The Gleaners, Leon Augustin Lhmermitte

Until recently, the only time I had ever used the word glean was in reference to something I’d taken from a text, film, or conversation. That is, I gleaned such and such information from something or someone. This, of course, is a secondary definition, one that has its roots in an ancient practice of gathering grain or other produce that reapers have left behind. This was a common–even sacred–practice that gave the poor access to the grain fields, vineyards, or orchards after they had been harvested.

The Bible contains explicit references to gleaning, the most notable in the story of Ruth, a poor Moabite woman who asked for permission to glean in the fields of Boaz so that she might help support her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi. The book of Leviticus (23:22) identifies God’s provision for the least of these:

“And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.”

Gleaning has continued to be an essential practice in many rural societies, even today. In his 2015 article, “Gleaning: An Ancient Custom That May Return In The Future,” Ugo Bardi writes that gleaning:

is an extremely smart idea simply because it is so inexpensive. First of all, gleaners didn’t need tools, nor needed special skills. They would simply walk in the fields, equipped with nothing more than their hands and a bag, collecting what they found on the ground. Gleaners didn’t need to be trained in harvesting, nor to be in perfect physical shape. Women could do it, just as older people and youngsters could. Then, it was a totally informal operation, without the costs of bosses, of hierarchies, of organizations.

In her 2000 documentary, The Gleaners and I, French film director, Agnes Varda offers a portrait of contemporary gleaners–both those who glean from the leftovers that the rest of us throw out or ignore and those creative souls, like herself, that make art from what they have gleaned. In a 2001 interview, Andrea Meyer said that gleaning might be a metaphor for so many things, even filmmaking. To which, Varda responded: It is true that filming, especially a documentary, is gleaning. Because you pick what you find; you bend; you go around; you are curious; you try to find out where are things.   

Varda also referred to gleaning as getting things that are abandoned. She explained that she didn’t abandon her earlier works–films and photographs–but rather, she returned to them, a body of work as something I can pick from.

Meyer and Varda may be on to something, for gleaning may certainly be a metaphor for so many things, particularly for returning to words, images, and things that have been set aside or forgotten in hopes of fresh pickings. As a thrift store connoisseur, I can testify to the adage: One man’s trash is another’s treasure. Oh, to explore the land of the misfit toys, clothes, and books! And to think that others have already harvested what they wanted and left these treasures behind!

Artists are exceptional gleaners. The entire world is literally at their fingertips, ripe for the picking. And contemporary artists, in particular, have often turned to the leftovers or the ignored for their subject matter. Andy Warhol gleaned Campbell soup cans and Heinz Tomato Ketchup boxes as the perfect subjects for his paintings. Poets often find poems in the most unlikely places: obituaries, advertisements, news stories. Choreographers, novelists, playwrights, and filmmakers glean stories from people and places that the world has largely ignored or forgotten.

Take, for example, a novel I recently read. Steven Heighton’s novel, afterlands, is a fictional account of the 1871 Polaris expedition which was intended to be the first trip to the North Pole. Who knew that Charles Francis Hall and 19 members of his expedition would be separated from their ship and have to survive for 6 months on an ice floe? Reading the account of their desperate attempts to survive on a chunk of ice that continued to shift and break was excruciating–not to mention the fact that there is not much food to be harvested on ice! Or who knew that, months later, Captain Hall would accuse these members of poisoning him and that would be a naval investigation into his death? I had never heard of this expedition or these people in any history class, and if it weren’t for the artful and historical gleaning of Steven Heighton, I would have died without knowing that if you are ever stranded on an ice floe, it’s best if you are stranded with a few Inuits who have some mad seal-hunting skills.

Lately, I have turned to some fruitful gleaning. Having inherited many of my father’s notebooks and books, I have been foraging through the margins, the end sheets, the single pieces of paper folded and stuck into places that may–or may not–have any significance. I have looked at entries my father had written and crossed out. Like Varda, I am returning to them as a body of work one might pick from. And the pickings have been far greater than I could have imagined.

From a small blue pocket notebook he carried when he walked the streets of Kearney, Nebraska:

“I am so slow in learning,” she said. Why did I praise her for that?

The author of a book is a voice with a new body.

Think of E.T.’s glowing finger and its magical touch. It is nothing compared to the touchstone that you get from the best reading.

From a brown, tooled leather journal:

When I wrote
     I walked on.
When I walked on
     went farther.
And, here, in this 
     worn pocket
is the book
     of my returns.

I live on inclinations
heart's knowings
two good twins.   
 

From margin notes following the poem, “How I Met My Muse” in An Oregon Message, Poems by William Stafford:

–so uncommonly common

Following Stafford’s poem, “Waiting Sometimes”:

This is Stafford at his best.
--"Hands" said, "Your attention, I need it"--and Stafford gives it
--Would Yeats? Would Heaney?
--Somehow hands would seem beneath Yeats's idea of poetry--not dramatic or noble enough
--Heaney would probably write about a specific person's hands, a bogger's, a turf-cutter's, or a thatcher's--but Stafford writes about generic hands and makes them human
--his style: to humanize the most ordinary things and people

From the end sheet of Selected Poems and Two Plays of William Butler Yeats:

Subjects for possible papers:
--Idea of dying into life--how does Yeats handle this old theme--what dies?
--Is Yeats's great poetry a literature of despair, hope, or neither? Is it a literature of realism? How realistic is it?
--Does Yeats reconcile Art and Life? Is Art greater than life? Is this an aristocratic point of view?
--What, if anything, assuages man's powerful thirst in Yeats's poems?
--Does art for art's sake lead to escapism, then to fatal irrelevance? As a way of life, who wants to follow a golden bird to Byzantium?

As a way of life, who wants to follow a golden bird to Byzantium? The birds of my father’s life were neither golden nor destined for glory in Byzantium. They were homing pigeons, blue bars, reds, and grizzles, all indistinguishable from common barn pigeons to the untrained eye. But if I have learned anything from my father–and from what I have I gleaned from his books and notebooks–it is that the ordinary is so uncommonly common, that it is seldom ordinary if we have but eyes to see and hearts to feel, that to humanize the most ordinary things and people is, perhaps, the most virtuous thing one to which one might aspire.

I have learned that to be slow in learning, a notion so tragically foreign to most classrooms and boardrooms, is to be praised. I have learned that to walk on, and then to walk farther, is often one of the best forms of prayer. And I have learned that inclinations and heart’s knowings are, without a doubt, two good twins.

And if gleaning may be a good metaphor for many things (and I believe it is), I have learned that my life has been filled with so many conversations and experiences during which some of the best stuff was left unharvested, lying in the fields to wither and, perhaps, to be forgotten altogether. Left there, unharvested, this is often the uncommonly common stuff that has the power to transform or, at the very least, to enrich lives.

Gleaning, as Varda claims, is about getting things that have been abandoned, and returning to a body of work, a conversation or experience, just like the hungry return to a field, as something to pick from. As I am looking forward into the new year, I will also look back to things I have abandoned, neglected, and overlooked. In the final line of his poem, “Birches,” Robert Frost writes that “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.” If my initial gleanings from my father are any indication, one could also do worse–much, much worse–than be a gleaner of things.