Green chilies, red chilies, tamales, sopapillas, guacamole! It’s New Mexico and the food is hot and tasty. Last week when I was in Espanola (a small town north of Santa Fe, south of Taos) I went to dinner with some friends at one of our favorites, Gabriel’s, out on Hwy 25, where they make the guacamole fresh to your specifications right at the table. The tortillas are freshly made too and the green chili knocks your socks off. Well, it’s not that hot, but it sure does get the tongue dancing.

Thought I’d look around for some “foodie” poems and found these three. Also took some snaps at Gabriel’s. Mmmm, is it time for dinner?

Entrance to Gabriel’s 

Twins that were too cute to resist not taking their picture. 

The busy dining room at dinner time.

Making the guacamole–so much color! 

Close up of the guacamole prep–love how that lime juice looks coming out of the press. 

Where are the mariachis who go under these hats? 

This was dessert–the desert at sunset. You can see some snow on the farthest peak. 

POPCORN

When Plato said
that what we see are shadows
flickering on a cave wall,
he must have meant
the movies.
You let a cigarette lean
from your mouth precisely
as Bogart did.
Because of this, reels later,
we say of our life
that it is B-grade;
that it opened and will close
in a dusty place
where things move always
in slow motion;
that what is real
is the popcorn
jammed between our teeth.

Linda Pastan
Carnival Evening
W.W. Norton & Co., Publishers

ODE TO FRENCH FRIES

What sizzles
in boiling
oil
is the world’s
pleasure:
French
fries
go
into the pan
like the morning swan’s
snowy feathers
and emerge
half golden from the olive’s
crackling amber. 

Garlic
lends them
its earthy aroma,
its spice,
its pollen that braved the reefs.
Then,
dressed
anew
in ivory suits, they fill our plates
with repeated abundance,
and the delicious simplicity of the soil. 

Pablo Neruda
Ode to Common Things
Bulfinch Press, Publisher 

RED ONION, CHERRIES, BOILING POTATOES, MILK– 

Here is a soul, accepting nothing.
Obstinate as a small child
refusing tapioca, peaches, toast. 

the cheeks are streaked, but dry.
the mouth is firmly closed in both directions. 

Ask, if you like,
if it is merely sulking, or holding out for better.
The soup grows cold in the question.
The ice cream pools in its dish.

Not this, is all it knows. Not this.
As certain cut flowers refuse to drink in the vase. 

And the heart, from its great distance, watches, helpless. 

Jane Hirshfield
Given Sugar, Given Salt
HarperCollins, Publishers

I was thinking about peace today and feeling weary. I used to shout about it, used to march about it, wanted to tear down buildings and burn flags about it. I was thinking about Ghandi, about Martin Luther King Jr., about how I’ve been at war with my own thoughts for 55 years now and how it’s time to lay down the sword, the shield, the desire to win and do what Christ and Nanak and Muhammad and John and Oko said to do: to love, to see what that can do. Yeah, it’s corny and naïve and let’s the other guy “win.” But it seems that winning is the object of war, so peace must be some kind of surrender, if only to the struggle. Don’t get me wrong, doesn’t mean I won’t put on my marchin’ boots again one day, won’t put my vote where my heart is and won’t keep praying every day for peace. It’s the conflict, the back-and-forth that I’m tired of having around. So, here’s my tribute to peace in the written word, photos and a bit of John Lennon to inspire. I wish for you true peace within that spreads like morning sunlight across the surface of this planet into every heart that beats.

All poems are from Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times, edited by Joan Murray, Beacon Press, Publishers. 

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry
 

ON PRAYER

You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word is
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
and knows that if there is no other shore
They will walk that aerial bridge all the same.

Czeslaw Milosz
Tr. by Robert Hass 

I know the truth –
give up all other truths!

I know the truth—give up all other truths!
No need for people anywhere on earth to struggle.
Look—it is evening, look, it is nearly night:
what do you speak of, poets, lovers, generals?

The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew,
the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet.
And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we
who never let each other sleep above it.

Marina Tsvetayeva
Tr. by Elaine Feinstein

Give Peace a Chance by John Lennon from The Best of John Lennon

These two poems by Jane Kenyon were recently featured in issues of Writer’s Almanac and I couldn’t help but reprint them here. Kenyon writes with such beauty and lucid tenderness about what it is to live fully in this world and to step over into the world beyond. Her poems ring as that kind of truth that moves beyond all boundaries of cultures, faiths and generations.

