Excuse for Being Here: Life Among Thoreau's Reflections
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978-1-934949-77-1
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By: Robert M. Chute
This books has three parts: Robert M. Chute's most excellent poetry, a memoir of sorts and the story of a life relating to Henry David Thoreau begining in a one-room schoolhouse and continuing even today as Chute lives a simple life in Maine.
This books has three parts: Robert M. Chute's most excellent poetry, a memoir of sorts and the story of a life relating to Henry David Thoreau begining in a one-room schoolhouse and continuing even today as Chute lives a simple life in Maine.
Excuse for Being Here by Robert M. Chute serves three purposes. It is first a collection of poems by Robert M. Chute. Secondly these poems are about Thoreau, written as if they were written by Thoreau or are written in reaction to something in Thoreau’s known history, actions or character. Last, this book serves as a rough memoir of Robert M. Chute, an award-winning poet who is also a scientist.
About the Author
Robert M. Chute is a native of Naples, Maine and was educated, according to Chute, with varying degrees of success, at Fryeburg Academy, the University of Maine, and Johns Hopkins University. He served in the U.S. Air Force in WWII, in the Aviation Physiology Unit of a Proving Ground Command. He joined the Bates College teaching staff as Chairman of the Biology Department in 1962. Wearing his scientific hat, he wrote Introduction to Biology and Environmental Insight both published by Harper and Row. Always aware of being a steward of our earth, lakes and trees, Chute was instrumental in the formation of COLA, The Congress of Lake Associations, dedicated to the study and protection of Maine lakes. He also served as chair of a state commission concerned with genetic modification of agricultural products. During the 1960s he produced and edited a mimeograph poetry magazine, The Small Pond. Research in and Professing of Biology supported his poetry habit until retirement from Bates College in 1993. He received the Rhine Humanities Council chapbook award for Samuel Sewall Sails for Home and the Beloit Poetry Journal’s Chad Walsh Award for the poem, “Heat Wave in Concord.” Chute was awarded the 2011 Distinguished Achievement Award by the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Chute ran as an independent protest candidate for the U. S. House during the Vietnam War and is an active supporter of Veterans for Peace.
About the Author
Robert M. Chute is a native of Naples, Maine and was educated, according to Chute, with varying degrees of success, at Fryeburg Academy, the University of Maine, and Johns Hopkins University. He served in the U.S. Air Force in WWII, in the Aviation Physiology Unit of a Proving Ground Command. He joined the Bates College teaching staff as Chairman of the Biology Department in 1962. Wearing his scientific hat, he wrote Introduction to Biology and Environmental Insight both published by Harper and Row. Always aware of being a steward of our earth, lakes and trees, Chute was instrumental in the formation of COLA, The Congress of Lake Associations, dedicated to the study and protection of Maine lakes. He also served as chair of a state commission concerned with genetic modification of agricultural products. During the 1960s he produced and edited a mimeograph poetry magazine, The Small Pond. Research in and Professing of Biology supported his poetry habit until retirement from Bates College in 1993. He received the Rhine Humanities Council chapbook award for Samuel Sewall Sails for Home and the Beloit Poetry Journal’s Chad Walsh Award for the poem, “Heat Wave in Concord.” Chute was awarded the 2011 Distinguished Achievement Award by the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Chute ran as an independent protest candidate for the U. S. House during the Vietnam War and is an active supporter of Veterans for Peace.
Reviews
Dana Wilde writes, "Excuse for Being Here weaves Chute’s sense of connection to Thoreau’s journey together with detailed recollections of his own family in Naples; their summer life as tourist hosts (a complex and under-examined facet of Maine character) that includes some interesting creative fictions that might as well be facts; and ruminations on Thoreau’s life and motivations that inform Chute’s understanding—and sometimes perplexity—about his own life and times."
Click to read the full review by Dana Wilde published in The Working Waterfront
What people say about Chute's poetry
Each of his [Chute's] poems is a search for meaning, that peculiarly human activity we couldn't stop if we tried. It is the concern of the poet and of his characters.
—Pamela Alexander, author of Navigable Waterways and Yale Series of Younger Poets
As he has done so admirably wiht other pieces of history such as Sweeping the Sky, a nonfiction poem series inspired by Soviet woman combat fliers in World War II, Chute presents the context of lives once lived in an act of profound imagination and empathy in Thirteen Moons."
—Carl Little in the Bangor Daily News
Robert Chute's ear and eye for detail, the mastery of his craftmanship and the intelligence of his choice among the diaries Samuel Sewall Sails for Home, make this an exemplary work, this is poetry of great clarity, lyric power and subtlety.
—Charles Simic
His images are as sharp as crusted snow, and the winter land he shows us is obviously a land which he knows and has walked himself, a land as real as the sound of feet breaking thorugh that snow crust, as real and as lasting as Abenaki dreams.
—Joseph Bruchac
Each of his [Chute's] poems is a search for meaning, that peculiarly human activity we couldn't stop if we tried. It is the concern of the poet and of his characters.
—Pamela Alexander, author of Navigable Waterways and Yale Series of Younger Poets
As he has done so admirably wiht other pieces of history such as Sweeping the Sky, a nonfiction poem series inspired by Soviet woman combat fliers in World War II, Chute presents the context of lives once lived in an act of profound imagination and empathy in Thirteen Moons."
—Carl Little in the Bangor Daily News
Robert Chute's ear and eye for detail, the mastery of his craftmanship and the intelligence of his choice among the diaries Samuel Sewall Sails for Home, make this an exemplary work, this is poetry of great clarity, lyric power and subtlety.
—Charles Simic
His images are as sharp as crusted snow, and the winter land he shows us is obviously a land which he knows and has walked himself, a land as real as the sound of feet breaking thorugh that snow crust, as real and as lasting as Abenaki dreams.
—Joseph Bruchac
