hoe n tell
gallery of work new to TTG and sometime online workshop
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right livelihood—Klyd Watkins reviews two books by Richard Krech
In Chambers: The Bodhisattva of the Public Defender’s Office. Buffalo, New York: sunnyoutside, 2008. $10.00 available thru sunnyoutside.com as well as amazon.com.
Rumors of Electricity. Buffalo, New York: sunnyoutside, 2008. 2 nd printing . $8.00 available thru sunnyoutside.com as well as amazon.com.
Richard Krech was one of Berkeley/San Francisco poets in the sixties, participating in that epoch of electrifying political activism. Like Charles Potts and other legends, he spurred on underground poetry by writing, promoting readings and publishing. According to poetsencyclopedia.com, in 1976 he quit writing and began the study of law. Fortunately in the new field he was able to continue his fight for social justice, practicing criminal defense. And we are fortunate too that he returned to poetry “early in this century.”
In his recent book, In Chambers: The Bodhisattva of the Public Defender’s Office, unfamiliar forces interplay: law and the practice of law to increase freedom; Buddhism; poetry. Not that poetry is in any way a subject of the collection. The poet does deal with the language of the court room here and there, as in these lines from “Gandhi Also Spun:”
The semantic warrior spinning yarn.
It is good yarn.
The stuff of freedom.
Hugh Fox has written of this poet that he never wrote a bad line. It would be hard to write a bad line with diction as transparently vernacular as Richard Krech’s. The incorporation of terms with precise legal uses, and of concepts important in Buddhism, only serves, somehow, to make the language all the more common. (I don’t mean that in any pejorative sense.) This poem illustrates:
Mindfulness to Changed Circumstances
Out of thin air
an opportunity
may arise so quickly
that you must
take advantage of it
right away
or not at all.
Again, from “The Lunar Calendar,”
They have a law for this
situation,
Section 1368,
“too crazy to stand trial .”
Very clean language. The treatments of law here could not work in prose. “The Lunar Calendar” presents a particular criticism of the American legal system that just couldn’t be achieved anywhere but in a poem. And, in “Avoiding the Third Strike,” variations of clothing carry a connotative weight only possible in poetry. “My client wears a red jump suit and shackles . . . / The prosecutor sports a designer suit/ and well polished shoes,/ the judge putting a robe over his . . . / My suit gives me entrance to the discussion . / My client’s interest toward freedom/ is advanced.”
Krech has good stories, little splatters of narrative set in amplifying context.
We provided the tape
to the prosecution
after the police had testified
under oath, after
their lies
had been nailed down
(“Caught In the Act, or KPFA Strategy”). The title of “Have Gun Will Travel” appropriately evokes a television hero, eventho the conflict portrayed is not physical. The protagonist achieves “victorious removal from the courthouse/ into the clear night.” Great fun.
The impact of Buddhism is familiar in the non-academic stream of American poetry since the fifties. It keeps rowdy company thru passing references in Ginsberg and hangs around with evergreens in Snyder. These are two among hundreds. In Krech there is a feel of a serious study and practice of Buddhism, not evident in every poem that cries Bodhisattva. The poems insinuate how Buddhist principles are carried into his legal practice. Going into a courthouse,
the pocket Buddha I carry around
with me
goes thru the
metal detector in a basket;
(“Pocket Buddha Passes Thru the Metal Detector”). In “The Gudgeon Fisherman” the poet portrays the clever and cruel activities of certain scam artists to such effect that the reader is ready to condemn the heinous criminals. Krech too disapproves, but in (Buddhist) terms that surprise:
The gudgeon fishermen
have no shame.
Their confusion
is colossal.
“Confusion” is exactly the problem with the gudgeon fishermen . It is not the fact that this is a Buddhist point of view that makes it so effective; it is because it is truth, a truth that pulls us in. We must own up to some confusion of our own.
The subtitle poem, “The Bodhisattva of the Public Defender’s Office,” is certainly the center piece of the collection. It is a huge little poem. At the end, the poet says of his legal career,
This right livelihood
surely is on the path to liberation
Bearing in mind that a bodhisattva is one who foregoes nirvana to save others, consider the power of the word “hell” in the poem’s beginning line: “The advocate strides into the hell worlds.” The habitual hyperbole we use when we say “hell” to describe a situation gets jolted up to the literal here.
In Rumors of Electricity we switch from “legal poems” to “travel poems.” And as Bodhisattva includes the simple pleasure of good stories, these pieces give the simple pleasure of quick visits to unfamiliar, exotic, even strange, places. We feel “nostalgia for a place/ we’ve never been” (“After Atget”) on many pages.
From “After the Lapin Agile:”
Bistros still spilling laughter
out into the street
way after we went to bed.
From “Sitting Here:”
at the ruins just outside of town
where five minarets still stand
a group of children found us
& followed past two bridges
until saying goodbye.