For more information on Jane Kenyon and her poetry you can CLICK HERE.

BRIEFLY IT ENTERS, AND BRIEFLY SPEAKS

I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years… .

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper… .

When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me… .

I am food on the prisoner’s plate… .

I am water rushing to the wellhead,
filling the pitcher until it spills… .

I am the patient gardener
of the dry and weedy garden… .

I am the stone step,
the latch, and the working hinge… .

I am the heart contracted by joy… .
the longest hair, white
before the rest… .
I am there in the basket of fruit
presented to the widow… .

I am the musk rose opening
unattended, the fern on the boggy summit… .

I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name…

Jane Kenyon
Collected Poems
Graywolf Press, Publishers
 

NOTES FROM THE OTHER SIDE

I divested myself of despair
and fear when I came here.

Now there is no more catching
one’s own eye in the mirror,

there are no bad books, no plastic,
no insurance premiums, and of course
no illness. Contrition
does not exist, nor gnashing

of teeth. No one howls as the first
clod of earth hits the casket.

The poor we no longer have with us.
Our calm hearts strike only the hour,

and God, as promised, proves
to be mercy clothed in light.

Jane Kenyon
Constance
Gray Wolf Press, Publishers 

Here’s my two cents from the PE e-letter this week along with some added photos of a beautiful skyline in Central Oregon. It was one of those spring days up here when the weather went from sunny to snow to rain to hail and back to rain all in the space of an hour.

Whenever I arrive anywhere after traveling I am lost, not quite sure what to do. I have no rhythm established. Do I eat? Watch TV? Do laundry? Run outside and talk to the trees or people on the street? Unpacking helps to some extent—putting familiar things in unfamiliar surroundings—clothes arranged neatly in dresser drawers, shoes set by the door, coats and sweaters hung in the closet, computer plugged in, internet on, email checked, vitamins set out on a desk or countertop, toiletries lined up on the bathroom counter, my own down pillow thrown onto the bed with a wool shawl and my traveling stuffed bunny pal. These things all help “me” be in the room where my eyes and fingers can be in contact with them. I like to burn incense or spray a special “clearing” potion called Serenity Spray that has sage and lavender and other herbal essences in it, all of which uplift the energy and removes any bad vibes. I also bring a traveling altar with me, consisting of a couple of silk cloths, a seashell, a candle, a framed picture of my teacher or a guru and my book of prayers. When this is set up on a dresser top or nightstand then I truly feel at home wherever I am.

It does usually take a good 24-36 hours for me to “land” and I most often find myself regretting making the trip, immediately wanting to turn around and go home, even if I’m at my home in Sisters. Even though I’ve grown to know that this is what I’m going to go through each time, it still surprises me, catches me off guard and I’m spun out of my comfort zone into a sort of “outer limits” zone. It’s now been 48 hours since I arrived in Sisters and today I feel terrific. I’m perfectly content to be here, looking out the window, taking long walks, talking to friends on the phone back in L.A. I’ll go back on Saturday, as planned, but I wouldn’t go back earlier even if you paid me. I guess it’s a process of assimilation and like a dog who turns around three or four times before he plops down to sleep at night, we are creatures who must feel secure in our environments, allowing our senses to relax, our guard to be let down. We need to make a connection with the place and the creatures in that place.

I am one of the very blessed and fortunate ones in this world to have so many loving and supportive places to lay my head. Sometimes it just takes a bit of time to settle down and settle in to find myself never wanting to leave, until the moment that too turns and I am ready to go home or go forth, whichever way the compass is pointing, whatever the destination on my ticket reads.

I can hear the wind blustering, see the leaves on the camellia bush outside my window waving furiously and when I went for a walk with the dogs there were tree branches and palm fronds scattered across lawns, sidewalk and into the street. Nothing like a windy day to evoke the wildness – in nature and in people. What is it about the wind that gets us going? Here in L.A. we have Santa Ana winds that blow off the desert, warm and dry they are known to make men (and women) mad. Only temporarily, of course, but I am sure crime rates go up, as well as traffic accidents and luniness, in general. Of course there is no hard evidence of the latter, but those who live in it know what goes on, how we all get antsy, itchy, and no manner of scratching can relieve the need to move or just do something inanely destructive. Who says we aren’t affected by the forces of nature?

Navigating around town on this bright, smogless day was invigorating. I hit some of the spiritual spaces/places that I have come to cherish over the years. It’s one of things I love about L.A. – these places where people are making an effort to provide food for the soul, where you can go to read books on great spiritual traditions, listen to uplifting music and inhale sandalwood incense. This is the Bodhi Tree, a metaphysical bookstore on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, where the floorboards squeak and the stacks are a warren of respite from the Borders and Barnes & Noble of the world. It has a devoted clientele and in spite of the lack of parking and encroachment of high-end shops and office buildings, persists in its determination to provide spiritual sustenance to the community.

Before getting to the Bodhi Tree I stopped at our “family” yoga center, Yoga West, on Robertson Blvd to pick up some meditation music. The vibe there is so welcoming and gentle. For many, many years our teacher, Yogi Bhajan would teach classes there, always drawing a full house, booming out his messages of “Keep up and you’ll be kept up,” and “It’s not the life that matters, but the courage you bring to it.” A lot of yoga has been done in that space, a lot of meditation. Tears of joy and pain have been shed on those floors as students stretch not only their legs and arms and spine, but their understanding of what it is to be human, to be a spiritual being. It is another one of those places where it’s not about the money made but the difference made every day with every inhale and exhale.

After Yoga West and a quick stop at the bank (even I have to take care of business sometimes) I headed over to Elixir, a tea and tonic shop just a block west of Bodhi Tree to meet with my good friend, Heidi. We met a few years ago at a David Whyte seminar at Santa Monica University, where we sat in the same row and ended up doing some “exercises” together. She’s a great astrologer, writer, stage director, mom and all round caring and loving person. She ordered a “Virtual Buddha” and I got the “Depth Recharger” purported to replenish “jing,” revitalize liver & kidneys and clear “heat.” Sounded good to me, so I ordered mine hot and we took our beautifully sculpted mugs of tea out to the garden in the back to catch up on what has been going on in our lives. The water fountain gurgled, the sun sifted through the bamboo and the sounds of a woman’s voice singing (either next door or maybe from the CD playing) floated over us like an angel of the highest order. It was just good – good to be somewhere so nurturing, with a friend sharing warm tea and sweet muffins, an environment where giving and receiving kindness flowed so naturally.

In the Bodhi Tree I picked up a couple of books of poetry, The Forbidden Rumi and The Penguin Book of the Sonnet. Below is a poem from each book. I hope you’ll also enjoy a track from a CD I bought at Yoga West from Healing in Africa by Siri Dharma Kaur and The Alexandra Community Choir.

May the winds of change ever inspire you to be more and more yourself and may you get a little crazy every once in awhile, feel the wind-spirit blow you to new territory, new frontiers of consciousness. Up, up and away!!

The Eggshell of the Body

If you want to feel rapture,
then give up thinking, and quit worrying.

You’re like a bizarre bird
in the shell of the body’s egg.
You can’t fly because you’re inside the egg.

But when this egg is crushed,
you’ll fly free and save your soul.

Rumi
The Forbidden Rumi
Tr by Nevit O. Ergin and Will Johnson
Inner Traditions, Publisher

The Forge

All I know is a door into the dark.
Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;
Inside, the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring,
The unpredictable fantail of sparks
Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.
The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,
Horned as a unicorn, at one end square,
Set there immoveable: an altar
Where he expends himself in shape and music.
Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,
He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter
Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;
Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and flick
To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.

Seamus Heaney
The Penguin Book of the Sonnet
Edited by Phillis Levin
Penguin Books, Publisher

Heidi Rose

A rainbow of Buddhas inside Elixir 

Teapots

The fountain and back garden at Elixir

Bodhi Tree front window with stained glass mandala. 

Inside the Bodhi Tree 

Bodhi Tree Checkout 

Teachers Bench at Yoga West 

Meditation for Communication from the CD Healing in Africa by Siri Dharma and the Alexandra Community Choir of Johannesburg, South Africa.

The liquid that descends from the clouds as rain, forms streams, lakes, and seas, and is a major constituent of all living matter and that when pure is an odorless, tasteless, very slightly compressible liquid oxide of hydrogen H2O which appears bluish in thick layers, freezes at 0° C and boils at 100° C, has a maximum density at 4° C and a high specific heat, is feebly ionized to hydrogen and hydroxyl ions, and is a poor conductor of electricity and a good solvent (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary).

On Sunday I spent a lot of time immersed. We have a beautiful oval-shaped pool in the back yard of the house we’ve been leasing for a couple of years, as well as a two-person hot tub. One of the best therapies for body, mind and spirit is to alternate between the frigid cold of the pool (we rarely heat it due to the cost and we’re not much into swimming) and the 103 degrees of the hot tub. By the end of 30-45 minutes of that you can melt right down onto the bed and sleep peacefully through the night. I felt like I needed an extra dose of hydrotherapy to ease some of the physical effects of travel and the still very present emotional effects of the passing of my father, so I took advantage of it being a quiet Sunday morning and dipped in and out of the warm and cold water, then wrapped myself in a cotton quilt a friend had brought me from India, sunk down onto the bed in our darkened guestroom and for the next two hours watched the film WATER, written and directed by Deepa Mehta.

 The film held me mesmerized. Set in India in 1938, but filmed in Sri Lanka after a public protest drove it from India, it is the story of an eight year-old girl who is widowed and then must live in seclusion and poverty with other widows, as society sees them as only “half-living” now that their husbands have died. There is great sorrow and great spirit in this film and such incredible beauty in the filming of it. The “ashram” where the women live is in a city on the banks of the Ganges, the Ganga—the Mother River, where Hindus bring the ashes of their dead and the devout make pilgrimage to bathe and cleanse their souls. I was absorbed into this film as a stream is merged with the river. It was a world so far away from my present-day reality and yet, the practices portrayed in the movie exist even today. I saw these women, as all women are — as water; fluid, ever-changing form, mercurial, emotional, powerful when provoked and as generous as the clouds that pour forth their bounty upon the earth. As everything is a teacher, so water is an endless source of wisdom, its lessons of compassion and of destruction always there to open us to the perfect rhythms of this world, as well as the vastness of its mysteries. Take a hot bath. Swim in the ocean. Drink long and slow from a pure mountain stream. Rent the movie WATER. Invite your loved one under the quilt with you. Let the tears roll. It’s so, so good for the soul.

Below are a few "water" poems written by women.

It was like a stream
   running into the dry bed
   of a lake,

               like rain
   pouring on plants
   parched to sticks.

It was like this world’s pleasure
   and the way to the other,
                                          both
   walking toward me.

Seeing the feet of the master,
O lord white as jasmine,
   I was made
   worthwhile.

Mahadeviyakka
tr. by A.K. Ramanujan
Women in Praise of the Sacred
HarperCollins, Publishers

FOREST LAKE

I was alone on a sunny shore
by the forest’s pale blue lake,
in the sky floated a single cloud
and on the water a single isle.
The ripe sweetness of summer dripped
in beads from every tree
and straight into my opened heart
a tiny drop ran down.

Edith Sodergran
tr. by Stina Katchadourian
Women in Praise of the Sacred
HarperCollins, Publishers

 
TO DRINK

I want to gather your darkness
in my hands, to cup it like water
and drink.
I want this in the same way
as I want to touch your cheek –
it is the same –
the way a moth will come
to the bedroom window in late September,
beating and beating its wings against cold glass;
the way a horse will lower
his long head to water, and drink,
and pause to lift his head and look,
and drink again,
taking everything in with the water,
everything.

Jane Hirshfield
Of Gravity & Angels
Wesleyan University Press

 
WATER PICTURE

In the pond in the park
all things are doubled:
Long buildings hang and
wriggle gently. Chimneys
are bent legs bouncing
on clouds below. A flag
wags like a fishhook
down there in the sky.

The arched stone bridge
is an eye, with underlid
in the water. In its lens
dip crinkled heads with hats
that don’t fall off. Dogs go by,
barking on their backs.
A baby, taken to feed the
ducks, dangles upside-down,
a pink balloon for a buoy.

Treetops deploy a haze of
cherry bloom for roots,
where birds coast belly-up
in the glass bowl of a hill;
from its bottom a bunch
of peanut-munching children
is suspended by their
sneakers, waveringly.

A swan, with twin necks
forming the figure 3,
steers between two dimpled
towers doubled. Fondly
hissing, she kisses herself,
and all the scene is troubled:
water-windows splinter,
tree-limbs tangle, the bridge
folds like a fan.

May Swenson,
Nature: Poems Old and New
Houghton Mifflin, Publisher
 

My father passed away peacefully on Sunday morning. I missed seeing him by a few hours and have been in Portland with the family all week. I wrote a piece on my father a few months ago when he was having a high school auditorium dedicated to him. If you’d like to read it you can CLICK HERE. Tomorrow we commit his ashes to the earth and celebrate with family and friends his rich and dedicated life. It will be a good day with friends and loved ones and I’ve no doubt he’ll be there, baton in hand, directing the whole procedings as if it was one of his concerts or a march down Main Street. He was always the consumate showman and we’ll do our best to get it right, to do him proud.

Below is a well-known poem by Robert Hayden that says so much about understanding love and its many ways of being expressed. I’ve also included one I wrote this week in his honor.

 
Clyde Moore 1921-2007 

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Robert Hayden 

********** 

We Remember Him
 
for what he loved: music
first and country, the beauty
of a woman, her brilliant smile,

a small dusty town, the kids
who picked up a flute, lifted
a trumpet to their lips, rolled

a pair of drum sticks between
their fingers for the first time.
Like a pearl the legacy of a man

is ground and polished by the grit
of tenacity, unwavering generosity.
We are what we do every day: rising

to dress, the long walk to work, stoking
the holy spark of others to flame.
I gave a damn, his life says. And like

the sassy-sweet croon of a sax hanging
on a high note, such a man echoes
forever in the hearts of the living. 

I wrote the piece below, THE STORY, THE MOMENT, for the weekly P.E. e-letter. I also wanted to share a few poetry related books and websites with you.

Dog Years (HarperCollins): Mark Doty’s new memoir. I haven’t read it yet but it got a great write-up in the L.A. Times last week and I’m taking it on my trip to Oregon this week as my main read.

Ten Poems to Last a Lifetime (Harmony Books):The latest (and last) compilation of poems by Roger Housden, where he brings a few stunning poems to the page and includes his own short essay on the poem. Great gift — for yourself or someone, anyone, who can use the inspiration.

Poetry.LA: A new website started by my friends, Hilda & Wayne, with video of the local Open Mic poetry venues around town. Includes featured readers, interviews with the hosts and open mic readers. 

Billy Collins Poems with Animation: I found these poems on many sites. Charming and creative ways to "see" the poem as well as hear it. 

A Chaos of Angels (Word Walker Press: This is a lovingly compiled collection of poems that touches on the culture of psychotropic drugs–how the individual for whom they are prescribed struggles, both with the with and without them, to be real, be themselves. The poems speak as well for their family, friends and society at large as we all seek to understand and respond to the ever increasing numbers of men, women and children who walk among us who are living drug-induced intellectual and emotional lives. It is the soul seeking to break free that is heard in these poems, the voice of the individual, of the poet inside of all of us, fighting for its very life in an increasingly electronically spinning world. Thanks to Alice Pero and Lois P. Jones, two local L.A. Poets, who dedicated themselves to the creation of this book of poems.

THE STORY, THE MOMENT

I’ve been going through some old cast aside poems, going back three, four or more years, fiddling with them to see if they have any juice, any life left in them if I shear a few words or lines or even whole stanzas off here, change a word there, rearrange the stanzas, make the lines shorter, longer. There are two minds at work when I flip through these poems; the cold-hearted editor, who has no qualms about slashing and burning what was once thought so sacred to the life of the poem, a mind bent on crafting a work of art, words that shimmer and shake with the essence of what the poem wants to say. The other mind that shows up is prone to drift off into memories of where I was when the poem was conceived:  on a country road in New Mexico, a hotel in Costa Rica, after washing the dishes in my L.A. home, standing at a window at midnight in Oregon. Of course, recalling the place recalls the mood, recalls the times and who I was then, what I was struggling with and how things have changed one way or another, since then.

Poems are signposts, markers in our lives, a biography that doesn’t spell it out as plainly as prose, but has the inherent faculty to be infused with deep emotional content. This is done, as I see it, through the language, the syntax and the form the poem takes. A vivid picture can be painted with a poem that strips away pretense and takes the reader into the heart of the moment, laying bare the soul of the poet and touching the soul of the reader. It is a delicate balancing act to be able to “tell the story,” as well as infuse the poem with the emotionality needed to transfer the interior of the individual writing the poem to the individual reading/hearing the poem. This is where “becoming a poet” requires both of those minds—the one that can form and mold the words, willing to cut and slash as well and the one who has developed the interior landscape of their soul, allowing him or her access to thoughts and feelings which are both individually felt and universally experienced.

In a panel discussion at the AWP Conference on The Narrative Poem, B.H. Fairchild spoke about how every poem, by its very nature, will contain both narrative and lyric elements in it. There is always some kind of “story” and there is always some kind of “transcendent moment” occurring in every poem—at least in every poem that has any resonance at all for a reader. This is how it is in life: we exist here on earth, in time, in space, eating, drinking, eliminating, getting older, having relationships, children, and finally leaving our body. But that can’t be all. It isn’t all. To be fully alive, to be our own “poem” we experience grief, awe, intuition, love, forgiveness, wonder, joy and gratitude. In every day, every moment and every breath we are both connected with our earthly self and our otherworldly self. It is only to the degree that we are aware of the latter that we experience ourselves fully. I thought when I first started writing poetry that it was about making a nice piece of writing that would “say” something and for people who read to find it interesting and clever. Thank God, after many knock-down-drag-outs with my ego, I know now that poetry is for me another way of connecting me with me and me with others and me with the vastness we call God or Allah or Sat Nam or The Unknown and that is why it is worth the time and the effort to develop the skills to craft a poem, because it is, as well, a crafting of the self to a higher attunement, another inch moving towards being a more aware human being, to truly being a poet.

Yesterday, at the Ruskin Art Club here in L.A., I took an all day workshop with David St. John, a USC professor of poetry and well-known local poet. I had heard so many great things about his workshops from my fellow poets in the last couple of years, but this was the first time I actually made it to a workshop. The title was Lyric Inspiration in Contemporary American Poetry: Cinema, Fragmentation and Erasure. The content of the session was far more accessible than the title. David gave us a general overview of how the cinema and pop culture has affected literature and poetry in particular, especially in the times following the first and second world wars. Poets like Frank O’Hara, Larry Levis, Norman Dubie and John Ashbery. He also talked about how the fragmentation of the culture, the move away from an agrarian society to an industrial one particularly was a catalyst for poets to speak more personally, to seek connection and community through their writing and to speak as the “I” and represent the “we.” T.S. Eliot’s, The Wasteland, was one of the first poems of this kind.

Somehow I missed getting the email with instructions for the day, so neither brought a well-known poem to illustrate the cinematic influence, nor did I bring a poem of my own to be workshopped in the afternoon. No loss though, the day was thoroughly enjoyable. There were several friends of mine in attendance and David has an ease of manner and an openness that makes everyone feel uplifted and relaxed sharing their thoughts and their poems (which were all quite good). Because I was having such a good time I completely forgot to take a picture—which can often be a bit awkward in these small groups, anyway. I’m definitely getting on the email list to get notice of David’s workshops in the future. Besides, I have a one-poem credit to get critiqued for the next one—kinda like a gift card for $20 from Best Buy or Trader Joe’s, but infinitely more delicious!

One of the several Larry Levis poems read in the morning session:

    Photograph: Migrant Worker, Parlier, California, 1967

    I’m going to put Johnny Dominguez right here
    In front of you on this page so that
    You won’t mistake him for something else,
    An idea, for example, of how oppressed
    He was, rising with his pan of Thompson Seedless
    Grapes, from a row of vines. The band
    On his white straw hat darkened by sweat, is,
    He would remind you, just a hatband.
    His hatband. He would remind you of that.
    As for the other use, this unforeseen
    Labor you have subjected him to, the little
    Snacks & white wine of the openings he must
    Bear witness to, he would remind you
    That he was not put on this earth
    To be an example of something else,
    Johnny Dominguez, he would hasten to
    Remind you, in his chaste way of saying things,
    Is not to be used as an example of anything
    At all, not even, he would add after
    A second or so, that greatest of all
    Impossibilities, that unfinishable agenda
    Of the stars, that fact, Johnny Dominguez.

    Larry Levis