side of the border, and spilling over and perhaps he has some truths that can help us again, as our heart breaks, breaks open, and as it is made to do, and open hearts try to help.
“All you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.” J.S. Bach
..the beauty will be as always
All around and invisible to the
Anxious eye. The river runs
Cold, snow in the air, cranes
Feeding in the fields and the
Trees tremble with the spring
Flow of sap, goldfinches
And warblers worry the brush
And I feel alive,
More alive than I ever feel
With people, more alive
Than I ever feel when alone,
And I have learned one thing,
Never to question why I feel
More alive on the river
With cold water and the wind
Brushing my face coming
Off the wings of cranes.
And I will leave a hole in my life
And vanish seeking the beauty part.
I look up.
A crane vanishes.
Through a hole.
In the sky.
The music flows and feelings
Become thoughts and the
Thoughts are felt, not said,
But when you go for the beauty
Part and vanish through that hole
The words stay behind and you
Tumble with feeling and cannot
Say what you finally truly know.
There are reports from the vast deep of life,
From the regions where my mind roams but
My body never visits. Life must be for
Both me and the crazy people and the cranes
Overhead, all of us arcing
To the same place
Under the same sky
In the huge empty
Of an universe without borders.
The ancient song wander onto the plains,
See the Sioux and other buffalo
Nations rise up on horse and fresh robes,
Hear the dreams of the Pawnee, feel the
Wound of the Oregon Trail. The sky so blue
Will ache overhead. The cranes fly over,
Fly south in the fall, fly north in the spring.
They see mammoths go down to Clovis
Points, watch the cheetah make its last
Run after antelope, see Coronado find the
Grand Canyon. The crane fly above history
And follow a road in the sky. They begin their
migration before the Colorado was made.
The cranes can visit the heavens, the earth,
And the underworld. They can fly at 20,000 feet.
They migrate thousands of miles. They vanish
Through that hole in the sky. Their voice beckons,
A sound Aldo Leopoldo thought the trumpet
In the orchestra of the wild and the free. A life
Should have more wonder than fear. Rolling
And tumbling, dogs and people, clouds of butterflies,
Gases exploding into arcs of energy called
Nebulae, that is the garden, not serenity, not
Terror but hunger that glowing hunger at the
First light of the life, the garden that flows not
Out of us but into us. The cranes are leaving.
Each
Day
I
Feel
Them
Departing.
Their calls are vanishing, and the
Cranes have been coming and going
For millions of years, they have seen many
Gardens and yet still yearn for some place they
Have yet to reach. Aldo Leopoldo wrote of the cranes,
“Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art,
With the pretty. It expands though successive stages of the
Beautiful to values not yet capture by language. The crane’s tribe
Stems out of the remote Eocene. When we hear his call we
Hear no mere bird. He is the symbol of our untameable
Past, of the incredible sweep of millennia which
Underlies and conditions the daily affairs
Of birds and humans. Out there, the
Cranes eat and the beauty part
Lives just beyond my reach.
I see but do not smell or
Taste or hear the
Music of the
Sun.
Beauty is not caged.
In a bar, once a hunter told me he could not shoot a crane.
I did not ask why.
To see them is to know they are part of your life and
That to shoot them is not murder, but suicide.
I believe every sunrise and I remember the smell
Of wet grass, the color of robins, and rustle of leaves
On the big oaks that outlive nations, all this come with sunrise.
The End Time is now behind us.
We begin afresh. The things we
Feared we now become. The air
Is warm, there is a gale and the wind
Becomes my life, the feel of it
Stroking my hair, scoring my skin
With sand, the roar of sound
Flooding my brain, pebbles
Under the clear tongue of the
Stream. There is a story I am
Told of a reporter sitting in a
Cafe and writing notes cause, she
Says, they are listening now
To everything, And i am stunned
because I can find no one that listens
to anything, Not even the songs that fall like
shiny coins from the throats of birds at dawn.
“All you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.” J.S. Bach
..the beauty will be as always
All around and invisible to the
Anxious eye. The river runs
Cold, snow in the air, cranes
Feeding in the fields and the
Trees tremble with the spring
Flow of sap, goldfinches
And warblers worry the brush
And I feel alive,
More alive than I ever feel
With people, more alive
Than I ever feel when alone,
And I have learned one thing,
Never to question why I feel
More alive on the river
With cold water and the wind
Brushing my face coming
Off the wings of cranes.
And I will leave a hole in my life
And vanish seeking the beauty part.
I look up.
A crane vanishes.
Through a hole.
In the sky.
The music flows and feelings
Become thoughts and the
Thoughts are felt, not said,
But when you go for the beauty
Part and vanish through that hole
The words stay behind and you
Tumble with feeling and cannot
Say what you finally truly know.
There are reports from the vast deep of life,
From the regions where my mind roams but
My body never visits. Life must be for
Both me and the crazy people and the cranes
Overhead, all of us arcing
To the same place
Under the same sky
In the huge empty
Of an universe without borders.
The ancient song wander onto the plains,
See the Sioux and other buffalo
Nations rise up on horse and fresh robes,
Hear the dreams of the Pawnee, feel the
Wound of the Oregon Trail. The sky so blue
Will ache overhead. The cranes fly over,
Fly south in the fall, fly north in the spring.