I can’t tell, in these poems, whether the familiar conquers the strange or vice versa . The balance between how foreign the people and places are and how, at the same time, identical to us they are—how there and here are so different, so much the same—that balancing swerves about everywhere in the poems, which are busy
questioning the relative consistency
of impermanence.
In “Nishat Bagh Revisited,” Krech writes, “The present can’t help/ but intrude into the past ./ Place includes both time and/ location .” // The location where the Moghuls sat/ under the trees/ beside the channeled water/ which spills into Dal Lake/ still exists . . . .// The place where the Moghuls sat/ under the trees eating fruit/ watching the rushing water in its channel/ as it spills into Dal Lake/ no longer exists.” (The quote above does not at all summarize the poem—there is much more to it, including philosophical humor on the nature of time.) This impermanent character of place gets stated directly here but it is illustrated all over the book . That consciousness moving among the words is one thing I want in my poetry supply, and it is here. “Place” in these travel poems is, like a view at twilight, always slipping into the past, imperceptibly moment by moment but perceptibly minute by minute.
The earth itself is a collection of such places. That earth is impermanent is not the province of these place loving poems—geologic upheavals are not used but subtler forms of earth dissolution are very effective, the way desert sands form ocean-like waves for example in a couple of places. And in this subtle but powerful moment at the end of “Chahar Square.” The speaker and an Afghani teenager have greeted each other, with minimal use of each other’s language, and they pass on,
I walking toward the Citadel of Herat
the wind carrying much dust with it
in this most ancient of Asian cities.
Now yall need to obtain these books and read them several times over and then you should go back to the remarkable poem “Laotian Music,” in Bodhisattva, and see how it ties the two books together.
As for the physical books, there are beautifully designed and produced.
bibliography: http://www.verdantpress.com/krech.html
Berkeley Daze section in Big Bridge http://www.bigbridge.org/BD.HTM
Joel got us into this California trip, let him continue it, even if it is in a note back to his boys in New York.
I value Joel Waldman poetry so much, and he writes so little, that I have had to lift some of it out of a note he sent along with regrets that he could not make his high school reunion. Joel it was who began our recent focus on the San Francisco poet’s reunion, quite by accident. These lines accompanied his note to the boys back home at his 50th reunion.
Dear Grand-papa Ivan, our star quarterback,
So sorry I missed the homecoming track.
But the bad news doesn't stop there . . .
I am trapped in my own smoke and mirrors,
And now you live just in my prayers.
The work you have done is heroic;
Your efforts, unquestionably brave,
But I stew in my juice by the ocean
And pull on my belly and rave.
My share of the Bush bucks are coming,
My wife in the house cooks our fish.
A chopper as quick airport pick-up, a Lear jet,
Remains still as my wish.
So my Brothers at Clinton,
Forgive me.
You live with me yet in my dreams.
Unfortunate solipsist stumbles have cursed me with alternate schemes.
My blessings go out to the Ronnies
Auster and Auslander, too.
Pfeffer and I told old stories,
We know y'all are still true
Blacks and Reds
Forever.
And so remain, aloof.
Old school chums, JD
Teenagers,
Young bodies
For our garlands,
Live on as our proof.
I will always love our school days.
It's dinner time.
Joel
And to all the local, self-enlisted poetesses and poets
I'll be listening.
Joel Waldman (The Good)
Richard Krech: 2 pomes
Rene Magritte Wore a Suit Every Day of his Life
Listening to you
in yr 62 nd year
talk with joy and enthusiasm
about flowers in the garden
helps me see
that ten year old girl
who once inhabited yr body .
The thread of yr ancestry
filling yr soul
like DNA of the human race.
Memories of wood cooking fires
smoke of grilled meat
filling the air.
Thousands of years of this.
Dividing and growing up till now.
Repeating routines.
Remembering Hassan-i-Sabbah
in his safe retreat
hurling thunderbolts
at the West.
The street in Switzerland
that bicycled off
into acid dreams
we remember today
in clear reality.
I looked at you
in the light of day
hold both yr hands
in mine, inhale
yr eyes.
Slight breeze cools us
as we Bar-B-Que
in the garden.
Middle class folk.
2 car family.
Suburban Sunday afternoon.
7/30/06
At the End of Time
Singing a song of youth and freedom
we burst out of the segregated fifties
to establish times now studied in detail
and reflected in the myriad changes wrought .
The same struggles now
in different garb w/ different words
and theocratic bogeymen
w/ Kalashnikovs and cell phones .
You must think of it as the second act
of a play.
The stage has turned.
Characters more developed. Some are dead.
and new relationships emerge.
You may have stepped out for refreshments
at intermission.
When the curtain rises again
there is more invested in the outcome,
a deeper meaning is found
as perspective grants knowledge.
A wider scope
yet able to focus
on the breath of an insect .
Maybe its just that “now”
is more vivid than “then.”
Is there a third act?
Does yr heart beat
any stronger
than did that
of yr ancestor?
Yr grandchild
will found a dynasty
as real as the cuticle
on yr left thumb
but you will never get to see it.
And they?
They may never even know
that you
used to exist
at the end of time.
6/28/07
Richard Krech
The good Joel Waldman's report was of interest to Hoers. Witness these 3 reactions.
from David Pointer:
Klyd, I always enjoy reading about the poetry scene from the 60s. Chris Harter/Editor Bathtub Gin currently on hiatus is coming out with a history of the small press at "Scarecrow Press" at the end of June. I think the first volume goes from the 60s to about 1980. "I got into "Home Planet News"a poetry newspaper in New York. Donald Lev is the editor. Take care for now.
David Pointer
and from Laurel Johnson:
Laurel Johnson
and from Ellaraine Lockie
I just checked out Time Garden and read Joel Waldman's report on the Berkeley 60s Poets' reunion series of reading here. Hugh Fox stayed with me for the four-day event, and I served as chauffeur. I really enjoyed watching from the sidelines these great poets read and interact. The camaraderie and love was palpable. Here's a photo from the barbeque that launched the reunion.
left to right: John Oliver Simon, Charles Potts, Richard Krech, Luis Garcia, Hugh Fox, Richard Denner
report from th coast—Joel the good checks in with a report from San Fransico 60's poet reunion.
We just got back from a reading at the Bird and Beckett Bookstore in SF. Saw Charlie and Hugh Fox and Richard Krech, and John Oliver Simon. The last two fellahs were partners in an offset press operation during the 60’s in a garage in the middle of a large industrial area next to the Santa Fe railroad tracks. Today the area is a tree-shaded, trendy, field of boutiques and yuppie food emporia.
The operation of the press was self-touted as printers to the revolution: leaflets, broadsides and occasional chap-books. They did the printing for my first book, “Ice Princess.” They were very proud of the union “bug” for the IWW that they put on all their productions. John put out a magazine called “The Aldebaran Review.” Richard called his output “The Avalanche Press.” John had a literary orientation. Richard’s stuff was of a Maoist, anti-establishment nature. One of the leaflets he put out on a regular basis was called the “Grass Prophet Review.” It was a drug market report of street commodities and underground anti-war activities. Very outrageous and edgy stuff. That he was never busted is either a testament to freedom of the press or his wily good luck.
When the war ended, Nixon’s cointelpro blanket worked its black magic on the counter-culture; Richard suspended his writing from the public scene and enrolled in law school.
Many years later, having become a county public defender working in criminal law, Richard resumed his poetic output as the Bodhisattva of the Justice Courts. He also did some interesting work documenting his travels in Afghanistan as witness to the destruction of the great Buddha statues.
As part of the reunion-aspect of the reading ( I had not seen the old partners in over thirty years) it was wonderful to see and hear these dedicated poets. Of course, it was hard to witness the ravages of time on them, so big a part of my own early career as a poet. Richard’s amazing afro hair-do is gone, a gleaming, slick dome of a pate in its place. Always a good dancer, now my old friend walks with a halting and painful limp and must use a cane to get about. He had to be helped to the mike and be provided with a chair to give his reading. “Age and age’s evils...” about which GM Hopkins rails, did not diminish the strength of Richard’s new poetic output on the nature of Justice.
Simon has a new career as a part of the California Poets in the Schools project. He was an early contributing editor of “Poetry Flash,” a quarterly newsletter of West Coast events poetical and interviews with luminaries, some great, some near-great, some unintelligible.
For many years he has focused on translation of Latin American poets. For all his early underground credentials, he still maintains an aloof and academic, “serious” tone. Nevertheless, nostalgia still places him in a warm place in my heart for his dedication to the art of poetry. Still at it after all these years.
Charlie is, of course, still Charlie . . . . .
I got to meet Rychard Denner, the poet and editor of “Berkeley Daze.” He was decked out in his Tibetan monks robes and sandals. “Buddhist drag,” he calls it. He is off to a mountain-top retreat as soon as the reading series is over. I tried to locate another copy of the book he put out, but none are available right now. I gave my copy to my son as a birthday present.
Joel Waldman
Kathy Skaggs is interviewed on Gordon Roque's website. Very much worth clicking over to read. Do come back.
Mr. David Pointer his mother's day poem
Member Local 41
I'm pulling up to the dock
doors of past decades over
learning my mother had
once been a member of
The International Brotherhood
of Teamsters, and two
episodes of disbelief later,
I could hear the labored
breathing of old trucks
and all things mechanical
nearly milling to moonlight
up the Arkansas mountains
down Monteagle steepness
with a wide windshield
vibrating its one chord
verse and chorus while
some terrified trucker's
cornbread cobbler slid
from the post-suppertime
seat to a floorboard full
of cold tools as my mom
in Kansas City, Missouri
shipping and receiving
department had traded a
day shift apron for extended
warehouse hours and a world
of old bridges now mixing with
darknight's unexpressable
divinity basket-mom's rising
as a Mother's Day flower
maybe a snow country lily
or Monet's bluest iris forever
planted by the heart's
mile marker number 74.
