Gary Snyder by Geoff Gossett

Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems, Gary Snyder. (Counterpoint Press) $12.95

Counterpoint’s re-print of Snyder’s first book of poems, Riprap, published forty-five years ago by Origin Press, is accompanied by his early translations of Chinese poet’s Han-Shan’s Cold Mountain Poems, from the sixth issue of the Evergreen Review. Snyder’s early clarity of vision, in response to ” the poetry of twentieth-century coolness, its hard edges and resilient elitism,” has only come to greater fruition over the course of his career. These poems mark the beginning of Snyder’s journey, and they reflect what’s best about his poems. They’re moral without didacticism or religiosity, more Hass than hippie, spare but not spacey.

an excerpt from Han Shan’s Cold Mountain Poems:

XXX2

In a tangle of cliffs I chose a place—
Bird-paths, but no trails for men.
What’s beyond the yard?
White clouds clinging to vague rocks.
Now I’ve lived here—how many years—
Again and again, spring and winter pass.
Go tell families with silverware and cars
“What’s the use of all that noise and money?”

The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, ed. Bill Morgan. (Counterpoint Press) $16.95

An aesthetic chronicle of two related but distinct poets, their letters are mostly free of artifice and seem to reflect their authors’ true personalities. Correspondences are often too full of allusion to be meaningful to the casual reader, but these buck that trend. Snyder writes generous epistles that contain a wilder lucidity than his poems, his love for Ginsberg, Nanao Sakaki, and other contemporaries is made obvious by their discussion of the everyday, their constant planning for reunions. His introduction to a letter sent from San Francisco to New York in spring of 1969 reflects the letters’ character well:

Dear Allen,
I had a few glasses of wine last night and called you, but talked to Peter pleasantly instead, you were in New York he said. He sounds on the phone like “Wolfman Jack” the celebrated Los Angeles disk jockey (whom we picked up on the Jap transistor in the depths of Baja California desert wilderness).

An interesting companion to Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems, The Selected Letters is a portrait of Snyder from another angle. A test, perhaps, of the veracity of his character, this view proves Snyder as meditative, elegant, and wise as his poems suggest.

DS

Since the holiday season is upon us, thought I’d create a “gift list” to use when shopping for your writer friends – or yourselves.

This list is very simple: 30 Books (Plus One) Every Writer Should Own. I realize this is subjective, but it encompasses the type of material we need when working on our books, articles, essays or other projects. This list is also designed to spark new ideas, or to further exploration of ideas you already have.

In the list, you will find several self-help writing books, collections of conversations with authors, memoirs, technical books, books addressing other creative genres (music and art, specifically), and works written by some of the greatest authors.

While I would love to include my own writing books in this list – Writes of Life and The Write Time … that’s not for me to judge. One day, someone might create a list that includes them.

In no particular order, here is the list, with personal impressions from my experience as an author, poet, journalist, editor and writing teacher. You can order them through Amazon.com or your local bookstore. Take this list with you during Black Friday or Online Monday (or whatever they call it). Also, let me know what you would add to this list – I’ll run your suggestions and any comments in a future blog.

1 & 2. On Becoming a Novelist and On Writers and Writing, by John Gardner. We start with a bang – a two-for-one. No novelist has ever conveyed the craft and writing life better; then again, he was perhaps the nation’s most refined fiction writer and teacher of fiction at the time of his death in 1982.

3. Writers Dreaming, by Naomi Epel. Conversations with noted authors on their dreams, plots or ideas that came from dreams, and how they work with their dreams. A vital read if you, like me, believe the 6 to 8 non-waking hours of the day contribute mightily to the writing process.

4 & 5. Storycatcher: The Power of Story to Change Our Lives, by Christina Baldwin. Reading and working the prompts in this book is like drinking nectar, further flavored by your own words when they spin together perfectly. In other words, this book does magical things to one’s ability to journal, write an essay or story, and heal. Life’s Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest is another Baldwin title worth owning.

6. The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E.B. White. After nearly a century, this book remains a staple of working writers and teachers. Its greatest value might be in emphasizing the need to write tight – crisp, concise, to the point.

7 & 8. Punctuation for Writers, by Harvey Stanbrough. This book deserves a spot on every writer’s desktop alongside The Elements of Style. It presents punctuation as a timely, valuable asset to every written sentence, rather than the necessary evil we first met in grammar school. Whenever I write a book, this gem sits on my desktop. An alternate Stanbrough pick: Writing Realistic Dialogue & Flash Fiction.

9. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard. In my opinion, one of the best memoirs ever written. I’ve read it 10 times, and counting. This masterpiece brings together nature, voice, observation, listening, creating, inner feelings, outer environment, hubris and hope … and every word sparkles with brilliance. What else is there? If you want more Dillard, go with Three By Annie Dillard – a collection that also includes An American Childhood, and The Writing Life.

10. A Natural History of the Senses, by Diane Ackerman. This is a tremendous book on how the physical senses play out in the natural world, and how we can attune better to our own senses … a critical aspect of deep writing. Some of the stories of how animals use their senses are breathtaking – and reminders of how much more sense-itive we can (and should) become as writers.

11. Color: A Natural History of the Palette, by Victoria Finlay. This book contains a history of primary colors, how they were mixed for artists since prehistoric times, and the fascinating stories behind the substances and creators of these colors. A great book of observation, journalism and craftsmanship. Good writers always form close alliances with color and tone; here’s a wonderful map into that journey.

12. Library: An Unquiet History, by Matthew Battles. I believe every writer should know basic library science and library history – and this book provides a wonderfully off-beat account of both. From Sumeria to your local library, the adventures of the printed word and its storage – and the wars fought over books – could not be better told.

13. The Browser’s Book of Beginnings, by Charles Panati. As writers, we should know the origins of every subject about which we write – and the etymology of the historical words we use. The incredible material can either be used in your works – or prompt little “archaeological” digs of your own. An alternate selection: The Book of Lists, by David Wallechinsky.

14. Writer’s Market, by Writer’s Digest Books. Between the great articles on marketing, editing and craft, and the thousands of publishing listings, how can any working writer not operate with this book close at hand?

15. 1001 Ways to Market Your Books, by John Kremer. John has been teaching marketing workshops to writers for a long time, and this book has become a staple for working writers nationwide. In this era of online communities and direct author involvement in promotion and marketing, its importance has never been greater. Writing today means doing good business; you will find a number of strong marketing strategies for your book in here.

16 & 17. Dimensions of a Life, ed. Jon Halpern. Written to honor great poet-essayist Gary Snyder on his 60th birthday, this collection of essays, stories and poems by more than 70 contributors focuses on aspects of Snyder’s life, work, personality, cultural influences, and more. It’s like taking 70 gemologists, peeling a diamond open, and seeing how that diamond comes together, one side at a time. Alternate selection for fans of Beat poetry and literature: Lighting the Corners, featuring the works and conversations of Michael McClure.

18. The Language of Life, by Bill Moyers. The subject of a 1995 PBS special, this book features conversations with 25 great current poets. In it, you will see how writers and poets develop voice, and read priceless insights on observation, imagery and craft.

19. Henry Miller on Writing, by Henry Miller. This book changed my writing life; I learned to really finish my book manuscripts after reading it. One of the 20th century’s most prolific writers and artists shares his take on the art and craft of writing – and the insights and tips fall from every page like fruit trees perpetually in season.

20. The Crossing Point, by Mary Caroline Richards. Every writer, teacher, artist, artisan, poet and those concerned with the creative process would do well to own this book of essays, talks, poems and musings by one of the 20th century’s greatest purveyors of personal creativity (and part of the famed Black Mountain literary movement). My copy is hopelessly ripped, underlined and dog-eared from extensive use; I can feel my creative electrons jumping each time I open this book.

21. How To Think Like Leonardo DaVinci, by Michael Gelb. Here it is, in a single hardback book: the visual imprint of the creative mind and creative process. Its exploration of the ultimate Renaissance man brings out the creator in all of us. This book is filled with page after page of creative inspiration; I can’t last more than four pages at a time without putting it down and writing to exhaustion.

22. A Writer’s Diary, by Virginia Woolf. The beauty of this diary is that we truly see the inner triumphs and struggles of a great literary figure – but also how every minute of every day was spent writing or gathering the seeds for future works. A great look at the inner world of the perpetually working writer.

23. The Gang That Wouldn’t Write Straight, by Marc Weingarten. The story of the New Journalists – the writers to whom every current journalist, memoirist and narrative non-fiction author owes a debt of gratitude. Beginning with Norman Mailer and Truman Capote, these were the pioneers of incorporating fiction-writing and deep inner personal feelings into non-fiction work.

24. The Language Instinct: How Mind Creates Language, by Stephen Pinker. During our growth as writers, we realize more and more how vital it is to understand the nuances of language, its im-pressions as well as ex-pressions. This book, written by a renowned linguist, shows the way. Read it, and you will find yourself listening to every person’s spoken word more closely – and capturing it more completely in your next piece of writing.

25. Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg. A modern classic for writers seeking the deeper, inner places from which to write, and the relationships of their feelings and perceptions to the outside world. The vignettes and essays in this book are tight, concise – and built to prompt you to write.

26. Practicing: A Musician’s Return to Music, by Glenn Kurtz. Music and writing are so closely linked, structurally and creatively, that it behooves every writer listen to music deeply, if not play or study it. But this stellar memoir is about more than music: it is about the art and hard work of practice, and how practice creates ultimate attunement with one’s instrument. In the case of writers, that means written vocabulary and voice.

27. Bird By Bird, by Anne Lamott. Anne’s deeply felt, highly observant look at the little things in life – a prime topic of both her fiction and non-fiction books – informs this collections of essays/prompts. In it, she shows how she invents verbs to suit the action of the moment – reminding us that we, too, can invent words.

28. Cultural Literacy, by E.D. Hirsch, Jr. While this book is somewhat limited, in that it spells out “only” 5,000 cultural facts or subjects people should know about, I consider it vital reading to every writer who wants to make an imprint on society – and in particular, younger readers. Due to breakdowns in education, funding and the like, writers are in a particularly crucial position of helping to educate and advance our culture. We can develop a strong base with this book.

29. On Writing, by Stephen King. The man who re-invented the horror genre – in both books and films – wrote this heartfelt, deeply informed book to the writer who fights, struggles, bleeds, perseveres and stops at nothing to write … then comes back for more. In other words, a book for all of us.

30. Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting, by Robert McKee. The author put 40 years of screenwriting experience into this book, which rises far beyond the world of the screenplay into something much more universal – the art and craft of writing a compelling story by visualizing a moment and then drawing it out. This book works for all writers. Alternate selection: The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller, by John Truby.

The Bonus Book: On Being a Writer, by Theodore Strickland. This Writer’s Digest Book Club selection is now 20 years old, but just as much of a treasure as the day it was published. It features wide-open conversations with a number of best-selling authors; between them, they canvass and discuss every nook and cranny of the writing process.

EMPTY YOUR GAZE AND THIS WORLD’S BEYOND SILENCE

I thought it was about time I posted a link to some of Han Shan’s poetry. He was hermit and fugitive who lived on ‘Cold Mountain’ in 9th Century China, around the time of the T’ang Dynasty. It was rumoured that he was handicapped, and lived in a cave on the mountain side. He rejected the life he was born into and opted to live within nature rather than as part of the privileged classes.Perhaps he was the poetic version of Millican Dalton? Unable to afford paper or ink he etched his poems into tree barks and stone. After his death the local Taoist monks – who took pity on him and fed him whilst he was alive – discovered his poems and wrote them down. So goes the legend of Cold Mountain.

He was a big influence on The Beats –  Snyder translated him and Kerouac dedicated Dharma Bums to his memory. I find there is something timeless about his work which keeps making me return to his poems over and over again.

If you are looking for a place to rest,
Cold Mountain is a good place to stay.
The breeze flowing through the dark pines
Sounds better the closer you come.
And under the trees a white-haired man
Mumbles over his Taoist texts.
Ten years now he hasn’t gone home;
He has even forgotten the road he came by.

I would highly recommend any of David Hinton’s translations – his work on Ancient Chinese wilderness poetry is really quite something. Or check out Penguin’s Poems Of The Late T’ang which also features work by Tu Fu and Meng Chiao. Cracking stuff.

Drunk on Rice Wine (In Search of the Lost Elation...)

The shack and a few trees
float in the blowing fog

I pull out your blouse,
warm my cold hands
      on your breasts.
you laugh and shudder
peeling garlic by the
     hot iron stove.
bring in the axe, the rake,
the wood

we’ll lean on the wall
against each other
stew simmering on the fire
as it grows dark
             drinking wine.

The following is an excerpt from a chapbook I made and distributed in ‘05. Printed in very limited quantities, and receiving even less critical acclaim, a friend of mine recently suggested that I re-read this. It’s been nearly four years since I last read it, and even with that distance, I found that I still liked it. Without further ado, I present the Introduction to an out-of-print chapbook called, “Sudden Beat Inspirations.”

I recently came to grips with the realization that I will never be, nor be considered, a Beat Writer. Never a Beat Poet, a Beat anything really. There’s that whole time issue, which I’m really not oblivious to, but more importantly is the voice issue. No matter whose name (and many people will disagree with me on this point) is on what’s traditionally accepted as Beat Literature, there is a very distinct voice— the voice of the Beat. I recently came to grips with the realization that the Beat voice is not my voice.

There is one story which is not included in this collection. Right now, I couldn’t even tell you the name of the story. It was the first story I ever wrote and it was about William S. Burroughs’ funeral. Really, from what I remember, the funeral was more of a backdrop to what was really going on. Gary Snyder was giving the eulogy, and some young boy walked up and spit onto the casket. When reprimanded by Mr. Snyder, the nameless boy replied that he meant no disrespect, but that the “seed” needed moisture to grow another one like him. Then the boy, whose description many people would recognize as a young Kerouac, stuck out his thumb and hitched a ride away from the funeral. The idea of the story is more pertinent to this collection than the story itself. Not only was it the first story I ever wrote, for no other reason than I felt like writing, but its significance would take me a long time to shake.

In one of my first English courses in college, I was granted a full pardon from writing anything for the entire semester. Not that I had supernatural writing skills which no one else possessed, much less comprehended, but because my professor recognized that I didn’t belong. Failing to complete (really, I never even started them) my first couple of assignments, I went out on a limb and showed him a copy of the aforementioned story about Burroughs’ funeral. He wasn’t impressed with what I wrote, but he was intrigued with what I chose to write about. He asked me about my topic choice, as it had nothing to do with any of the assignments, and as I began to stutter something, he cut me off and told me that he had someplace to be. As he walked away from me, he told me not to worry about coming to class for the rest of the week, but that he expected an answer e-mailed to him by noon, Friday. Being the eternal procrastinator (as I would prove time and again throughout the remainder of my college career) I ran to the campus computer lab around 11:30am on Friday and frantically began typing some gibberish about why I hadn’t written him sooner and how I’d just read Dharma Bums for the second time in a week (like I thought he might care) and how I suspected that my girlfriend was sleeping with this old lawyer guy she and I both knew (which was more annoying than heartbreaking) and that I just wanted to be able to live what I considered a Beat existence (whatever that means) and not have to worry about any of that shit because it was all about experience and that I wanted desperately to believe all that and just live my life like free-form verse, not concerning myself with rules or stanzas. Something I said worked, I was granted a full pardon from writing anything else for the entire semester.

Having written about the Beats so persuasively, I counted myself as part of their company. This belief lasted the better part of ten years. Not as productive as I would have liked, but entirely necessary.

College as a whole seemed to be a waste of time. Not that I wanted to enter the workforce, but I seriously contemplated following one of Kerouac’s routes of either joining the Merchant Marine (even though I had recently gotten out of the Navy), or traveling around the country, staying with friends and writing about my experiences. I had several dreams about hanging out with Kerouac, Cassady, Ginsberg, Snyder and a bunch of other guys who acted out the parts of their pseudonyms from the books and poetry of my literary heroes. A group of three of those dreams actually happened in sequence over a two week period. As difficult as it is to resume a dream, I did it twice, and all three dreams were centered around me hanging out with and talking to Kerouac. There were many peculiarities about this series of dreams, but the most poignant was Kerouac and I walking towards a crowd of cheering people on a hilltop and him reading to me, from a small back notebook, some line about a hawk in my house. I told him that all those people were waiting for him and he replied that they were not waiting for him. When I turned to him to ask what he meant, he had disappeared and I was engulfed by the crowd. I have had, and been told, many interpretations for that portion of the dream. At best, my own interpretations are arrogant. Other’s interpretations aren’t as flattering. Somewhere in the middle is way off target.

Few people believe (most don’t seem to care) that these dreams occurred a month before I picked up, or even heard of Kerouac’s Scripture of the Golden Eternity. Poem #22 ends with the lines: A hummingbird can come into a house and a hawk will not: so rest and be assured. While looking for the light, you may suddenly be devoured by the darkness and find the true light. (Which I later learned was a reference to Henry Miller’s  story, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird, which without being too ironizing, is a strange coincidence itself.)

One thing that Beat literature really opened my eyes to was the fact that there is significance in the mundane. Up until the point when I first read On the Road, literature seemed guilty of bypassing the mundane, or at best, treating it merely as a transition to the next sub-plot. Life to me wasn’t like that. The mundane was very real, very beautiful, worthy of significance, but in my youthful naivete, I never thought to damn the world and apply it myself. I had falsely assumed that since it wasn’t mentioned, the mundane was nothing more than mundane. Beat literature, and the lives I read about of the Beats, awakened me to Rilke’s advice to a young poet: If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place. I was the young poet— I still am. Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Snyder, all of them were my Rilke; all of their poetry, all of their literature was a letter to me— it still is.

