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Samuel Sewall Sails for Home
Robert M. Chute
*Samuel Sewall Sails for Home* is a slim book of poems by the Maine poet Robert M. Chute, published by Coyote Love Press in 1986 and honored with a Maine chapbook award. Chute takes as his subject Samuel Sewall, the Puritan magistrate and diarist best remembered as the one judge of the Salem witch trials who later stood up in church to publicly repent his part in them. Working from the grain of Sewall's own famous diary, Chute builds a quiet, historically rooted sequence about conscience, faith, and the long voyage home - literal and spiritual. It is intimate, restrained poetry that trusts its material. For readers drawn to New England history, or to poems that inhabit a real historical voice rather than merely describe it, this small book rewards attention.
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The author
Robert M. Chute (1926-2019) was a Maine poet and biologist, long a professor at Bates College, who wrote poetry deeply engaged with New England history, science, and Native American subjects. He published widely in small presses and won recognition within Maine's literary community.
The subject
Samuel Sewall (1652-1730) was a Massachusetts merchant, judge, and diarist. He sat on the court that condemned the Salem "witches," and years later publicly confessed his guilt and error - an act of conscience rare for his time. His diary is a foundational document of colonial New England.
How to read it
Chute's sequence is best read as a meditation on conscience and homecoming, keyed to Sewall's own words. Compact and unshowy, it is a chapbook that repays slow reading.
For more context
Read it alongside Sewall's Diary itself, or Nathaniel Hawthorne's New England tales, for the Puritan world it draws on.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Robert M. Chute
- Publisher
- Coyote Love Press
- Place of publication
- Brunswick, Maine
- Year
- 1986
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Poetry
- Location
- Maine
Places
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