Richard Hugo's Landscapes for Jenni & C. Dale

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Landscapes


If I painted, I'd paint landscapes. In museums
I stop often at van Ruysdael, and the wind he painted
high in European oaks gives license to my style.
I move the barn two feet. I curve the hill down
more dramatic. I put a woman on the hill against
the light, calling me to dinner. The wind I paint
is low and runs the grass down dancing to the sea.

In no time I have aged the barn stark gray.
Obviously, my cows hate no one. My wife
across the field stays carved out solid on the sky.
My tossed kiss stings her through the waves of heat
plowed dirt gives off in August. My tossed worm
drifts beneath the cutbank where I know trout wait.
As long as wind is pouring, my paint keeps farming green.

When wind stops, men come smiling with the mortgage.
They send me the eviction notice, postage due.
My cows are thin and failing. My deaf wife snarls
and claws the chair. The creek turns putrid.
I said fifty years moss on the roof is lovely.
It rots the roof. Oaks ache but cannot stir.
I call van Ruysdael from my knees on the museum floor.

In uniforms like yours you'll never understand.
Why these questions? The bank was wrong. The farm
is really mine. Even now along these pale green halls
I hear van Ruysdael's wind. Please know I rearranged things
only slightly, barn and hill. This is real: the home
that warps in August and the man inside who sold it
long ago, forgot he made the deal and will not move.

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I got no time for private consultation, under the Milky Way tonight...

Actually, I do. Some songs I thought were so great when I was young make my blood run cold now, but I still love that one.

Highly recommended: The latest issue of "The American Poetry Journal". Wonderful stuff from Jeannine Hall Gailey, Paul Guest, Susan Meyers, Steve Mueske, Beth Bachmann, etc, etc...sterling material. Buy, beg, borrow or steal.

Invisible Galaxy?

Check out C. Dale's long-awaited "Publishing Secret Number Four". I'm inscribing "Writing And Publishing Are Not The Same" and "Marianne Moore" on my journal in really big letters, right under "RISK!"

Two bald eagles winged over the field this morning, and pink is showing in the Kwanzan cherry buds. Hip, Hip, Hoorah!

Sprung

Spring, that is. Has. The calender is wrong, the daffodils are right. By the time March 21st rolls around, most of the pink flowering cherries may be over already. The fish-n-chips lines are getting long at Ivar's at Coulon park on the lake, where the only orange gates are the legs of mallards. Like all things, there's a price to be paid for all this wonder. They're already fighting brush fires in Eastern Washington. In February. But today, I'm finding it hard to mind.

Guardian Exercise Poem,

which doesn't conform terribly well to the instructions, but so be it. Any corrections to my laughable Spanish would be appreciated.


Destello Verde

My love, we need to mean these words
we have only practiced pronouncing:
por favor, cuanto cuesta, donde esta,
gracias, sabrosa. There is our short cut
under Orion, hunting down
to where the town begins.

Please can't we stay here in comfort
on our terrace punctuated by hibiscus
and diluted sangria, talking of pelicans
under the patterns cast
by pierced metal stars?

How much might it cost us to wait
for a taxi? Falter through the gate
to a bougainvillea path lit only
by pale bracts, pressed memories of moons.
Dusk comes steeper than we're accustomed to.

Where is the applause of the sea at sunset?
Manufactured waterfalls are still too near,
under a stucco facade where men dangled
themselves from old ropes over a precipice
like this one, bristling with rebar. Take my hand.

Thank you, my heart. Just one more flight
of steps left now; we're past the overgrowth
where wild roosters mocked us into morning.
Mind the low awning outside that store
locked full of chameleon vases, silver eyes.

Delicious on the waterfront at Las Palomas, we arrive
believing the fortissimo gossip of orange trumpet vines.
Salvador offers us the special. Take this goblet, drown
the cutlery with azure fire and let us spend tomorrow's
hummingbirds. Already, a meteor melts on my tongue.




The title is supposed to mean "Green Flash". Does it?

National Bison Reserve at Moiese, Montana

"Sometimes the poor are difficult to digest"

Check out this, this, and this about current Supreme Court case Kelo vs. City of New London on the question of eminent domain. Does government have the right to force you to sell your land for any other reason than actual public use (roads, etc)? The case involves a small band of holdouts who don't wish to give up their river-view homes to the city, which wants the land for a huge multi-use developement because (depending on who you believe) a: they crave the increased tax revenues it would provide, or b: they want to placate Pfizer, who has a big research facility nearby, or c: both.

To demonstrate the thinking of some parties on this matter, consider this by a Professor of Urban Planning and Design: "It could be argued that a neighborhood of single-family houses is simply underperforming property," Kayden said in answer to a question. "It doesn't generate very much revenue compared with other uses. Consequently, one might label it as blight."