A lot of people in the academic world are experts at unearthing poetry from the mundane—  as long as it is somewhere else. Discovering the poetry in one’s day to day affairs is much more difficult; in fact, it would seem damn near impossible from an academic standpoint. Finding fault with another is much easier to swallow than strict self criticism.

That’s not where I want to go. Aside from being guilty of the same thing (that’s the reason I am leaving that paragraph), it’s simply not the direction I envisioned, but it did serve as a good resting point. If my mind will allow— back on track.

I had this other professor, well, I didn’t actually take his class, I only went to see him about switching my major to English Literature— so he was a potential advisor, if anything. I had several poems I had written to a lot of girls who would never see them, a couple of lyrics to heart wrenching songs about why those girls would never see them, and my story about the funeral. I went to meet him with my snazzy little portfolio. My definition of “snazzy” was markedly different from his, a point he was very vocal about. Following his sermon, he handed me a book of his poetry, which he had recently published, and instructed that I learn to write like him if I ever wanted to make it as a poet. As I was leaving, I was told to photocopy “ten or so of [my] favorites and return the book promptly.” I left the book on his desk along with my decision to become an English Lit major. I kept my desire to write, but I let the haughty s.o.b. beat me— I trashed all of my poems. He may have been right about them, but I acted rashly, thinking I would just start a new slate. I still wish I had them just to see from where I came. I have been ridiculed to my face for things I have written since then, but I still have them. What I learned above all else was perseverance.

Beaten but not defeated was my obnoxious battle cry. With time, I began to understand what he was telling me: There are a lot of people out there who write; not all of them will get published. Some will. There is something to be learned from those who do, namely, how to get published. The how-to market is flooded with experts on the field of how to get published. If you can’t publish a book, why not publish a book on how to get published? There is some logic in there which temporarily escapes me. The real meat on board this train is that, as a beginning writer, you should find something similar to yours that has been published and go from there. I drew more similarities than were actually there, but if nothing else, I was inspired by Beat literature. Not only by the literature, but by the Beats themselves. It takes a hell of a talent to make hobo-ing sound appealing. Fortunately, I never followed the path that far, but I did recognize the sheer power of the people behind the literature.

I hoped that in learning about them, I would learn to be more like them. If I could do it without being the hobo, wandering, starving artist, so much the better! There is something to be said about one’s literary voice, and it is this: No matter how well you hone your impersonation skills, you will never be who you are not. For me, this marks my departure.

Not that I’ve given up trying to write like those who inspired me to put words together in an artistic way to say something that everyone knows but not everyone realizes. What I have given up is trying to be a Beat. I am not. I didn’t experience the disillusionment of the mediocrity which befell America after winning the second world war. I didn’t contribute to the creation of a literary genre that would not only define a generation but would serve as a model and influence generations for years to come. I could go on like this for some time, defining who the Beats are and who I am not, but that is not why I write, I’ve found. What I have found is that I am not a Beat anything. Much of my artistic make-up is heavily influenced by people who are, but I am someone else entirely. I was born in a different era from which most of the Beats came, I grew up experiencing situations that didn’t make sense to me, to those around me, and certainly wouldn’t register to the Beats, being that realistically they are, by and large, from my grandparent’s generation and have backgrounds representative of that era. Not only have I been blessed with the opportunity to read their works, but I have also been able to read those who came before them, and those who have been inspired by them since.

This collection can be read as a tribute to those who inspired me, as a childish quest to be something I am not, or, and I believe most accurately, the ambitious beginnings of an aspiring writer. Any of the above contexts will do, but the important thing to note is to acknowledge where you came from, but never lose sight of where you are going.

© 2005, n09XI—Furious Poet Press & Vagabond Lit

For some reason I remembered this poem today by Gary Snyder.  I haven’t read it in years.  I’ve forgotten how powerful it is.  “We Make Our Vows Together with All Beings”:

Eating a sandwich
At work in the woods,

As a doe nibbles buckbrush in snow
Watching each other,
chewing together.

A Bomber from Beale
over the clouds,
Fills the sky with a roar.

She lifts head, listens,
Waits till the sound has gone by.

So do I.

.

todo lo que puedas sobre los animales como personas.

los nombres de árboles y flores y malas hierbas.

nombres de estrellas, y los movimientos de los planetas

..…..…………………………………………………………………………………..y la luna.

.

tus seis sentidos, con una mente alerta y elegante.

.

por lo menos una clase de magia tradicional:

adivinación , astrología, el libro de los cambios, el tarot;

.

sueños

los demonios ilusorios y los resplandecientes dioses ilusorios;

.

besar el culo del diablo y comer mierda;

joder con su verga peluda y rijosa

joder con la bruja,

y con los ángeles celestiales

..…..………………………………..y las doncellas perfumadas y doradas–

.

y luego amar lo humano: esposas y amigos.

.

juegos infantiles, historietas, goma de mascar,

y lo extraño de la televisión y los anuncios.

.

trabajar, largas horas áridas de trabajo insípido y aceptado

y vivido y amado finalmente.

..…..……………………………………………………………………………Agotamiento,

.

..…..……………………………….hambre, descanso.

la libertad loca de la danza, éxtasis

el peligro real.

..…..…………………………………la apuesta

.

..…..……………………………………………………………el borde de la muerte.

Gary Snyder

Lo que debes saber para ser un poeta

Ele parece tão inteligente!
deitado de costas
os dois pés presos numa mão minha
o seu olhar de lado
num poster gigante do Jerónimo
com uma espingarda de repetição Sharp ao joelho.

Eu abro, limpo, ele nem dá por isso
e nem eu.
Pernas e joelhos de bébé
dedinhos como ervilhas pequenas
rugas pequeninas, saborosas,
olhos brilhantes, orelhas brilhantes,
peito a inchar sugando o ar,

Não há problema, amigo
tu e eu           e o Jerónimo
somos homens.

A cabana e algumas árvores
flutuam no nevoeiro que sopra

Eu tiro-te a blusa,
aqueço as minhas mãos frias
nos teus seios.
Tu ris-te e estremeces
a descascar alho ao
fogão de ferro quente.
trago o machado, o ancinho,
a lenha

iremos encostar-nos à parede
um contra o outro
o guisado a fervilhar ao lume
enquanto escurece
a beber vinho.

At Fresh Media conference at W2 Arts + Media Centre, participants riff a spontaneous blurb about a hero from a Dossier of Importantancy in a workshop about storytelling + podcasting by Dave Olson (AKA Uncle Weed).

Features Samuel Pepys, RMS Carpathia, Amber Case, Thomas Paine, J. Garcia, Mudhoney, JJ Rousseau, Geoff Berner, Ed Abbey, The Numbskulz, DH Lawrence, Tin Tin, HD Thoreau, Jer Crowle, Bev Davies, Gary Snyder, Vaclav Havel, Lou Reed, Cory Doctorow, Dr. Seuss, Dead Kennedys, Theo Van Gogh & Derek K. Miller, Gillian Shaw and other personal luminaries liberated from an envelope. Thanks to @shermanscorner for tunes.

Questions & Answers from the Hero Dossier (7:33, .mp3)

Ephemeral Feasthouse podcast feed

More about Podcasting:

Belated, but Joyful, Northern Voice Podcast Mop-up

Queridos bruxos e fadas, o vídeo abaixo está entre os selecionados para concorrer ao prêmio de Poesia ao Vídeo da Fliporto – pra quem não conhece o evento, clica aqui. O poema é meu, assim como a edição – e também as macacadas, como vocês poderão ver.  Cliquem aí e curtam:

Texto: Ale Lucchese

That’s some straight up good tea, yo. Sometimes words flock to my head, words with no business in my head, much less in print, but the only way to clean house is to get rid of the trash. My first sentence is such a conglomeration of words. Why would those words flock to my head when there are so many beautiful and tender ways to express an emotion, or in this case, an observation? The tea that I am drinking is very good. It’s the tea they serve you in those little cups when you walk into an Aveda store, but my cup is not one of those little cups, and believe it or not, I do not blog or engage in any sort of writing while in the Aveda store. My tea was steeped with honey and is served to me, by me, in a nice brown coffee mug that looks like what a senior art major might produce had he just returned from his semester in Mexico. Very pretty, but a little sloppy. Not Mexico, rather the art major’s hand spun mug. Don’t get your feelings hurt, these are just words. They flock to my head, remember? The guy insistent on taking out the trash when it suits him? That’s me.

There are people who like to ask me, What are you reading these days? I never like to answer that question. My answer sounds pompous, but it’s only because a rare form of deadly ADHD lurks in the wake of pompous. I’m usually reading several things at one time. Not because my brain’s input voltage is so high that only heavy duty amperage will satiate me, rather because I’m interested in reading so many things  that I couldn’t possibly have a taste of everything I want if I let myself completely indulge in only one project. The Arcades Project, by Walter Benjamin. Even if I thought I could isolate one sturdy month to sit down and polish off that myriad-leafed tome, I probably wouldn’t get much from the experience. The Book of Questions, by Edmond Jabes. Similar in structure to The Arcades Project, most of the pages have as much white space as text, but to sit down and digest all the beauty contained therein would be similar to having a replay button for the sunrise and sunset. It may lend to a sweet sentiment, but inefficient for digestion. Amber Tamblyn’s new blog on the Poetryfoundation.org website. Erotism, by Georges Bataille. Incest, by Anais Nin. Some of Ginsberg’s poems, just because we recently celebrated the 54th Anniversary of the reading of Howl. Assorted poems and essays by Gary Snyder, just because I love Gary Snyder. Blog posts and comments by Susan Henderson. Anything someone happens to send me, be it literary, comical, or poetic . . . The short answer of what I read, clearly, is not a simple one. Even as I type this partial list, I can see why people stop listening to me. I could always lie and just give a one book answer, but why should I?

I read all the examples by which I would like to situate my own writing, but when I sit down to write, I come up with a line like, That’s some straight up good tea, yo. I know that such verbosity won’t win me the adulation of starving agents or publishers carefully perusing blogs for “the next big thing,” but the line sticks to me and I just have to get it out. Songs will do that to me, and the only remedy is to sing them at an inopportune time in a very unfortunate key. I’ve read Hesiod’s origin of the Muses, those delightful goddesses who promote the proud flame of beauty in the darkened souls of easily inspired mortals; but maybe he left out the chapter of the dummy muses, those dreadful wenches who couldn’t find beauty in the twilight of Autumn and are therefore jealous for our attention and just yell more loudly than the Muses we attempt to attune our senses to reflect.

Perhaps I would do better to follow the wisdom of a dearly regarded earthly muse, Fernando Pessoa:

My intent is not to be alone, but a result of my writing is alone time. I’ve never been dissuaded by writing badly, and I’ve never been able to flow great writing with more great writing. All of life happens in cycles. I would prefer the cycles to be as tightly wound as possible so that the great writing happens with greater frequency, but as the argument unravels, the bad writing will occur with similarly intense frequency. Now that I’ve regarded good or bad as irrelevant to my satisfaction with writing, I believe my next step is to not invite anyone over for the sunrise writing sessions, and to keep to myself when writing at twilight. The good Muses can continue their barefoot dance around the green fields of Arcady, and the bad muses can keep their heavy booted romp inside the radio. I’ll have another cup of tea and get back to tightening my curls.

© n09X Vagabond Lit

My imagination dances in shadows. It’s a slow dance that everyone is familiar with, but most people wouldn’t be caught doing in public. Not me– I dance loud, I dance insatiate, I dance ecstatic.

Today is the 54^th anniversary of the famous Six Gallery reading where Allen Ginsberg read Howl for the first time. Several other Poets read that night: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Lew Welch, Michael McClure, and Philip Lamantia citing the words of the freshly deceased Poet and friend, John Hoffman. A touching sentiment by Lamantia, but overlooked by the scholars of history more concerned with the new bard on the scene, Allen Ginsberg, who offers eulogic stanza to same deceased in the lines:

Kerouac was still two years shy of publishing his prose equivalent, On the Road, but was established and present with wild shouts of “Go man, go!” while passing a communal jug of wine around to the Poets and audience without discrimination.

I read in a lost interview, soiled by memory and want, that Ginsberg wound out the ecstatic breaths of Howl as a vehement repose to Joan Vollmer Adams, William S. Burroughs deceased wife by hyperbolic hand in a bloody game of William Tell. Joan visited Allen in a dream and asked about everyone’s happenings since her death. In a Poem titled, Dream Record: June 8, 1955 he begins this letter by recounting the dream through textual reconstructive summary. Howl is a weightier exposition of this theme.

This is the shadow in which I dance. Eighteen years before I out swam the other minions for the golden egg of hair-trimmed womb, Ginsberg included a line that seems to have been written specifically for me, and I don’t intend this greeting as a salutation of flattery:

Sometimes I think that Poetry was easier when I was younger and fresh to the cut. There weren’t all these ridiculous notions of elaborate rhyme scheme, or intentional free verse, or blatant emulation for the sake of frenzied expression. When I was younger I wrote Poetry for girls who had no interest in Poetry and even less interest in me. None of that mattered, because I was writing my little rhymed Poems and was insanely happy with my products. As I’ve encroached on my vagabond scholasticism, I’ve lost much of the appeal that coupled me with Poetry initially. Every Poem is a sloppy trace of someone else’s texts. There’s always a drive to be something that I am not. I am a Poet, I’ve known this for far to long to dismiss it because of several years of misguided hero worship. I am not a Beat Poet, nor am I a Romantic Poet, and certainly not classically trained, if such a moniker applies to Poets of flesh. I still write my Poems for people who don’t care anything about Poetry, even as they remain moderately amused that I would have such an ambition. I write much of my Poetry for the dead, wonder what so-and-so would think about this line, this choice of phrase, or the ordering of this stanza before or after this other one, and as a result, write dead Poetry.

I do crave an audience. What lunatic who dives into the textual abyss of Poetic nuance does not? What I have gained over the last however many years of adulation is that Poetry is not written on mirrors, rather Poetry is written through reflection. It’s a beautiful world, even when you feel like pissing on it.

© n07X Vagabond Lit

N del T: esta entrevista apareció en el otoño de 1968 en la revista norteamericana The Paris Review. Traducción: Martín Abadía – Roberto Santander

Esta es una entrevista compuesta. Combina dos encuentros diferentes con Robert Creeley, celebrados en diferentes épocas y conducidos por entrevistadores diferentes: Linda Wagner y Lewis MacAdams Jr. Las preguntas que abordan específicamente lo referente a su poesía pertenecen a Linda Wagner. Ella alude a este intercambio como un “coloquio” –término en el que Creeley insistía ya que (como él mismo las denominó) sus preguntas fueron “conjeturas activas”. Ella mantuvo un primer intercambio en las sesiones de poesía de Vancouver de 1963, luego en la casa de Creeley en Bowling Green, Ohio en 1964 y finalmente en agosto de 1965, en el nuevo hogar del poeta en New Mexico.
MacAdams entrevistó a Creeley en Eden, New York, en la primavera de 1968, a sólo unas millas de Buffalo, donde Creeley alguna vez había enseñado durante un invierno. “La primera sesión fue un fracaso,” dirá MacAdams sobre la entrevista. “Ambos estábamos cansados y pese a que Creeley fue educado y versátil, yo hice un montón de preguntas tontas. La entrevista terminó tarde, todos estábamos borrachos y ligeramente malhumorados. Levantamos la sesión ya que mucha nieve se había juntado en la entrada de la casa. Dos semanas más tarde, lo intentamos una vez más. La nieve había parado, el sol había salido y la casa de Creeley estaba llena de amigos, entre ellos los poetas Allen Ginsberg, Robert Duncan y Robin Blaser. Luego de desayunar, los dos fuimos hasta su estudio en la parte alta de la casa, una gran habitación soleada con vistas al largo valle boscoso de Lake Erie. Antiguamente, aquel estudio había sido una enfermería; las fotografías enmarcadas de Charles Olson, John Wieners y de la esposa de Creeley, Bobbie, sobresalían del empapelado rosa, cubierto también por fotos de caballos y vacas lecheras.”-Linda Wagner & Lewis MacAdams, 1968

¿Cuál piensas que fue el primer impulso que te llevó a ser escritor?
Desde chico estuve fascinado por la gente que, como dicen, “viaja ligera.” Mi padre murió cuando yo era muy joven, pero en mi casa quedaron cosas que mi madre guardaba como evidencia de su vida: su maletín, sus instrumentos quirúrgicos, incluso su bloc de recetas. Más allá de que estas cosas fuesen algo más que reliquias de su persona, lo que era más interesante para mí era que las cargaba en su mano. El “maletín” del doctor. Ahora es una cosa del idioma corriente, “maletín”, hablar de éste o aquél “maletín.” El maletín del doctor era un ejemplo concreto de algo que cargas contigo y con lo que puedes trabajar. Desde chico, al crecer sin padre, siempre estuve interesado en hombres que llegasen a casa con instrumentos de ese tipo –carpinteros, técnicos – y me fascinaba la idea de poder viajar por el mundo con todo lo necesario en las manos… un Johnny Aplleseed. Todo esto vuelve a mí cuando me encuentro hablando con gente acerca de la escritura. La escena es siempre la misma: “¡Qué maravilloso! ¡Ser escritor!” Las palabras son algo que puedes llevar contigo. Verdaderamente puedes “viajar ligero.”