They see mammoths go down to Clovis
Points, watch the cheetah make its last
Run after antelope, see Coronado find the
Grand Canyon. The crane fly above history
And follow a road in the sky. They begin their
migration before the Colorado was made.
The cranes can visit the heavens, the earth,
And the underworld. They can fly at 20,000 feet.
They migrate thousands of miles. They vanish
Through that hole in the sky. Their voice beckons,
A sound Aldo Leopoldo thought the trumpet
In the orchestra of the wild and the free. A life
Should have more wonder than fear. Rolling
And tumbling, dogs and people, clouds of butterflies,
Gases exploding into arcs of energy called
Nebulae, that is the garden, not serenity, not
Terror but hunger that glowing hunger at the
First light of the life, the garden that flows not
Out of us but into us. The cranes are leaving.
Each
Day
I
Feel
Them
Departing.
Their calls are vanishing, and the
Cranes have been coming and going
For millions of years, they have seen many
Gardens and yet still yearn for some place they
Have yet to reach. Aldo Leopoldo wrote of the cranes,
“Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art,
With the pretty. It expands though successive stages of the
Beautiful to values not yet capture by language. The crane’s tribe
Stems out of the remote Eocene. When we hear his call we
Hear no mere bird. He is the symbol of our untameable
Past, of the incredible sweep of millennia which
Underlies and conditions the daily affairs
Of birds and humans. Out there, the
Cranes eat and the beauty part
Lives just beyond my reach.
I see but do not smell or
Taste or hear the
Music of the
Sun.
Beauty is not caged.
In a bar, once a hunter told me he could not shoot a crane.
I did not ask why.
To see them is to know they are part of your life and
That to shoot them is not murder, but suicide.
I believe every sunrise and I remember the smell
Of wet grass, the color of robins, and rustle of leaves
On the big oaks that outlive nations, all this come with sunrise.
The End Time is now behind us.
We begin afresh. The things we
Feared we now become. The air
Is warm, there is a gale and the wind
Becomes my life, the feel of it
Stroking my hair, scoring my skin
With sand, the roar of sound
Flooding my brain, pebbles
Under the clear tongue of the
Stream. There is a story I am
Told of a reporter sitting in a
Cafe and writing notes cause, she
Says, they are listening now
To everything, And i am stunned
because I can find no one that listens
to anything, Not even the songs that fall like
shiny coins from the throats of birds at dawn.
May 3, 2021
The sixth and final installment in Bowden's "Unnatural History of America" series. Alfredo Corchado notes, in an excellent forward, that when it comes to the US/Mexican borderlands, "some are hell-bent on raising uncomfortable truths, pushing back against conventional talking points. Bowden was one of that kind."
Was he ever, as demonstrated once more in this non-linear, stream of consciousness series of prose poems published posthumously, expected to be the last of his work.
Was he ever, as demonstrated once more in this non-linear, stream of consciousness series of prose poems published posthumously, expected to be the last of his work.
January 31, 2022
Have you been gnawed open by a hunger that is against the laws? Do you identify with the man “who jumps in the river to drown but then finds the water too cold”? Has love slapped your body blind? Do you long to inhabit a place of the “musk coming from wet earth,” the “slow wing flap of a heron bringing food back to the nest, the edge of the storm raking down the valley trembling the cottonwoods”? If so, check out the lyrical essay collection Sonata by Charles Bowden. Take a break from the “dogs out there fighting for their share of the flesh,” approach the point “where we must erase ourselves or never get to the hard ground of understanding,” and give yourself permission to “cease to have solutions and cease to think of issues and cease to listen to anything but the rustle of leaves.” Recognize, through Bowden’s eyes, that “a life should have more wonder than fear,” and catch a glimpse of the time forthcoming, when “all will be smooth again like the water in the ponds.”
March 22, 2023
This book has no business being so beautiful. I loved Bowden when I was a teenager, read all the books I could get of his while hiding from Officer Meredith in the stacks of the public library. Desierto, Blues for Cannibals, Blue Desert, Blood Orchid, Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing. It was my first exposure to this lyrical style of nonfiction writing that retains a visceral sense of outrage. In all the years between I haven't come across anyone who quite accomplishes it like Bowden does. Either they fall into the trap of aestheticizing things because they don't understand them, and so disrespect them, or they end up writing an academic essay that would have been better off academic.
This book serves almost as an elegy to Bowden's own writing, an artist's statement on his life. I recognize themes from other work, the black metal door to the insane asylum he visited so often, moments that stood out to him over a lifetime of reporting on the US-Mexico borderlands. But also we get a whole portion of the book dedicated to beauty, essays on Van Gogh that are some of the best I have read (I have read a lot of them for whatever reason) interspersed with stories of tragedy that, as a witness, Bowden has only survived through his unique conception of beauty.
If this is the only book of his you've read it might not connect with you. I'd urge you to read a few others first.
This book serves almost as an elegy to Bowden's own writing, an artist's statement on his life. I recognize themes from other work, the black metal door to the insane asylum he visited so often, moments that stood out to him over a lifetime of reporting on the US-Mexico borderlands. But also we get a whole portion of the book dedicated to beauty, essays on Van Gogh that are some of the best I have read (I have read a lot of them for whatever reason) interspersed with stories of tragedy that, as a witness, Bowden has only survived through his unique conception of beauty.
If this is the only book of his you've read it might not connect with you. I'd urge you to read a few others first.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews