scribbling dust when I turn...

William Stafford

            – a poem from Even in Quiet Places

Sometimes

When they criticize you how do you
hold your wings? I hold mine out
and down, descend a little, then more.
Cool air comes. Nobody cares how low
I descend, and the way my eyes close
makes me disappear. They have their sky again.

So thin a life I have, scribbling dust
when I turn, trailing as if to follow
something inside the earth, something beyond
this place. If I accept what comes,
another sky is there. My serious face
bends to the ground, the dust, the lowered wings.

*

This remarkable little piece is an exacting view of self and other. I’m always amazed by how Stafford – as he put it – “closed down a poem”. Ending with the wings lowered is an such inviting image for the reader.

I like the hush and near stillness in a Stafford poem. Here, the thin life that scribbles dust is quite strong. And the trail that is followed? … not spelled out. There’s no need. That would hinder the force of the poem. He writes, “something beyond / this place” – and leaves it at that.

One of his great gifts is his ability to always engage the reader. The writing is very direct. All the excess, gone. The words – in all his work – clean and minimal … but the thoughts are immense, unstoppable, life-changing.

dark whispers...

William Stafford

            – a poem from My Name Is William Tell


A Wind from a Wing


Something outside my window in the dark
whispers a message. Maybe it is
a prayer sent by one of those friends
forgiving me the years when I sat out their war.
It flared, you know, generating
its own reasons for being, its heroes
anyone killed by an enemy. They looked up
and met fame on a bullet awarded so fast
their souls remained stuck in their bodies,
and then their names, caught on flypaper
citation, couldn’t escape. Their families eat that
carrion, and like it. That is their punishment.

In a sky as distant and clear as Pascal’s
nightmare, and immediate as our sweat
when God shakes us from sleep, my fate
shudders me awake. Little squeals
of the unborn fly past in the wind. It is midnight
and a motel, and nobody but me remembers
my mother, my father, and that hidden key
they left by our door when I was out late.

*

The poem’s stark commentary on the notion of war is so appealing to me. The call … to wake up. Met fame on a bullet tells me everything I would ever want to know about war’s hard reality. Note that the imagery of the second stanza begins with a sky that is distant ... immediate as sweat.

And it is very like Stafford to make so much of a such a brief moment: the fluttering of a bird outside a window. The poem’s ending is a powerful statement – the small, yet important things ... that hidden key ... that define us … that make us who we are.

there is another door...

Even in Quiet Places


(Confluence Press, 1996)








My Name Is William Tell


(Confluence Press, 1992)











Smoke’s Way


(Graywolf Press, 1983)

*

Here’s a trilogy of books by William Stafford that have been, for me, a major influence and constant source – Smoke’s Way (1983), My Name Is William Tell (1992), and Even in Quiet Places (1996). The three books collect many of Stafford’s chapbooks published by small presses – Smoke’s Way … fourteen; My Name Is William Tell … six; Even in Quiet Places … four. Over the years I have become drawn to the chapbook format because of the directness and intimacy of the works I find there.

A number of these poems, especially some included in Quiet Places, are among Stafford’s best works. That, however, is not what draws me to the three collections. I’m more focused on the intricate connections the works have with life and the writer’s craft. It’s a more limiting view, but bursting with detail. The small pieces can have, in the force and accumulation of their gentle wills, an enormous impact on the reader.

The small, limited editions of poetry create a marvelous poetic landscape. I find this to be true among most writers.

A poem from Smoke’s Way:


Kinship


In a wilderness at the end of a vine
it is now. Flowers are brushing toward noon.
From the dome of his skull in a room in
the earth, under the arch of the sky,
a caveman draws curves to link
hunter and prey. In that harness he put
on them all, the animals whine.

So even today, when we start to speak, then
turn away, I hear through contorted rock
a diagram rise through quiet—
that artist at work in the cave and a
tunneling heart—yours, mine—lost as
it ever was, racing to stay the same.

*

This poem with such a direct opening message … it is now … illustrates the immense force of a history I rarely consider. Stafford connects then and now in such a marvelous way that, to be honest, forces me to consider the nature of loneliness, not only as a part of the human condition but as a bedrock in my own life. Here I’m thinking of the words from Bashō: Even in Kyoto I long for Kyoto. Although the writer most probably is a social creature by design, his or her world is, ultimately, a lonely one. The craft itself forces the issue.

I make the connection of the “tunneling heart” with the writer’s need to create. I also realize that the image must surely have a more universal necessity to it. Stafford writes, “yours, mine”. We race to stay the same. The more we move, the more we are still. The more we lose, the more we find. That is life – whether it is underground, creating some sort of beauty and order in the numbing cold and solitary places of the world … or at a desk typing words onto a computer screen, just before leaving for a dentist’s appointment, then the grocery store.

waiting...

The point is that translation is more than a leap from dictionary to dictionary; it is a reimagining of the poem. As such, every reading of every poem, regardless of language, is an act of translation: translation into the reader’s intellectual and emotional life. As no individual reader remains the same, each reading becomes a different—not merely another—reading. The same poem cannot be read twice.

                              – Eliot Weinberger, from 19 Ways of Looking
                                       at Wang Wei (Asphodel, 1987)
*

This little book, with commentary by Weingberger and Octavio Paz, focuses on various translations of one four-line poem by Wang Wei. But – this is not merely a book of translations or about the translating process. Its true force is about reading, about our approach to language. The different versions of the poem illustrate just how cluttered our reading lives are. We don’t read as much as we scan. And as for writing, most never move past the surface of what is there – waiting.

If you want to be a better writer – or reader, for that matter – spend time with this book.

If words are bad, and thinking is bad

what is good?




Words can’t fully get at the experience of Douglas Hofstadeter’s marvelous Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, a smart and clever unfolding of the ways of thought. The book makes perfect sense. It shows, among so many other things, the connections between art, math, and music. But, to say that, in some way, limits the work’s power.

Although this book is a challenge, my advice: jump in. You won’t regret the ride.

—from “Escher and Zen”

“In questioning perception and posing absurd answerless riddles, Zen has company, in the person of M.C. Escher. Consider Day and Night, a masterpiece of ‘positive and negative interwoven’ (in the words of Mumon [Zen master]. One might ask, ‘Are those really birds, or are they really fields? Is it really night, or day?’ Yet we all know there is no point to such questions. The picture, like a Zen kōan, is trying to break the mind of logic.

* * *

“There is a delicate haiku-like study of reflections in Dewdrop; and then there are two tranquil images of the moon reflected in still waters: Puddle, and Rippled Surface. The reflected moon is a theme which recurs in various kōans. Here is an example:

Chiyono studied Zen form many years under Bukkō of Engaku. Still, she could not attain the fruits of meditation. At last one moonlit night she was carrying water in an old wooden pail girded with bamboo. The bamboo broke, and the bottom fell out of the pail. At that moment, she was set free. Chiyono said, ‘No more water in the pail, no more moon in the water.’”

Puddle
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid,
by Douglas Hofstadter (Basic Books, 1979)

Ten Books That Will Ripple Your Thinking ... Number 10

No more water,

the fire next time!



This notion of apocalypse closes one of the most harrowing and crucial documents of the 20th century, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time.

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.

and

Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace--not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.

The Fire Next Time,
by James Baldwin (Dial Press, 1963)

Ten Books That Will Ripple Your Thinking ... Number 9

an eyeful of fish-scale and star

All right then. Pull yourself together. Is this where I'm spending my life, in the "reptile brain" this lamp at the top of the spine like a lighthouse flipping mad beams indiscriminately into the darkness, into the furred thoraxes of moths, onto the backs of leaping fishes and the wrecks of schooners? Come up a level; surface.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,
by Annie Dillard (Harper & Row, 1974)

Ten Books That Will Ripple Your Thinking ... Number 8

No bird soars too high...

if he soars with his own wings.

This line from "Proverbs of Hell" illustrates the depth of William Blake's revolutionary book, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a book that must be read. This is a powerful work that any serious reader or writer will return to many times. It is fuel; it is fire.

from "The Voice of the Devil"

"Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or Reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.

And being restrain'd, it by degrees becomes passive, till it is only the shadow of desire."

from "A Memorable Fancy"

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear...as it is: Infinite."

from "A Song of Liberty"

"Empire is no more!"

and

"For every thing that lives is Holy."

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,
by William Blake (Oxford University Press, 1975)

Ten Books That Will Ripple Your Thinking ... Number 7

Life as motion...

Moon & Sun are passing figures of countless generations, and years coming or going wanderers too. Drifting life away on a boat or meeting age leading a horse by the mouth, each day is a journey and the journey itself home.

Back Roads to Far Towns,
Poetry / Travel Journal by Basho, Trans. Cid Corman & Kamaike Susumu (Grossman Publishers, 1968)

Ten Books That Will Ripple Your Thinking ... Number 6

a silver morning like any other...

Mary Oliver’s writing has always, at least to my mind and ear, defined a certain greatness that makes me jealous. And I love that about her work. I’m amazed every time I leaf through Blue Pastures, always finding a fresh look into a world that could be.

Each of us brings to the poem, to the moving pen, a world of echoes.

*

…the poem is a temple—or a green field—a place to enter, and in which to feel

*

The self is out of love with the ordinary; it is out of love with time. It has a hunger for eternity.

