All
Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2001
Richard Denner
No
part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping
or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in
writing from the publisher.
For
information, please contact:
Comrades
Press
23 George Street
Stockton, Southam
Warwickshire, England
CV47 8JS
Website: www.comrades.org.uk
email: editor@comrades.org.uk
Quotation
from Kora In Hell © by William Carlos
Williams,
reprinted
with permission of City Lights Books.
“D Press: Jewel in the
Net”
originally
published in The Temple #16
Tsunami,
Inc., 2000
Front
cover collage: Kim Secunda
Back
cover photo: Jessica Framer
Linoleum
block prints by the author
ISBN:
0-7388-6318-1
for my mother, Helen
and in memory of my father
Samuel Denner
1900-1998
Here’s splotchy velvet set to hide a door
in a wall and there— there’s the man himself
praying.
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Berkeley, Aptos & San Luis Obispo: 1961-1968
Letter to Sito in Time of War
ABCs
Poem on My Birthday
Commitment
Tabula Rasa
Poem on My Return
Captain of Poetry
Song
Patterns
Tale
A Book Entitled
Vision
Spaced
Yes
My Poems
Calculated Lion
Cogito Ergo Shazam
Split Pe-rsonality Soup
Ode to Graham Crackers
27½ Before 3
Taxman
Line Drive
Augustus Turns in His Tomb
Sermon on the Mound
Flower Poem
Putting Down Roots
Oakland Should Be
Langtree
Tantrik Tune-up
Detail
Scorpio, Scorpio Rising
Happy Climes
All The Heads of the Town Lit Up
Ketchikan & Deep Bay: 1968-1970
Feather
Evidence
Poems
Woodnotes
Fairbanks & Preston: 1970-1974
The Beast
Poloot
Big Foot
Islam Bomb
Headwater
Truckin’ the Alkan
Dirt
On the Beach
Seascape
Atman
Sea Change
Steppin’ Out
Printer’s Devil
Hell/Life
Funk of the F Word
Ellensburg: 1974-1995
Traveler’s Blues
Scat Song
Get Down
Burger Productions
Gold Leaf
Chilling Out with The Eclogues
Relax
At Iambic Feet
Diamond Hanging J Floating I
Variables of Existing Choices
Canis Latrans
Om Om on the Range
Critics Aren’t Agreed
Right Livelihood
Notes on the Back of a Feed Bill
Washington Swine Seminar
Green Pastures
Duke’s Mix in Winter
Living Well
Evolved and Eclipsed
Ecological Hazard
Beeper
Learning New Words
Tortureland
Calf Graft
Now Is Like That
A Tumbleweed Carries It’s Shadow
Tucked Within
New Gravity
Convalescent Conversation
Robbers’ Roost
Ordinary Adventures
Leaps and Bounds
Andy the Mechanic
Ancestors
Flake on Flake
Now There Then
Am I Repressed
Rodeo of the Equinox
It’s a Mess
After the Volcano
Old Growth
Slash
Synthesis
What Are You Up To?
All Mimsy Were the Borogoves
A Hill Called Bringer of Luck
Night Deluge
By the Numbers
Love’s Way
Chances
Hermit and Trout
As Above, So Below
Secret Spots
We Love Each Other
Ordinance
By Dint
Beryl
Red Light, Blue Light
Beryl on the Rocks
Erewon
Winter Forest
Slowly
Curve of Wind
Angel
Birthday
Nature Has No Memory
Sure Sign
Astray
Heart, How Close You Are
Interior Rose
Box
Elemental
Gifts
Maid of Mist
Vista
Dark Order
Soul Light
In First Light
Waterdownstone
Green Feeling
Afternoon Feeling
Dandelion Wishes
All Ways
Fourwinds
So
Moonrider
Cookin’
Everything
Two Roses
Two Friends
Walking
Do I Hear Trumpets?
March of Reds
Silent Language
Real
Strained Sunrise
Eyes That Cry
At the Blackhawk
F You C K
Up Before Four
Space Out
Dream
Clouds
Shifted
Insured
Below the Rad Lab
Home
Ok
Pagosa Springs: 1994-1997
Too Many Horses, Not Enough Saddles
Right to the Point
Clear
What Where Is Here
Method in My Madness
Post-Dogmatist Puddle
Painting Clouds
Once
Transition
Africa
Whatever It Takes
Samsara and Nirvana
Furniture Poem
Shrine for Jimi Hendrix
Deja Voodoo
Too Little Too Late
Warm Light
Our Natural View
Turn Beauty Turn
Party Down, Anasazi
Santa Rosa & Sebastopol: 1998-2000
Pebbles
On This Side of the Pass
Beating Against the Rock
Head Start
Eco Biz
Sky Line
Painpoint
Intrusions
Moving Finger
Come onto Dry Land
Stake Out
Cold Fountains
Blue Notes
Poetics
Tara
Endangered
Follow the Instructions
Heavy Artillery
Once I’m up to Speed on Quark
Flatline
Man-eater
Back to the Real World
Morning
Noon
And Night
And the Tree of Life Also
Five Abstracts Inspired by Mark
Rothko
Vacuumgenesis
Telecosmos
Nutcracker
Cutting a Swath
More Light
Picture from Williams
At East West Café
Diminishing Options
Fresh Flavor
Compassion
Cowboy
Angels
Duet at Sunset
Que Petite Sirah, Sirah
Constructive Rest
Xitro
Singing to the Cows
Singin’ Dixie
Rising from the River
Omni-spatial Matrix
Mandala
I Voted for Ike When I Was Eight
History on Her Hands and Knees
11:55 a.m. on This Planet
Turning and Mirroring
Full Moon
Music of Her Face
Yes, Repeat, No
Across No Divides
Song at Midnight
Eye Roving Over Blue Hills
Trace-tones and After-dots
Approachable But Out of Reach
When My Work Is Done I’ll
Look for the Seven-headed Beast
Heart’s Love & Yearning Misery
Flying White
Luminous Form
At the Center Is Fire
Fully Awake in Your Look
Found Poem
Tapestry
The 12:02
Bear Dance
Following Salvador Dali
Excruciating Beauty
Dicey
Lovers Lain
Coyote Meets Bodhidharma
Israel 33½
Buddha’s Last Words
Bunkhouse at 6 a.m.
Cold Out There
Fable
Clotho, Lachesis & Atropos
Pleides
A Way She Walks
So Sudden
A Lovers Are
Another Day
Wipe Out
Keep Moving
Nestled in the Rose in the Meadow of
Midnight
Instructions to My Apprentice
So High You Kissed the Sky
Minaret
Mother Muse
Calendar of the Moon
No O Zone
Time Space Language
Being Just As We Are
Just As It Is
Spit in the Ocean
Pasta Is Fasta Ordered By Phone
Encounter
A Leaf Ready to Fall
For Breakfast
Fragments
Freight
Believe Me, Laura
Timberline
Green Fire
Heart’s Timber
Stubborn Lumber
Where On the Paper Chain Are You?