David Pointer
Markers
(originally featured in Bellowing Ark)
Laurel Johnson
Charles Ries' Mother's day card
THE
We’re from the
As kids we’d wrap ourselves in ten layers of clothes, leaving
Charles Ries
comments from Laurel Johnson
Laurel
[Maybe we can talk her into sending a mother poem—KW.
April 29 2008—yr time gardener, aka Klyd Watkins (for you google bots and other searching crawlers) postpones the Jon-Taylor-Baudelaire feature, upcoming still, and turns appropriately to a Mother's Day theme. I start with 3 on the subject by Ellaraine Lockie
Mother by Any Means
She's sitting on my bar stoo
when I come back from the bathroom
Her hand clamping a cocktail napkin
over my cream sherry
Don't I know there are men
who drug women's drinks
She glares across the table
above cups of green tea
Concerned over a man I've met online
A masterful poet who metered
murdering half the population of L.A.
A maniac she admonishes
And don't mail him your address
She's pacing the New Mexican
motel room at midnight
when I return from the grocery store
Where locally grown produce
overpowered me for an extra hour
She's unable to understand
the epicurean pull of sixteen species
of peppers with recipes honoring each
I'm unable to understand her panic
that I was impounded by something
more menacing than a pepper
Until I remember motherhood
when she was an adolescent
and saw herself immortal
Contrary to me now
who knows I could die any day
I elect not to allude to the
charging rhino in South Africa
Nor mention the motorcycle and marijuana
I'm saving for special occasions
Omissions kindred no doubt
to my daughter's when I waited up late
for the end of each date
Mother of Meager
A World War I born baby
with a lifespan of poverty
spread ahead of her
Over godforsaken farmland
that hailed hardships
more often than minimal provisions
Where poor was the norm
But no one knew
the nasty little secret
So she grew into girlhood
Happy in hand-me-downs
shared with six siblings
Mercenary manners for outsiders
became the accepted apparel
Hunger a Christian comfort
As they hoarded in the soft down of it
all the extraneous trappings
tossed away by others
Quirks she carried into marriage
With countless tin cans
collected from town people
who weren't garden dependent
Coal ashes in case she uncovered a use
And every paper scrap ever sent
to anyone within a Montana mile
Idiosyncrasies eventually out of proportion
to a prospering economy
and disgraceful to a teenage daughter
Who was demand-dressed in clothes
homemade from scraps
Humiliated by her mother
who felt-out phone booths
for forgotten change
Arrived first for second-hand sales
And offered toilet paper for guests
while she wiped with washed rags
Hung them by the sink to dry
beside the daughter's degradation
The mother's conservation
now compulsion
Camouflaged by
a sixties' earth mother image
Deprivation disorder invisible
to everyone except the daughter
Dramatic as she grows older
in her defiant disposal of leftovers
And addictive in her own home
with more and more brand new decor
Copious closets of store-bought clothes
And cutting-edge commodities
crowding out creature comfort
Accumulations as incurable
as her mother's flea market cancer
Until 21st century recession
steals her mock security
And re-evaluation drives down
the value of up-to-date
While midlife refurbishing
rubs the shine from new
For the daughter
whose mother of meager
enforces her final recycling feat
Role Reversal
We're car-pooling with the most popular
boy in the fifth grade
My turn to drive to drama try-outs
My ten-year old
daughter said
ahead of time
not to make
my zebra
bracelet talk
To wear a bra
Underpants too
Don't do Tai Chi
in the parking lot
while I wait
No McGuire Sisters'
songs in the car
And don't bring
up the buttons
I collect
for my
gravestone
The list grows with each grade
I'll never get through adolescence
without rebelling
Ellarine Lockey
April 20 2008—yr time gardener, aka Klyd Watkins (for you google bots and other searching crawlers) has a day job now, which has left him without the time to implement his plan to rotate Jon Taylor's Baudelaire translations with poems by the usual gang, one a week for as long as it lasts. That will begin soon but good has come out of my delay. Our cattitude groweth with the following sent in by Reed Richards and written . . . let him tell you.
My cat wrote this poem:
Spud
Not Quite Catsville
Destiny
keeps a dinosaur fossil
in her first tooth keepsake
box, and Brontosaurus
comic books between the
white buffalo calf bookends
on the mantle piece. She
also points out that on TV
where dinosaurs and humans
evolved together for micromillions
of episodes that there is less
extinction in high definition
animation. I listen while
washing my grandmother's
old Iriquois oven plate as
two power walking widows
of the nightly neighborhood
who promised nothing yet
delivered two serial burglars
while burning big calories
with moderate meaningful
exercise pass by windows
without a cat unworthy or
otherwise to send to The
Time Gardener like a good
and caring poet would do.
David S. Pointer
note from Laura Johnson
Laurel
You bet, Laura. The reasons why the poems were not online are technical and complicated but they are up now. Thanks for pointing out the problem. Klyd
Review by Kathy Skaggs of Ellaraine Lockie's Blue Ribbons at the County Fair
Blue Ribbons at the County Fair
By Ellaraine Lockie
ISBN 978-0-939221-45-4
64 pages at $10
PWJ Publishing
P. O. Box 238
Tehama, CA 96090
www.wellinghamjones.com
Many poets hate contests even as they become more and more common, one way for small poetry presses to stay in business. Entry fees range from $1 a poem to $25 or more for a complete manuscript, and can get expensive for a poet trying to find a home for her poems. But Ellaraine Lockie loves them and she’s been entering them since she began writing poems, and winning, including two First Place ribbons at the San Mateo County Fair. For Lockie, poetry contests evoke the county fairs of her childhood where “Women throughout the year developed recipes, canned, needle-crafted and nurtured gardens in order to participate.” In the essay, In Praise of Poetry Contests,” which ends the collection, she details some of their benefits: "ot only are they fun and suspenseful, but placing in them gives credibility to cover-letters, pays money prizes or other honorariums and sometimes provides public reading opportunities. Often a poem gets published as a result of its contest standing, even if the poem didn’t place.”
Whether you’ll be sold on the idea of entering poetry contests yourself from reading this book, the poems in this collection are worth reading. Lockie is strongest when she writes about Montana, the land and its people, as in “Godot Goes to Montana,” a beautiful, sad elegy for farm life and its toll on the people who find themselves enslaved by the land:
After hay baling and breech delivering
from sunrise to body’s fall
He slept in front of the evening news
Too worn out to watch the world squirm
Too weary to hear warnings from ghost brothers
who were slain by beef, bacon and stress
Too spent to move into the next day
“The Whipping Woman” is another strong poem that might have been written in response to Brenda Hillman’s injunction, “Write the poem that scares you.” It’s bare and uncomfortable, speaking a truth we wish we didn’t have to see. The narrator’s hired whipping woman visits the dementia ward in her stead and “accepts the mouth kisses wet with drool/From where gravelly words/dribble down washed-out gullies” that the narrator’s “rawhide flesh refuses.”
This collection is definitely worth reading. There is much to like here.
Kathy Skaggs
Jon Taylor
We interrupt the catitudinal constructions to say Laura Stamps, herself a cat lover and champion of feral cats, has reviewed Kathy Skagg's Poet Laureate of People Who Hate Poetry. In part she says. "Kathy Skaggs has an incredibly strong voice, which reaches out to the reader in every one of these poems." For the rest of this short review visit http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/583830.Laura_Stamps
okay yall go ahead and bring on the cat talk
here Laurel Johnson joins in
I can't compare to Charles and Reed, but I can contribute to the cat dialogue. I'm so happy to hear Reed's cat is better.
Gray Baby came to us when we lived in another town. She loved us unconditionally, with such devotion that we found it hard to believe. Gray was my muse. She developed a rare virus and we spent exorbitant sums of money in a desperate attempt to keep her alive. We failed. She's buried on the south edge of our property in a cairn my husband built by hand of concrete blocks and rocks to keep coyotes from digging her up. A couple months after she died, sunflowers grew around her grave in great profusion. Gray loved butterflies so we were delighted to see colorful wings fluttering around the flowers last summer. That small joy, however, did not make up for her loss. I haven't written one creative word since she died. This poem was written when she first came to us, only one of many cats who found their way to our food dishes.
Gray Baby
My town's claim to fame is not historic
wagon ruts left by pioneers who headed west
in shabby prairie schooners, or remnants of ancient Indians
who lived in vast encampments 'til the government
usurped their territory. This is the old west,
but legends fade and now their calling card is
feral cats. Cats running wild and multiplying
have overrun this dying town.
Nobody seems to care
that people come from miles around
to dump their pregnant house pets
to have kittens in abandoned, run down buildings.
Gray Baby showed up on our porch, a half grown cat
with fire in her eyes. Patchy fur over bone
is all she was, but cats three times her size
hunkered down or backed away
when Gray approached the food dish.
I tried to run her off at first.
She stood her ground, legs splayed wide
at the claim she'd staked and meant to keep,
growling fiercely as she ate.
And when I dared to run one hand softly
along her back, she purred and closed her eyes
in feline ecstasy to feel that kindly touch.
What little life she had left in her had once known
the human touch and tenderness.
"OK, I'll let you stay Gray Baby. What's
one more stray cat to feed?", I said.
Next day she proudly brought her babies
to the porch. Three black kittens, fat and healthy
from their mother's milk and care.
She must have lived on grasshoppers and crickets
to make milk for such big kittens,
all three near as big as her.
Gray had been a family pet, abandoned
when her family moved, or dumped
because she had a growing belly.
She wanted people, houses, human love,
to use a litter box again and chase a ball.
Gray is healthy now, she's spayed, well fed.
She sings a purring song to show her love
and gratitude—just one rescued from the thousands
like her in this town, a town indifferent to anything
that doesn't promote tourism.
Laurel Johnson
Reed Richards on Charles Ries' Cat
Hey Klyd –
I really thought Spud was a goner last week, and even though he is about 19 years old I wasn’t ready for it. But this week he is all fixed and acting like he would have been just fine without all the intervention, so why the fuss? Typical. I don’t think he is human, but I know he is a person.
note from Kathy Skaggs— I really like the 2 from Charles Ries. Wish I had time to write more. The poems deserve it. Or then again, maybe they speak for themselves. : ) Both those poems really spoke to me.
Kathy
Laurel Johnson checks in; my most faithful commentator—and I am most appreciative.
a verse note from Joel the Good (Waldman)
Dear Klyd Watkins,
J the G here.
Trying to be
Hepful.
Just played Harp All Made of Gold
Again, twice.
While following TTG
Almost to the End
But ran out of
Measure.
If we’re so fuckin smart why ain’t we richer?
Too brown in the tan for tourmaline
I spose...
Wif love,
All the best to you and yrs.
Joel Waldman
PS I’m tickled by some of the company we’re keeping.
new voice on the time garden
Stephen "Nobody Dreamer" Goode
The first thing I read by Stephen was simply signed "nobody." There was a vast sadness. He has, apparently, experienced prejudice from "full blooded" skins. Yet there was a spiritual brightness to it too. I'm glad he send this poem:
Mental Truth of a Mixed Blood Indian.......
I suppose I'm nuts!!!!How utterly ridiculous to think I could be a Native American with no roots and proof....
I'm so sorry and must apologize....
Apologize for being insane I guess is redundant, but never the less I'm sorry for that too..I do wish though more people saw the world through my vision and beauty..A world that doesn't exist but only in my Dreams..
It's true though there was a time this Dream of mine wasn't so insane and I could drink from a stream,find Clams and Muscles as large as my hand,Find Fish as long as my arm,my Medicine was at arms length in the Forest..Mostly as I roamed these lands being free from oppression I had nothing to be Sad about, nothing to be sick about and knew nothing about Money..
So After reading back over this I have to ask now who really is insane.....
my sad feeling brought about this little idea of mine........
Stephen " Nobody Dreamer " Goode............
2 from Charles Ries
MY CAT’S HUMAN
(November 21, 2006)
I would tell my daughters, “That’s the luckiest cat in the world;
she’s so dumb she’d die if she ever stepped foot out the door.”
I guess even she knew that the day I left the front door open by mistake,
freedom beckoned as she stared out into the wild world knowing it wasn’t for her.
I didn’t pet her; she didn’t like to be petted. I freshened her water.
My daughters were always too busy to do it. She was my daughters’ cat.
No one brushed her dreadlocks; the matted clumps that grew worse
as she aged, slowed down, and slept more. So I did.
I grew up on a mink farm. I don’t love animals. What are they good for except
to eat and wear?
She’d sit next to my desk as I’d write, and stare, and talk to no one. She’d sleep
outside my bedroom waiting for me to wake up; scratching the door if I was late.
She didn’t get smarter with time. After thirteen years she was still just a dumb cat.
Well, animals are all pretty dumb aren’t they?
Yesterday she didn’t get up from the place where she’d plant herself until I got home;
the spot at the top of the steps where she seemed to be glued as if she were waiting for
someone to come in the front door.
When I called Elaine to say the Vet had just put Princess down, I made a joke about
her corny name; and started to weep. That was when I realized she’d made me her human.
KILLING SEASON
I did what I had to do. I had no choice. I was the son of the man
who raised them. From kittens in May to an early death in November.
Our mink dressed the fashion elite. We cared for our animals like
they were our furred children.
We gave them a good short life and a quick painless death. We’d drop
them like quarters into a wooden box containing cyanide powder and
wait a few minutes until they expired, slowly, silently, into eternal sleep.
We didn’t always kill them that way. We used to break their necks.
But it took a big man many hours to break 10,000 necks each pelting
season. So we changed with the times and went with cyanide.
This allowed me, at fourteen, to become the chief executioner.
I wasn’t thoughtless. It never became like breathing or picking corn.
I’d run wheel barrows full in to my father who peeled their skin off and
readied them for New York furriers who’d select the best for full length coats.
My prolific ability at killing 40,000 mink over four seasons left me hanging
when I filed for Conscientious Objector status with my draft board. They
asked me, “If you had no qualms about killing thousands of mink, how come
you have a moral problem with killing the enemies of your country? I mean,
killing is killing, ain’t it son? Aren’t you just a natural born killer?”
The purity of their logic confused me. I had always been an absolutist, like
those Jain monks who see God in an ant. Who, when inadvertently stepping
on a beetle see a sentient being crushed to death.
If I could kill mink, why not men?
Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems, short stories, interviews and poetry reviews have appeared in over two hundred print and electronic publications. He has received four Pushcart Prize nominations for his writing. He is the author of THE FATHERS WE FIND, a novel based on memory and five books of poetry — the most recent entitled, The Last Time which was released by The Moon Press & Publishing. He is the poetry editor for Word Riot ( www.wordriot.org), Pass Port Journal ( www.passportjournal.org) and ESC! ( www.escmagazine.com). He is on the board of the Woodland Pattern Bookstore ( www.woodlandpattern.org). He is a member of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission and a founding member of the Lake Shore Surf Club, the oldest fresh water surfing club on the Great Lakes ( http://www.visitsheboygan.com/dairyland/). You may find additional samples of his work by going to: http://www.literati.net/Ries/
Jan is back!
Hey Klyd—I agree with Kathy. The last crop here is a good one. SPD must have been out of stock on the Holy Grail! Heath Row’s other poem, “Wireless Weather Station” has the same kind of humor in a subtler way. I love the way the speaker in the poem continues his father’s seemingly pointless obsession with weather, receiving a ton of information that is “not forecasts/ but records of what is,/ what was . . ."
The detail that it was his father who gave him the contraption that takes up the balance of the poem, the wireless weather station, with its elaborate technology and installation, is a telling point. We do pass down some rather elaborate uselessness. The return to direct reality at the end of poem confirms the readers suspicion of what the poet has been up to. It’s a very subtle poem, a piece of “conceptual music” in the phrase you used in one of the poems in 5 SPEED. I think it would be fun to read more of Heath Row.
John Berbrich’s poem is a powerful old school piece. It is wonderful to see free verse like this again—overtly rhythmic but subtle and unafraid to be of vast scope.
Finally, the quiet vicissitudes of Laurel Johnson’s piece. Klyd, this poem of hers, I bet you big money, will not be in The Best American Poetry of 2008. But I’m even more certain that it is a better poem than many of those that will be.
Jan Fiering
Ps—please don’t say “Jan is back!”
note from Kathy Skaggs— "Great new poems on your page."
new voice on the time garden John Berbrich (publisher of Barbaric Yawp) sends this poem:
Time-Exposure
Hands entwined, their eyes gaze into the future
Grainy black and white
Beyond her ruffled shoulder
An old chestnut tree, glinting dull sunlight
Beyond his, the barn stands in the distance
Like a mountain, birds roosting on its summit
Beyond the chestnut, white sails billow in the wind
Over the rolling deep-sea waves
Beyond the barn, a scaffold, stocks, and a fire
Fingers pointing at witches
Beyond the waves, carved gargoyles and monsters
Climb magnificent cathedral heights
Beyond the fire, naked warriors sharpen stone
And iron for killing
Beyond the cathedral, ghosts and demons wander through
A stone city
Beyond the warriors, blunt clubs lean against the wall
Of the cave’s mouth
Beyond the ghosts and demons, beyond the stone city
Beyond the clubs, beyond the cave
Two tails, snake-like, entwined
Dragons, the world burning
Fire in their nostrils, the dragons
Their eyes burning, burning into the future.
John Berbrich
new from Laurel Johnson—comments and poem
Morning Pleasures -- originally featured in Bellowing Ark
Today I sat outside in the worn
brown Adirondack chair
and watched the wind clouds
ripple through a bright blue sky.
Leaves danced a trembling jig,
turned inside out by thunderheads
growing in the south, predicting rain.
Redbirds and yellow finches grazed
together at our feeders, startling
at the sound of orioles and
blue jays swooping by, insisting
on their turn at the trough.
I smile to hear my husband cussing
in the background, something
about the latest raccoon raid on
sunflower seeds, cat food and cracked corn.
His displeasure is short-lived
when he discovers wild roses growing
thick along the ditch line by the road
and milkweed hosting butterflies.
His happy grin inspires me.
Birds and butterflies, wind and sky,
shade trees making muted music:
These are our morning pleasures.
new voice in the time garden—Heath Row
2 poems
Dear SPD
Just got the box—thanks!
Order #166091.
In the box were four of five items ordered.
The item not packed was 0916685942—
The Holy Grail.
Do you plan to send it
separately,
or was it accidentally not packed?
Just a head's up.
2/18/08
Wireless Weather Station
My father keeps a diary
a weather log of sorts
An annual calendar book
marked up with pencil notes
on the daily temperature
and how many inches of rain
or snow
had fall’n
I receive weather alerts
via email
thanks to My-Cast's
weather condition reports
courtesy of the NWS
Both are not forecasts
but records of what is,
what was
in Eagle River and
in Central Park
Several years ago,
my father bought me
a wireless weather station
made by La Crosse Technology
Indoor temperature
Outdoor temperature
Min./max. temp recordings with time
Quartz clock with 12- or 24-hour time display
A range of 80 feet
For several years,
it's kept station on top of a bookshelf,
unopened and gathering dusk
Today I decided to install it
Two AA batteries from the freezer
One AAA, and another from a drawer
and I lean outside the open screen
to screw the remote sensor holder
into the wall outside
The wall too hard,
I drop the screw,
and I listen to it fall through the fire escape
to the ground below
each floor ringing a note clear and clean
as it falls like raindrops
like opportunity lost
From La Crescent, Minnesota,
to Brooklyn, New York,
it can still do its job
as I look out the window
at the afternoon light
and gathering clouds
In FREE VERSE Issue #94, 'tis announced that David Pointer is one of 3 winners in the Homeless and the Hungry Poetry Contest (Popcorn Press). David is the author of Wheelchair Dancer, a Time Barn Books chap.
a note from India:
Dear Mr. Klyd Watkins . . . .
I sat through "Ghost trees" till just a while ago, listening to a familiar voice speak to me, a collective voice of the spirits of nature; the voice of the native from all lands, the voice of a meek permanence that is innocent of the heroics of "mighty man."
Humility is not an obligation but a necessary condition for being.
I guess its what makes you be as you come through your works......
Suresh Ranganathan
notice of CD release
Molding's new recording, Buddha Tormented by Pol Pot, was mixed and partially recorded at Thundershack, Klyd Watkins'--yr humble time gardener's--audio studio. Click the cover image to surf over to thundershack.net for full information.
Jan Fiering—a late, late review note on Jeremy Gaulke’s the ghost of Harrison sheets, published by The Temple (http://www.thetemplebookstore.com/ghost.html )
Klyd, when you sent me a copy of Jeremy’s Gaulke’s first book about four years ago, I knew I could not review it, not because too much was going on, because, instead, too much had been going on just before and my concentration was spent. I read it dutifully, and gained a favorable impression, but really didn’t taste it, so to speak. Luckily, I picked it off my book shelves while looking for something to carry to the dentist’ office yesterday, and, as I had a long wait before being called in to the chair, I “discovered” the ghost of Harrison Sheets. I want to quote one of the poems in full.
the graveyard
they had hiked all day,
and fell through fern and cedar
to a graveyard of salmon.
rotting, pink, and knarred
some of the bodies half buried
in sediment
what was left of the dead eyes
stared from the exhausted stream
bed to the sky.
they sat on fallen tree and stone
and one of the boys
pinched the hooked
jaw of the largest fish
pulling it up and down
and talking like porky pig
they threw rocks at the fish
ten or twelve feet away
and pondered how many
they could catch with just a net
when the stream was full
and the salmon drifted down
to die
As overwhelming as the imagery of death is, the boys remain absolutely blind to its relevance to them. Their ignorance is a version of the truth too, the most appropriate version they could inhabit during these moments. They are doing what they should be doing, making the fish heads talk like porky pig, enthusing about how many salmon they could have caught when the stream was full. The wise reader sees the unconscious wit of the boys, its liveliness, take place within the scope of death. This is mind play. This is poetry.
Every poem in this little book from The Temple finds a way to dazzle quietly. Let me just say if you buy poetry books you want to buy this one here: http://www.thetemplebookstore.com/ghost.html . I close with a teaser (from “in Spokane and everywhere else”):
her shirt undone and a hand against the window
she was the saddest girl i’d ever tasted
Jan Fiering
We are selling a few copies here and there of Kathy Skaggs' book The Poet Laureate of People Who Hate Poetry (see below).
She sends this note:
I tried listening to “Oohlungwodee Oohnolay" online a while back, but my media software would quit in the middle for some reason and not restart. So I tried it again just now (with a different media player) and finally got to hear all of it. I like it a lot. I really like the layering of the voices. It works well with that particular piece. I love the circularity of it, or I guess it's more like a spiral of sorts. It really mixes up the connections between lines in a fascinating way so that you can hear things in the poem that you might miss by just reading it linearly. Great work!
Kathy Skaggs
MOIRA B. resurfaces--where you been, Moira?
note from Poets West's J. Glenn Evans
Great harvesting with healthy crops!! See you got hold of seeds from Jim Bodeen, Charlie Potts, Stephen Thomas (link did not work but I took poetry classes from him) and Paul Nelson. By the way, we used "The Wind Is Sacred There" [Oohlungwhodee Oohnolay] on a recent show "Earth Echoes."
I have recommended poetry sites here. Why not recommend an artist's site. Art wire music is David Adkins site. He does sculpture out of paper clips and out of larger metal materials, pipe, tubing, whatever he can get his hands on. Some non-metal too, of dolls' heads for example, very interesting uses. I think his materials drive his creativity much of the time. He is seriously good. Look at his work here:http://artwiremusic.com/