Austin Chapter
Reader's Guide

February 2001

Going To Ground: Simple Life on a Georgia Pond
by Amy Blackmarr

Then consider these discussion questions that the Evening Reading Circle discussed in April, 2000:

1. Think about the ways in which this book is different from others we have read and discussed together. What book does it most remind you of?

2. The book has been praised by critics for its deeply evocative sense of place. Find the passages that give you a strong sense of the environment around Blackmarr's Georgia pond. We'll read and discuss some of these.

3. Blackmarr's present life on the land is enriched by her awareness of the past life of the pond and the surrounding fields. Find one or two of these passages and mark them for discussion. How do they add to the "sense of place"? How do they help to define Blackmarr and the other people in her narrative?

4. Blackmarr writes about several encounters with dangers. Choose one of these and reread it carefully. What sort of danger is it? How does she respond? How does her response change the situation? How does it change her? What does she learn from the experience?

5. Blackmarr's living conditions are primitive, by the standards of our ordinary American life. Why do you think she chose to do this? Have you ever lived in a situation like hers? How did you adapt to the loss of conveniences we usually take for granted? What did you learn from the experience?

6. These short essays were written separately, rather than as a consecutive narrative, yet some are linked. Find two of these "linked" essays and study them carefully. What connects them? (Theme? style? vocabulary?)

7. Some of essays in this book were originally written to be read on public radio. Which essays do you think these might have been? What makes you think so?

8. In the essay called "The Condition of Not-Seeing," Blackmarr writes about what Buddhists sometimes call "soft eyes" or "open eyes"--the ability to see without looking, to take in unexpected perceptions, to open ourselves to surprise. This idea is one of the central themes of this book. See if you can find other examples of it in the other essays. Have there been times in your life when you could see without looking?

9. In the essay "Queenie," Blackmarr's dog is killed. The essay is suffused by a deep sadness, but lightened by little touches, like the bumblebees, for instance. Reread the essay and let yourself experience the sadness at the same time that you look for the ways in which Blackmarr has crafted the story to give us, in the end, a sense of the continuity of life.