Planting the Blast
On to the Next Unit
Whip or Will
Vacuum Plus
Flash an Ogham
Five Is the Key
Cold Mountain
Suspicious
Go Song
Zero Tolerance
Napoleon Without a Bone
Irresolute
Open on All Levels
Automorph
Calendar Art
Do or Dot
There There
The Wart Cannot Be Coerced
Space Control
Way Through
Crazy As Possible
Stress in the Field
B Is for Reflection
Interchange of Tinctures
Why2K
Adventures of Psyche on The Astral
Plane
How to Proceed
Things Change Yet Are One
President Buchanan Slept Here
Your Bones Know You Can
Calculus
Just When Phoebe Decided Life Held No More Interest
Rules
Space & Longing & a Few
Flashes of Light
Sunshine within Sunlight
Flowers Inside the Present
Mutiny Is Fate
Galatic Addressing Code
Give Me Fag Vomit
O, the Hells Ring Out
Trains That Could
Apocyyylove
War Saw
Weapons of Mass Destruction
No Visible Means of Support
General MacThuselah
Terror Angel
Errata
Worn to A Phrasl
Flashburn
Ideogram
The Color White
Geraniums
Gwen
Percy
I Know a Place
Weary Elves
Maddening
Forest Perilous
Billy Meets the Canyon Spirit
Boogie Knight
Maybe a Maiden
Not Anything Real
Merlin Creeping About
Stars and Time
Hear Them Buzzz
Risking the Boundary
Persephone’s Mirror
Hermes on His Rounds
Holographic Paradigm
Phantom’s of the Fayum
Numbed by the Rays
He Who Lists to Hunt
Nectar
Late Knight on the Golden Gate
Perfect
For Jennifer
Seeing Angels with the Inner Eye
In Ketchikan
Marilyn Manson on the Rag
This Script Has a Butt Shot
Sunflower Kitchen
Of Suns and Worlds
High Pressure Center
Box of Nerves
At Every Level of Montezuma’s
Consciousness
Love’s Garden
Visionary Designs
At the Game Reserve
Joy in All the Little Things
Wavetwisters
I Am Virgin to My Poem
Soul of the Anti-poet
My Escape Forward
I Know Nothing
Page of Wands
What Is Mind?
Night of Mystic Rain
Magician’s Apprentice
Flowing
All This Inside Me
Vision Quest: So Many Rainbows
Samsara Is an Airport Surrounded by
a Delayed Flight
Hookeena Village
Aloha Means Don’t Crash on the
Rocks
At Mahukona Beach Park
Wind Blows East, Then West
Pointless Poem about the Existence
of Non-existence
Story My Mother Tells
Cord Cutting
Refuge
Juxt Pose
Postcard from the State of Disaster
Sit Like a Mountain
Lost in Tongass Forest
Nima’s First Sweat
Mother of All Sweats
Poised
November Mist
Discovery
Dream
Along the Cutbank
New Forms
Dharma Talk
Building a Fire for the Medicine Man
Eurydice Awaits Orpheus in Hell
Installation
Friends
FOREWARD
At
Comrades Press, we have a vision—this book is part of that vision.
Comrades Press was founded in 2000 as a direct result of its on line magazine. The amount and the quality of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction that we received was staggering, much of it from previously unpublished writers. We decided to rectify this by becoming publishers ourselves and, with no funding whatsoever, set about the task of bringing the work of the misplaced poets of the world to the world. The first step in this rather grand and impossible plan (the higher the goals, the higher you can climb) was to be the publication of the first of our yearly anthologies. However, the possibility of publishing the work of Richard Denner arose, and a race began to see which book we would publish first. As both the horses were in the Comrades stable, the race was a foregone conclusion, and I am proud to say that you are holding the winner in your hands right now.
By
utilizing print on demand technology and on line stores, we are able to produce
quality books without many of the overhead costs associated with traditional
methods. This means that we are prepared to take risks that would probably have
other publishers waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. Rather
than publishing what we know will sell, our goal is to publish work that we
like, work that we believe in, which should be the only reason for anybody to
publish anything. Comrades Press works on a non-profit basis. If we make any
money from our publications, it sits in the bank account just long enough for
us to make the red numbers a little smaller before it is channeled straight
into our next publication.
This
also allows us to produce short-run chapbooks from brand new authors whose work
grabs you by the throat and demands to be read or picks away at the back of
your brain until there is no choice but to go for it.
If
this all sounds like a good idea to you, then please do visit our web site at
www.comrade.org.uk where you will find details of our other upcoming
publications.
Verian Thomas
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
The muse is not necessarily
embodied in a single person. My first contact with this spirit of inspiration
was Juanita Miller, the daughter of the flamboyant, 19th century California
poet, Joaquin Miller. She lived in a vine-covered castle among her father’s
monuments to Moses, John Frémont, and the Brownings, nestled in the Oakland
hills, in what is now Joaquin Miller Park. In our neighborhood, she was
unusual. On a foggy Halloween night, some friends and I spotted her in a white
nightgown walking barefoot through the eucalyptus. We were sure her house was
haunted and dared not go to her doorstep to trick or treat. She rode with my
family to church on Sunday, and on one occasion she signed a copy of a
collection of her father’s poems and presented it to my mother. I revered this
book. I would open it and gently touch her signature. It amazed me that we knew
someone who was associated with the arts.
I
memorized a poem from Miller’s book, a poem to Lily Langtree, a popular singer
of his day. I recited this poem in the 4th grade, and the next year in Mr. Shriner’s
5th grade class, when asked to memorize a poem, I recited the same poem to
fulfill the assignment, and the class jeered me, saying they had heard this
poem before. A red-headed girl came to my defense and said she still thought
the poem beautiful. A muse can be old
or young, peaceful, joyful or wrathful, and sometimes they are teachers. In the
6th grade, Mrs. Latimore whacked the back of my hand with a yardstick for
passing a scatological note when I was supposed to be diagramming
sentences. Professor Traugot
reprimanded me in front of a freshman comp class at Cal for plagiarizing Alfred
Kazan’s essay on Blake, and Professor Parkinson proclaimed my essay, “My Home,”
the worst thing he had ever read. I may be forever re-writing “My Home,” but I have
learned to disguise my sources with more craft.
Kenneth
Rexroth was the first poet I heard read. Ernest Blank opened my eyes to hidden
beauty in poetry by explicating Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress.” Mike
Sneed critiqued my first poem, a parody of Poe’s “The Raven,” and he pointed
out that poems are not Freudian soap-operas. While guarding the balcony of the
Campanile on the U.C. campus, Don Bratman taught me how to scan a poem’s lines.
Dennis Wier fired my interest in printing by showing me how to burn plates with
a light bulb in an orange crate in his closet. Vic Jowers promoted my first
chapbook at the Sticky Wicket near Aptos. Up to this point, I was dabbling, but
I was primed for allegiance to this art when the 1965 Berkeley Poetry Conference
was announced. My English teacher said he knew Robert Creeley and that I would
learn more in one day at this conference than I would in a whole year at Cal
Poly, so I turned in my journal,
accepted a C for the semester, and
thumbed my way back to Berkeley.
A
major turning point—an injection of rocket fuel. I want to thank Gary Snyder
for telling me Berkeley didn’t need another bookstore and to take the nuts and
bolts of what I had learned and move to the hinterlands where I was needed. Thanks to Allen Ginsberg for revealing that
I could be both a good poet and a good businessman. “Just be good,” he said, and I took the meaning
of this to apply to both esthetics and ethics. As a bookseller, I always tried
to find the right book for the right person at the right time. As a poet, well,
you really can’t be called a poet unless your poems survive a couple hundred
years. Thanks to Charles Olson for showing me the meaning of epic scale. It was a mind transmission
watching him bebop through the universe fusing Gilgamesh and quantum mechanics.
To Robert Creeley, who laid down two laws: William Carlos Williams’s No ideas but in things and Ezra Pound’s Make it new! To Jack Spicer, who
admonished, “Poet, Be Like God,” and to Robert Duncan for pointing out I could
write with or against the sun. To Kirby Doyle for showing me that we are all
connected; we just need to hold hands. To Ed Dorn for including me among The
New Poets. To Max Scheer for making me The Poet of the Berkeley Barb. To
Richard Kretch for inviting me to read at Shakespeare & Co. and publishing
my early poems in avalanche. To
Wesley Tanner for teaching me to thump type. To Philip Whalen for his blessing.