*

Give me that dark moment I will carry it everywhere
like a mouthful of rain.

Blue Patures, Mary Oliver (Harcourt Brace, 1995)

This book is like an old friend. Ten Books That Will Ripple Your Mind ... No. 5

What times are these...

Carolyn Forché has edited an anthology of many passionate voices of the 20th Century – 140 poets with stories to tell – stories to read.

The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread.

When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out ‘stop!’

When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.

Bertolt Brecht [Trans. John Willett], from “When Evil-Doing Comes Like Falling Rain”

Burning the Dreams

on a spring morning of young wood, green wood
it will not burn, but the dreams burn.
My hands have ashes on them.
They fear it
And so they destroy the nearest things.

Muriel Rukeyser, from “Breaking Open”

Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness, Ed. Carolyn Forché (Norton, 1993)

Ten Books That Will Ripple Your Mind ... No. 4

...impoverished by preparations for the ultimate war...

From Jim Schley's preface to a wonderful and terrible anthology:

We live in a world impoverished by preparations for the ultimate war. While claims and threats made in the name of “defense” by various leaders have grown ever more grandiose, there is epidemic hunger, infant mortality, illiteracy, and unemployment. More and more apparent is an epidemic anxiety: people everywhere are terrified of the carnage that would result from detonation of even one of the fifty thousand or more nuclear weapons presently stockpiled [as of 1983]. Psychologists, social workers, and philosophers are telling us that anticipation of a nuclear catastrophe has immeasurably affected human perceptions, even in very small children.

This book – bringing together the various forms … poem, essay, story – never strays from its determination to be an ultimate warning and guide. It’s a powerful read.

Yes, I know. There is only the Church
of Eros. Billion small hairs. Golden.
Winding to the secret of secrets. And I know
in the vast fallen parts of earth, my faith unrequired,
the red leaf mosses build on twists of stone.

from “Credo,” Michael Daley

…militarism and nuclear proliferation can be seen as an inevitable outgrowth of a political system historically hostile to human life, one facet of a continuum of violence against us. Nuclear annihilation is not the sole threat we face, but one of a hundred possible bloody ends.

from “‘Fractious, Kicking, Messy, Free’: Feminist Writers Confront the Nuclear Abyss,” Barbara Smith

An empty ant track, scuffed by delicate feet.
The violent wind has passed. The hole gapes.
Corn will not sprout under lowering clouds.
The woodpecker’s nailed to the bark of a tree.
No one can say what happened to the sky.

I fall to a dark place where words echo.
In the dunes in this well, sand sifts
through the clock of my cupped hands.
Is there any sense in measuring time?

When exposed by rains in an unknown future,
I’ll be considered a significant find
as they measure my bones, skull span, and ribs.
Non one will know my thoughts about myself.

”An Afternoon’s Wandering,” Kolyo Sevov [Trans. John Balaban & Elena Hristova]

Writing in a Nuclear Age, Ed. Jim Schley (New England Review and Bread Loaf Quarterly, 1983)

This book is a must read ... a must encounter. Ten Books That Will Ripple Your Mind ... No. 3

All landscapes have a history...

A summer storm reveals the dreaming place of bears. But you cannot see their shaggy dreams of fish and berries, any land signs supporting evidence of bears, or any bears at all. What is revealed in the soaked rich earth, forked waters, and fence line shared with patient stones is the possibility of everything you can’t see.

Secrets from the Center of the World,
Poetry by Joy Harjo, Photographs by Stephen Strom (Univ. of Arizona, 1989)

Ten Books That Will Ripple Your Thinking ... Number 2

a few words about doing...

Wonderful thought from Suzuki-roshi:

When you give up, when you no longer want something, or when you do not try to do anything special, then you do something. When there is no gaining in what you do, then you do something.

from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Weatherhill, 1970)


[From time to time, I'll be listing Ten Books That Will Ripple Your Thinking, but in no special order. Suzuki's book is one of them.]

10 Most Influential Poetry Collections

After reading Emily Lloyd's blog on her 10, I thought I'd give it a try. Here are ten collections that have had the most lasting impact on me as a poet:

1. Geography III, Elizabeth Bishop
2. The Bridge, Hart Crane
3. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake
4. Turtle Island, Gary Snyder
5. Satan Says, Sharon Olds
6. The Dream of a Common Language, Adrienne Rich
7. Narrow Road to the Interior, Basho
8. The Only World, Lynda Hull
9. Dreamtigers, Jorge Luis Borges
10. Duino Elegies, Ranier Maria Rilke

I'm not sure I can be trusted with this list. Number 1 is number 1-- after that, it's all weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Where is The Waste Land or Howl or The Branch Will Not Break ...?