Setting

Poetry Setting ACT I A country road. A tree. Evening –Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot A country road. A tree. And it is Evening— six words beneath ACT I in my edition— a yellowed page whose sparseness is deceiving. The reader brings the landscape to fruition, as Beckett had to when he jotted mound, low mound to be exact, when seating Estragon. What gets filled in cannot detract from country road or tree or Evening. The latter is embodied by the leaden sky outside my window. And the road? Loose gravel. The tree? A muddle ripened for the fragrance of the hospital bed, the bus stop, or the front-row pew unraveling in this yellowed absence. ß Derek Updegraff Author biography Derek Updegraff is Assistant Professor of English at California Baptist University in Riverside. His poems, short stories, essays, and translations from Old English and Latin have appeared in numerous journals, including The Classical Outlook, The Lyric, Saint Katherine Review, Natural Bridge, descant, The Chiron Review, and Texas Studies in Literature and Language. Christianity & Literature 2015, Vol. 64(3) 369–373 ! The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/ journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0148333115579021 cal.sagepub.com ...