To Moe Macowitz for my initiation into bookselling. To Jon Springer for giving
me shelter in New York. To Luis Garcia for giving me his tattered thesis
binder, so I could organize my poems. To Belle Randall, Gail Chiarello,
Marianne Baskin, Kate Coleman, David Cole, Jim Whelage, Patrick Gord, William
Boardman, Don and Alice Schenker, Carry McWilliams, Patricia Turrigiano, Price
Charlston, Grant Risdon, Bob Allen, and Cheri Bader for their encouragment. To
John and Karen Bader for their patronage. To John Oliver Simon for building an
anthology, City of Buds and Flowers,
around a few of my poems. I flitted through Charles Pott’s Valga Krusa. I became a Berkeley Street Poet and a Poet of Peace
and Gladness.
Many
of the names above are famous, and I do not mean to imply I have been on
intimate terms with all of them, but it was during these days many lifelong friendships
started, and all of these people have in one way or another been instrumental
in my development as a poet. Luis Garcia, my closest friend and collaborator,
has been my greatest mentor, always present with insights and humorous twists
of perspective. I met Lu right after the Berkeley Poetry Conference, and we
continued meeting with other poets for weeks to come. Lu’s style of writing is
unique—playing with the words within the words, he directed me to meditate on
the morning light and helped me understand that it was important to discover my
own voice, to forge a blade, as he put it. Lu’s poems sizzle. They move so
fast, if you aren’t ready, you miss them. By imitating Lu’s use of jazz rhythms
and breath notation, I began to read my poems aloud. Just like Leadbelly
learned to play the 12-string, I learned my craft by putting my spine against
the piano.
The
choice of poems here is mine. Mainly, I have arranged them in chronological
order, except where they seem better situated in the thematic contexts of later
D Press chapbooks. I usually self-publish my writing, developing the arts of
collage and printing along side the poetry. The printing of my poems is a way
of editing my work, bringing what I say into better focus. Some of my poems
appear in more than one book and in more than one version. It has never been my
intent that any of them be the final version; I am not writing the poeme supreme. Words and phrases, which
have bothered me after reading them for years, have here been changed or
dropped. Due to format limitations, I have included only a selection of the
early poemebooks with linoleum block illustrations. The cyberbooks, Wavetwisters and Another Artaud, are absent from this collection because they
require elaborate typography and photographs to be fully appreciated.
Many
events have affected my view. Many collaborations have enriched my life. I am
especially grateful to my family and the many friends of my life. Also, thanks
to my publisher, Verian Thomas. My poetry is my experience. This is my secret
autobiography.
Richard Denner
Santa Rosa
December 4, 2000
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Some of the poems and art have
appeared in these journals and anthologies:
Tangents, Cabrillo College, Aptos, 1962
Breastbeaters, Berkeley
Pamphlets, Berkeley, 1963.
Poly Syllables, California
State Polytechnic College, San Luis Obispo, 1965.
America Sings, National Poetry Press, Los
Angeles, 1965.
Berkeley Barb, Berkeley
Barb, Berkeley, 1965-1967.
avalanche, undermine press, Berkeley,
1966.
Polar Star Art-Lit Supplement, University
of Alaska, Fairbanks, 1970-1972.
Vagabond Anthology, Vagabond
Press, Ellensburg, 1976.
City of Buds & Flowers, Alderaran
Review, Berkeley, 1977.
Heart in Utter Confusion, The Dog
Ear Press, Hulls Cove, 1980.
Ellensburg Anthology, Ellensburg
Arts Commission & D Press, 1980-1987.
Crab Creek Review, Crab Creek
Review Association, Ephrata, 1983.
Catalyst, Laocoön Books,
Seattle, 1988.
The Temple, Tsunami Inc., Walla Walla,
1997-2000
Pacific Northwestern Spiritual Poetry, Tsunami Inc., Walla Walla, 1998.
Blue Collar Review, Partisan
Press, Norfolk, 2000.
The 2River View, Daeman
College, Amherst, 2000.
Waterways, Ten Penny Players Inc.,
Staten Island, 2000.
The Louisiana Review, Louisiana
State University, Eunice, 2001.
Butcher Block, Butcher Shop Press, Oneonta,
2001.
Published at these sites on the
worldwideweb:
Comrades, www.comrades.org.uk
The Physik Garden,
www.physikgarden.com
Poetry Tonight, www.poetrytonight.com
The Place Around The Corner,
www.1freespace.com/art/olgasearch
dIVE, www.pages.prodigy.net/yog-sothoth
The Junkyard, www.thejunkyard.org
The Half-drunk Muse,
www.geocities.com/owatagal
Central California Journal of Poetry, www.solopublications.com
Seeker Magazine (The Gryphon’s Nest), www.seekermagazine.com
Dream Forge, www.pcisys.net
Niederngasse, www.neiederngass.com
NuFoto, www.nufoto.com
Bardo Burner,
www.dedcenter.com/bardoburner
Absinith Literary Review, www.absinthe-literary-review.com
Aluminum Baby, www.safesurfer.co.uk/rdenner
In Posse, www.webdelsol.com/InPosse
Fresh Poetry, www.freshpoetry.com
Electric Acorn, www.acorn.dublinwriters.org
State of unBeing,
www.apoculpro.org/SoB
Poetry Downunder,
www.aceonline.com
Adirondack Review,
www.suite101.com/myhome.cfm
Poetry Super Highway,
www.poetrysuperhighway.com
Cool Bird Poems,
www.usd.edu/~tgannon/bird.html
Poems About Poetry,
www.homepages.tesco.net/~magdtp
Eclectica Magazine,
www.eclectica.org
Bluff Magazine,
www.bluffmag.com
2River, www.daemen.edu/~2River
Story Bytes, www.thor.he.nte/~stories
Moria, www.moriapoetry.com.
Dark Planet, www.sfsite.com/darkplanet
zygzag,
www.zygzag.com/pages/ZZhome.html
Melic Review, www.melicreview.com
Samsara, www.sundress.net/samsara
This volume collects the work
published by D Press over a period of 33 years.
Poems & Blocks, Ketchikan,
1968.
The Eye of the Vitamin, Ketchikan,
1968.
Denner Recipes, Ketchikan, 1968
Poems, Ketchikan, 1968.
Crankshaft, Ketchikan, 1968.
Untitled
Poembooks, Deep Bay, 1969-1970
Chainclankers, Deep Bay, 1970.
Head Soup, Fairbanks, 1972.
The Scorpion, (at Arif Press) Berkeley,
1975.
New Gravity, Ellensburg, 1980.
Flake on Flake, Ellensburg, 1981.
Said Just So, Ellensburg, 1982.
Flower Poem, Ellensburg, 1985.
Night Deluge, Ellensburg, 1986.
Blue Agate, Ellensburg, 1988.
Blood Dust (with Luis Garcia),
Ellensburg, 1988.
Slowly, Ellensburg, 1989.
Dark Order, Ellensburg, 1989.
Curve of Wind, Ellensburg, 1989.
Interior Rose, Ellensburg, 1990.
This Mississippi Miss, Ellensburg,
1991.
Moonrider, Ellensburg, 1992.
With Loss of Eden,
Ellensburg, 1992.
Soul Light, Ellensburg, 1992.
Vista, Ellensburg, 1993.
Maid of Mist, Ellensburg, 1993.
Two Roses, Ellensburg, 1993.
Crossover, Ellensburg, 1993.
Waterdownstone, Ellensburg, 1993.
The Blank Flower,
Ellensburg, 1994.
Too Many Horses, Not Enough Horses, Ellensburg, 1994.
Risking the Boundary,
Ellensburg, 1995.
