I own an 1868 etching of this image of women watching an eclipse by Felix Braquemond. It's hanging here in my study. I bought it at auction at Skinner, intending it to be the cover of Shadow Bands (1988), my short-story collection, but Raymond Smith and Joyce Carol Oates, the book's publishers, didn't think much of it. Instead, I used an image of a painting by Alice Neel that didn't translate very well from color to black-and-white. Oh, well. I am posting (publishing?) "The Eclipse" now, all these years later, on the occasion of the solar eclipse partially seen here in Andover on April 8. The light became strange, greenish-brownish-yellow, but the day didn't become dark. It was over quickly. I didn't use special glasses to see it. I just kept gardening. I suppose I feel about eclipse-watching the way I feel about bird-watching: it's all too far away. And yet I used eclipse metaphor in the title story of my long-ago collection... and shadow bands is itself a specialized eclipse term... Eclipses must have meant something to me back then. I'll have to reread the story...
p.s. I met Scott Wheeler, the composer, at a party when my book was either nearing publication or was already out. When I told him about the title and its meaning, he was intrigued, and a few days later he asked me if I would mind if he used the same for the title of his forthcoming CD. Of course, I didn't. And so in addition to mine, there is also his Shadow Bands (1990) for violin, viola, and cello.
p.s. I met Scott Wheeler, the composer, at a party when my book was either nearing publication or was already out. When I told him about the title and its meaning, he was intrigued, and a few days later he asked me if I would mind if he used the same for the title of his forthcoming CD. Of course, I didn't. And so in addition to mine, there is also his Shadow Bands (1990) for violin, viola, and cello.
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