New England Poetry Caravan

The New England Poetry Caravan is a poetry-reading tour whose June 1988 itinerary draws Jim Gardener back into Patricia McCardle’s professional orbit. For Gard, it is at once paid work and a binding arrangement: the tour offers cash he needs, but its contract and McCardle’s influence over future bookings make leaving costly. The Caravan’s practical machinery—substitutions, fees, and obligations—turns the literary circuit into a consequential force in his life.

Organization and Touring Work

The Caravan is presented as a touring enterprise that arranges readings and lectures across New England. On June 24, Gard is scheduled to read in Fall River, followed by two readings in Boston over the next three nights, then further readings and lectures in Providence and New Haven. The itinerary is part of a summer tour, and Gard’s return date is uncertain: the university office can say only that his final reading is June 30. When Roberta “Bobbi” Anderson hears this schedule, she supposes Patricia McCardle is behind Gard’s absence and asks whether he will be back for the Fourth of July.

The organization’s finances combine direct payment with the looser, tour-wide practice of charging expenses to the account. Its stated fee is two hundred dollars up front and two hundred at the end of the tour; the advance is described elsewhere in Gard’s dealings as three hundred dollars already paid by Caravan, Inc. The remaining fee is therefore not merely an inducement but something Gard can lose if he leaves. The account for tour expenses—the tab—is another part of the arrangement, distinct from the cash compensation.

Patricia McCardle and the Vacancy

Patricia McCardle is the Caravan’s principal contributor and head ramrod. The 1988 tour had been booked with six poets, and she had secured twelve reading dates and fairly good advances on the basis of a program effectively sold as six poets for the price of one. The arrangement is exposed to contractual default when one of the six, Bill Claughtsworth, dies by suicide shortly before the tour. With only three days to find a replacement, and after trying four poets, each less established than the last, McCardle calls Gard with thirty-six hours remaining before the first reading.

Gard’s recruitment is thus a last-minute repair to a program already sold to venues, rather than the result of an ordinary open booking. McCardle has worked with him before, and their prior dealings have involved trouble. Their exchanges are combative, but the need is mutual: Gard wants a good used wood furnace for the coming winter, while McCardle needs another poet to fulfill the Caravan’s announced lineup. She arrives with a contract in triplicate and a notary public, making clear that she intends to formalize the arrangement rather than rely on an informal promise.

Contract, Payment, and Leverage

The contract sharply limits Gard’s freedom to leave. If he departs for a reason the tour coordinator does not accept, unpaid fees become null and void, while prepaid fees must be returned to Caravan, Inc., within thirty days. Gard has already completed most of the dates, but that does not remove the contract’s leverage: he would forfeit the second half of his fee and risk being sued for the advance. The stated fee and the advance mentioned in the contract are not identical figures in the account; both details underscore that payment is structured around completion, not simply attendance at individual readings.

McCardle’s influence extends beyond the immediate contract. Gard believes she would pursue legal action and work to have him blackballed from other poetry tours with which she is associated. Her grants-in-aid also give her a role in the larger literary economy: money inherited from her husband has been used to establish grants, making her both a patron of the arts and a shrewd operator. The Caravan’s leverage therefore reaches beyond one tour, binding Gard through money, professional access, and the prospect of future exclusion.

Place in Gard’s Story

The tour supplies a concrete reason for Gard to be away from Bobbi during the days leading up to July Fourth. When she telephones the university English Department after several rainy days, the office confirms that he is reading in Fall River and continuing through Boston, Providence, and New Haven. Her tentative expectation that he may return on the Fourth meets the uncertainty of an itinerary whose final date is known but whose exact return is not. The Caravan’s schedule marks the distance between them at a moment when Bobbi is trying to reach him.

The organization also gives Gard an economic choice with a visible consequence. He wants the furnace because he is tired of enduring winter in a poorly insulated house, yet leaving the tour would put his payment and future bookings at risk. What begins as a temporary substitute engagement becomes a binding professional commitment, shaped by McCardle’s need to rescue the program and Gard’s need for cash and heat. The Caravan matters not because it is a grand institution, but because its ordinary mechanisms—an itinerary, an advance, an expense tab, and a contract—constrain what Gard can do.