Blue Light, Ellensburg, 1995.
Sambhogakaya Cowboy, Pagosa
Springs, 1996.
Turn Beauty Turn, Pagosa
Springs, 1997.
One In a Jillian, Pagosa
Springs, 1997.
Party Down, Anasazi, Pagosa
Springs, 1997.
Talking Trash, Santa Rosa, 1998.
Wide As the World,
Sebastopol, 1998.
Constructive Rest,
Sebastopol, 1998.
First Flower, Sebastopol, 1998.
Xitro, Sebastopol, 1998.
Letter To Sito In Time of War,
Sebastopol, 1998.
Chain Clankers & Linoleum Nudes, Sebastopol, 1998.
New Gravity: A Collection,
Sebastopol, 1998.
Islam Bomb, Sebastopol, 1998.
Tack Shack, Sebastopol, 1998.
On Borgo Pass, Sebastopol, 1998.
Hollow Air, Sebastopol, 1999.
Cow Songs, Sebastopol, 1999.
The Spot, Sebastopol, 1999.
Flying White, Sebastopol, 1999.
Bear Dance, Sebastopol, 1999.
Green Fire, Sebastopol, 1999.
Second Boiling, Sebastopol, 1999.
Imaginary Toads,
Sebastopol, 1999.
Aluminum Baby, Vol. 1, No. 1, Sebastopol,
2000.
Aluminum Baby, Vol. 1, No. 2, Sebastopol,
2000.
Ice Moon, Sebastopol, 2000.
A Double Play (with Luis Garcia),
Sebastopol, 2000.
Wavetwisters, Sebastopol, 2000.
Another Artaud, Sebastopol, 2000.
Poems of the Four Times,
Sebastopol, 2000.
Windfall, Sebastopol, 2000.
INTRODUCTION
D Press: A Jewel In The Net
Like
Indra’s all-encompassing jewel net, D Press sparkles and shines with an
offering of well-crafted chapbooks that reflect more than forty years of
publisher Richard Denner’s handiwork with words, ink, paper and
illustration. Available works are always
new as the idea of keeping press runs short allows for a quick turnover, a low
cost or break even per book, more time for fresh material and other writers to
make it into print. Present titles
include Angio Gram by Charles Potts, Celestial Cattlecall by Lee Harris, Rebel Girls by Leila Castle, What Is The Sign? by Gay Shelton and A Year in Cows by Jane Booth. Belle Randall (Wax Museum) and Luis Garcia (Even
Steven) have been performing with Richard for years under the group name Circle of Friends and are kindred
spirits.
Although
conceived in a Ketchikan attic flat in l967, the roots of D Press go back to
the Bay Area of 1959. Richard took classes at UC Berkeley (Diane Wakoski was
there) and perhaps unconsciously received the metaphysical mantle of alumnus
poet Robert Duncan. Soon, Richard found himself reporting for Public Service
Station KPFA, getting married and
working as a bindery clerk. He became acquainted with every facet of printing:
the feel and look of paper, the color and smell of ink, typesetting and the
uses of different typeface, the feeding and rolling of presses, the cutting and
stitching of recto and verso. After a move to Aptos for more classes at
Cabrillo College, Richard became a regular at The Sticky Wicket, a coffee house
with poetry readings and live jazz.
Many ordeals and a few years later, he attended the seminal 1965 Berkeley
Poetry Conference, what John Bennett has called, “an event creating white light
intensity that rivaled any drug high and had more staying power.”
This
convergence of the Black Mountain, Berkeley Renaissance, Beat and Northwest
Schools gave Richard the pivotal opportunity to study under such avant-garde
poets as Charles Olson, Ed Dorn, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg and Jack
Spicer. Later he would study with Robert Bly, Gary Snyder, Phillip Whalen,
Denise Levertov and Carolyn Kiser at Fort Worden Center for the Arts in Port
Townsend, Washington. But it was Jack Spicer’s molding of series poetry into little books that had the most singular effect.
In 1965
Richard became a staffer on one of the original underground newspapers, the
Berkeley Barb and wrote his first article, Where
Is The Citizen?, which according to publisher Len Fulton (Dust Books) put
the coffin nails in this floundering Berkeley co-op paper which he co-directed.
Besides printing his poems in The Barb, Richard became a street poet who gave
impromptu solo and regular group readings with others such as Luis Garcia,
Richard Brautigan, Richard Kretch, John Oliver Simon, and Gene Fowler. “I would
hold five different colored magic markers,” Richard said, “and write rainbow
words on girls’ legs and arms.” Poems from these embryonic years appear in his Letter to Sito in Time of War (D Press 1998).
Here I am
reminded of Cummings or Snyder, words in vertical order as if they had fallen
off a pen, images juxtaposed with ideas to steer and grip the eye rather than
rhyme scheme, line length and academic filler. we find/ourselves/in a new/world/speaking/an old/language//we speak//of
beauty/and feelings/while the/machines/blast/the birds/ from our/hearts//watch/the
words/ hear/the howl/come/to the ear/eye/nose/lip//scream/at the/dichotomy/of
the/comma—/a dream/an illusion/how time/passes//dinosaurs/dance off/the
map/where you/and I sit/drinking/coffee//we hold/down/this loose/end/of
the/universe/feeling/at home/in the/smoke. Great one breath rhythm here, vowels echo and consonants resonate
while war and apathy are clearly addressed. An economy of words, words used
like paint or graffiti, well-woven words that challenge and explode with
intensity and insight, simple poems not only of use but of beauty and all
connected by a central motif—these would become Denner trademarks. Luis Garcia aptly alludes to them as
“dinner” in the title of his book, Poems
for Dinner (Summit Road Press 1997).
According
to Karl Shapiro, a rational person is least able to understand poetry, and the
poet must find inspiration and pry truth from hard won experiences. At The
Barb, Richard was suffering from rationalitus with acute ennui and hot flashes
of Armageddon. So he took off for Alaska, in search of lost horizons, to find
his true self (and what is reality?) through a series of pristine cognitions.
He worked as a water-chaser, unsetting choke and bundling logs for a logging
outfit. For two years Richard lived with wife and child in a cabin at Deep Bay off berries, hunting and
fishing. Back in civilization, he got a job on the Ketchikan Daily News and
worked at a cold storage plant. Tackshack
(D Press 1998) is full of such experiences: the Tongass National Forest,
glacier deposits, bears, dead salmon, king crab, soil samples, and The Beast (Richard’s Alaskan Pipeline
poem which pits industrial horrors against natural habitat and spells
indigenous doom).
The first
D Press chapbooks were simple affairs, printed from a Kelsey movable type
handpress and 60 point Boldini Bold, all acquired for fifty bucks. The pages
were hand cut, hung to dry in Richard’s attic flat and hand bound, yet showed
brilliant illustrations (Aztec Design
by Grant Risdon). Good paper, fine cover art with linoleum block prints to
accentuate the poems, a balance of art and word, these Dennerisms would become
D Press trademarks. An old picture of
Richard adorns one cover: he appears much like young Trotsky in Siberia with
wire-rimmed glasses, mustache, student garb and a pensive gaze...he had reason
for concern.
Up the
Alkan Highway, Richard traveled to the
University of Alaska at Fairbanks. He worked in the backshop of the student
newspaper and graduated in 1972 with degrees in English and Philosophy. D Press
was admitted to the campus library but banned from the UA student
bookstore. Perhaps it was the explicit
prints in Linoleum Nudes or graphic
poems, such as ‘Musky/Hump/in US/for 69.’ Whatever, feathers flew, and the UA
Polar Star (which later printed Richard’s works) put out the story, ‘Books
Raise Censorship Question.’ Professors came to his defense; Richard’s chapbooks were found to have literary and
artistic merit; and D Press was back on the shelf. It would be easy to dismiss
this book ban as provincial fuss, however the ground D Press broke in Fairbanks
mirrors the breakthroughs of alternative publishers such as Grove Press and
City Lights in the lower 48 states.
