A walk in the woods

Selections from a Commuter's Notebook

1. Mornings
when the first
cottonwood

seeds flurry down across
May
lawns and

gather at curbsides and
among the yellow
irises, mornings

like this--Night
forgot
to take in the moon,

it remains
a white stone
in the pool of the sky.


2. Morning
is what the starlings
discuss

as they pick at the chaff
of the newly
mown lawn, while

ambling dogs, grey
of muzzle, sniff
the weed beds

for news: summer,
dare we say it, becomes
general

and insistent
in this patch
of the world. God

cracks the knuckles
of his grass
stained hands.

3. The Lawn
of Rosehill
Cemetery already

gone flat
and golden though
it's not yet July--

In this encampment,
do you hear a murmured
conversation

from the pup tents of the dead?

A Visit From the Hummingbird Moth

I guess I had heard of the hummingbird moth, but I never saw one until yesterday evening. I was talking with my mom on the phone; I was doing this on the back porch because the day had been so hot and the evening was, if not cool, at least cooler. This creature, this messenger appeared--I though it was a hummingbird at first, nosing into the petunias in the planters along the railing, but it moved too slow for a hummingbird, you could see the wingbeats even though they were still incredibly fast. I ran inside, still on the phone with Mom, and gestured to Darren to come outside and look.  He caught the urgency of my gesture and we were both able to watch the fellow dipping his feeding tube into our flowers--five six seven blooms, and then he lifted up and zoomed away into the deepening blue dusk over the rooftops. Son of a moth and an bird's illicit union?  Messenger from the realm of oncoming and ongoing dream? Fantastic, at any rate, in several senses of the word. I felt lucky to have been visited by this missionary.

Here's a borrowed video of what my visitor looked like.  Ours had different coloring but the general size and form were the same.

The School of Orpheus is not in any Building

Ann Wroe wrote the book on Orpheus, that magician, demi-god, philosopher, priest, poet, singer, that inspiration, that tragedy, that Argonaut, that sacrificial lamb. Her new book, Orpheus, The Song of Life, is dedicated to everyone who protested, "But Orpheus isn't real."  Using everything from texts from antiquity to poems and paintings from the present day, Wroe demonstrates that an archetype, despite all the blurring of boundaries and definitions  (Was Orpheus based on a real person?  Was he a king?  A Poet?  Did he study at Alexandria?  Did he live in Thrace, or the mountains further north?) despite all the questions, Orpheus is a Being, an Idea, with a lasting influence, a man real enough to inspire uncounted poems, songs, operas, mosaics, paintings, plays, and happenings.  As for scholarly works about the big O, I very much doubt that a better one will be coming along soon. Wroe is learned and erudite, a writer whose mastery of her prose makes the reader feel, this reader, at least, that he's found a text that becomes both a home (comfortable) and a way-station, a place that has the potential to be the start of any number of journeys. Whether you are planning on a trip to Hades to retrieve your one true love, or you want to discover ways to be the enchanted singer of your age--and who at one time or another has not wanted to have a voice that moved the very trees to dance--this is the book you need.  Poets of all sorts, here is Anne Wroe on Orpheus:

  The public square was always foreign to him. His school was not in any building, though the boys sitting now on temple steps, smoking and listening to their iPods, may jiggle with the sense of him, as he slides through shaded doorways on the waves of balalaika music kicked up from passing cars. The forest was always his place, or among the rocks; in secret, and most often in the dark.

Here she is describing how Orpheus sang a song that made a forest uproot itself, great trees following behind him like eager dogs:

    He led them, then -- scarcely daring to turn, in case they froze behind him -- swaying and stumbling from rock to rock, their canopies full of sky and threshing wings, until they reached Zone on the Aegean Sea. There, in an open space, they arranged themselves in a double ring as though they meant to dance in a spiral, like the planets around the sun. But though he urged them to dance, though he challenged them, laughing and splashing, to follow him into the sea with their hundred hydra arms, they moved no more. Having staggered so far, astonished by the wide blue glare ahead of them, they felt the music leave them, and rooted there.

     He could only lead them so far. That is still the case.

I am eager to find out where Wroe's terrific book might lead me.

Orpheus playing for the beasts. The unicorn looks particularly enthralled.

Paging George Abend

I am delighted to have work included in the current issue of Right Hand Pointing.  Always a fine journal to page through.

I also got a copy of the recent Bluestem in the mail--I love having my work at on line journals, but to have the mailman bring me a journal in the mail, and there's the issue, with my name in print, and my bio in the back--well, it's still very gratifying to me, and somehow still more exciting than seeing a poem up on line. Not to knock on line work--Bluestem also published my ode to a snowy night on their web version.You can hear me read it to you there, in case you are too tired to focus on the words on the screen.

Sarah Jane Sloat has some of her poems exploring invented typefaces up at Used Furniture Review. When I read these, it reminded me of her wine descriptions, and made me wish I'd thought of a series like this before she did.  But then, Sarah's writing is so elegant that I guess I can just be glad that she wrote them; my job is just to share the love.

In other news, I got a copy of Lew Welch's recently reissued Collected Poems, Ring of Bone.  Welch is one of the lesser know poets of the Beat/San Francisco Renaissance era, and I'm very happy to be reading and re-reading these poems.  He was a friend of Gary Snyder's, wrote about his affinity for Gertrude Stein, and in his work paid homage to great poets of China and Japan. I'll try and post more about him when I've gone through the book a couple more times.

