jim harrison | five poems

POETRY DISPATCH No. 362 | January 5, 2012

JIM HARRISON

FIVE POEMS

Editor’s Note: I just trashed a lead-in piece, essay, on Harrison that I spent too much of yesterday (and the afternoon of the day before) writing. I liked where it was going, but after a trip to town, after a cup of coffee and reflection, after I came back to the desk here in the coop, I was tired of the piece, tired of what we’ve done to Harrison, maybe even more tired of what Harrison has done to himself.

Success in American writing means the making of the myth. Then living up to it till it eventually kills you, spiritually if not physically. I don’t want to get started on this or I’ll spend another day or more writing that piece. I don’t want to be reminded of how many times Harrison has been compared to hard drinking, hard living, hard loving, hard writing Hemingway. And how the myths sometime converge. But…

Fuck it! (I’m angry). Harrison may be our Hemingway of today (he may have even preened himself for this distinction through time…including what seems his present, ‘heroic’ road to self-destruction), but he is not Hemingway. He is Harrison. In some ways, a better writer than Hemingway. Certainly a better poet. Certainly a fuller grasp of the narrative of the natural landscape of America (the Midwest in particular), how it speaks, what it says, how it saves us from ourselves…how it shapes Harrison’s words far beyond the Nick Adams Stories.

Forget the myth. Forget the photographs. Go to the work. There you’ll find him. — Norbert Blei

Calendars

Back in the blue chair in front of the green studio
another year has passed, or so they say, but calendars lie.
They’re a kind of cosmic business machine like
their cousin clocks but break down at inoppormne times.
Fifty years ago I learned to jump off the calendar
but I kept getting drawn back on for reasons
of greed and my imperishable stupidity.
Of late I’ve escaped those fatal squares
with their razor-sharp numbers for longer and longer.
I had to become the moving water I already am,
falling back into the human shape in order
not to frighten my children, grandchildren, dogs and friends.
Our old cat doesn’t care. He laps the water where my face used to be.

[from IN SEARCH OF SMALL GODS, Copper Canyon Press, 2010, $16, pb.]

I Believe

I believe in steep drop-offs, the thunderstorm across the lake
in 1949, cold winds, empty swimming pools,
the overgrown path to the creek, raw garlic,
used tires, taverns, saloons, bars, gallons of red wine,
abandoned farmhouses, stunted lilac groves,
gravel roads that end, brush piles, thickets, girls
who haven’t quite gone totally wild, river eddies,
leaky wooden boats, the smell of used engine oil,
turbulent rivers, lakes without cottages lost in the woods,
the primrose growing out of a cow skull, the thousands
of birds I’ve talked to all of my life, the dogs
that talked back, the Chihuahuan ravens that follow
me on long walks. The rattler escaping the cold hose,
the fluttering unknown gods that I nearly see
from the left corner of my blind eye, struggling
to stay alive in a world that grinds them underfoot.

[from IN SEARCH OF SMALL GODS, Copper Canyon Press, 2010, $16, pb. ]

Tomorrow

I’m hoping to be astonished tomorrow
by I don’t know what:
not the usual undiscovered bird in the cold
snowy willows, garishly green and yellow,
and not my usual death, which I’ve done
before with Borodin’s music
used in Kismet, and angels singing
“Stranger in Paradise,” that sort of thing,
and not the thousand naked women
running a marathon in circles around me
while I swivel on a writerly chair
keeping an eye on my favorites.
What could it be, this astonishment,
but falling into a liquid mirror
to finally understand that the purpose
of earth is earth? It’s plain as night.
She’s willing to sleep with us a little while.

[from IN SEARCH OF SMALL GODS, Copper Canyon Press, 2010, $16, pb. ]

BROOM

To remember you’re alive
visit the cemetery of your father
at noon after you’ve made love
and are still wrapped in a mammalian
odor that you are forced to cherish.
Under each stone is someone’s inevitable
surprise, the unexpected death
of their biology that struggled hard, as it must.
Now to home without looking back,
enough is enough.
En route buy the best wine
you can afford and a dozen stiff brooms.
Have a few swallows then throw the furniture
out the window and begin sweeping.
Sweep until the walls are
bare of paint and at your feet sweep
until the floor disappears. Finish the wine
in this field of air, return to the cemetery
in evening and wind through the stones
a slow dance of your name visible only to birds.

[from SONGS OF UNREASON, Copper Canyon Press, 2011, hb, $22]

Death Again

Let’s not get romantic or dismal about death.
Indeed it’s our most unique act along with birth.
We must think of it as cooking breakfast,
it’s that ordinary. Break two eggs into a bowl
or break a bowl into two eggs. Slip into a coffin
after the fluids have been drained, or better yet,
slide into the fire. Of course it’s a little hard
to accept your last kiss, your last drink,
your last meal about which the condemned
can be quite particular as if there could be
a cheeseburger sent by God. A few lovers
sweep by the inner eye, but it’s mostly a placid
lake at dawn, mist rising, a solitary loon
call, and staring into the still, opaque water.
We’ll know as children again all that we are
destined to know, that the water is cold
and deep, and the sun penetrates only so far.

[from SONGS OF UNREASON, Copper Canyon Press, 2011, hb, $22 ]

three native american prayers

POETRY DISPATCH No. 361 | December 14, 2011

Editor’s Note: Though my working environment in the coop is saturated with ‘spirit’…the pine walls, glow with sacred memorabilia of all sorts, from hand-made wooden crucifixes to paintings, photographs, holy cards, carvings…windowsills of glass, pottery, sculpture…much of it reflecting the Southwest and the old country…much of it appealing to myth, mystery, meditation…there’s a particular place above my desk, to my right, where at least thirty years ago I posted a copy of “A Prayer of the Navaho Night Chant” which I found during one of my New Mexico sojourns, and which I have never removed since.

Though I don’t read it every day, or pray every day, I consider it a kind of blessing of words which hover around me, good days and bad days. Words that make a difference. Which is all any writer is ever after. His sole reason for being.

Along with the artwork on the coop walls done by many of my friends, here and there a warm, comforting and perfect piece of pottery by Chris Spanovich, a woman I truly loved, makes its presence felt. I smile. I walk over to it. I touch it. Her pottery begs to be held in both hands, like an offering—received. More spirit. More reverence. More prayer. I did a long story on her once, “Chris Spanovich, The Potter of Chimayo” which appears in DOOR TO DOOR, Ellis Press, 1985.

Prayerful, thankful…that’s how I feel today. That the arts speak to us in ways no organized religion can ever understand. All this spirit that surrounds me is all that really matters. ..Norbert Blei

I’m an Indian.
I think about common things like this pot.
The bubbling water comes from the rain cloud.
It represents the sky.
The fire comes from the sun
which warms us all, men, animals, trees.
The meat stands for the four-legged creatures,
our animal brothers,
who gave of themselves so that we should live.
The steam is living breath.
It was water, now it goes up to the sky,
becomes a cloud again.
These things are sacred.
Looking at that pot full of good soup,
I am thinking how, in this simple manner,
The great Spirit takes care of me.

— John Lame Deer

Greeting, Father’s Clansman,
I have just made a robe for you, this is it.
Give me a good way of living.
May I and my people safely reach the next year.
May my children increase; when my sons go to war,
may they bring horses.
When my son goes to war, may he return with black face.
When I move, may the wind come to my face,
may the buffalo gather coward me.

This summer may the plants thrive,
may the cherries be plentiful.
May the winter be good, may illness not reach me.
May I see the new grass of summer,
may I see the full-sized leaves when they come.
May I see the spring.
May I with all my people safely reach it.

— Crow Indian prayer

Tségihi,
House made of dawn.
House made of evening light.
House made of the dark cloud.
House made of male rain.
House made of dark mist.
House made of female rain.
House made of pollen.
House made of grasshoppers.
Dark cloud is at the door.
The trail out of it is dark cloud.
The zigzag lightning stands high upon it.
Male deity!
Your offering I make.
I have prepared a smoke for you.
Restore my feet for me.
Restore my legs for me.
Restore my body for me.
Restore my mind for me.
This very day take out your spell for me.
Your spell remove for me.
You have taken it away for me.
Far off it has gone.
Happily I recover.
Happily my interior becomes cool.
Happily I go forth.
My interior feeling cool, may I walk.
No longer sore, may I walk.
Impervious to pain, may I walk.
With lively feeling may I walk.
As it used to be long ago, may I walk.
Happily may I walk.
Happily, with abundant dark clouds, may I walk.
Happily, with abundant showers, may I walk.
Happily, with abundant plants, may I walk.
Happily, on a trail of pollen, may I walk.
Happily may I walk.
Being as it used to be long ago, may I walk.
May it be beautiful before me
May it be beautiful behind me.
May it be beautiful below me.
May it be beautiful above me.
With it be beautiful all around me.
In beauty it is finished.