Next stop
Seattle, where Richard took a job with the Queen Anne News and studied at Port
Townsend. Islam Bomb (D Press 1998)
presents some of Richard’s first post-modernist poem experiments during these
years (1972-74). Here there is an expansion of line and poem length as well as
consciousness expanding East meets West terminology. Much like Eliot, Richard
combines his fragments into a unified whole, and does not leave one in a forest
of foreign text (like Pound) or babble (like Joyce). Using even romanized
Sanskrit and Tibetan is high risk business, yet Richard explains his diction
and uses it as part of a tapestry whose weave is encyclopedic in scope. In point, his four page poem on the once
unprintable F word reminds me much of
Robert Grave’s exhaustive piece Lars
Porsena, or The Future of Swearing.
From
Seattle, Richard went to Ellensberg to oversee a 300 head cattle ranch in
Badger Pocket for several years. Between stints in Alaska, he worked at Moe’s
Bookstore in Berkeley, so perhaps it was deja
vu that he opened the Fourwinds bookstore in Ellensberg (1977). This
literary nucleus was enlarged to include a restaurant by Richard’s son, Theo,
who continues to operate it today. It was here that Richard received a
Washington State Arts grant to produce Ellensberg
Anthology which featured and promoted local writers. The list of Denner
influences East of the Mountains seems endless: more anthologies, readings and
poetry workshops at his bookstore, formation of a city arts & crafts
festival, exhibition of his books and printing techniques at Kittitas County
Art Gallery, a three-day poetry workshop for the Washington Poets Association,
and video production for Ellensburg Public Television.
D Press
books began to resonate with new organic imagery in his Cow Songs and New Gravity.
In ‘Diamond Hanging I Blues’ the lines are simple and effective, I mend the fences./I tend the herd./...The
shit is ten feet deep/and I can’t eat or sleep/coyotes yap all night/below the
blown moon. A number of D Press books can be considered pivotal in the
evolution of Richard’s poetic style, psychic metamorphosis and creative
adaptability. The Scorpion (1975) combines all of Richard’s loves: astrology and
tarot, philosophy, Tantra, Latin (‘Cogito Ergo Shazam’) and the fine art of
printing, which Richard learned thumping type for Wesley Tanner at Arif Press.
Xitro pays
tribute to Richard’s spiritual quest, his teachers, Ginsberg and Tsultrim
Allione, a vast range of philosophical studies and Tibetan Buddhist practice.
When I read On Borgo Pass (1998), the
line drawings mixed with poetry take me back to the novel water colors of Henry
Miller and the wild pictopoems of Kenneth Patchen, apocalypse now/a pair of lips now, or words of my perfect T-shirt/Don’t Worry/Be Hopi.
For
fifteen years Richard annually planted trees, giving back to the earth and
getting in touch. Now, he plants seeds
by teaching at a school run on the Steiner Method and also online in poetry
chat rooms. When I was asked to write this essay on D Press and 40 years of
Richard Denner, I was told there were about 100 chapbooks, and I thought, pull
the other leg. James Tate is called prolific because he published some twelve
books of poetry in six years. Richard
is more likely to publish six books in one year along with a bevy of other
poets. James Laughlin (New Directions) published William Carlos Williams and
Ezra Pound for years at his own expense when they were not selling. He did not
want them to end up like Blake, being generally unread in their own lifetime.
In the same sense, D Press allows greater access to a variety of poets whose
vitality is assured by limited editions of selected work.
As I
opened a 20 pound box mailed from Santa Rosa, chapbooks flooded my table, and I
wondered how I could begin to encompass such a literary sea (and most of
Richard’s work is out of print). Seamus Heany’s old headmaster used to look
over his writing and sigh, “Ah, pure Hopkins” or “Ah, pure Chekov.” My eyes
swim through this tidal wave of excellence, collage covers which steal my
breath, Leonardo illustrations, such brillig poems, and I can only whisper in
awe, “Ah, pure Denner.”
Lee Harris
Seattle
BERKELEY, APTOS & SAN LUIS OBISPO 1961-1968
LETTER TO SITO IN TIME OF WAR
we find
ourselves
in a new
world
speaking
an old
language
we speak
of beauty
and feelings
while the
machines
blast
the birds
from our
hearts
watch
the words
hear
the howl
come
to the ear
eye
nose
lip
scream
at the
dichotomy
of the
comma—
a dream
an illusion
how time
passes
dinosaurs
dance off
the map
where you
and I sit
drinking
coffee
we hold
down
this loose
end
of the
universe
feeling
at home
in the smoke
ABCs
it begins
like this
and ends
like this
and continues
.
in the
beginning
it was
done on
a blank
page—
white
on
white
on the
day of
creation
.
hear
here
is a bird
in the
window
is a bee
a flower
a garden
in the
mind
.
dilute the
potion
pour in
water
with the
hemlock
open the
windows
look for
patterns
in this
dream
.
a new
dimension?
shaped
words,
canvases
of space
.
song
bird
word
word
heard
third
.
we are
running
we are
mad
the stars
point out
the way
we are
naked
we are
free
there are
flowers on
the path
.
I was
told
I was
shown
it was
pointed out—
the narrow path
the word’s wisdom
.
so
intricate
so
complex
so amazing
the dead
leaves
on the
sidewalk
the dog
barking
the man
scratching
.
what’s out
side is
within
is there
emptiness
without
awareness?
.
word
wise
will
word
weed
worm
word
were
wood
word
weld
wink
word
wild
wing
word
wall
war
.
construct
something
out of
clay
dirt
obscene
words
in the
wash
room
stall
VietnamVietnamVietnamVietnam
ietnamVietnamVietnamVietnamV
etnamVietnamVietnamVietnamVi
tnamVietnamVietnamVietnamVie
namVietnamVietnamVietnamViet
amVietnamVietnamVietnamVietn
mVietnamVietnamVietnamVietna
no time
not place
no mind
for it—
it is
a dark
sentence,
a joke on
the wall
.
island
city
one can
loose
oneself
in any
pattern
any tree
star
cloud
mountain
field
.
a problem today
is to put down
the black-white
marble of mind
draw a circle
take your shot
feed daffodils
to crocodiles
.
there
is a
cemetery
in the
heart
tombstoned
we look
for it
the door
that
opens
onto
gardens
and
graveyards
.
there
are stars
in the
branches
of the
tree
all the
windows
of the
moon
open and
close
.
the count
and how
to count
the count
.
how is it
sir?
how
is it?
it is
how
it is
is
how
it
is
down
that
road
soften
it up
how
it
sir
.
Spring
do not
mistake
me for
a flower
or a tree
Death
knows
there’s
music
in the
air
POEM ON MY BIRTHDAY
once again this day protrudes
its ugly head out of the debris of
the year
bleary-eyed & melancholy, strung
out
in my Imolian web
i contemplate my 23rd time-twisted
space-spun, yelping year
with River Lethe flowing
my scorpion soul
winds its wayward way
to a shipwreck upon a seed
COMMITMENT
when Ezra Pound was released
from St. Elizabeth’s, he said
“America is an insane asylum,”
and then he split for Spolento
It appearing to the Court
on this day
the above named defendant
appeared to answer
a charge of committing Treason
It appearing that the said Judge
in it appearing that on that date
a doubt arose as to the sanity
of said defendant
dismissed criminal proceedings
in said action
and certified the above-named
for hearing and examination
by said Court
to determine the sanity
of the said defendant; and
the attorneys
for defense and prosecution
stipulated
that the doctor’s reports
could be received in evidence
and the Court
considered the evidence
presented upon the issue
of the present sanity
of said defendant and found
the said defendant to be insane
It is THEREFORE ORDERED
ADJUDGED AND DECREED
that the said defendant
be committed and confined
as an insane person
until such time as he shall
become sane
the poet sits alone
in the Idlewild Airport Café
sketching his next Canto
‘mid
C Beef 65¢
Coke 10¢
comfort after 14 years
in a Washington D.C. mental ward
across the room
a dark-eyed beauty
cool, contemplative
Cassandra, your eyes are like tigers
with no word written in them
You also I have carried to nowhere.
noise from the juke box
interrupts his cold beef vision
TABULA RASA
A clear slate
An empty table
A clean plate
He rose
With earthquake and lightening
Pierced and naked
He returned
To prove
His identity to those
Who betrayed
Feared and denied
Him
And
When he spoke
He spoke
As one from eternity to
Us
The living
A new life
A second chance
A second coming
POEM ON MY RETURN
i’m back among the living
back from where angels & devils
dwell
with no one dead i know
i’m back
and see the meager come, the greater
go
day follow day as usual
i’m back and will live lustily
among the oak trees
CAPTAIN OF POETRY
a cold, bleak day—
i’m playing gin rummy with Phil
when we hear on the radio
Elliot is dead
i have a photo of him
dressed in a black suit with a cape
wearing a wide-brimmed hat
carrying a walking stick
standing in the shade of a tree
was he ever young?
not feeling very young myself
i walk along the shore
and listen to the gulls
watch the waves
feel the whirl
i figure he has the answer
to the question now, but
what do you do with it
when you’re dead?
SONG
the president of the univers-
ity Ph.D LL.D
acting in good faith
opened the key to symbols
and saw
the new requirements
applicable to persons
not embarked
are shown in circles
Do Not Fold, Bend
Stipple or Mutilate
Beware of kindergartens
early elements
exceptional
specialized
adults
credentials
supervision
TEXTBOOKS
MAPS
IRS regulations
under the current regulations
peace and gladness
cannot be deducted
PATTERNS
look at the numbers
Kant 478a-79d
there is beauty in moral order
and Bacon who should
be in Everyman’s Library
knew Augustine confessed
I have a friend who says
there are 3 principles
the good, the bad
and that whichisneither
good nor bad
as for the whichisneither
my friend told me to stop
smoking, which changed my life
because I smoke 2 to 3 packs
I write this sitting
on a Persian rug
listening to a harpsichord
on a Victrola play
Partia #2 in C Minor
Schmieder 826
478 79 3 2 2 2 826
in the bottom of the 9th
TALE
an ancient tale
of a river that fell in love
with a maiden
my soul stretches as a river
your image is reflected
deeply, quietly
blue eyes and bright face
kind, calm
a fresh flower on a spring day
when the image is lost
my soul
floods with despair
A BOOK ENTITLED
when you die we will plant you
beneath the magic mushrooms
they will grow lush and perfect
on a night with a full moon
you will hear them cry out
to be gathered
eebee
eebee
ooooo
eebee
eebee
ooooo
Listen!
Prepare the Jell-O!
Light the sofa!
VISION
my vision of a fish
brown with a yellow streak
and an amorphous red eye
encircled by a river
has fused with the dead cat
in the gutter I sent
to heaven with flower-stars
SPACED
Time stopped—
and like the drool
on the lip of an idiot
I hung over the abyss
looking inward
amazed
YES
o yes
read first
by all means—
now, a
string of DNA
floats
having
come unstrung
from its coil
o yes
I keep a
loose vowel
MY POEMS
Who said it
wasn’t just
sound, Gail?
You just
happened
to come
On a night
when I’ve
lost all
Of my poems.
ELIZABETH SAYS
I get that feeling
you get in your nose
when you eat ice cream
in my eyes when I hear
the sound of the needle
at the end of the record
like a mouse eating crackers
CALCULATED LION
A god
passed by
my window.
“Into the
Lion’s
Mouth,”
Lu said.
I quickly
jumped.
COGITO ERGO SHAZAM
9 times 9 times 9
miles, minutes
trains, tracks
clanking chains
electronic brains
Harpo Marx? No,
an acustaka
often ten
A BRAMAVITS SITS ON THE HEAD
OF A NEO-CLASSICIST
for Wolfman & The Big X
3 out of 4 hippies aren’t
badminton
mushrooms
mungbeans
moonbeams
sitting in Kip’s
with a book and a burger
my valves are loose
and my chains clank
SPLIT PE-RSONALITY SOUP
And so it goes and goes and goes
between your toes and up your nose.
Take two, one for each.
So far out, it’s out of reach.
Can you guess which is best
and which is less than all the rest?
ODE TO GRAHAM CRACKERS
GRAY
HAM
AND
peanut butter
sliced pickles
and
peanut brittle
take another toke
cherry pie
on rye
27½ BEFORE 3
close to a
symbol stupor
do not listen
unless you know
what you are doing
we must be careful
when filling special
dietary needs
beware of toxic chemicals
beware of toxic poetry
TAXMAN
clanking chains
electronic brains
a harpsichord?
no, a cowbell
there are two angels
one records, and the other
dictates
listen to the hum
take a cosmic breath
relax, man, hell is hung
with pretty pictures
listen to the sitar
Indian hard-bop twisted
on the frame of a fugue
sit and listen
as it tears your soul from you
LINE DRIVE
ami
ma moo
ami
ma moo
that’s a train
we go on that train
yes, we go on that
train
power steering batting average
power steering batting average
stop.
I cannot ignore
certainly not dismiss
Anulios
AUGUSTUS TURNS IN HIS TOMB
bottom of the 13th
Willie faces the left-hander
2 for 5
homerun for the 9th
overcast has blown away
in the next room
a sewing machine whrrrs
draining the power
static
fast ball hit into right
for a base
the mood shifts
LeFever is up
why is the spectacular held
in San Francisco
when the riots are in L.A.?
SERMON ON THE MOUND
apparently
I did not understand
when He spoke of the grain
which is the symbol of man
looking to the burial of the seed
its death and resurrection
I want mustard on my hotdog
FLOWER POEM
Gladness linked to
madness to amuse you.
Characters move—
rhythms, waves of color
flowers.
They whisper to me.
I am a privileged guess.
They let me do as I please.
They do as they please.
In the core of the bud
is fire,
the bone of desire.
.
I knew
when a moth flew out
of the moon’s eye
the dead
would teach me
to love.
.
There are stars
in the branches of the trees.
The moon’s windows
open and close.
It’s right
there
DANCE
DANCE
DANCE
.
Her eyes are for me
to see her heart.
While she moves into mine
I move into hers.
The grave, cold, simple—
ordained
in the see.
.
New directions,
old directions, each
is eaten in time,
each star,
seed,
stone.
.
Moon moves
mind into fragments.
Visitation comes
wordless, shapeless.
It is sweet, the taste
of a tree, children running,
guns clicking,
that shaking of my head,
needles too—a place
in space,
song, bird, word,
word, heard third.
.
The moon is a flower.
The day is a song.
Let the dog bark
down the hall of fading portraits,
my face in the mirror
above a broken vase.
Her mouth quivers.
She sees humor
in the antics of the man
trying.
.
There is a cemetery
in the mind.
We look for it—
nine times nine times nine
nails, needles, trains, trees—
often ten.
The moon is a flower.
This is to say
I love to say
I love.
PUTTING DOWN ROOTS
Serge planted a tree
when he was three on Berkeley Way.