Tu trabajo se asienta mucho en el medio del poeta, su lugar. ¿Es por un interés geográfico o responde a un sentido más personal?
En realidad, hablo de mi idea de lugar. Como diría Robert Duncan, “donde el corazón halla reposo.” Me refiero al lugar al que uno está abierto, donde las inseguridades, el actuar a la defensiva y muchos otras reacciones bajan finalmente los brazos. Donde uno siente una asociación íntima con la tierra que pisa. Es obviamente una idealización – o al menos el anhelo de que un lugar como este sea una idealización – pero hay algunos lugares donde uno siente esa posibilidad con mucha más intensidad que en otros. Yo, por ejemplo, me siento mucho más cómodo en un pueblo pequeño. Siempre me he sentido así, creo que porque crecí en uno de New England. Me gusta ese derrame de vida que hay en todos lados, como la primavera en New England con tanta agua, hilos de agua por doquier, el empañarse de las cosas, esa timidez en las personas y, muy particularmente, las urracas azules. Me gusta el ritmo de las estaciones como cualquier otro ritmo que se da en relación evidente con el suelo, como – pongamos por caso- el ritmo que sienten los granjeros. Me gusta el excedente de tiempo en las personas. Es por eso que amo muchos aspectos de la vida en España y, francamente, tengo la misma idea donde vivo ahora, en New México. Por mi ventana puedo ver la Caverna Sandia, siete millas más allá de las montañas, quizás la evidencia más vieja de un asentamiento en este hemisferio. Creo que data de 15 o 20 mil años antes de Cristo y aún sigue allí. Además, se me ofrece la magnitud del Río Grande llegando desde el Oeste, con las montañas del sudeste, y las salvajes sierras de Mesa. Es un lugar bastante básico para vivir. Las dimensiones son de tal tamaño y de tan curiosa eternidad que avergüenzan a la idea del hombre como la totalidad significante de la vida. Esta zona produce un tipo de persona que encuentro muy aliviadora y mucho más segura para mi naturaleza que, digamos, esa acumulación de intenciones y esfuerzos que hace a los hombres en New York. De manera que lo local responde a un sentido geográfico y a la vez personal.

¿Le atribuyes a algún escritor –del pasado o contemporáneo- un fuerte influencia en tu poesía?
Creo que Williams me dio el ejemplo más amplio, pero igualmente no puedo ignorar la influencia insistente de Charles Orson en los primeros tiempos y también en la actualidad. Y la de Louis Zukofsky. La primera persona que me introdujo en la escritura como oficio -quien inclusive habla de ella en tanto oficio- fue Ezra Pound. Creo que fue cuando cumplí los veinte años que mi cuñado me llevó a una librería de Cambridge y me dijo “¿Qué te gustaría llevar? ¿Quieres algún libro?” Compré Make it New y ese libro fue toda una revelación para mí. Pound hablaba desde el punto de vista de lo que era la escritura en sí misma, no de lo que trataba, no de qué simbolismo había que seguir, sino de cómo un hombre se sitúa frente al acto mismo de escribir. Y aquel fue el conocimiento más profundo y conmovedor que creo haber obtenido. Así que Pound fue muy importante en lo que refiere al oficio, más allá de que, posteriormente, yo lo haya avergonzado con mi propio trabajo. Tanta, tanta gente –Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, Denise Levertov, Paul Blackburn, Ed Dorn. Podría decirse también que Charlie Parker – en su uso del silencio y la estructura rítmica. Su música también fue influyente en un punto, así que no puedo hacer una jerarquía de personas.

¿Qué me dices de la comunicación con otros escritores cuando estabas empezando?
Empecé a escribirles a Ezra Pound y a William Carlos Williams sobre una revista en la que estaba involucrado. De ahí saqué la valentía para hacerlo. Me hubiese dado mucha timidez escribirles y decirles, “creo que eres un gran hombre.” Estar en contacto con ellos, me dio una razón para seguir. Pound me escribía específicamente, pero tendía a darme directivas – “Haz esto. Haz lo otro. Lee esto. Lee aquello.”

¿Hiciste todo lo que dijo?
Lo intenté, pero no podía hacer todo. Él me envió libros en un momento, los cuales fueron muy útiles. The History of The Money de Alexander Del Mar, el cual leí bastante bien. Él fue de mucha ayuda. Era muy halagador poder ser tomado seriamente por alguien como él. William fue siempre más específico. A veces decía cosas que me consternaban, pero que ponían a mi ego en su lugar. Recuerdo que una vez le escribí una carta muy severa – una descripción de algo que iba a hacer y que así eran las cosas y no de otra forma, bla bla- y él me envió de vuelta las páginas de la carta con marcas al margen en algunas secciones en particular, “Bien, tu estilo está ajustándose.” Yo tenía para mí que esos comentarios eran de una cierta utilidad, más allá de que aprobase o no lo que tenía para decir. Esas cosas que hacía estaban muy bien. Pound me decía, “¿Por favor, podrías decirme qué edad tienes? Te muestras como alguien que ha estado involucrado en algo por cuarenta años. ¿Tienes veintitrés o sesenta y tres?”

¿En ese momento criabas palomas en el campo?
De chico tuve aves de corral, palomas y pollos. Me casé en 1946 y luego de vivir un año en Cape Cod, nos mudamos a una granja en New Hampshire donde intenté sustentarme a través de ella. No teníamos ambiciones con respecto a poder sacar algún rédito. Teníamos un pequeño jardín que nos proveía una cierta producción para ser enlatada. Eso hacía que los días fueran muy activos y muy interesantes, cierta continuidad –alimentarlos, desplumarlos, cuidar de ellos de diferentes maneras. Conocí a un hombre adorable, un loco, un criador decidido de Barred Rocks. Era bastante bajo, era como un elfo de algún modo, con una imaginación loca, intensa y maravillosamente elocuente. Se dedicaba a la rabdomancia, por ejemplo, y a un montón de otros asuntos místicos y locos que le calzaban tan cómodamente como un hacha en tu mano. Ningún tipo de consternación ni de confusión. Una vez, uno de los vecinos de New Hampshire perdió dinero en el bosque. Él hizo una varita mágica de un abedul y lo encontró, de la misma forma en que tú puedes encender las luces y ver lo que estás haciendo. Recuerdo que otra vez, uno de nuestros vecinos, Howard Ainsworth, un leñador, estaba sacando pasta de los árboles un día de nieve. Uno de sus bolsillos tenía un agujero y para el momento en que lo advirtió, ya había perdido el dinero. Así que Howard simplemente cortó un palito de un abedul y lo encontró. Estaba casi a oscuras en el bosque. Él sólo comentó esto; más que el hecho de haberlo encontrado, cómo lo había encontrado. Nunca le ocurrió nada más extraordinario que aquello.

¿Cómo fue que te ocurrió a ti?
Estuve fascinado por ello – porque era un tipo de “misticismo” extraordinariamente cercano y práctico. Él tenía una manera loca y aún práctica de ejemplificar lo que había conocido empíricamente. Solía pintar, por ejemplo. Una vez me mostró una pintura de un perro. Me dijo, “¿Qué piensas? Es uno de mis perros favoritos.” Era un perro en blanco y negro, quieto; se veía increíblemente enfermo. Le dije, “Es una linda pintura, pero.” Y él dijo, “Sí, murió hace tres días; es por eso que se ve tan enfermo.” Me deleitó, sabes, y me sentí mucho más en casa junto a él que con cualquier otra persona porque no creí que hubiese un hombre más sofisticado en este sentido que él. Pero, Dios, él hablaba de cosas por las que darías tu propia mano. Era muy paciente y con él aprendías cómo prestar atención a cualquier cosa.

¿Piensas que trabajas mejor en lugares aislados como los que frecuentas – New Hampshire, Mallorca, New México-?
Ese parece ser mi hábito, más allá de que haber sido profesor por varios años hace que te hagas de un número de gente y encuentres un lugar entre ellos. Pero mi dilema, por así decirlo, siendo joven, fue que siempre tuve muy buena relación con gente que conocía por casualidad. Recuerdo que una vez, bueno, varias veces, intenté acercarme a cierta gente en particular. En cuanto tenía acceso a alguien que me era atractivo – no sólo sexualmente, sino personalmente también- quería inmediatamente estar con él. Me encontré absorbiendo formas de hablar muy rápidamente. Quería estar entre ellos. Quizás algunos puedan sentirlo como algo estúpidamente agotador – intentar encajar con alguien, sabes, así como ellos contigo. Nunca experimenté que la otra persona sintiese cierta afectación. Digo, creo que muchos de los momentos amargos en la relación con mi primera esposa se debieron a la intensidad con que ella la encaraba. Me refiero a que todo era tan intenso que involucraba siempre cierta tensión. Mi manera de experimentar emociones fue siempre la más exigente, y no muchas veces era a sabiendas de ello. Simplemente, era “natural”. Allen Ginsberg me dijo una vez que cuando voy a la ciudad, nadie se duerme hasta que me haya ido. No dejo que nadie se duerma porque no quiero perderme nada. Lo quiero todo, así que tiendo, comprensiblemente, a agotar a mis amigos –presionar, presionar, presionar. No es una presión social alborotadora, pero, sabes, no quiero perderme nada. Lo amo. Amo la intensidad de la gente al punto de no dejar que nada se detenga si no es porque llega a su fin.
He oído muchas historias acerca de tus peleas en esos primeros días.
Eso sucede cuando la confusión que produce el estar rodeado de gente llega a su extremo y me rebalsa. Tenía que ver con la bebida, la cual estaba muy presente en mí entonces. Y la marihuana. Habíamos fumado marihuana continuamente desde… veamos… la primera vez que lo hice fue en la India, donde estuve junto al Servicio Norteamericano. Estábamos en el cuartel –unos 40 tipos, de todas las edades. Creo que casi todo el mundo en esos cuarteles estaba colocado la mayor parte del día. Estábamos en la India Central, y no había nada qué hacer. El clima nos era increíblemente hostil. Digo, hacía mucho calor y nos la pasábamos sudando –la bebida era algo imposible- y enfermando muy mal todo el tiempo. Tenía un amigo del sur de California que un día nos sugirió una alternativa. Nos dijo, “prueben esto.” No fue nada místico. Más bien, algo como, “Aquí tienes una aspirina.” Fue entonces que el cuartel cambió y todo se volvió muy agradable. La comida tornó instantáneamente apetecible y la vida mucho más interesante. Tanto fue así que me recuerdo volver desde Inglaterra en el Queen Elizabeth y mi amigo y yo seguíamos fumando a bordo. De hecho, solíamos hacerlo en el baño. Mucha gente dependía de ese baño y él y yo nos metíamos ahí, nos colocábamos y nos sentábamos donde fuese. Afuera podía haber una gran masa que esperaba y aporreaba la puerta. Pensaban que éramos homosexuales – una idea que circulaba ya que una noche, recuerdo, volví tambaleándome a la habitación y me metí en la litera equivocada. Solíamos ir a la cubierta también, la cual nos estaba restringida. Aquel Atlántico norte – absolutamente desolado y silencioso, la luna llena sobre el mar en su totalidad. Simplemente hermoso.

Hablabas de las peleas.
Bueno, mira, al beber yo tenía la idea de que lo hacía por frustración frente a la ineptitud social. Incluso hoy en día, si bebo –más allá de que sea extremadamente placentero, aliviador y relajante- llega un punto en que, inevitablemente, todo lo que siento torna en irritación, frustración, y es entonces cuando peleo. Digo, no creo haberme peleado jamás con alguien si no es en esa condición – pelear por pura frustración y por un sentimiento de absoluta incompetencia e incapacidad. Además, la gente solía ser más beligerante en los años 40 y 50. Solíamos meternos en esas peleas ridículas.

Oí que una vez te peleaste con Jackson Pollock.
Sí, un gran encuentro. Obviamente fue debido a que él tenía el mismo problema que yo, peleaba por ganas de pelear. Había estado en el Cedar Bar con Franz Kline y un amigo de Kline, y probablemente Fielding Dawson también estuviese ahí. Estábamos sentados en la esquina hablando y bebiendo muy relajados. Pero una vez más, yo –algo muy característico en mí- me desenganché de la conversación y empecé a apurar las cervezas o lo que fuese que estuviésemos tomando porque no salían rápido. Iba hasta la barra, bebía un trago rápido y volvía a la mesa. Los tragos empezaron a salir con regularidad y, para entonces, yo ya estaba excitado y me estaba poniendo desagradablemente borracho y volvía a la barra para pedir otro trago cuando este tipo tan sólido, tan particular, tan intenso, entró al lugar. Vino hasta la barra y casi inmediatamente hizo un gesto que me molestó: puso su vaso cerca del mío, empujándome con sólo estar ahí. Así que yo traté de afirmarme en donde estaba. Lo próximo que recuerdo es estar abalanzándonos el uno sobre el otro. Recuerdo que John, uno de los dueños, se apoyó en la barra y saltó encima para ponerse en medio de nosotros y nos dijo, “ok, muchachos,” y empezó a empujarnos a los dos, con lo cual, sin siquiera pensarlo, nos enfrentamos a él y él dijo, “vamos, muchachos, córtenla.” Luego dijo, “Muchachos, ¿ustedes se conocen?”, y nos presentó y ¡Dios! ¡Era Jackson Pollock! Acto seguido, yo estaba mostrándole fotos de mis hijos y él me decía, “Quiero ser su padrino.” Instantáneamente afable, sabes. De inmediato nos hicimos amigos y él fue muy bueno conmigo.
En esos días, recuerdo, en el Cedar Bar yo solía llevar conmigo una navaja de mano que en mis momentos de frustración y furia… – digo, nunca apuñalé a nadie, pero la podía sacar si… sabes, no creo que alguna vez haya tratado de asustar a la gente con ella, pero si todo fallaba, la navaja estaba ahí… no en el sentido de que fuese a matar a alguien, como con un arma, pero amaba esa navaja. Podías tallar cosas con ella, formar cosas y mucho más. Aparentemente, yo coqueteaba con esa navaja en el bar en algún punto y recuerdo que John me la quitó una vez diciendo “por dos semanas no vas a llevar esta navaja.” Finalmente, me prohibió la entrada al lugar. Yo le dije, “¿qué voy a hacer entonces? ¿Adónde voy a ir?” Más tarde, dejó que entrase con la condición de que bebiese solamente cerveza de jengibre, pero tan sólo porque empecé a quedarme en la puerta y a mirar adentro por la ventana. Me dejó entrar y sentarme otra vez, en tanto fuese un buen chico y tomase mi cerveza de jengibre. Más tarde me devolvió mi navaja porque esa navaja era muy… bueno, aún tengo una de ésas.
Cuando tomaste LSD por primera vez, ¿tuviste algún tipo de problema?
Recuerdo que tuve uno momentáneo cuando en algún punto entré en ese dualismo de “sí-no”, el factor binario. Creí que iba a ser absolutamente horrible. Me dije algo como, “este es el caso” e inmediatamente tuve una experiencia intensa de “este es el caso – este no es el caso- este es el caso…” Era como ver un gran tablero de ajedrez – una situación alterante. Luego, por la gracia de algo, me bajé de ello. Simplemente me bajé. En mi segunda experiencia, el verano pasado, estuve agradecido de que eso no volviese a ocurrir. Durante ella, tuve “There is a mountain” de Donovan todo el tiempo sonando. Estaba con un buen amigo y lo tomamos a eso de las dos de la madrugada. Sentíamos al fuego arder, estábamos en un lugar de New England. Se hizo de día de una manera clara y fresca y había caído mucho rocío sobre los árboles y la hierba – esas telarañas de rocío que se forman – Era absolutamente idílico. El color de la casa cambió completamente. Los niños obviamente no tenían conocimiento de que estuviésemos de LSD, pero de alguna manera el sentimiento se extendió a toda la casa, así que las chicas fueron hasta una tienda a una milla de distancia y nos trajeron una torta de chocolate. Ellos no parecían ni preocupados ni interesados en nuestro estado y pasaron más de una hora y media haciendo un collar de piña que luego le regalaron a mi esposa Bobbie. Los gatos y los perros estaban allí, casi hambrientos. Se nos trepaban encima. No era que nosotros solamente lo estuviésemos alucinando; ellos estaban junto a nosotros, molestando y ronroneando alrededor. Más tarde, el fuego en la chimenea, aquella luz tan hermosa; y luego ver una vez más cómo volvía a amanecer a nuestras espaldas y cómo se hacía de día en la habitación… Así es que “The Finger” surge directamente de esa información. Recuerdo estar allí con esta hermosa mujer primigenia, disfrazada de mi esposa y, a su vez, su imagen flotando en montones de nacimientos –desde una niña hasta una bruja – Demenciales todos esos disfraces de mujer. Es lo que Robert Graves, por ejemplo, de una manera didáctica, intentó decir. Él estaba ciertamente en lo correcto. Aunque no es jerarquía; es una manifestación absoluta a través de todos los reinos de existencia que una mujer puede figurar, aún siendo una mujer. Inequívocamente mujer. Absolutamente maravilloso. Así fue que yo entonces esbocé delante de ella un mundo hecho en mi mente y pensé “eso es lo maravilloso.”
¿Cuál crees que es el efecto de las drogas alucinatorias en el proceso creativo?
Es tremendo. Al fin y al cabo, eso es lo que quería decir. Las cosas habían sido tan rígidas por casi un año – escribiendo sobre nuestro matrimonio con la sensación rancia del esfuerzo y también la confusión que provoca el ir haciéndote viejo. Lo pienso muchas veces y, en ocasiones, puedo encerrarme en mí mismo con un armamento de soluciones racionales y puedo llegar a quedarme en un atasco sin esperanza. Así que, de alguna manera, el LSD despejó todo eso –los miedos, las indecisiones y el sentimiento de estar perdido o de estar perpetuamente apartado del mundo, todo eso se fue. No podría afirmar tan simplemente que la escritura logró, de ese modo, una apertura pero sí sé que el año pasado fue muy activo como consecuencia de ello. El asunto es la información –información extraordinaria y profundamente relevante. Como si uno oyera que la guerra acabó, que algún inminente peligro o un desgaste a raíz del tiempo la detuvo. Por supuesto, no hay objeto alguno en contar esto una y otra vez; yo no siento una necesidad constante de tomar esa droga todos los días. Es una visión de una vida, de toda la vida – y esa visión es obviamente una concesión enorme de lo que uno no se aparta muy rápidamente.
¿Cuándo empezó tu interés por la pintura?
Bueno, a través de la agencia de Pound llegué a conocer a René Laubiès, quien tradujo algunos de los Cantos de Pound al francés. La primera traducción al francés que se publicó de ellos. Y Laubiès, además, es un pintor muy activo e interesante. De hecho, la primera vez que vi verdaderamente el trabajo de Jackson Pollock fue en su galería en París, la galería de Paul Fachetti. Hasta aquel momento mis vínculos habían sido fundamentalmente con escritores, pero me gustaba mucho lo que hacía Laubiès. No era la pintura en sí misma lo que me interesaba, sino el pintor, o el acto de pintar. Por ese entonces, empecé a ver más cosas y al ser un norteamericano viviendo en Europa –había dejado mi granja en New Hampshire- estaba particularmente intrigado por el americanismo de ciertos pintores como Pollock y algunos otros, como Ashley Bryan, y en particular John Altoon, quien se volvió muy importante para mí ya que su energía era algo increíblemente evidente en su trabajo – y reflejo de mi propia realidad, por así decirlo. También Guston me parecía extremadamente bueno y fue muy generoso conmigo en concederme su interés y su tiempo. Yo estaba fascinado por la vida de estos tipos y no simplemente porque estuviesen bebiendo todo el tiempo, sino porque era solitarios y peculiarmente norteamericanos, específicamente norteamericanos en su manera de experimentar la actividad, poniendo energía en el proceso –como en “When I am in my painting” de Pollock. Duncan dejó muy en clara en Maximus cómo era su relación con la pintura en San Francisco con el grupo de allí – Clyfford Still, Diebenkorn y todos sus otros amigos. En la escritura, todavía se discutía con la tradición o con las formas y las actitudes heredades.
Luego, en mitad de los años cincuentas, los pintores, sin duda, se volvieron muy decisivos para mí, y no sólo para mí. Pensaba en esto cuando me encontré con John Ashbery el otro día y, en algún punto, Ashbery me dio su propia visión de la escuela de New York. Me dijo, “Bueno, antes que nada, en lo único en lo que estábamos todos de acuerdo era en que no debía haber programa alguno y que el poema, tal como lo imaginamos, debe ser la posibilidad de todo lo que experimentamos. No debe haber límites de orden programático.” Y luego me dijo por qué ciertos pintores les eran interesantes; simplemente es el hecho de que la articulación en la pintura –la gama de posibilidades- es más viable en su forma de ver las cosas. Y yo pensé, “es eso exactamente lo que quería decir.” Precisamente, esa es la idea de actividad que yo tenía. Hoy en día todos estamos pasando los cuarenta y lo llamativo es que todos nosotros solíamos tener la misma concepción en lo que refiere a la experiencia y al propósito. Obviamente John llegaba por la vía del surrealismo francés en donde encontró no sólo cierto entretenimiento, sino también la entrada a un mundo que puede ser sentido y confrontado a la vez. Pero eso no sólo provino de allí. Yo lo hallé en el jazz, por ejemplo. Es por eso que Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk y toda esa gente fueron extraordinariamente interesantes para mí. Era simplemente que parecían tener como límite sólo la naturaleza de su actividad. Posiblemente no pudiesen siempre hacer agua con las piedras, pero, en ocasiones, lo lograban. Era eso lo que me intrigaba.

¿Cuándo empezaste a escribir acerca de pintores?
Lo primero que escribí fue una nota acerca de Laubiès para Black Mountain Review, la cual fue la primera nota de ese tipo que yo haya escrito. Luego, por intermedio de Black Mountain, empecé a interesarme por Guston y por lo visual, qué vemos en el mundo y cómo eso puede llegar a ser un todo. Había estado tan involucrado con la economía de las palabras y la experiencia del sonido y el ritmo que, de pronto, fue como si las cosas volvieran a abrirse. No tenía conocimiento alguno de cómo una escena puede tener una continuidad histórica ni sabía usar el vocabulario preciso de un crítico de arte, pero sí era capaz de dar testimonio y de extender mi visión a otros. Puedes ver cuán relevante es. Estábamos haciendo algo, no solamente usando nuestra imaginación –que era nuestro objetivo después de todo- sino también trabajando con los materiales propios de nuestra propia experiencia, así como John Chamberlain experimentaba los materiales de su mundo y viendo cómo la imaginación podía articular esa experiencia. Yo intentaba hacerme del vocabulario que reflejase la experiencia de mi mundo. Ninguno de nosotros tenía un historial en ello. Recuerdo a Ducan, aquel momento maravilloso en que nos conocimos –él y Jess y Harry Jacoby habían venido a Mallorca. Yo estaba pasando una etapa densa y difícil en mi matrimonio. Ann estaba fuera por alguna razón –en la ciudad, haciendo compras. Vivíamos en una casa pequeña de la periferia. Llegamos hasta allí en tranvía y los cuatro buscamos una pensión en la ciudad donde pudiesen quedarse. Íbamos en el tranvía con un montón de gente y recuerdo que Robert -viajábamos sosteniéndonos del pasamanos- se dio vuelta, me miró y dijo, “¿tú no estás interesado en la historia, no?”. Le dije, “debería. Quiero hacerlo. Pero creo que sí, que no lo hago. Sabes, me gustaría hacerlo, pero ciertamente no lo hago.” La historia, como forma de experiencia, era algo con lo que verdaderamente había querido involucrarme, pero con lo que, finalmente, no pude ligar. El arte quizás sea, como diría Williams, producto de algo, pero nunca llegué a aceptarlo como parte de un proceso histórico.
¿Podrías decir algo de los poetas de Black Mountain –Olson, Duncan y los otros- o algo de aquellos días?
Por intermedio de Vincent Ferrini, con el primero que tuve contacto fue con Olson. Vincent era amigo de Cid Corman y fue la revista Origins de Cid, que comenzó en los primeros años de los cincuentas, la que formaría el centro de lo que posteriormente sería la escuela de Black Mountain. Yo no conocí a Olson hasta que fui a enseñar a Black Mountain en 1954, trabajo que me salvó la vida de alguna manera y que, a su vez, me la cambió. Ya viviendo en Mallorca, más allá de las facilidades y la belleza del lugar, yo había empezado a sentir que, literariamente, era un bueno para nada. Así fue que Olson me ofreció aquel trabajo y me encargó la edición de la revista, lo cual fue un cambio rotundo de panorama.
Para el momento en que llegué al lugar, las cosas estaban bastante apretadas. No podían albergar más que veinte o veinticinco estudiantes y cada día parecía que iríamos a acabar en la calle. Recuerdo que, en algún momento, existió la posibilidad de que un tipo acaudalado de un lugar como Charleston nos enviara a su hijo mentalmente deficiente para que lo incorporásemos a cambio de una donación y luego de muchas idas y venidas finalmente aceptamos. Él habría de cumplir su promesa –Dios sabe por qué- haciendo volar su avión por encima del colegio. Pasamos al menos tres días mirando al cielo y el maldito avión nunca apareció.
Hubo otra posibilidad de financiamiento que consistía en que Stefan Wolpe, conmigo como su secretario, escribiría cartas a gente como Guggenheims y Doris Duke –cartas que Stefan empezaba diciendo, “apuesto a que Ud. Debe tiene muchísimo dinero a su disposición y no sabe qué hacer con él,” y que luego yo trataba de apropiarlas a un inglés más correcto. Pero nada vino de allí tampoco, a excepción de una de los Guggenheims que, aparentemente, habia heredado una fortuna en oro y le envió un cheque de diez dólares a Stefan con una nota en la que explicaba que sus negocios estaban poniéndose en orden y que, más adelante, intentaría enviarnos más. De Kooning hizo una vez una apreciación bastante aguda, “el único problema que tiene Black es que, si te inscribes, ese problema pasa a ser tuyo.”
Pero para mi fue toda una revelación y la gente de allí era increíble. Por ejemplo, fue allí que conocí a Ed Dorn, Mike Rumaker, Dan Rice y a muchos, muchos otros. A Johnathan Williams ya lo conocía de Mallorca, igualmente que a Fee Dawson, cuando ambos estábamos en el ejercito en Sttugart, pero, volviendo al punto, la intensidad y la singularidad de esta gente que comprendía la escena de Mountain era absolutamente maravillosa. Supongo que el único problema era cómo encontrar una alternativa, la cual obviamente, habría de llegar.
¿Cuáles son las características comunes a los miembros del grupo Black Mountain?
Estaba a punto de responderte que el ser solitarios era lo que parecía juntarnos. No había idioma alguno en común por así decirlo, como si lo había en el grupo de New York por ejemplo. Creo que había un sentimiento común de que el verso era algo que le había sido concedido a uno para escribir y que la forma debía cobrar cierta intimidad con ese hecho. Al menos era eso a lo que yo me refería con “La forma nunca es algo más que una extensión del contenido.”
¿Cuándo conociste a Ginsberg?
En 1956, después de abandonar Black Mountain. Debió haber sido en enero o por entonces, cuando paró en Albuquerque con algunos amigos para que yo me uniese a ellos y fuésemos a San Francisco en donde estaban Ed Dorn y su familia. Yo estaba tratando de deshacerme de mis hábitos. Mi matrimonio había acabado completamente y estaba harto de lo que ya conocía, por así decirlo. Así que, de alguna forma, decidí irme al Oeste. Llegué a la casa de Ed hacia las cuatro de la tarde y él y Helene me llevaron a recorrer el lugar. Recuerdo que me emborraché muchísimo y Rexroth me había invitado a cenar. También recuerdo vomitar en la acera justo antes de entrar. Más tarde, esa misma noche, Ed se fue a Greyhound –había conseguido trabajo como despachador de equipaje- y, de pronto, Allen apareció. Estaba trabajando en el mismo lugar, sólo que en el turno anterior. Es tan característico de Allen el estar allí de esa manera y cómo llega tan directamente a lo que le interesa. Yo me sentía halagado –hablamos la mayor parte de la noche de Olson y de la escena de Black Mountain – y me contó lo que estaba sucediendo en San Francisco. Más tarde, recuerdo estar caminando junto a él y a Phil Whalen por la ciudad, y Allen llevando aquella gran carpeta negra con sus notas, leyéndonos “Howl” cada vez que nos deteníamos para sentarnos o parábamos para comer. Fue un momento hermoso – todo parecía tan abierto, tan desenvuelto por su propia energía.
Hablaste de tu correspondencia con Pound y Williams. ¿Te has escrito con tus contemporáneos? ¿Qué clase de cartas?
Constantemente. Creo que durante una época, Olson y yo nos hemos escrito un promedio de una carta cada dos días. Mayan Letters podría darte alguna noción de todo eso. Entonces yo estaba tan alejado de todo el mundo que dependía de esas cartas por una necesidad de conversación. Más tarde, viviendo en Francia, tenía a Denise Levertov y a su esposo, y a Mitch Goodman para hablar, pero la mayoría de las veces no había nadie inmediatamente cercano a mí con el que compartir las inquietudes que estaba teniendo, así que las cartas servían al hecho de una retroalimentación que, por entonces, yo consideraba muy necesaria. Por ejemplo, a principios de los cincuentas, Paul Blackburn y yo nos escribimos constantemente y él me daba una lectura muy precisa de los poemas que yo le enviaba –no sólo acerca de lo que pensaba de ellos, sino un desglose línea a línea, palabra por palabra, en el que exponía de qué manera podían conmoverlo. Así que las cartas fueron muy importantes para mí y recuerdo que en algún momento en Mallorca me pasaba unas ocho horas diarias escribiéndolas. Creo que fue Williams quien me escribió una vez que las cartas eran una especie de ensayo de lo que fuésemos a hacer más tarde.
Has dicho que la poesía es “la expresión básica del habla y del sonido.” ¿Estás implicando que la motivación del poeta se encuentra en su propia forma de expresarse o existe algo más que pueda ser dicho acerca de este deseo de comunicar sus intereses a los posibles lectores?
Yo no creo que haya “lectores posibles” en el contexto en el que se escribe la poesía. Personalmente, ése jamás ha sido mi caso. Si uno pensase en un público, sería extraordinariamente molesto. El acto total de escribir se volvería una suerte de entretenimiento para personas a las que uno jamás conocería y probablemente, estaría avergonzado de conocer en todo caso. Así que sólo me interesa lo que puedo articular con las cosas que me son dadas en tanto confrontación. No puedo lamentar su costo. No creo que ningún hombre que escriba deba lamentar el costo que trae aparejado el acto de escribir, incluso no siendo consciente de ello.
La comunicación per se entonces, ¿no es la primera motivación del poeta?
Para algunos, lo es; para otros, no. Depende de lo que te refieras con “comunicación”, por supuesto. Yo estaría muy complacido si pudiese darme cuenta de que alguien, al leer, ha sentido lo mismo que yo he sentido al escribir – me tranquilizaría que alguien haya sentido conmigo eso que he escrito. Así y todo, no es la circunstancia de mi propio trabajo. Antes podía tener horribles dudas verdaderamente al caer en la cuenta de que sería leído por otros, pero eso jamás podría influir de manera importante en mi trabajo. Así que no puedo decir que la comunicación –en tanto sea “hablarle a alguien”- sea lo que me ocupa. Cuando escribo me estoy diciendo algo a mí mismo, algo de lo que, curiosamente, no tengo un conocimiento previo. Una vez, años atrás, un amigo se lo le preguntó a Franz Kline –no con hostilidad, sino con intensidad- y él finalmente dijo, “bueno, mira, si yo pintase lo que ya conoces, eso simplemente te aburriría, la repetición de mí hasta ti. Si pintase lo que yo conozco, sería aburrido para mí. Así que pinto lo que no conozco.” Bien, yo creo en eso. Escribo lo que no conozco. Comunicación es una palabra que uno podría pasar mucho tiempo definiéndola. Por ejemplo, ¿puedes hacer que un ciego vea? Esa fue una pregunta que me he hecho. Y si es cierto que no puedes contarle a alguien algo que no ha experimentado, el acto de leer es aquel en el que uno lee con alguien. Yo siento que cuando la gente lee mis poemas de la manera más empática, es cuando los lee conmigo. De modo que la comunicación es un sentimiento mutuo con alguien, no un proceso didáctico de información.
Quizás esta sea una pregunta al margen, pero ¿la “sinceridad” del artista tiene algún tipo de influencia en la calidad de la obra? ¿Un poeta puede escribir poemas buenos acerca de algo por lo que no siente nada?
No veo cómo no. Si uno respeta la medida de Pound en “Only emotion endures” y en “Nothing counts save the quality of the emotion,” la ausencia de sentimiento parece prohibir enteramente la posibilidad de ese tipo de calidad, pero al mismo tiempo, hay muchas formas de sentir. Quizás éste sea el caso de Ted Berrigan –uno fue hecho para sentir por el sólo hecho de que en las palabras no hay accesorio alguno más que lo subjetivo del sentimiento. Es una cuestión sutil. Recuerdo que Irving Layton escribió un poema muy conmovedor, “Elegía for Dred Smith,” y luego, Gael Turnbull, muy impresionado por el poema, le dijo, “debes haber sentido mucho la muerte de tu amigo,” y Irving le respondió que no había tal Smith, que simplemente había tenido ganas de escribir el poema. Ya ves, el también quería sentir, quería llegar a verse en la posibilidad de confrontar con ese sentimiento. No había habido sentimiento alguno que provocase el poema, pero sí cierto sentimiento involucrado. Y era ciertamente un tema por el que Irving sentía algo. Por supuesto que el tema de la sinceridad en sí misma puede ser un refugio para los tontos. Yo estoy seguro que el senador Goldwater es sincero de alguna manera, pero eso no lo protege de un juicio hostil. Los fanáticos son a menudo muy sinceros, pero yo me refiero a la sinceridad en el sentido de Pound, ese ideograma que forma: el hombre sostenido por su propia palabra. Ese tipo de sinceridad siempre ha sido importante para mí en lo que hago.
Indudablemente también hay obstáculos. Probablemente Edgar Guest es más sincero que cualquiera en lo que escribe, pero ¿por qué no llega a ser un Williams?
Una vez más, como puedes verlo, la respuesta es simple. Si creemos en “Nothing counts save the quality of the emotion,” tenemos un parámetro que califique lo que hace Guest –la emoción en Guest es de una calidad paupérrima. Está todo articulado de una manera tan general y ese supuesto sentimiento es algo tan borroso que se convierte en una especie de lío. La demasía de generalidades, ésa sería la diferencia entre él, diría yo, y alguien como Williams, quien tiene la virtud de llegar a una calidad en el sentimiento de una intimidad, modulación y complejidad muchísimo más rica. El área de lo sentido está mucho mejor articulada y no sólo da evidencia de ella, sino que además permite que esa evidencia sea sentida por el lector.
Un tipo de lector al que se le permite sentir de una manera personal a través del poema, el acto de recrear la experiencia. No estoy solo, creo, al sentirme excluido de cierta poesía moderna. El otro día estaba leyendo un poema de Gary Snyder, “How to make stew in the pinacate desert”:
Now put in the strips of bacon.
In another pan have all the vegetables cleaned up and peeled
And
Sliced.
Cut the beef Sank meta up small…
La técnica es el principio del poema de Snyder, ¿no crees que estamos poniendo demasiado énfasis en la técnica?
El contexto del poema es muy relevante; quizás yo sé demasiado acerca de él. Está dirigido a dos amigos. Lo que Gary está haciendo es ofrecerles una receta de estofado a ellos y allí su forma de hablar se hace evidente. Lo que realmente sucede allí es la proyección de un tono o un modo de hablar. Sí, puedes tomar literalmente ese poema como una receta para hacer estofado, pero en esa manera de expresarlo existe también un contexto emocional, un cierto sentimiento. Esa es, para mí, la parte significativa del poema. Es ese dirigirse hacia alguien que trae aparejado cierto sentimiento y es la manera en la que las palabras se suceden, en mi opinión, lo que engendra el aspecto más íntimo de ese poema como tal. Ahora, ¿cómo podríamos llamarlo? ¿Técnica? Seguro, hay una técnica que articula a ese poema en tanto las palabras se sitúan en líneas y hay cierta velocidad en esas líneas, pero no creo que él haya ido tan lejos como tampoco creo que Wlliams en Paterson haya ido tan lejos al plasmar sus exploraciones. Parece ser muy prosaico, pero me genera una extraordinaria sensación vívida de cuán lejos uno puede excavar para encontrar lo íntimo y vital de acuerdo a sus propias necesidades. Así como el agua se halla luego de muchas capas, el personaje de ese registro me da una sensación verdadera de lo que es intentar encontrar algo en un medio atiborrado por la acumulación de basura, de desperdicios, de tedio y abuso. Así que preferiría ya no hablar de “técnica” como algo extensivo al poema o apartado de él. Respetaría la particularidad del poema de Gary. Me es inevitable no volver a “Only emotion endures” de Pound; en este caso, trata de dirigirse a sus amigos de una manera cálida que los reúna a todos en uno. Esa posibilidad me parece más interesante.
La considerable cantidad de obscenidad en la poesía contemporánea, ¿es el resultado de que algunas barreras hayan cedido o es reflejo de un comportamiento de estos tiempos?
Una vez, en un taller de poesía en Arizona, justo después de haberse publicado Naked Lunch, Duncan dijo que la gente estaba aún escribiendo poemas sobre la luna y la indomable avalancha primaveral. Es decir, nadie se exaltó frente a que fuese posible entonces publicar algo que incluyese la palabra “fuck”. Sin embargo, dado que uno quería que eso fuese capaz de acaparar a un máximo de gente y no solamente a algunos focos marginales, creo que supuso un gran alivio el que empiece a hacerse. De todas formas, creo que la moral sexual se ha ablandado en los últimos años – y la obscenidad, o mejor dicho, las palabras llamadas obscenas, tienen una gran energía. De manera que uno las usa de forma que parezcan ocasionales. Por ejemplo, los diarios de Peter Orlovsky de los que Ed Sanders ha publicado algunas secciones, son más entendibles si Peter hace uso de esas palabras en tanto detalles del acto sexual.
¿Cuánto tiempo te toma escribir un poema?
El tiempo que toma tipearlo o escribirlo de alguna otra manera, ya que trabajo simplemente sentándome y escribiendo, sin hacer revisiones de ningún tipo. Si eso sucede de manera llevadera, continúa hasta su fin y es entonces cuando me detengo. Es terriblemente difícil para mí tener un sentido del tiempo real ya que, como decía antes, no estoy seguro del tiempo cuando escribo. A veces parece sólo un momento y puede haber sido una hora y media o una tarde entera. Además, los poemas me llegan en grupos de tres a la vez, o quizás de seis o siete. Siempre más de uno a la vez. Entro a mi habitación y me siento a trabajar porque tengo ganas de hacerlo. Empiezo a escribir y, como suele decirse, a jugar y algo empieza a cobrar forma; empiezo a seguirlo si ocurre. Quizás me lleve a su propio término, complete su propia entidad. Luego, muy posiblemente debido al estímulo que produce, algo comienza a anidar. Esa parece ser la forma en la que lo hago. Por supuesto, no tengo idea de cuánto tiempo toma escribir un poema en el sentido del tiempo que tarda un poema en definirse entre una de las tantas variaciones de articulación que puede tener.
Lo que te rodea en ese momento, ¿qué tan importante es?
Allen Ginsberg, por ejemplo, puede escribir poemas donde sea – trenes, aviones, en cualquier espacio público. Es inconsciente de todo eso. De hecho, él parece estimularse con la gente que lo rodea. En mi caso, necesito cierta tranquilidad. A menudo, pongo algo de música porque me da algo, un murmullo que me gusta en tanto relajación. Recuerdo que Hart Crane escribió una vez que el sonido de algún disco lo estimulaba y lo llevaba a una cierta apertura. En todo caso, el entorno que es necesario es aquel que le provee al artista una manera de dejarse estar en el mundo del modo más fructífero posible.
¿Cuál es tu concepción del proceso creativo per se? ¿Estás de acuerdo con la descripción de Williams: un saber-cómo teórico más la cuota imaginativa, la desenfrenada base de un sonido demencial?
Sí. Uno puede aprender muchísimo tanto leyendo como por lo que has acumulado al escribir. Pero llega un momento en que todo esto sucede sin demasiadas declaraciones y que puede apartarse de las intenciones de uno. Un proceso comprensivo total no garantiza la ocurrencia. Y uno, curiosamente, nunca sabe ni cómo ni cuándo ni porqué ni bajo qué forma se hará presente.
Nadie puede aprender a escribir poesía, ¿no? Todo lo que envuelve al poeta –experiencias, conocimiento, técnica, emociones. ¿Uno es poeta por mérito de serlo más que por lo que sabe?
Se es poeta en tanto te es dada la posibilidad de la poesía de una manera que se revele como un proceso realmente misterioso. Naturalmente, todo lo que se sabe proviene de la propia escritura y de la de otros escritores que ayudan a obtener una manera de articularla. Es parecido a conducir. Un hombre que no puede conducir en absoluto se siente obviamente avergonzado de bajar un camino. El conductor más “articulado” sería aquel que puede seguir el camino a fuerza de responder precisamente a cada obstáculo. Los contextos de alguna manera son equivalentes.
¿Tienes la sensación de un proceso continuo? ¿Existe la sensación de una nueva aventura en cada poema?
Posiblemente sea una nueva aventura, en el sentido que Melville le daba, “sé fiel a los sueños de tu juventud”, frase de la que Olson me dijo que Melville solía tenerla sobre su mesa de trabajo. No quiero no ser romántico al respecto, pero nunca he sentido estar yendo hacia algún lado con lo que escribo – no creo en un “todos los días y en todas direcciones, voy mejorando más y más”*. Lo que sí me gusta mucho es el hecho de que, a veces, puedo apropiarme de la actividad, estando allí con lo que sea que surge. Al vivir en esta casa, o en la relación con mi esposa, es igual. Ir a “un lugar” no es el objetivo de todo esto.
Has hablado de un poema que creaste “en un molde” o a medida. ¿Es algo te moleste que la inspiración no llegue? ¿Crees que es un fenómeno norteamericano el creer en una fuerza de inspiración que desaparece de vez en cuando?
Me molesta muchísimo, pero he encontrado una cura. No conozco escritores que no hayan atravesado el mismo dilema. No sé qué se puede hacer, excepto esperar. Me di cuenta al final que, perversamente, disfrutaba mi descontento, es decir, no hacía más que revolcarme en la inercia que sentía al estar bloqueado. Es pesadísimo, pero sin embargo, verdad que no hay manera de que pueda escribir, por más deseos que tenga.
¿Eliges conscientemente las temáticas?
Nunca he sido consciente de ellas. Quizás enfatice mucho esa idea, pero no puedo recordar que me haya puesto conscientemente a escribir un poema sobre algo. Bueno, puedo pensar en alguna excepción, como la secuencia de poemas que hice para complementar las pinturas de Robert Indiana, pero luego de un año duro de intentos vanos, llegaron los primeros cinco entre las cinco y las siete de la mañana – un momento del día que no me parece bueno para escribir como para cualquier otra cosa.
Para mí, escribir ha sido siempre una forma de encontrar aquello que estoy sintiendo, -eso es lo que me engancha como “temática- y es también encontrar una articulación para las emociones dentro de la propia escritura. De manera que no elijo mis temáticas de forma consciente. Creo que una vez que las cosas han empezado – es decir, una vez que ya tengo tres o cuatro líneas- es cuando también empieza a engendrarse una posibilidad continua que probablemente siga. Reconozco que, al mirar atrás, he sido persistente en algunas preocupaciones: el matrimonio, las relaciones entre los hombres y las mujeres, la sensación de aislamiento y de lugar en una cierta intimidad, pero jamás he tenido para mí que hubiese que comenzar con algún tipo de “temática”. Vuelvo a Olson en este punto; creo que es en “Letter 15” en The Maximus Poems donde dice “Él dijo, das vueltas alrededor de un tema. Yo dije, no sabía que fuese un tema.” Ya ves, no entiendo que la poesía tenga “temas”, a excepción de las referencias categóricas que hacen en los catálogos de las bibliotecas. La poesía tiene tópicos, es decir, un contenido que persiste en la poesía, más allá de que quiera o no quiera reconocerlo el autor. Estos tópicos son como aquéllos a los que Olson alguna vez se refirió: la guerra, el amor entre el hombre y la mujer, la amistad y el cuidado de la tierra; pero no siento que estos tópicos sean indicadores del mérito de un poema o de su utilidad en la sociedad en la que se hace presente.
Entonces no tienes “punto” alguno que ilustrar o que usar como un término común de referencia.
El punto que quisiera ilustrar es aquello mismo que escribo. La escritura es mi primera articulación, así que, cuando escribo, es por eso mismo por lo que me pongo a trabajar –una articulación en la cual confrontarme, de la que no puedo darme cuenta o anticipar la prioridad de mi trabajo. Creo que hace unos diez años, en la introducción a The Gold Diggers, dije que si dices una cosa, siempre te llevará mucho más allá de lo que habías pensado decir. Esa ha sido siempre mi experiencia.
Para mirar un poco más de cerca los tópicos en tu trabajo: muchos parecen rondar el amor, el odio –en las relaciones humanas. ¿Es esta interacción humana el interés que domina tu punto de vista artístico?
Bueno, siempre me he sentido avergonzado de una supuesta visión más amplia. Estuve escribiendo sobre lo que ejercía una presencia íntima en mí y siempre me he sentido muy, muy nervioso, las veces en las que he intentado lograr una visión más abarcadora. Nunca me he sentido cómodo. Soy un hombre que trabaja con aquello que le es cercano – el sentido del vínculo entre las personas. Creo, al menos para mí mismo, que el mundo se muestra más evidente y más intenso en esos vínculos, por tanto, son esos los materiales con los que trabajo.
Entonces, ¿en general escribes sobre lo que es más importante para ti?
Sí. Para mí, las personas son la cosa más importante en el mundo. No me refiero en absoluto a un sentido humanístico. Es sólo el hecho de que son las presencias más insistentes, exigentes y complejas que se me han ofrecido.
De alguna manera, este tipo de temática es diferente de la de muchos poemas de Williams, al cual admiras. ¿Ves alguna contradicción allí?
Una vez más, recuerdo a Williams cuando dice, “el poeta piensa junto a su poema.” Cuando él llega a un poema como “The Red Wheelbarrow”, el cual es parte de la secuencia de Spring And All, una mixtura de poesía y prosa en su versión original, ese poema y toda la secuencia es una manera de percibir – no planeada, sino encontrada casi en su totalidad por “accidente divino”, como diría Stendhal. Williams dice que esa secuencia particular se mueve entre el reconocimiento que le es ofrecido a través de sus percepciones. En eso estoy interesado, en poemas así – no en el material en concreto que hace a “The Red Wheelbarrow”, sino en cómo se da la percepción, cuál es su idea en el contexto de esa relación. No es simplemente por qué él dice eso, sino cómo lo dice, cómo le da credibilidad y reconocimiento. Ambos estamos haciendo cosas bastante semejantes: pensamos y logramos una manera de articular el poema que nos sea propia. Como él dice, “en nuestra familia tartamudeamos hasta que, ya medio locos, empezamos a hablar.” O, “las palabras están hecha únicamente de aire.” Este contexto de la poesía es de un intimidad e inmediatez muy reconocible para mí, de modo que no creo que puedas decir, “bueno, este hombre habla de botellas verdes y este otro de su esposa; por tanto, están interesados en cosas diferentes.” Es la manera en que las cosas se perciben en el poema y cómo se articulan lo que es significante y, a ese respecto, tengo una gran deuda con Williams y siento que, ciertamente, he aprendido mucho de él.
Dado que tus dos libros recientes son en prosa, The Island y la republicación de The Gold Diggers, ¿podríamos hablar un poco de la diferencia entre poesía y prosa?
Bueno, la prosa parece ofrecer más variedad para acercarte a una experiencia. Es más relajada. Uno puede experimentar mientras está en route, por así decirlo. Pero aún así, para mí, la poesía ofrece una articulación más concentrada e íntima –una manera de hablar más elevada. No tengo preferencias. No digo que la poesía sea para mí más útil en este sentido y que la prosa lo sea en aquel, por tanto, escribo un relato cuando quiero este efecto y un poema cuando quiero aquel. Van y vienen. Cuando algo está en mi mente por un tiempo largo y de alguna forma, soy consciente de ello, probablemente será la prosa la que me dará la oportunidad de articular lo que me anda rondando con tanta insistencia. Pienso, por ejemplo, en un parque de Inglaterra en el que me sentaba junto a un amigo y la novedad de lo que nos rodeaba. No me sentía un extraño, pero sí recién llegado. Estábamos sentados en este parque inglés tan tranquilo un domingo por la tarde cuando una pequeña familia pasaba por un sendero no muy expuesto, pero sí arreglado para que la gente se moviera por los corredores de árboles y plantas, y aquello posibilitaba una cambio permanente en el paisaje de la gente que iba y venía. Había allí una estatua vieja, no muy admirable pero sí interesante, como si una persona hubiese sido inmovilizada o concretizada. En todo caso, en ese momento, sentados en un banco, hablando casualmente y mirando la gente y los niños de todas las edades, algo se despertó en mí. No sabía lo que haría de eso – o quizás, lo que eso iba a hacer conmigo- pero esa clase de persistencia es una de las cosas más intensas que creo haber hallado en Inglaterra. No sé lo que significa. No la comprendo. No sé por qué – de todas las experiencias que he tenido allí- ese momento repentinamente cobró una gran intensidad. Probablemente, eso fuese algo que estaba llegando para ser escrito. Lo siento ahora, lo siento llegar y que haré algo de él. Y, cuando lo haga, probablemente se escribirá en prosa porque en él hay una complejidad en la que querré moverme. Quizás sienta a la prosa como un modo de atravesar algo. La poesía es, a menudo, el aprehender algo absolutamente – un reclamo que no ofrece variaciones de este tipo.
¿Entonces la prosa aparece en tus planes futuros tanto como la poesía?
Debo decirte que en tanto planeo escribir prosa, no hago absolutamente nada. Había planeado escribir otra novela porque verdaderamente disfruté con The Island, habiendo aprendido varias posibilidades técnicas en lo que refiere a la forma –digamos, habiéndola escrito-. Logré una visión referente a lo que, técnicamente, podía ser una obra larga en prosa. No quería perderlo, así que me prometí escribir otra novela, un gesto bastante imprudente. Incluso le puse un título ya que he vivido algo que me pareció ideal para trabajarlo en prosa – dos años que pasé en Guatemala me dejaron una impresión muy caótica de muchas cosas, personas y actos, una gran versatilidad en la gente- Pero tan pronto como lo planeo, se detiene. No sé cómo voy a atravesar eso. Un día simplemente me sentaré y empezaré a escribir. Hasta que ese día llegue, hablar de esto es un poco absurdo porque no trabajo de esa manera… planeando escribir una novela y hablando con mi editor, aceptando un pequeño avance y dándole un título, parezco… no sé. Bueno, por ejemplo, hubo un momento, la primavera pasada, en el que me puse verdaderamente histérico y llamé a mi editor para decirle, “mira, quiero devolverte el dinero. Estoy harto del programa.” Así que, una vez más, ves como Pound tiene razón. Aquella cita que había sacado de Remy de Gourmont, “ser libre para escribir lo que uno quiere escribir es el único placer del escritor.” Es completamente cierta. Tan pronto como se convierte en algo programado, intentar hacer algo se torna muy problemático.

¿Escribes los relatos de una sola vez, igual que los poemas?
Sí. Por eso es que el tipo de economía de la que Pollock hablaba me parecía tan real… Cuando dijo, “Cuando estoy en mi pintura…” Recuerdo una conversación que mi esposa sostuvo con Guston en los cincuentas. Ella lo desafió, “si pintas de esta manera, expresionismo abstracto o como sea que lo llames, ¿cómo sabes cuando está terminado?” Le sugería que, de alguna manera, estaba siendo falso y que también lo era todo en lo que estaba involucrado. Tomó la pregunta muy seriamente y le declaró de una manera muy cuidadosa y generosa su experiencia con la pintura; le decía que estaba terminado cuando, al mirar, te sentías involucrado con lo que estaba pasando y que ya no podías mirar mas allá de donde se había desarrollado esa actividad. Digo, más allá de donde todo eso ha sucedido. Y me di cuenta de que era precisamente lo que yo sentía acerca de la escritura, el momento en que ya no puedo decir algo más es el fin. Escribes o te pronuncias hasta que ya no haya posibilidad de seguir haciéndolo. Pensé que era el caso de Kline, o de Guston o de De Kooning – quizás no tanto el caso de De Kooning ya que su procedimiento formal difiere mucho, pero sí el de Pollock- de aquellos que no “experimentan” tanto como se maravillan, se conmueven y se vinculan con una determinada actividad -que permite experimentar algo- y que los hace seguir ocupados en ella tanto como fuese posible. Y que en algún punto se acaba. Me refiero a que se detiene o quizás a que algo los arroja fuera de ella, los hace detenerse.
Existe actualmente un vasto grupo de poetas que escriben lo que ha sido llamado “Poemas Creeley”. Cortos, tersos, conmovedores al máximo. Sabes, por supuesto, que has tenido una influencia tremenda en la generación posterior. ¿Crees que esta influencia es buena?
No tengo una idea totalizadora. Les toca a ellos demostrarlo. En un conferencia sobre poesía, Robert Duncan -al escuchar varios poemas dedicados a él- dijo, “Oh, Dios mío, ¿yo sueno así?” Hay un cierto horror en ver cómo se repite lo que han tomado como significante de los actos de uno. La retroalimentación proporciona un desarreglo interesante y lo que la gente hace de mi trabajo me ha maravillado algunas veces y otras me ha disgustado, pero no creo que sea mi trabajo decidir cuál es bueno o malo. Ya demostrará sus propias virtudes o sus fallas.
¿Hacia dónde pueden estar yendo estos escritores jóvenes al imitar?
Te repito, no tengo un sentido último de hacia dónde se dirigen con su poesía. Eso es asunto suyo – así como el mío me pertenece a mi. Volvemos a la idea de Olson sobre que cada uno de nosotros tiene sus propios predecesores y su propia concentración, de modo que me parece absurdo proponer reglas a los nuevos poetas. Simplemente siento que todo aquel que esté involucrado con la poesía puede tomar lo que quiera de lo que quizás yo he descubierto o de los que descubrieron antes de mi o después de mí. Obviamente, esto no tiene fin; creo que debe haber una transferencia y que puede o no ser usada para que cada uno aprenda por sí mismo.
¿Cuál es la pauta? ¿Deben seguir imitando?
No, claro que no. La imitación es una forma de lograr un aprendizaje. Es la manera en la que uno aprendió al tener la posibilidad de una cercanía con maestros como Williams o Pound. Escribir poesía en esa modalidad fue una gran instrucción para mí cuando empecé a “sentir” eso a lo que Williams llegaba como “comprensión”. La fase imitativa es una cosa natural en los artistas. Creo que debería ser alentadora. Es una manera de aprender y es la manera que yo respeto viniendo de un medio rural en donde aprendías a arar primero observando cómo otro lo hacía y luego tratando de imitar su forma de hacerlo, así logrando un uso que te sea propio. Pero aquello que ares – más allá de que ares o no- es asunto tuyo y, afortunadamente, hay muchas maneras de hacerlo.