– A Prayer of the Navaho Night Chant

john bennett | sometimes you feel so all alone

Charles Bukowski | Photo by Herb Ritts

POETRY DISPATCH No. 360 | December 10, 2011

John Bennett

Sometimes You Feel So All Alone

I’d like to address the court. I’d like to address the hung jury. I’d like to address the envelope in the best penmanship possible. I’d like to dress up like a Lilliput and go traipsing thru the streets of Chicago. I’d like to dabble in redress to ease my distress. I’d like to respond to the warrant. I’d like to warrant your love. I’d like to live in a warren and watch the world pass by.

I wish I could stop tap dancing and snapping my fingers. I wish I could take off this grease paint. I wish I could lay down and die. No, seriously, how bad could it be? Except I wonder how long my brain will continue to churn after my heart has stopped. I wonder if they’ll be unkind to my body.

I’m partial to a funeral pyre pushed out to sea. Or just lay me down in the leaves in some deep forest dressed in everyday clothes. I don’t need a service where people show up who’ve stopped thinking about me years ago. Let’s not make a lie of it on the cusp of my last breath.

Sometimes you feel so all alone it just feels right.

Goodbye, Charles Bukowski.

julie eger | rendezvous | kitchen secrets | things my grandmother told me

POETRY DISPATCH No. 359 | November 17, 2011

Julie Eger

Editor’s Note: I began as a teacher of English on the high school level in 1957. Because inside this teacher of grammar and literature lived a young writer trying to break out, no matter what I taught in the beginning or where, when, and what lower/higher levels of teaching I eventually reached (junior high, junior college, college, graduate school…workshops) my major focus was always writing. Words on paper. Essays, stories, poems. My be all and end all. Tell me about it.

I don’t know how many students (all ages, types, abilities) I touched base with in my brief, 10-year career as a certified teacher in the Chicago and suburban area, or my life beyond that as a writer (with a track record of publications and books) who loved to talk and work with others who wanted to write (in particular, over thirty years at my favorite setting ‘to get things done”, my annual workshop at the Clearing, here in Ellison Bay, WI), but certainly over hundreds of people wanting and needing to get their own words down…put their own lives on the line.

The more determined, intense, passionate—those were/are my people. NOT the hobby writers, not the people who talk about writing, not the folks who wish to write bestsellers, not the people who are afraid to write what they know because of hurting somebody’s feelings, and definitely NOT the people who think there is money to be made at this. Give me the people who need to write and know not why. Give me a classroom, a table, a desk, a counter, a bar, a bench in the park. Let’s talk writing. Where we are at the moment. Where you may need to go. How I might suggest you get there. What to read. Ways to write. Now do it.

My most frustrating writing student: the one who CAN do it, with little or some or no help from me. But, for whatever reason, doesn’t. ‘Doesn’t at least do it in the way I feel a writer must work reasonably. Unreasonably, steadily…to do IT before anything else. (Or almost anything else). I grow upset, tired, frustrated when someone whose work I admire is not publishing in literary magazines, not receiving the recognition they deserve…not publishing a first, second, third book of his or her work.

What does this have to do with Julie Eger? Well, a little. Or maybe a lot. I hate to use her as an example, especially since this piece will be news to her—though I’ve known her as a student/friend for quite a few years, and she knows where I’m coming from–as a potential publisher who has been trying to get a complete manuscript out of her for at least the last three maybe five years. But…nothing…still.

What’s frustrating for other writers out there who are persistently publishing in literary magazines, persistently approaching publishers like me to take a look at their book manuscript, but won’t, because I do not have the time or energy to take on unsolicited manuscripts by the car-load, beginners especially but others as well, yet here I go on my own ‘seek-and-find’ mission to get a writer, a manuscript I WANT—and come up empty. In this case, someone with perfectly legitimate explanations, such as those found in a recent note from Julie:

“I keep trying to piece stuff together but it seems that I’m busier helping other people piece their lives together and that is just taking over. I think I’m at an in between spot in my life where my mom needs me to help with Dad, my kids need me to help with grandkids, and then there is my own stuff. Too many which ways. I’ll keep writing and one of these days I hope to ‘get ‘er done! I’m not giving up, just taking longer than I originally anticipated. Damn economy threw a wrench in all my play time!”

Maybe, too, there’s a lesson here I need to learn and accept, as hard as it may be for a writer like me who lives and dies every day to get the word out, one way or another. Maybe some writers don’t want or need to see their work in print. Maybe some are satisfied enough in the act itself. In all my years of working with writers, I have known only a handful content to exist alone. Julie may be another one. “Nobody needs to read this but me.”