Luis did too,
two birch, on Acton.
Peter started ivy
to cover his hideaway.
William grafted roses,
rows of them.
Patrick sowed oats
up and down on Telly.
Wes confesses
he hates green.
Alice says there’s nothing like
Oakland
bay laurel for cooking
or as a fact there.
OAKLAND SHOULD BE
abolished.
She’s an early bird
that catches the worm
on MacArthur at Manila,
an intersection, a branch
of Oak. O police love her.
City of Merritt,
your lakes and hills
are eyes and thighs.
You lay in asphalt splendor.
Your ways are littered,
and pigs are chased by panthers
orbited by angels dancing
on the tips of your limbs.
City of the Raiders,
what’s it like blasted?
Are you made of aluminum?
Where is London square?
Wolves aware of the sea’s tear
wander in rose gardens
and eucalyptus groves.
Joaquin Miller Amphitheatre
is dedicated to California’s
writers,
dead ones.
LANGTREE
Joaquin sings
of Lily’s graces.
She brought
the house down.
The house had beams
musically spaced,
columns of concrete
delicate as bird legs.
A structure,
a broken shell.
TANTRIK TUNE-UP
Wheel your rig into DICK’S—
you’ll get a square deal.
Dick distributes Punch Products.
Punch protects your transmission
parts. Perfect parts
produce the proper frequency
to transcend planetary interference.
Pour Punch in your crankcase, it’ll be-
come a peacock with 6 heads and 9
tails.
After this rite, things will be
right on.
Stick it in your gas, it’ll swell
until there’s a tyger in your tank.
Stuff it in that stash behind the
dash.
Rub it on the hood or slip it in
your ear,
Punch stops heat, sludge, jerking
and the formation of calluses
on your eyes
DETAIL
Birds that lay
in Euclid’s branches
have a view of May.
Spring blows and sucks,
sucks and blows
the eucal blossom.
It’s always ragtime,
suck and blow.
SCORPIO, SCORPIO RISING
Scorpio
beastie in the bunghole
bugaboo of bugaboos
mite in the middle of the third root
race
big eight of the cycle of life
maggot of the mind’s eye
mistake, abortion, infection,
crablouse
error of the raised eyebrow
O deadly persuader
O propagator of corruption
O comic of crimes not yet committed
O gutless guttersnipe
O diddler at the door of destruction
let me fall with you into generation
EYE OF THE SCORPION
is issuing from the brain
shinning upon us
to block our knock off
in the 13th week
a pearl in wine
the web of life, and a worm
are weaving deep in the earth
a wooden bowl
is being filled with blood
to make bread
as the cauldron boils
more gold and more gold
is issuing from the brain
white is holding a corpse
in the east of the brain
red is holding a banner
in the west of the brain
yellow is holding an arrow
in the south of the brain
black is holding a bowl
in the north of the brain
as the worm weaves the web
in the 13th week
in the eye of the scorpion
HAPPY CLIMES
Athens of the West—
she creates a provincial mentality
by fulfilling through witchcraft
whatever the mind pretends.
In Berkeley I was reduced
to monads by the Mænads,
classified scizo-non-decisive,
and given Stelazine and A.T.D.
A minor inconvenience—
a nervous breakdown.
Strangled by my vocabulary,
what to do with the stiff?
No one knew I was there
until a flood of vomit
oozed from under my door.
ALL THE HEADS OF THE TOWN LIT UP
I filled vials with violets and
grass.
I made baggies of marigolds and
grass.
I loaded a wine bottle with grass
and announced a Party for Allen.
I underestimated by a hundred
how many would attend this bash.
I was in a spot, so I put out my
stash
and passed my Stetson.
Olson filled the papa chair
and passed his pipe—that was some
pipe.
Orlovsky and I made it to the liquor
store
much to everyone’s relief.
Kretch read a diatribe seated on the
commode.
Lew Welch swung from the chandelier.
It was Creeley demanding everyone
know
where the firemen and police were
located
that cleared the place.
So, I added the cost and the cost of
the cost.
Nothing was stolen, and nothing was
broken,
save for the chandelier.
KETCHIKAN & DEEP BAY 1968-1970
FEATHER
unicorn
canker
Ketchikan
the moon
the axis
the exasperation
what can I say?
I saw them on the slope.
I saw them
climb Deer Mountain.
I called my friend
and he gave me
no answer.
I entreated him
my mouth
god
suck
flower
EVIDENCE
whereas a fortress
whereas a jade pagoda
whereas a river
of diamonds, a river
of blood
whereas the fortress
is the pagoda, whereas
the river is blood, whereas
men and women are diamonds
I ask what is there
where imagelessness prevails?
whereas some cosmoses are being
transformed, whereas some are
being transfigured, whereas
some metamorphosis continues
I ask how is this possible where
there is no imagination?
POEMS
HAS ONE
TIME TO
SEE THE
MISTAKE
THERE
AMONG
FLOWERS
OPENING
TO THE
MARBLE
LIGHT OF
CANDLES?
.
CAN WE EAT
THE GRASS
GOOD-BYE
FAREWELL
TOMORROW
TOMORROW
A TEST
A VISA
TO MEXICO
TO AFRICA
GOLDEN LEAVES
IN THE SUN
.
AROUND
ME THE
WALLS
MOVE
THE SKY
IS DARK
WITHOUT
A MOON
THERE’S A
DAEMON
EATING
MY LIVER
.
AT THE
CENTER
OF THE
FLOWER
LOOKING
BEMUSED
AT AN
ANGEL
RUNNING
A SWORD
THROUGH
A WORM
.
WORD
WORM
ACID
ANON
LOVE
LICK
LEAF
LEAK
ONLY
ONCE
WIND
WORD
WOODNOTES
for David and
Jim
Seek to realize the self—
the way, the poets say, is difficult.
We are situated in a cedar cabin
built on stilts over the water in a
cove
a mile across Moser Lake from Deep
Bay,
our mail drop, Deep Bay 99901.
Mail arrives weekly from Ketchikan,
25 miles by plane weather
permitting.
Mid-winter—there is four feet of
snow.
Elizabeth and baby Theo and I,
helped by friends, take to the woods
after reading Bradford Angier’s
How to Live in the Woods on $10/Week.
With my last paycheck, income tax
return
and promise of employment insurance
we should make out—hoping that
by discriminating use of ecological
resources
most of our material needs can be
met—
Selfless means to a selfless end,
as Ghandi put it.
So around this complex
our routine flows—all activities
merge in the pursuit, which deepens
here in Deep Bay.
Schedule remains firm.
Implementation of spiritual
discipline,
Karma Yoga—wood and water
wood and water, wood and water.
Would you believe, wood and water?
Elemental—the meaning is subtle,
but we’re only scratching the
surface.
We have stored away necessary
supplies, several cords of wood
cut and split and stacked.
Now we improvise.
.
Awoke to a 14 foot tide, high
enough to float a forty-footer off
an abandoned logging donkey.
Tied on and rowed it to shore,
breaking a rib in the dinghy near
the stern.
Tied up and came in for coffee.
Sometimes, I’m the ocean,
man-boat-ocean.
I wonder how hard the wind can blow.
Whips us from the east today.
Whitecaps in the cove, cedar
bending.
Gulls motionless in the gale.
February is a windy month.
Can we use up our desires?
Not that we don’t have sense
cravings.
Food is Number One God here.
And Shelter.
And the twin god, a good pair of
Boots.
Made a mixture of vinegar, water,
cloves, onion, garlic, salt,
mustard,
sugar, ginger for sauerbraten.
Put this mix and a venison roast
in a stoneware crock to marinate.
.