CA Conrad | The Book of Frank | Chax

Ambar Past with Xalik Guzmán Bakbalom and Xpetra Ernandez | Incantations: Songs, spells and images by Mayan women | Cinco Puntas Press

Ursula LeGuin | A Wizard of Earthsea | Banta | 1981

Peter Trachtenberg | Book of Calamities: Five Questions about Suffering and Its Meaning | Little Brown | 2008

Reb Anderson | Warm Smiles from Cold Mountains: Dharma Talks on Zen Meditation | Rodmell | 2005

Carol Samosek | Mediated | na | na

Jennifer Moxley | The Middle Room | subpress | 2007

Can Xue | Old Floating Cloud & Yellow Mud Street: Two Novellas | Northwestern | 1992

Slavoj Zizek | Looking Awry | MIT P | 1992

Franz Kafka | Amerika

Steve Carey | Selected Poems of Steve Carey | Subpress | 2009

Gary Snyder | Mountains and Rivers without End | Counterpoint | 1997

More Eileen Myles here.

I’ve been particularly attuned to the weather for the last few weeks, because I planted my autumn/winter garden seeds at the beginning of September. Walking to work on nice days, I’ve been guessing at the heat of the light and the number of hours its been landing on the garden, warming the seeds. We had lots of days like that, interspersed with gentle September rainbursts, which I gloried in, imagining the droplets seeping down through warm soil to nourish emerging seeds. It was the perfect weather for starting a cool-season garden.

autumn in the garden 1: ripening tomato

Witnessing vegetables sprout from seeds is one of my favorite things, so I watch my garden like a hawk in the days after I plant it. When they’ve had enough time to germinate, I start checking every few hours, increasingly giddy and paranoid. Giddy because I know tiny green shoots will appear at any moment. Paranoid because I know as soon as the shoots appear, the snails will come. They decimated my spring starts, migrating into my garden under cover of darkness by the hundreds and chomping the plants down to the dirt. So, as I took satisfaction in the garden-friendly September weather, I also because increasingly neurotic, imagining hordes of gastropods converging on my garden to destroy everything I’d planted and yearned for.

Autumn in the garden 2: pumpkins

As the day neared when the seeds would sprout into the daylight, I became increasingly obsessed with tactics to protect them. I could use poison to keep the snails out. Or something less toxic; say a beer trap for them to slime into and drown. I could even follow the example of New Zealand grandmother Oriole Parker-Rhodes, who decided to one-up the helix aspersa by harvesting them right along with her garden veggies and serving them up in butter and garlic.

Oriole Parker-Rhodes

But weirdly enough, even though the snails destroy something I love SO much… I can’t bring myself to kill them. For a couple reasons.

First: its hard for me to kill anything, honestly, which is part of the reason why I am mostly vegan. [I eat fish maybe once a month, cheese once a week or so, and meat once or twice a year. Every meal I cook at home is vegan.]

Second: I’ve come to realize that each of my actions—particularly those that involve consumption—have far reaching consequences. I recently discovered that, in addition to creating a carbon footprint, I am also creating a water footprint. Josh Harkinson recently published a fantastic article on the subject in Mother Jones. Chew on this:

[Farmer] Shawn Coburn, turned toward me and demanded if I knew how much water it took to grow one almond, a cantaloupe, or a pound of tomato paste. (I didn’t. Turns out it’s 1 gallon, 25 gallons, and 55 gallons, respectively.) “The people in the city, they don’t know what their footprint on nature is,” he scoffed. “They sit there in an ivory tower and don’t realize what it takes to keep them alive.”

autumn in the garden 3: peppers

Farmer Shawn is right. We have no idea what it takes to keep us alive. After reading Harkinson’s article, I did some research and discovered that being mostly-vegan also enables me to reduce my water footprint by nearly TWO TONS every year. Once I learned that, I became obsessed with my two tons of not-wasted water. Where was it? I started imagining a tiny, two-ton alpine lake, ringed with talus slopes and huckleberry plants. Every day in the year I abstain from consuming animal products, the lake gets a little deeper. If I’m dawdling in the shower, I picture my lake-level dropping, and I turn the water off. I try to only water my garden at night or in the early morning, and if a dry spell goes on for too long, I will stop watering altogether and let my garden die until the rains come again.

I suspect that, akin to the imaginary lake filled with water I have Not wasted, there is an unseen ecological consequence of all the snails I have Not killed.

I’m not against using scare tactics. The other day, while helping me rake leaves and fill holes our dogs had dug in the yard, my friend Gretchen picked up a snail to study it more closely. Her chocolate lab puppy Butters darted up and licked the snail, top to bottom.

Butters, prior to snail-attack, in bottom left.

Gretchen turned the snail to face her and informed it seriously: “Tell all your friends. This is what we do to snails around here.” Then she tucked it safely in an empty potting container, from whence I deposited it in the (covered) compost cone later that day, to live out its snail-life in a paradise of rotting vegetable matter.

I’m too lazy and squeamish to pick them off my garden at night with a flashlight, like Thich Naht Hahn does at Plum Village. Some online gardeners suggest lining your garden with hair clippings, but I don’t have any at the moment. I have lots of dog hair, but I’m sure it would blow away. Eggshells are also supposed to dissuade snails from crossing into your garden, but being a predominantly vegan household, we don’t generate any eggshells. Copper is also rumored to dissuade snails and slugs via a tiny shock to their tender bellies (vaguely Guantanamo, but still non-lethal), so I tried lining my garden with pennies. It seemed to be working, but then they started getting knocked off the edge of the bed by unshocked and/or braver snails, clearing a path for their legions of followers.

By the time I’d pulled together a little extra cash to buy copper wire to wrap around my 36 foot garden perimeter, it was too late. The snails had made short work of my babies. Six rows of winter greens, chomped all the way down to the root. And despite all those hours of obsessing over my seeds, weather patterns, and non-lethal slug aversion techniques, I wasn’t angry at first. Just sad and frustrated.

I comforted myself with the concept of coexistence. I thought of a conversation I had last week with Dharma teacher and organic gardener Dan Peterson, who reflected thoughtfully that the snails probably enjoyed eating his garden just as much as he did. Staring ruefully at my decimated garden, I thought about Aldo Leopold, who noted in the Sand County Almanac, that humans are simply “plain members of the biotic community.” Who’s to say those snails’ pleasure is any less important than mine? I’ve identified philosophically with deep ecology since my early twenties romance with the writings of Gary Snyder. I agree with deep ecology’s founder Arne Næss, who wrote in 1973: “The right of all forms [of life] to live is a universal right which cannot be quantified. No single species of living being has more of this particular right to live and unfold than any other species.”

Still, this was MY garden! Those winter greens belonged to Ryan and I. We were going to use the kale in soups, as and bake it in olive oil and salt. The spinach was going to get drowned in peanut sauce and served up with tofu, and the rainbow chard was destined for hundreds of breakfast scrambles. I clambered into the garden and knelt down, searching in vain for any surviving green. There was none. Now I was mad. I shouted at the alley, and retreated into the house.

Later, I listened to a recording of a talk Dan Peterson had given at the Seattle Shambhala Center on mind terma, the treasures of Buddhist teaching passed from teacher to student through the generations. I’m not a practicing Buddhist, and I have trouble sitting still, so a lot of Buddhist teachings sail straight over my head. But Dan tells great stories, and his talk pulled me in. He talked about “how we wake up, moment by moment.” I thought of all those days I’d taken note of the weather and the light, and all the times I’d knelt by the edge of the garden to watch for the tiny miracle of green sprouts pushing their way up through the dirt. Moment after moment of awakening to my surroundings, to the intimate process of growing food. The moment of discovering decimation by snails contained an equal amount of awe— awe at destruction, not creation. But in that destruction, the snails thrived, and something else was created. Dan told a story from his own garden:

In the morning I go out into the garden in my barefeet to water, and I had the experience of stepping barefoot on a slug. It felt like electricity. It was a sentient being! So I would gather the slugs in a plastic container and carry them to my compost heap. I kept it moist, and they were fine there. Later, I found literally fifty to eighty slugs coming out of the compost heap, and they were all lined up in the same direction, going back to the garden! Our regard for what we call slugs can be east. We can be facing east when we look at a slug. There’s no enemy.

By facing east, Dan was referring to a Shambhala chant. “Radiating confidence, peaceful, illuminating the way of discipline, Eternal Ruler of the Three Worlds, may the Great Eastern Sun be victorious.” He explained:

The East represents richness, brilliance, and is the quality of unconditional experience… Peaceful means that there’s no aggression, which means there’s no territory. There’s complete openness. With no territory, there is primordial confidence. There’s nothing to defend, no enemy. This is a lot of conceptual load to put onto the simplicity of direct experience, but I think its helpful to point out that’s what happening. There’s no enemy… Radiating confidence, peaceful, is east.

I tried facing east. Watching snails destroy my planting, after all those weeks of tending and watching and waiting, was an opportunity. A pile of direct experience to wade into and consider.

There is no territory. The garden Ryan and I built belongs no more to me than it does to the snails. The land the garden sits on belongs no more to my landlord than it does to me. We are all of us only dwelling here for a little while. Here, in my decimated garden, was my deep ecology philosophy made real. How could I be angry? There was no enemy. I took deep breaths. Felt peaceful.

A couple brussel sprout plants were large enough to survived the snails, so today I planted some company for them. Stopped by the West Seattle Nursery and picked up small starts of red cabbage, kale, broccoli, winter greens mix, and some onion and garlic bulbs, all big enough to (hopefully) survive the oncoming snails and frosts.

starting over.

It begins again.

Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828)

Reginald Horace Blyth, born in England in 1898, died in Japan in 1964.

Following are two haiku by Kobayashi Issa (小林一茶), who lived from 1763 to 1828. He was associated with the Jôdoshinshû sect of Japanese Buddhism. I reproduce here the translations and commentaries on the poems by R.H. Blyth, whose masterwork Haiku—published in four volumes from 1949 to 1952, under the successive titles Volume 1: Eastern Culture, Volume 2: Spring, Volume 3:Summer-Autumn, and Volume 4: Autumn-Winter (Hokuseido Press)—re-introduced the form into the English-speaking world, influencing such writers (in America) as Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, and Richard Wright, to name only three. These volumes were later followed by a shorter, two-volume History of Haiku (1963), which further extended Blyth’s influence on poetry—and on thinking about Japan more generally—in the English-speaking world. The commentaries he provides in the latter work are notably succinct, and by turns gnomic, amusing, and exact. The book is, in short, pretty generally a delight to read.

The original Japanese, together with Blyth's romanization. His translation and commentary follow below.

Just below the pissing,
Drip, drip, drip,—
Iris flowers.

This is one of the best haiku ever written. It has everything in it. It overflows, overflowers.

Again, the original Japanese, with Blyth's romanization. His translation and commentary follow.

A straw mat;
The Milky Way aslant
In the saucepan.

The greatness of Issa consists in his putting the Galaxy into the stew-pot.

N.B. The images and texts above are from R.H. Blyth’s History of Haiku (vol. 1): 388. For The Icebox, a Kyoto-based site devoted to haiku in English, click here. Readers curious as to my having mentioned Richard Wright, author of Native Son, in connection with haiku should have a look at a wonderful book, published posthumously and with an introduction by his daughter, called Haiku: This Other World. It collects 817 of the more than 4,000 haiku Wright wrote during the last two years of his life. For a link to Pure Land Haiku: The Art of Priest Issa, a book about Issa by David Lanoue, click here.

The new issue of Ecopoetics includes two interviews with Gary Snyder, one conducted by the editor, Jonathan Skinner, the other by Kyhl Lyndgaard. One portion in particular caught my eye from the former:

JS — You said at one point — in one of those interviews in The Real Work — that you never write of an animal or a plant that you haven’t seen.

GS — Not usually, no. Unless I dreamed it.

JS — Could you say a bit about the importance of that experience?

GS — I take animals seriously. They’re real beings. It’s exploitative to just try to play with them like counters. They don’t like it.

JS — Plants too?

GS — Yeah. You have to take into account …

JS — What about rocks?

GS — Anything. The world is solid. And spiritual. It’s just not something that you move around ny way you like. You have to give respect to it. Just like what Dick Nelson says about Koyukon, Athapaskan Indians in Alaska, in the Yukon area. He says they are so sensitive … to the etiquette of nature, that a mother will say, “Don’t point at the mountain, it’s rude.”

JS — I think there is a baseline rule for “ecopoetics,” in some respects, that it has to go beyond book-learning, beyond poems put together with the dictionary or encyclopedia.

GS — Koyukon are really something about that. Nelson talks about a guy trying to get his outboard started on the river there, and he’s getting kind of pissed off at it. And his friend says, “Don’t get mad at the outboard, it’s got feelings you know.”

The language philosophy underlying this exchange is a charming mixture of pragmatism and magical thinking. Pragmatism, because the emphasis falls on how words influence human action. For Snyder, the self-imposed discipline of writing about animals he has seen (or dreamt about!) and no others is a means of fostering respect — respect for animals and also for nature as a whole. It’s a constraint, but unlike the constraints of Oulipo and its progeny, Snyder’s constraint treats writing as part of the moral life of the writer. The magical aspect of Snyder’s practice lies in his further belief that words have an effect on the world, not just because they influence human action, but directly, as directly as any other tool. Even as guns, axes, traps, and engines alter the shape and character of the solid world, so too do words alter the shape and character of the spiritual. The exploitation of animals begins in the indiscriminate use of their names.

Jonathan Skinner (with Carla Billitteri peeking out from behind the corner)

Snyder doesn’t make the latter point directly, in part because the interview moves so quickly, in part because his pragmatism — his footing in the solid world — is so strong. Though he loves words, he cares much more about the world. When Skinner asks him about writing, he skips directly over to nature. He doesn’t say, “I take names seriously. … It’s exploitative to just try to play with them like counters,” he says “I take animals seriously.”  But the skipping over, the substitution of “animals” for “names,” is not just a prioritizing; it indicates a train of thought, as Snyder more or less confirms by citing with approval Koyukon sensitivity. In writing, he suggests, one should not “point” rudely at animate or even inanimate objects, since not only animals and plants, but rocks, outboard motors, indeed “Anything” (as Snyder emphatically tells Skinner) can be hurt as a consequence. ^[1]

I would not be as confident as I am in this interpretation had I not read Carla Billitteri’s book on Cratylism and American poetry (reviewed by Charles Bernstein here). Cratylism — named for Plato’s Cratylus dialogue — is a belief in the natural propriety of language: of language understood as a collection of names and of names understood as the authentic expression of things. Since Plato’s dialogue is already a critique of this belief, its persistence into our own, post-Saussurian era speaks directly to its enormous appeal, especially to poets. In Billitteri’s account, the basis of that appeal — at least in American poetry — is the generative power Cratylism offers utopian social projects pursued within the horizon of language. After all, if words and things are intimately connected, the poet’s actions on the one should have a direct effect on the other. The renewal of the world begins, one might say, in the discriminate use of names.

As Billitteri shows (through her reading of Plato’s dialogue and its recapitulation in three poetic projects — those of Walt Whitman, Laura (Riding) Jackson, and Charles Olson), Cratylism is impossible to sustain in its purest form, which means that Cratylist poetics inevitably incorporate or coexist in potent tension with other ideas about language. As she writes in her coda (on Language poetry as a kind of neo-Cratylism):

Whenever linguisticity and social vision are conjoined in poetry — whenever “a more than ordinary consciousness of how to do things with words” takes the world as well as language as its object — impulses toward Cratylism will inevitably arise. These impulses may be resisted, they may be entertained playfully as tropes, they may become temptations difficult to avoid, but the very fact that they arise will in itself be noteworthy, an indication of the poet’s desire to act on the world by acting on language. ^[2]

There are, we learn from Billitteri, several versions of Cratylism, and several forms of Cratylist fantasy. In one of these fantasies, words disappear altogether, into the things of which they speak, allowing poetry to become a kind of thing-language. Billitteri’s principal example of this fantasy is Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Rolling Earth,” about which she writes, “A hymn to the materiality of things and words, the poem begins by dismissing written language as mere squiggles, affirming that the real language abides in the substance of the earth and in human corporeality.” Here are the poem’s opening lines:

A song of the rolling earth, and of words according,
Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines? those curves, angles, dots?
No, those are not the words, the substantial words are in the ground and sea,
They are in the air, they are in you.

Were you thinking that those were the words, those delicious sounds out of your friends’ mouths?
No, the real words are more delicious than they.

Human bodies are words, myriads of words,
(In the best poems re-appears the body, man’s or woman’s, well-shaped, natural, gay,
Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame.)

Air, soil, water, fire—those are words,
I myself am a word with them—my qualities interpenetrate with theirs…

Gary Snyder

And here is a Snyder poem from Turtle Island that gives expression to the same fantasy, and must, indeed, be indebted to Whitman’s prior formulation:

As for Poets

The Earth Poets
Who write small poems,
Need help from no man.

+

The Air Poets
Play out the swiftest gales
And sometimes loll in the eddies.
Poem after poem,
Curling back on the same thrust.

+

At fifty below
Fuel oil won’t flow
And propane stays in the tank.
Fire Poets
Burn at absolute zero
Fossil love pumped back up.

+

The first
Water Poet
Stayed down six years.
He was covered with seaweed.
The life in his poem
Left millions of tiny
Different tracks
Criss-crossing through the mud.

+

With the Sun and Moon
In his belly,
The Space Poet
Sleeps.
No end to the sky —
But his poems,
Like wild geese,
Fly off the edge.

+

A Mind Poet
Stays in the house.
The house is empty
And it has no walls.
The poem
Is seen from all sides,
Everywhere,
At once.

This is playful, of course, not a statement of belief. ^[3] For a statement more in keeping with Snyder’s actual commitments, one should turn instead to a poem from Regarding Wave, “What You Should Know to Be a Poet.” As in the poem above, though very differently, words are ultimately disparaged in favor of the world they address. Despite the title, the only advice offered about language is to know the correct names of things. But the abandonment of words does not occur for the sake of materiality alone. Spiritual considerations are also given their due:

What You Should Know to Be a Poet

all you can know about animals as persons.
the names of trees and flowers and weeds.
the names of stars and the movements of the planets
and the moon.

your own six senses, with a watchful elegant mind.

at least one kind of traditional magic:
divination, astrology, the book of changes, the tarot;

dreams.
the illusory demons and the illusory shining gods.

kiss the ass of the devil and eat shit;
fuck his horny barbed cock,
fuck the hag,
and all the celestial angels
and maidens perfum’d and golden —

& then love the human: wives   husbands   and friends

children’s games, comic books, bubble-gum,
the weirdness of television and advertising.

work, long dry hours of dull work swallowed and accepted
and livd with and finally lovd.   exhaustion,
hunger, rest.

the wild freedom of the dance, extasy
silent solitary illumination, enstasy

real danger.   gambles.   and the edge of death.

Knowing for Snyder also involves doing, hence the injunction to kiss, eat, fuck, and love at the center of the poem. This is his pragmatism, expressed with greater force and clarity than the magic it accommodates, which makes sense since magic points toward the inexpressible. Dance and solitude, ecstasy and illumination. Language is not the horizon here, not even a language of things.

Cratylist touches aside, in other words, the magical aspect of Snyder’s project has less to do with the properties of language than it does with what language fails to encompass. And in this respect, he reminds me much more of Emerson than Whitman. In Emerson too pragmatism and magic are brought together, and in Emerson too, despite Cratylist touches, the adequacy of words and things is not, finally, the point. The point is the world, and those who forget the point are fated to know the world from surfaces only, from a “thin and outward rind” depleted of all its worth:

Blight

Give me truths;
For I am weary of the surfaces,
And die of inanition. If I knew
Only the herbs and simples of the wood,
Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain, and agrimony,
Blue-vetch, and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras,
Milkweeds, and murky brakes, quaint pipes, and sundew,
And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods
Draw untold juices from the common earth,
Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell
Their fragrance, and their chemistry apply
By sweet affinities to human flesh,
Driving the foe and stablishing the friend, —
O, that were much, and I could be a part
Of the round day, related to the sun
And planted world, and full executor
Of their imperfect functions.
But these young scholars, who invade our hills,
Bold as the engineer who fells the wood,
And travelling often in the cut he makes.
Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,
And all their botany is Latin names.
The old men studied magic in the flowers,
And human fortunes in astronomy,
And an omnipotence in chemistry,
Preferring things to names, for these were men,
Were unitarians of the united world,
And, wheresoever their clear eye-beams fell,
They caught the footsteps of the SAME. Our eyes
Are armed, but we are strangers to the stars,
And strangers to the mystic beast and bird,
And strangers to the plant and to the mine.
The injured elements say, ‘Not in us;’
And night and day, ocean and continent,
Fire, plant, and mineral say, ‘Not in us,’
And haughtily return us stare for stare.
For we invade them impiously for gain;
We devastate them unreligiously,
And coldly ask their pottage, not their love.
Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us
Only what to our griping toil is due;
But the sweet affluence of love and song,
The rich results of the divine consents
Of man and earth, of world beloved and lover,
The nectar and ambrosia, are withheld;
And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves
And pirates of the universe, shut out
Daily to a more thin and outward rind,
Turn pale and starve. Therefore, to our sick eyes,
The stunted trees look sick, the summer short,
Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay,
And nothing thrives to reach its natural term;
And life, shorn of its venerable length,
Even at its greatest space is a defeat,
And dies in anger that it was a dupe;
And, in its highest noon and wantonness,
Is early frugal, like a beggar’s child;
With most unhandsome calculation taught,
Even in the hot pursuit of the best aims
And prizes of ambition, checks its hand,
Like Alpine cataracts frozen as they leaped,
Chilled with a miserly comparison
Of the toy’s purchase with the length of life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

One could quibble with Emerson’s high-handed denunciation of “unhandsome calculation.” Isn’t his “full executor” of nature’s “imperfect functions” but a bolder engineer, a more handsome calculator? What he decries, however, is not the mastery of nature, but the ignorance and wantonness with which the mastery is accomplished. Blighted and blighting, Emerson’s invading scholar and ravaging engineer “Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,” which makes them ancestors of Snyder’s exploiter, who treats animals as mere “counters” and points rudely at the rock, castigating the outboard motor. Such people exhaust the world of all its natural and spiritual resources, and exhaust themselves as well, becoming “Like Alpine cataracts frozen as they leaped.”

As for language: the truest facility with words, the deepest knowledge, comes not from speech or writing here, but from the practice of living. For Emerson, as for Snyder, knowing correct names (even in Latin!) is not enough; nor is it enough to know the things they name. One must know them in the correct manner, which is to say by taking correct action. Only in this way can one learn to “spell” the “fragrance” of “the herbs and simples of the wood.” Only from this source can one learn to take possession of nature’s actual bounty.

In Snyder, then, I see the persistence of an Emersonian poetics, a project distinct from the Emerson-inspired projects of Whitman and Dickinson, which is mostly what we find in later poets who trace their lineage back to Concord. Call it the Emerson of Thoreau, but more accommodating to magic. A poet with his feet in the solid world, but his mind attuned to worlds of dream. With a craftsman’s respect for language as tool, and a moralist’s impatience for tools without purpose. Loving the flower he plucks, the tree he cuts for fuel, even the machine that breaks down on a busy morning. ^[4]

◊

Notes

¹ [Back to text] Of course, if one should avoid exploiting anything in the world, poetry has to be included, which means that one shouldn’t treat poetry as a means to an end either. It’s the problem of actualizing Kantian ethics, dramatized with great humor by Mary McCarthy in Birds of America, one of my favorite novels.

² [Back to text] “Linguisticity” is a term coined by Michael P. Kramer; the quote comes from his book Imagining Language in America (1992).

³ [Back to text] In his interview with Lyndgaard, Snyder talks about this poem and it becomes clear from that discussion that he means for his metaphors to be paths for thought, not endpoints where thought might rigidify into belief. This is probably the aspect of Snyder’s work I most appreciate: his dedication to thinking as a lifelong process, his curiosity, his willingness to revise or adapt his formulations.

⁴ [Back to text] See in this regard Snyder’s “Stories in the Night,” in the new issue of Ecopoetics:

Big Green Onan — fueled by propane — wouldn’t start —
(one time turned out there was a clogged air cleaner; oil-drops blow back up
from deep inside)

(I try to remember machinery can always be fixed — but be ready to give up the
plans that were made for the day — go back to the manual — call up friends who
know more — make some tea — relax with your tools and your problems, start
enjoying the day.)

I still remember the first time I heard him say that, eight years ago this month, September 20, 2001. I heard the audio clip again today, sampled at the end of a hiphop track, and it gave me chills.

There was the America I lived in before he said that, and there was the America I lived in after. I am still trying to figure out what changed.

journal, 10 September, 2001. day off today, decent weather. decided to have a try at making the hike-climb to Camp Muir. Left Guidehouse around 10:45 or so and began trudging up the cement trails to Pebble Creek. Around Panorama point, I reflect on an orderpad (brought along cuz its lighter than the journal) “the breezes coming off the mountain are cold from the glaciers, and sweep away everything that lingers.” felt an incredible sense of peace and singleness of purpose as I passed through subapline meadows and hiked up into the fellfields. Notice for the first time that the waterfall coming off the Wilson Glacier disappears entirely into the loose rock above the Nisqually Glacier, as if it is funneling into a chute. No snow on St. Helens, but a fair amount on Adams. The Cascades stretch out in front of me to the ocean, ridgeline after bluegreenpurple ridgeline, like the shapes left in the sand after a giant wave has receded back into the sea. On that note, notice that the waterfalls coming off the mountain sound exactly like the ocean roar, and the occasional icefall or rockslide sounds much like the breaking of larger waves.

September 11 came at the end of my twentieth summer, which I spent living and waitressing in Paradise, the small employee village/tourist destination on the southwestern flank of Mt. Rainier.

Paradise is the small cluster of buildings in the sunlight beneath the clouds

The mountainsides were turning fall colors, and I was reading a lot of Beat poetry, and picking a lot of huckleberries, having figured out where the tastiest ones grew from a Gary Snyder poem: “Delicate blue-black, sweeter from the meadows, small and tart in the valleys with light blue dust.”

I was cynical about the new Bush administration, angry that the country had just laid down and let him take office when it was clear that something was rotten in Florida. I was unnerved by the prospect of a political dynasty, and the administration’s potential for doing harm. But I wasn’t afraid of them yet. Resenting corrupt national leaders seemed in keeping with being twenty and enamored of the Beat poets and living in the mountains. I figured they’d do some damage, and get voted out in four years, and we’d go to some rallies and make some good art about it. I didn’t understand yet all the ways people could get hurt. Would get hurt.

On September 10th, I set out to hike to Camp Muir, the primary base camp for mountaineers attempting the summit of Rainier. I’d been eying the hike all summer. None of my friends had the day off to go with me, so I went alone. Its no easy day hike— you ascend nearly five thousand feet in less than five miles, and the last portion of the hike crosses the Muir snowfield, which is prone to frequent whiteouts. That summer, enough snow had melted to expose crevasses on the snowfield, something none of the mountaineering guides could remember in recent decades. I was prepared, but also young, and bent on proving to myself and everyone else that I could. My male friends were constantly going off on solo hikes, but women were cautioned not to hike alone, and it rankled me. So I set off, with my ten essentials and my extra water bottles, on a sunny, clear-skied September day.

“in early afternoon, i finally hop over the last narrow crevasse and hike into the camp, tucked in the bowl between Cowlitz Cleaver and Anvil Rock. Sit leaning against the shelter looking out over the Tatoosh range, which seems so small now. The sun is warm, and the hiss of campstoves comes from all corners, as climbers melt snow for their water bottles. Most will leave sometime tonight to attempt the summit. We’ve watched their lights from Paradise before, nudging up those last four thousand feet in the dark, and its strange to be here now, looking out across the world from ten thousand feet. It was work getting up here, but I’m not really tired or sore. Steep slopes of snow angling down before the rest of the lowlands, crevasses cutting through the snowfield and the glaciers all around. Take a small nap on the little plateau, and talk with a few climbers, then slip slide back down the snowfield and trudge back down to Paradise.”

That night, I was sitting in the employee dining room, eating some food-service-of-america-brand dinner, writing about the hike in my journal. Two of my coworkers came in to make pb and j’s for a hike, and told me they were setting out to camp on Pinnacle Peak. Within twenty minutes, I’d traded my September 11th breakfast shift for someone’s lunch shift and re-packed my backpack. We drove down to the Pinnacle Peak trailhead at the foot of the Tatoosh Range, just below Paradise, parked the car, and turned on our headlamps.

ten percent of the time, we are hiking on the trail, and 90 percent of the time we are winging it, navigating scree slopes by Petzlglow beneath dark peaks silhouetted against a sky absolutely overflowing with stars, clambering down rockslides and cutting mountaingoat style across rockfaces. we find a spectacular little plateau on the backside of Castle Peak and unroll our sleeping pads. the plateau is on a saddle between two of the Tatoosh mountains, which means we can see the small cluster of lights on Rainier that is Paradise behind us, and the small cluster of lights downvalley which is the town of Packwood before us. We pass around a bottle of Sammy Smith oatmeal stout, and watch the moon rise. For a time, it is an eerie shade of red, as it passes through the more chemical-laden slice of our atmosphere, then it fades to yellow and then bright white as it ascends. The night grows cold, and I don’t sleep much. Crazy sunrise in the morning, like laying under a heatlamp by eight. We eat pb and j and pick huckleberries for breakfast, then clamber straight down the side of Castle and bushwhack our way to the car, talking about vagabondage and Merle Haggard.

I think: I could live like this all the time, and be really happy. love having fingers that smell like pine and are covered in dirt and huckleberry stains.

back at Paradise, I run up the stairs to my dorm room. Throw on a black skirt and the cleanest white shirt I can find, splash water on my face and hair. I am digging for a clean apron in the mess on the floor when another waitress pokes her head through the door. She says “someone flew a plane into the world trade center!” I picture the small airplane that had crashed on the lawn of the White House sometime in recent memory, and i say, “oh, how bizzare.” Realize I’m truly late for work, and finish getting dressed as I run to the dining room, picking the dirt out from under my fingernails and adjusting the knot on my tie.

8 years later, I remember how quiet it was in the dining room when I came running through the double doors. All the servers, bussers, and hosts were standing on the little platform by the bar window, peering through at the only television set in the lodge. The footage was a few hours old by then, and we weren’t entirely convinced it was real. Smoke billowing out of downtown New York. The planes, flying into the side of the towers. The tiny specks that were people’s bodies, leaping from the inferno. The dumbstruck newscasters. It was all too much like a movie. As it turned out, so was what followed.