But I hope not. —Norbert Blei

Rendezvous

My poem strolls in at midnight
like Humphrey Bogart,
tosses his coat and hat on my bed.
I pull back the curtain,
glance out at the lighted drive.
He’s backed in – front end
aimed at the highway.
His plan – a quick get-away.

But for now I lie
down beside him,
and because I am
a methodical woman
and alluring –
I undress him slowly,
one layer at a time
to reveal his hidden intent
and he stays,
this time better than the last –

His tie is on the floor now.
He’s gone – down the highway
I suppose
I am satisfied
he came at all.

Julie Eger © 2011

Kitchen Secrets

The first time I heard Elvis
I was five-years-old.
Papa was gone
and I was peeking
around the corner
while Mama was
in the kitchen
with the radio on.
Come supper time
I danced to the table
with swaying hips
and bendy knees.
I used my spoon
as a microphone.

Papa gave me the look
and Mama said,
“That’s enough child.”
And I said, “No,
that’s alright now Mama,
That’s alright by me.”

Julie Eger © 2011

Things My Grandmother Told Me

Wash the walls with hot soapy water but rinse with cool and clear.
Don’t rub so hard the paint comes off or the paper peels up.
Wear a hat when you’re out in the sun.
Don’t look directly into the sun
or you’ll burn your corneas and go blind.
Add this much salt to the soup.
Turn away when a man looks at you.
If he bothers you, kick him in the knee.
If he keeps bothering you, kick higher.
Mind your manners at school, especially Sunday school.
Sing your song loud even if you’re off key.
Don’t mind the ones who are always on key,
they don’t know other things.
Pull weeds, not carrots.
This is the way to use a hoe.
This is the way to use a rake.
This is the way to stack wood.
This is the way to use a broom.
This is the way to carry bricks.
This is the way to wash a dish.
This is the way to a fold a towel.
This is the way to fold fitted sheets.
This is the way to make a bed.
This is the way to carry buckets of water.
This is the way to flip a pancake.
This is the way to make beef stew.
This is the way to open a jar.
This is the way to pin your blouse
in the middle where it gaps.
This is the way to pull back your hair
when you are working hard.
This is the way to pull back your hair
when you are working hard to attract a man.
This is the way a whore wears her hair.
This is the way a whore makes a bed.
This is the way to wear your hair
when you want to keep a man.
This is the way to mark your calendar.
This is the rhythm to follow when you don’t want a baby.
This is the rhythm to follow when you want a baby to come.
This is the way to make your bed,
especially when you are expected to lie in it.

And if I don’t want to lie in it?

Then you haven’t been listening.
We all have to lie in it.

Julie Eger © 2011

ralph murre | crude red boat | psalms | the price of gravity

Ralph Murre | Photo by Bobbie Krinsky

POETRY DISPATCH #358 | November 13, 2011

Ralph Murre

Editor’s Note: Ralph Murre began as a farm boy from elsewhere Wisconsin. I’m not familiar with his entire life history, but the rural is still in him and along the way other interests claimed his attention. Job titles include: dreamer, mariner, architecture—which he still practices for survival, when the words don’t call him home. Or shall I say “the sea”?

Ralph Murre loves water. In the deepest part of his heart, the sea in all of its manifestations, lyrically, matter-of-factly, speaks to him, sets him adrift. He’s writes with a true hand about a lot of ordinary things as well, as many poets do, but many poets don’t hear the sirens, don’t reach deep enough within for the extraordinary, as Ralph does, transforming line, rhythm, feeling, image, idea (note too: wry humor) in ways most uniquely his and inevitably ours.

Though I’ve lived in this county for over forty years, I never really knew him. A passing nod of recognition upon occasion…some knowledge of his working in the local building trades. “Great Northern Construction” comes to mind. I remember him sending me a poem (a good one) about a local character/icon that I had profiled in my first book about the county. That was my first inkling he had any interest in poetry at all. Sometime later he appeared in my annual writing workshop class at The Clearing. A beginner? A late bloomer most likely, born in 1944. Already shaped significantly by life…already a tone of voice in his words on the page. Little I could do but suggest some other directions: There. Try that way. Then over there. He had already launched himself…headed into those waters all writers dip into at the beginning, inevitably finding or not finding them too cold, too deep, too dark or just right. Smooth sailing.

Since then (not that long ago) he has developed into one of our more significant ‘local’ poets, where there is more good writing to be found than you can “shake a stick at”, as they used to say–which pretty much dates me. As I recall, when I moved here in the late l960’s, I was the only writer in the landscape on a serious mission to survive by my words alone–with the exception of a “little-old-lady” poet, Frances May of Sturgeon Bay, whom I did not meet (come to love and highly respect) for at least three years after my arrival.

There was the local newspaper, of course, a couple of local newspaper writers who entertained the folks with columns, gee whiz news, basking in local ‘celebrity’ (well deserved), all of whom may have penned a little book of local color or were thinking of it someday. But that was it.

Since that long time ago, I am happy to report from this oft called “Paradise” a plethora of fine poets and writers in our midst: Ralph Murre obviously one, with books, publications, readings, local and state organizational activities to his credit, a highly regarded man of few and many good, right words; Robert M. Zoschke, poet, novelist, cantankerous essayist, author of  DOOR COUNTY BLUES, MADE IN AMERICA, editor/contributing writer to REFLECTIONS UPON THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF JACK KEROUAC’S ON THE ROAD…another, (though not so obviously) an up-and-comer, our resident ‘outsider’ (reminiscent of my own difficult outsider years here…born to write to piss some people off), while I shuffle anonymously into the twilight these days, a few books of local interest trailing behind me, more than satisfied with the beauty and growth of this peninsular paradise, the wonder of earth, air, water expecting no less than the best within us–words and images…poems, stories, books, paintings, photographs, music…whether our subject be local or far away from here.

A good place to grow. To chart a voyage of discovery. To set sail. To just be.

The poetry of Ralph Murre reflects all this, from shore…to sea. – Norbert Blei

Scout’s Honor

Merit badges for tying knots —
the bowline, the sheepshank, the clove hitch.
Merit badges for whittling the likenesses
of dead presidents and woodland animals, and
of course, for assistance given to the feeble
in their never-ending quest to cross the road.

Maybe they should keep handing them out.

The badge for showing up every day
right down to the day they tell you
not to show up tomorrow,
A merit badge for the day
your infant son needs major surgery.
Another for that day he’s grown
and buys his first motorcycle.
Badges for each of your daughter’s tattoos
and piercings. Diamond insets
if you can’t really mention what’s been pierced.
A merit badge, or, at least, a colorful neckerchief
as your party loses another one.
(But it could be taken back if you move to Canada.)
Bronze medals for burying parents.
Silver for friends.
You’d rather die than win the gold.
A merit badge and letter of commendation
the day you actually give up your abuse
of anything, or anyone.
And a little badge of semi-precious material
for every day that you get out of bed
and wear a brave costume.
One for that confident smile on your face
as your knees tremble beneath the table.

[from CRUDE RED BOAT, Cross+Roads Press, 2007]

VIII.

I may go back to blues, back to blue-black times
when rhymes and little pills didn’t cure the ills.
Joy-killer realities, banalities like paying utilities –
but it’s so hard to paint in the dark – back to a fridge
of don’t-know glowing meats, rancid eats, few beers,
pickled herring, pickled beets, picking up the beat
of trash-can slam, picking up jobs of poor-I-am and
picking up women in good-night dreams, bad-night bars,
rusted cars in South-Side parking-lot wake-ups, staggering
to fourth-floor walk-ups, singing blue of our break-ups,
if we’re singing at all.

[from PSALMS, Little Eagle Press 2008]

Prayers of Old Men

I’ll bet you think the old men
are praying to be young men
with young lovers, but
they kneel now beside your bed
and pray for the things young men
haven’t heard of yet -
the high plateaus of you
and the rivers rushing
to the deep sea of you.
Old men pray for height and depth
and the quivering leaf of your ear
touched by a tongue,
for that quiet cove of you
where they may lie sheltered
for one more evening.
They pray for the light
of sunrise in your eyes
and they pray to believe
in whoever they pray to
for they want to believe in everything,
because believing in nothing didn’t work.
And they pray for the touch of you on me.
They’re all praying for you and for me,
the high ground of you towering
above me, and the river,
they’re praying now for the river of you,
and they’re praying for me
to go adrift in the river
to the sea of you,
to the sea of you,
praying I’ll be lost at sea in you
and they’re secretly praying
that this storm will drown me
in the depths of you,
because they are old men
and they know I am a sailor,
and they know that drowning
is the only way for sailors
to get home.

[from THE PRICE OF GRAVITY, Auk Ward Editions, an imprint of Little Eagle Press, 2010]

Much more on Ralp Murre can be found by clicking here…