Ok, I'm off to NYC for the big bookselling conference--flying out at 6 AM tomorrow morning--so I'll leave with this:

     John said, "Then I met that short fat guy with the 

     neat little beard, with a name like dawn."

     "You mean George Abend?"

     "Yeah."

      Abend means evening."

                                         Lew Welch, from "Circle Poems" in Ring of Bone.

Three Reviews (in the form of plays) of "50 American Plays" by Matthew and Michael Dickman

 The Fourth of July

MATTHEW DICKMAN.
          Wonder twins--power of absurdity.

MICHAEL DICKMAN.
          Wonder twins--power of brevity.

MATTHEW DICKMAN.
           Wonder twins-- power of vaguely political leftist polemics.

 MICHAEL DICKMAN.
          And fun, wonder twin.  Don't forget it was fun to write.

MATTHEW DICKMAN.
          Activate wonder twin power!

MICHAEL DICKMAN.
          Activate wonder twin power!


(They touch power rings and immediately explode into a finale of Fourth of July fireworks)



Castor and Pollux Consider the Moon

CASTOR:
          Wasn't there an oil named after me?

POLLUX.
          We are boxers, and horsemen.  And sailors.

CASTOR.
           Do I get to be the immortal one this time?

POLLUX.
          We are twins, and so share our immortality.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY.
          (Having just arrived from Idaho)
          I'll box both of you at once. Greek pussies.

CASTOR.
          He thinks he's the immortal one.

POLLUX.
          Maybe he is.  But we are the divine twins, born of the silver moon!

CASTOR.
          That was an egg.

POLLUX.
           No, no, I'm sure it was the moon.  Our glittery mother!

CASTOR.
          Our mother was a princess who was raped by a swan.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY.
          Are we going to talk about the past or are we going to drink like men?
          (Whispers)
          It's like they are going to start making out at any minute.

POLLUX.
          You so badly want to see that.  But we are talking about our mother.
           Isn't there some tradition where people thought she was the moon?

CASTOR.
          In at least one tradition Ernest Hemingway is actually Zeus.


POLLUX.
            Yes, Hemingway's tradition. Listen, we will box you if you take the form of a swan.



Vignette

(Two men walk in to a bar. Allen Ginsberg and Gertrude Stein are drinking there in silence, companionably.)

MAN #1.
          Hey, aren't you Gertrude Stein?  What are you doing back in America?

GERTRUDE STEIN.
          America is not in America.  America is an idea kept under a gentleman's cap. America is a cupful of brass tacks, in a lady's handbag.
(She sips her creme de menthe, and coughs)
          America, go touch yourself with your atom bomb.

MAN #2.
          Allen Ginsberg--that woman is stealing your line.  And she isn't even saying it right!

GINSBERG.
          (Taking his head off the pillow of his arms)
          That's no woman, that's my wife!

(Frank O'Hara walks briskly across the stage in search of a martini)

MAN #1.
          Frank O'Hara in the bar too?  What are the chances?

MAN #2.
          Frank O'Hara is on stage in all of these plays. Or sometimes behind the scenery, prompting our lines. That reminds me.  (He goes over to the jukebox and selects a song)

          (When "Chances Are" begins playing, the two men look at Stein and Ginsberg, now deep in quiet conversation.  They shrug, and begin to dance with each other.)


         

I remember "I Remember" and now I remember reading "The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard"

I just got done reading The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard.  (With a lovely introduction by Paul Auster) Which led me to re-read Ron Padgett's warm and touching memoir of his friendship with artist and writer Brainard, called Joe, which led me to pull out a coffee table book, Joe Brainard: A Retrospective, so I could look again at his wonderful work.  I am particularly drawn to collage, and Brainard did tons of work in collage--in his amphetamine-fueled years he produced thousands of works.

I think what attracts me to the art, as well as to his writing, is its sheer likability. Brainard talks a lot in his written work about wanting to be liked.  In the writing this doesn't come off as preciousness, or over-eagerness. The reason I Remember has become such a classic is because of the works' humor and lack of pretension or artifice--each statement starts with the plain-spoken and practical "I remember," followed by an image or memory that might be mundane, or it might be touching in its vulnerability:
 

I remember running  for vice-president and giving a campaign speech wearing my baby blue garbardine pants. I lost. That was junior high school.

I remember that nobody ever knew what to give Aunt Ruby on special occasions so everyone always gave her some stationary or scarves or handkerchiefs or boxes of fancy soap.

I remember daydreams of being a girl and the beautiful formals I would have.

The beauty of the Collected Writings is that there's so much more to see.  I Remember is what Brainard will be remembered for, at least in the realm of the written word, but this collection of journals, jottings, collaborations, and experiments shows he was more than a one-hit wonder.  Here, in its entirety, is "No Story."

I hope you have enjoyed not reading this story as much as I have enjoyed not writing it.

He reminds me, sometimes, of Gertrude Stein.  Here are three of the "Twenty-three Mini Essays":

                          LOSER

He was at the airport when his ship came in.

                         POETRY

Poetry is that certain something we so often find missing.

                   INSTANT DIVORCE 

The marriage was so brief they had nothing to fight over but the cake.

____________________________________________________________

Here's a three minute introduction to Joe Brainard, courtesy of YouTube: