Summary

In July, Jason went to the vicarage believing he had an appointment with the vicar to discuss his poetry. Instead he met an eccentric old lady named Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck. She wanted to discuss his poetry with him. She recognized that in his last poem, entitled “Rocks,” the people doing war in the garden were representative of his mother and father. It was through his poetry that he was able to say the things he felt he couldn’t say with his own voice. She taught him about word choice and beauty and explained to him that the words should convey the beauty, not be the beauty. The discussion was difficult for Jason because no one, not even his teachers, had challenged him to think about words and writing before. She challenged him to say what he thought around her instead of...