Because no one wanted to fly anymore, out-state-guests canceled their reservations at the lodge. The shell-shocked, somber national mood dovetailed with the end of the summer season, and every morning we waited on a smaller group of tourists, refilling coffee cups and moving quietly among tables where everyone was reading the same newspaper. The air grew cooler, and the rain and fog settled in around us. We kept living the way we had been, taking hikes in between shifts and sitting next to bonfires and playing out summer romances.

On September 23rd, I copied Ed Abbey’s definition of somnolence out of Desert Solitaire: “a heaviness in the air, a chill in the sunlight, an oppressive stillness in the atmosphere that hints of much, but says nothing.”

As Bush ramped up the nation to invade Afghanistan, my best friend and roommate Erin and I ripped up a sheet and painted banners to hang out our third floor dormitory window: “War IS terrorism,” we proclaimed to the emptying parking lots.

erin sitting beneath our banner outside of Guidehouse, our dormitory building, writing in her journal.

We realized the president was asking us to take sides. His speeches, which we clipped out of the Tacoma News Tribune, reduced reality to two dimensions. There was good, and there was evil, and you were one, or you were the other. Young as we were, we were unnerved, and not fooled.

8 years later, I am married, and 28. I live with my husband and my dog in a sweet little house with a garden near the water in West Seattle. I’ve gotten a master’s degree and written a book manuscript. I am still a waitress. My life is good. Erin is 29, married with a stepdaughter in a sweet little house in Portland. She’s been the editor of a newspaper, has gotten a master’s degree, and has learned to surf. We still read beat poetry, write in our journals. The war George Bush began has lasted nearly the entire decade of our twenties.

21 September 2001, Friday. weather comes and goes today. Rained a bit. Bush says you’re either with America or for terrorism. I refuse to believe its that black and white. especially when I seem to remember laerning that America trained a lot of these “terrorists” in Afghanistan back in the 80s to fight communist Russia? So much for good versus evil. how do you mobilize against “terrorism,” anyway? Bombing the Middle East will accomplish the following, in my uneducated opinion:
1. the deaths of untold numbers of Muslims from violence, starvation, and “smart bombing” (which will be continually three steps behind the “real terrorists”)
2. More terrorism.
3. racism, rampant prejudice, alienation and violence against Muslims and brown people in the United States.
4. on the “plus” side, war is often good for the economy, and solidarity among many Americans will increase, at least temporarily, which tends to happen when you think evil people are trying to kill you. Consequence: the country will rally behind our “leader” and let him get away with pretty much whatever he wants.

8 years later, change in presidential administrations notwithstanding, Operation Enduring Freedom is still churning merrily along. America has gone bankrupt, but plenty of golden parachutes have opened, sparing corporate execs a bumpy landing in the ravaged economy. Some corporations—primarily prescription drug companies and defense contractors— have actually managed to get richer. (Bad times are good for buzzards). We’ve had other Hallmark moments; in August of 2006, American citizens drowned in New Orleans because the National Guard was stationed in Iraq and the national leadership was too busy plotting war and buying shoes. We’ve merrily ignored genocide in Darfur, installed new puppet governments in the Middle East, and made torture part of our “national security” program.

Last month—August 2009—was the deadliest month to date in the war in Afghanistan. 77 coalition soldiers died… that’s 2 people a day, and 3 on Sundays. 199 American soldiers have died in Afghanistan this year alone—the highest casualty rate sustained since we invaded in 2001 to root out Osama bin Laden. Who, eight years later, is reputedly alive, well, and releasing more videotapes. The Taliban now controls an estimated eighty percent of Afghanistan. 2009 set another record as well, while we’re on the subject: in the first six months of 2009, over 1000 Afghani civilians died, a 24 % increase from 2008. .

Eight years later, I realize there’s very little connection left between the people of Afghanistan and those New Yorkers who held hands and jumped into the sky. I realize there was never really much of a connection to begin with, and what connection there was got lost in the mud of a war waged in Iraq under entirely false premises.

America claims to have turned over a new leaf. I’m not sure what’s actually changed.

The state of Georgia has blessed us (we?) maniacal motorists with inefficient signs looming over the Interstates, probably feeling that Atlanta drivers need another reason not to watch the road while driving. This morning I looked up and saw that there was an accident on a completely different Interstate, miles out of the way of where I was heading. Shortly after taking and dismissing note of this sign, I was passed by several screaming rescue vehicles heading towards the noted incident. Aside from the fact that Georgia Navigator Traffic knew about the incident long before the people who should be tending to the incident, I was most moved by the realization that these rescue vehicles would be driving quite a distance to get to where the incident was reported. Almost in the next county, but not quite. In fact, less than a mile from that other county’s Fire Department and less than two miles from their EMT dispatch site. I drive a lot and have learned these things through painful repetition.

Not tasked with worrying about anyone’s actual safety, I then thought about how absurd it was that rescue vehicles be county specific. That led me to consider the arbitrariness of county, city, and state lines. None of which mean anything beyond some previous landowner’s financial resources. That is what makes them arbitrary, but what makes them necessary? State lines, particularly, don’t follow any regional guidelines dictated by botanically existing neighborhoods. Sometimes a state line may follow a river path, but one state to the next looks remarkably the same until you have crossed several miles of similar landscape only to finally stumble across a line denoting a taxable welcome to some arbitrary new state. Gary Snyder discusses this very theme in an essay called Watersheds much more fully than I’m willing to allow here, so read his essay if you’re environmentally challenged to know better than I explain.

Really, the same holds true for Literature and Poetry. After years of scars I’ve finally learned where to go to find my sought-after books in any bookstore around this un-blessed city, but rarely does it make any sense other than following some arbritary pattern. Fiction and Poetry are fairly obvious and broad categories, followed by generic alphabetization, one can develop a good lead of where a particular book might be. “Is it Memoir,” one attendant asked me when we were unable to locate a particular book. “Because if it is, we might have it in Biography.” I didn’t feel like bringing up the point that Memoir was more appropriately classified as Autobiography, and just as well, because we found the book. What about books labeled simply as Fiction but tell much more about the author than any Biography or Autobiography would allow? What of the Autobiography that is so fabricated that Fiction wouldn’t even recognize it as a distant relative? What about Satire? Picaresque Novels? Usually mixed in with some other broad category which isn’t very convincing, but somehow effective because people have these mislabeled books in their collections.

Labels are handy ear marks for quick reference for the proprietors and instigators of the labels. Your common stooge stumbling upon these labels is likely to have scratched groove stains across his/her noggin. As children we’re taught that “you can’t judge a book by its cover,” but the application of life indicates otherwise– you have to make judgments based on surface level labels just to fit in with your everyday anti-logic and cartography. Otherwise you’ll just be lost and sorely confused as to what direction someone is trying to guide you.

© n02IX Vagabond Lit

When I moved to San Diego last year, I did two wonderful things. First I joined the Sierra Club San Diego Chapter and enrolled in the Wilderness Basics Course.  Second I started hiking with my brother-in-law Doug. We chose hikes in the San Bernadino and San Gabriel mountains because of their proximity to Doug’s home and since I had spent thirty some years in Northern California any trail in Southern California would be an adventure for me. Our first explorations in the San Bernadinos included a hike through Jeffrey Pines on the snow covered Siberia Creek Trail, documented in this watercolor,

Hiking on the Siberia Creek trail

and a trek to the Pacific Coast Trail where it brushes by Big Bear Lake.   Our final adventure of last year was in the San Gabriels  hiking  Mt. San Antonio (known affectionately as Old Baldy) with my friend Dan.   Baldy is some twenty-two miles to the east of Mt. Wilson and Big Tujunga Canyon where the fires continue to burn now in their sixth day.  I keep thinking about those mountains — a challenge for  the north-south driver — but also a strong range charged with protecting the Los Angeles basin from the harsh temperatures of the Mojave desert and capturing moisture during the winter for the times of drought.   I keep thinking about the wildlife and people uprooted by such a massive fire and the lives lost, some heroically and others needlessly.  This evening I opened Gary Snyder’s essays Back on the Fire and thumbed to the “Regarding the Smokey the Bear Sutra” and this brief excerpt reads “a handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs showing that he is aroused and watchful, bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances….his left paw in the Mudra of Comradely Display  indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits…wearing the blue work overalls symbolic of slaves and laborers, the countless men oppressed by a civilization that claims to save but only destroys…wearing the broad-brimmed hat of the West, symbolic of the forces that guard the Wilderness….round-bellied to show his kind nature and that the great Earth has food enough for everyone who loves her and trusts her….”  Thank you Smokey.

Acontece que talvez nenhum de nós conhecesse Gary Snyder se ele não escrevesse versos e fosse um dos grãos de pólen dando cotoveladas até desabrochar o grande girassol que se tornou a cena cultural de São Francisco nos anos 1950. Na verdade, apenas um ano bastou para tornar Snyder um dos vagabundos mais conhecidos do planeta. Foi em 1955 que ele conheceu Jack Kerouac – a entidade que escreveu On the road – e foi até 1956, que eles viveram todas as iluminações que Kerouac publicou em The Dharma bums – algo como “Os vagabundos do Dharma”, mas que saiu no Brasil como “Os vagabundos iluminados”.

Nas páginas de Kerouac, Snyder ganha o nome de Japhy Ryder. Snyder/Ryder é um jovem estudante de chinês clássico na Universidade de Berkeley, e que também escreve versos e estuda literatura inglesa. O rapaz tem 25 anos, uma bagagem enorme de leituras, conhece grande parte dos Estados Unidos viajando de carona, já foi lenhador e guarda florestal. Além disso, é filho de anarco-sindicalistas, sabe tocar um hinário anarquista no violão, e apóia qualquer manifestação política de esquerda, apesar de não acreditar em nenhuma delas: quer mesmo é fazer balançar até cair o way of life que vem se estabelecendo no pós-guerra.

Todas essas facetas já comporiam um grande personagem, mas guardo aqui nesse parágrafo o componente mais incendiário: Snyder é um zen-budista. Quando Kerouac nos faz sentar com Japhy Ryder para tomar um vinho barato e ler as traduções que está fazendo do poeta Han Shan, é perceptível que Ryder/Snyder não está traduzindo apenas versos, mas um modo de vida inteiro diverso do tecnicismo que o pós-guerra acelerava. Snyder dinamitava qualquer engrenagem técnica que estava estruturada ou se estruturando na cabeça de quem aceitasse sentar com ele no chão para tomar uma xícara de chá.

Ryder/Snyder ia em busca de si mesmo escalando montanhas, vivendo de maneira harmonizada com o meio em seus exílios pela natureza selvagem. Tal como Han Shan escrevia seus versos em pedras e cavernas no século IX, o vagabundo iluminado fazia enormes mandalas de neve ou de arbustos, invocava mantras e praticava meditação zen entre um dia e outro de caminhada pré-organizada. Organização é tudo quando se está sozinho, dependendo apenas das próprias pernas e com pouca comida em um ambiente selvagem: um cálculo errado pode significar a morte. O auto-conhecimento de Snyder quanto às suas necessidades e o respeito pelo espaço em que se encontra fazem qualquer papo sobre “sustentabilidade” parecer balela. As jornadas do poeta nos ensinam a amar e fazer parte do mundo, e não a gestar seus recursos de maneira que a exploração possa continuar por mais tempo.

Canto para sonhar

“Os vagabundos iluminados” acompanha Snyder até sua partida em um navio para seus oito anos de treino formal zen no Japão, em 1956. O poeta retorna no fim dos anos 1960, com esposa e filho, estabelecendo-se em uma fazenda ao pé das montanhas no norte da Califórnia.

Tão artesanal quanto sua morada, a poesia de Snyder toca fundo alguma coisa que ainda pulsa em nós de espontâneo e primitivo. Seus temas vão desde um simples banho no filho a uma possível harmonização da cultura dos índios americanos com a invasão européia. Também escreve ensaios sobre etnopoesia, zen-budismo, meio ambiente, e tantas outras coisas. Seu livro Turtle Island, de 1974, foi premiado com o Pulitzer de poesia.

Apesar de ter mais de duas dezenas de títulos lançados, são escassos seus materiais com tradução em português. A maioria deles leva mais em conta o lado ensaísta de Snyder, em detrimento do poeta. Recentemente a Azougue Editorial lançou uma coletânea com seus poemas e ensaios, intitulada “Re-habitar”, mas nada de livros completos por essas bandas.

Outras travessias

“Os vagabundo iluminados” foi lançado em 1958, e contribuiu para que o poeta fosse elencado até hoje na lista dos expoentes da geração beat. Snyder não acha isso ruim, mas esclarece que teve pouca participação nas loucuradas libertárias daqueles anos em São Franciso, e que só manteve maior contato com Allen Ginsberg depois dos anos 1950, na medida em que crescia o interesse de Ginsberg pelo zen.

Ginsberg foi quem escreveu Uivo, o poema, digamos, “de estréia” da geração beat. Uivo se configurou como uma espécie de manifesto de alguns iluminados de uma geração que queria qualquer coisa, menos uma família americana, uma casa com calefação e um forno elétrico. Queriam uma vida que pulsasse, e não a acomodação do “pesadelo com ar-condicionado”, como Henry Miller iria definir com precisão em outro momento.

Em Back on the fire, lançado em 2007, um Gary Snyder com 77 anos conta como recebeu, a notícia de que Ginsberg estava falecendo em um hospital, vítima de câncer no fígado, em 1997. Ele conta com a simplicidade que só cabe aos poetas como Ginsberg “atravessou” a vida do coma para a morte, do mesmo modo que “o dia anterior a ontem atravessou as montanhas lá longe – no cheio florescer das cerejeiras”. É desse modo que Snyder atravessa a vida.

Texto: Ale Lucchese

Fotos: Thais Brandão

News of the Universe, by Robert Bly

Sometimes I go about pitying myself,
and all the time
I am being carried on great winds across the sky.–Ojbiway

Containing 150 poems from many eras, News of the Universe, first published in 1980 and one of my most illuminating companions for more than 25 years, represents what could perhaps be called the poetry of the soul, of real feeling. The anthology brings us new, more honest feeling-perceptions of ourselves and the universe. We commune with some of the world’s great poets, including Pope, Yeats, Frost, Baudelaire, Lawrence, Stevens, Rumi, Kabir, Jeffers, Rexroth, Snyder, and many others.

Each of us will find in this volume poems that can not only help expose the rigid structure of ideas and attitudes about ourselves and the world that shape and even imprison our consciousness of the inner and outer world, a consciousness that is constantly constricted by the needs and demands of our self-image, but can also help open us to new ways of seeing, feeling, and sensing the world as it is.

Are we at all interested in seeing things as they actually are, or must we see everything in relation to our own lives? The poet reminds us:

I should be content
to look at a mountain
for what it is
and not as a comment
on my life.–David Ignatow

Robert Bly: photo from Wikipedia

Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine mountains,
and the maker of canyons and pine mountains!
All seven oceans are inside, and hundreds of millions of stars.
The acid that tests gold is there, and the one who judges jewels.
And the music from the strings that no one touches, and the
source of all water.

If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth:
Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside.–Kabir

We are all “hungry,” says Bly, for consciousness. And so he has given us a gift of poetry that we can return to again and again for new insights into what it means to be a conscious human being, a book that can help us return to the actual feeling and sensation of the “good and beautiful,” which were so important for Socrates and Plato, and for which we are all searching, whether consciously or unconsciously.

One of the many crucial themes one finds in this volume is the realization of our ultimate death and the death of everyone we know, a realization that few of us allow into our awareness in our daily lives, but which can be tasted in moments of meditation, stillness, and silence.

There is a stillness
On the tops of the hills.
In the tree tops
You feel
Hardly a breath of air.
The small birds fall silent in the trees.
Simply wait: soon
You too will be silent.–Goethe

Bly writes: “this poem contains an experience many people have had: each time a human being’s desire-energy leaves his body, and goes out into the hills or forest, the desire-energy whispers to the ears as it leaves ‘You know, one day you will die.’ I think both men and women need this whisper; it helps the human to come down, to be on the ground. When that whisper comes, it means that the tree-consciousness, the one in the wooded hill, and the one in man, have spoken to each other. …”

The poet reminds us, however, that to come down to the ground is simultaneously to be lifted upward toward the heavens:

Earth hard to my heels bear me up like a child standing on its mother’s belly. I am a surprised guest to the air.–Ignatow

In being a “surprised guest to the air” we begin to reclaim our humanity, a growing sense of the wonder and mystery of being, and begin to live with a real question: “Who am I?”.

All the poems in this magical volume are enlivened by that fundamental question, but none for me so beautifully as this one:

I live my life in growing orbits,
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I will never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years.
And I still don’t know if I am a falcon,
Or a storm, or a great song.–Rainer Maria Rilke

News of the Universe is a book that I recommend to anyone who wishes not just to think in a new way about the mystery of being but also to sense and feel it directly.

Copyright 2009 by Dennis Lewis. This review, slightly edited, was first published in the January 2009 issue of The Journal of Harmonious Awakening.

Photo of Robert Bly from Wikipedia: June 2004 at the Great Mother – New Father Conference in Maine. Photo by Fred L Stephens of Oak Ridge, TN