Amplifying the human voice …

… Ronald Blythe: Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village | The Mookse and the Gripes. ( Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Akenfield itself is a fictional village, but it is based, Blythe says in his preface, on the Suffolk village of Charsfield, “but with the surrounding countryside and myself drawn into it.” When he sat down to write Akenfield, Blythe did not have any idea what a oral historian was and, therefore, did not set out to write an oral history but rather “the work of a poet.” And, indeed, this poetic chronicle of the village both celebrates the unsung lives of its inhabitants and frequently hints at the unfathomable universe we all partake in.