By the way, I’m told
Ramakrishna uses the simile of the
ocean,
the ocean of sat-chit-ananda
the ocean of existence,
consciousness, bliss—dissolve
myself like a salt-doll in this
ocean.
Lu Garcia writes from Berkeley,
“Things spin as they always spin.”
Jon Springer, at this time, finds it
“fetid in the Ukrainian ghetto of
6th St.
.
How did I get from selling the Berkeley Barb
on Telegraph Avenue to this cabin?
The old personality breaks down, and
the world becomes pure—like Blake
said,
as it is in infinity.
It is curious how some moves take
years to come about, but then
done with full support of mind &
body
they move forward.
.
The wind gathers strength.
As weather delays delivery of oil,
as the Coleman stove is in parts,
we cook over a makeshift grate
in the Yukon oil drum heater.
Elizabeth achieves bliss of
sourdough
chocolate cake, cerealmate bread,
venison strogfanoff, and fern
frawns.
Living in the woods is a fruitcake
idea.
Can others be influenced by seeing
how
it’s done?—expanding circle—friends,
town, state, country, galaxy, cosmos
returns me back to myself.
.
Snowflakes falling outside
and in my mind.
The temperature, 40 degrees.
Nothing sticks.
I roam the woods.
Tongass National Forest.
Sitka Black Tail Deer. Beaver.
Squirrel.
A few bear.
Much spirit life.
While dark, I take to the woods.
When dawn cracks, I’m waiting.
I’m a good shot, felling my game
with a single round from a 30.30.
Death, sorrow, sort of unreal,
this tug of life and death.
Repression, exploitation—
leaving the city to avoid the
establishment,
and, in turn, I become the Man.
Good weather, one clear day in
thirty
in this rain forest—ego hunting—lots
of weird animals in the mind—the
mind
itself a crazy monkey.
.
Somewhere, the Governor of Someplace
makes money in real estate.
Dr. Leary attends Altamont, says
it’s a lesson to be learned.
Theo and I float in our boat, while
far away
Neil Armstrong takes his giant step.
Hunt and fish, wood and water.
Today, eight crabs in the trap.
Cut and stacked cedar blocks,
using the tide to move them to
shore.
I came indoors to paint the cabinets
until Theo knocked over the paint
can.
Put him down for a nap and read
a few chapters of Thomas Á Kempis.
.
Field studies:
Periculum aquillium
a perenial fern, local species “hog
braken”
substitute for asparagus.
Theo gets up early to pick the
frawns.
Tiarella trifoiata
Quileut “gwaqwlatcyu’l”
three leaves (qwal’l=3)
Chew for coughs.
Equisetum arvense
“field horsetail”
Used by Quinault to regulate
menstrual flow.
While reading this aloud, Elizabeth
starts her period.
We have no ailments in the woods,
except when we go to town, we catch
the Ketchikan crud.
.
A whirly-twirly, sunny day.
Here it rains 200 inches a year.
10% chance of rain means 10 inches
of rain.
Made ice cream and had mincemeat pie
á la mode.
Watched a sea otter dive for crab.
The sky Gualoises blue, the water
a shade of jade and now smooth.
Buds and bugs and migrating fowl signal
Spring—
I feel like pulling the doors from
the jambs,
but I’m afraid of the ceiling
falling down
from a ton of newspaper &
mattress insulation.
.
Cut and split another cord of wood.
Supper of red snapper filets,
scalloped
spuds, and sponge cake w/berry
sauce.
We haven’t seen a soul on the water
for days—grooving on the isolation.
By kerosene lamp I read Lone Wolf
Smith’s
letters to the Daily News,
always a revelation—
Not one new goat trail here.
What for our Poor People and trollers
more rotten Pinks from Creeks
and let Coho go?
Where o where is Gov. Hinkels
Better or Bitter way?
.
Not sure I want improvements.
Sit and watch the deer on the beach,
watch them turn their heads, twitch
their ears suspiciously.
A little bird settles on a branch,
listen to it sing.
FAIRBANKS & PRESTON: 1970-1974
THE BEAST
Old Valdez.
275 sq. miles. Second oldest
white settlement in Alaska.
Captain Cook 1778
1794 Bligh Island
Spaniards 1798.
1800s whaling. Copper mined.
Route to the gold fields.
Blue fox farming in the 1920s.
Iron Trail by Rex Beach set here.
Young Miss Miller marries
the Maharajah of Indore.
New Valdez.
Rebuilt after quake on a new site.
Voted All-American City 1965.
Valdez rhymes with “ease.”
South Terminus of Alyeska’s
pipeline from Prudhoe Bay.
Wrathful Alyeska
auger in one hand
marshprobe in one hand
geo-stick in one hand
polaski in another
I take soil samples
along the surveyed route
from Valdez to Tonsina.
I follow the Lowe River
through alder swamps
across marshmuck to bogmire.
Streams jambed with rotting salmon.
I follow a bear trail
to the cutline where I auger
twenty feet to bedrock.
I sidetrack near Kendal Cache
to collect lichens and weathered
telegraph insulators.
I note the conglomeration
from a glacier deposit.
Along glacier benches to bedrock
across rivers to bedrock
to bedrock under ridges, under
boulders, under cobbles, under sill
under sand, under volcanic ash.
I take a rest and get sick.
A caravan of Winabegos passes.
A woman points to a dead salmon
and exclaims, “Someone should do
something about that.” Cheechakos.
10% chance of rain in a rainforest
means 10 inches of rain.
At Trans Alaska Pipeline
Point on Ground TAPS PG=361+68
I join my copter pilot.
Mustachioed Vietvet with shades
his scarf trails in the breeze.
He drops me off on a sandbar.
There’s a field of devil’s club
and a jungle of alder hanging
from granite cliffs between me
and my test hole.
King crab to Otterman:
glacierized
graywhacky
sandy sill
silly sand
gravel
cobbles
Indian
love stones
fucking
rocks
over
Otterman to Kingcrab:
reading you
alluvial
fan
metamorphic
composition
zone
theory
montage
effects
colluvium
colluvium
colluvium
clear
Dhal sheep graze below me.
As the Alouette lands, a bull moose
into the brush.
Up the line, a grizzly and her cubs
into hiding.
From the Arctic Ocean
at Prudhoe Bay, over
the Brooks Range
across the Koyukuk River
across the Yukon River
and the Tanana, stretching
Across the Alaskan Range
this in temperatures below zero
for more than one hundred days
below forty below for weeks
dropping to eighty below
in arctic winds
From Thompson Pass
down a glacier moraine, the pipe
slouches into Valdez.
1972
POLOOT
Alaska, who lives there?
Caribou, wolves and bear.
This grizzly airs a grudge
that everyone fears to judge.
A refinery don’t smell
like Chanel— more like hell.
BIG FOOT
One drop goes
a long way to ease
the friction.
100 billion barrels,
ten to the tenth power—
while the answer is hair
warm nights in fur,
and the best investment
is Sasquatch.
ISLAM BOMB
1. inner secret
theoretically the absolute p(ohm)e
is defined in a self-consistent way
the unit of resistance
determined with a coil
spinning in a field
passion-love-beauty formula
the passion of love
the catalysis of beauty
the passion of beauty
the crystallography of love
the beauty of love
the musicology of passion
the of of beauty the passion love
passionlove of the the of beauty
expressed concretely
in terms of smart bombs
(a form of intercourse protexted
under the cuntstitution)
Kenning equations concocked &
cunninglingously composed
paradoxically pertinent when
accepted as parts of patterns
suspicious as it sounds
using Euler’s formula L+2=P+A
& correcting for obscured areas
let us begin w/the premise
when we take care of ourselves
participants are swept along
in unacknowledged harmony
true Taoist cyberneticism