As a poetry workshop facilitator, I often find myself asking writers to consider changing the titles of their poems. Bland, self-evident, or redundant titles can weigh down a poem, if not ruin it entirely, so in workshop I invite writers to brainstorm titles that might be able to “do more work” for their pieces. A unique or attention-grabbing title might prompt someone to read a poem they otherwise would not; a title that foreshadows where a poem is headed, without revealing too much, can create fruitful dynamism or interesting traction. With Here it Snows in June, a debut collection of short fiction published by Wiseblood Books, Eric Cyr has hit upon a title that does great “work”— a title I’d never ask to be changed. It’s a good one, possibly a perfect one, in combination with the book’s striking cover design, which features a single, battered farm building leaning in the midst of a snowy plain. Here it Snows in June is plainspoken and provoking all at the same time, especially to those of us who find snowfalls in the same month as the summer solstice to be otherworldly and strange.
This satisfying title crowns a book of stories set in Cyr’s “here,” an idiosyncratic Minnesotan space that he’s not only lived in but come to know deeply enough to refer to as “here,” in a voice that rings with both authority and affection. It is possible, after all, to live somewhere without allowing that place to become our here; it’s possible to skim the surface of a place for years by way of distraction, dissatisfaction, or busyness. But Cyr must have somehow stilled himself long enough to watch and to wonder at his place in the world, because some of the primary accomplishments of Here it Snows in June are its precise vision and careful attention. A lesser collection would have offered only midwestern window dressing, but in this collection, anecdotes about Twins and Vikings fans, cars stuck in snowdrifts, father-son hunting excursions, and elderly porch-sitters squabbling about Keillor, hum with something more. There is a tension vibrating beneath the surface appearances of marital disagreements and the kid at scout camp that everyone always knew was just a little different. Readers of this book are invited into the invisible resonances that transcend these tales, invited to realize that there is always more at stake in our everyday lives than might at first meet the eye.
Although the Midwest may not be “here” for all of us, in these works of short fiction there are many human experiences that remain painfully or poignantly familiar. The question of vocation, whether it be a career or a commitment to marriage or religious life, is one of those inescapable realities we all wrangle with, no matter the landscape of our lives. Cyr’s stories drop us in the midst of situations where people must sort out the big or small questions on either side of a vocational commitment. We meet young couples struggling to get by with their first child while most of their friends are still single and (seemingly) carefree, a middle-aged man who ponders the puzzle of his desiccated marriage on a hunting trip, and a number of elderly characters, some suffering through widowhood and others through the distressing decline of their spouse. Seminarians discern into, and out of, the priesthood, and high schoolers try to figure out what comes next after graduation. It all sounds very ordinary, very much like what many of us might know from our own first-hand experience. But to see the arc of the story that stretches beyond the scattered events of our lives, and to offer it with vivid and engaging details, is the gift of an ever-vigilant writer of fiction. As it has been noted by Seth Wieck in these Front Porch pages before, “nary a brow lifted in condescension nor condensation on a Collins glass escapes the watchful eye of a novelist whose inner narrator never sleeps.”
In addition to its close attention to the quotidian, one of the other appealing features of Cyr’s short fiction is its small-town ambiance. In the same way that we might bump into a familiar friend at the grocery store in town, we run into familiar faces throughout the collection’s stories, in particular, a young man named Kyle. Although the narrator of Kyle’s tales may have a wider view of things—like the adult Saint Augustine, who writes in his Confessions the story of his youth from the perspective of an older, wiser convert—as readers, we’re set down in the mix of life with Kyle as he struggles through his final days of high school, tries to be more assertive with his father, and stands up to menacing classmates. His attempt to ask a girl to prom is painfully disastrous; his plans for after high school are a mixed bag. When we encounter him later, after graduation, he’s stuck close to home and suffers through a church softball game face-off against the bombastic, boorish Father Paul. Over the course of the book, Kyle becomes a known—though mysterious—quantity, an appealing character experiencing relatable struggles to make something of himself and of his life.
As the book draws to a close, the promised June snowfalls appear—two of them, almost a decade apart, linking moments in Kyle’s life like a loose bridge over the chasm of time. It is a connection that is alternately ephemeral and enduring. Twenty-nine-year-old Kyle, now a husband and father, watches as “the snow that hit[s] the pavement [breaks] apart and melt[s] as soon as it land[s], like miniature worlds erased.” With an artist’s eye for detail, however, he also spies the snow upon the lawn, where “the large flakes . . . settle[], unharmed, on the bright green blades of grass.” Here it Snows in June invites readers, like Kyle, to see the story in the ordinary, to peer out of our own kitchen windows for a glimpse of the stubbornly persistent snow.
Image Credit: Vincent van Gogh, “Snow-Covered Field with a Harrow (after Millet)” (1890)