I got interested in this while researching a snippet I heard on NPR about Costco's policy of overt or tacit collusion with local authorities in eminent-domaining current owners off the land they want to build stores on. And, in one case in California, attempting to eject a competitor from their adjacent retail space. Oh, niiiiiiiiiiice ...

And I really enjoyed shopping at Costco, too. Perhaps I'll sit on my blighted deck under a blighted cherry tree and watch my blighted grass grow, instead.

I need to get out more...

Confiscated from C. Dale who stole it from Suzanne who commandeered it from Charles who lifted it from Laura:

Bold the states you've been to, underline the states you've lived in and italicize the state you're in now...(actually, I "yellowed" the states I've been to; "bold" doesn't show up too well).

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida/ Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C.

Next month, I can add Arizona to the list; we're going down to visit Scott's sister. Any not-to-be-missed recommendations for Phoenix or Sedona and environs?

Guardian Poetry Workshop/Exercise

I keep meaning to attempt a poem for this, but it's a pretty small window, temporally speaking. Each month, The Guardian newspaper drafts a British poet to propound a poetic challenge, assess the results, and post/discuss a handful of them online. Here is the link, if anyone's interested. The catch is, the deadline for this month is the 20th ... tick tock.

Educate Me

Is there a name for this? I was reading a Jack Gilbert poem, Measuring the Tyger. In this bit --

...............The weight of the mind fractures
the girders and piers of the spirit, spilling out
the heart's melt. Incandescent ingots big as cars
trundling out of titanic mills, red slag scaling off
the brighter metal in the dark.

-- I was struck by how "titanic mills" immediately drew my brain to pull up "dark satanic mills". What would you call that? Implied rhyming allusion? I remember having similar reactions to other poems recently, although I can't recall specifics. It's an interesting device. You could use it, I suppose, to subvert cliches, or for any number of subtleties.

What wide new vistas of subliminal manipulation open up (insert the evil laughter of a mad poetic genius ... not.)

I've got 10,000 songs to render you mute.

Yay, I finished (well, mostly ... you know how it is) a poem I started on New Year's Eve! That's been an emerging pattern lately -- get the basic images, framework of the poem, then let it ferment for a few weeks or months before coming back to it. The only drawback is wondering whether it will be weeks or months before I feel prepared to grapple with it again ... or years, or never.

It's a tsunami poem, which I had no intention of writing, and feel somewhat conflicted about having written (that aspect of corpse-picking that attends every disaster poem). But it came knocking on my skull. Scott likes it; I'm blessed by having a husband who's a perceptive (although perhaps insufficiently critical) reader. He pulls things out of my work I didn't see myself.

The cat has dragged a box of Kellog's "Fruit Harvest" cereal out of the pantry and is making a valiant effort to bite through the cardboard. He is obsessed with fruit in any form; jam or yohgurt sends him into a mild frenzy. If I don't share, he tries to climb my jeans.

Today's title comes from this article discussing the contrast between the superficial friendliness and inherent reserve of Seattleites. Being a native, I can't judge the accuracy from the standpoint of an immigrant, but a lot of it seems well-observed. Except for the part about the merging on freeways. I'd like to see some more of that legendary politesse and fewer near-misses with SUVs.

Counting Crows on Soundstage. I still know all the words to "Mr. Jones".

Green Dragon Reclining In Black Ink

I love the names of Chinese tree peonies. A sampling:

Black Dragon Holding Blossom
Azure Clouds Floating Around The Sun
Violet Butterfly Facing Wind
Snow Encircling Pure Heart
Coiled Dragon In The Mist
Flying Swallow In A Red Dress
Fire Refining Jasper
Emerald Hairpin On Gui Fei
(I think this may be the same Gui Fei as in Victoria Chang's poem)
Icicle Over Red Stone
Swan Sleeping In Snow
Silver Fish Teaching Green Pearls
Morning Dew On A Jade Platter
White Screen Reflects A Blue Jewel

--and lest you think all the names are high-flown like this, may I present:

Tipsy Imperial Concubine

I was reminded of these by an email I received the other day ... Sunshine Farm and Gardens is running a naming contest for double hellebores here. If they choose your name, you get a free 4-inch pot of the plant in question -- a great deal, considering what nurseries usually charge for double hellebores. And they're gorgeous. So have at it, poets.

Magnificent. From the NASA photo-of-the-day site.

Cutting Sonnet

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Knowing The Score


The t.v. says the stone age has returned.
This land has nothing left to give but lives.
All other wealth is stolen, bombed, or burned
but papaver somniferom, which thrives
on rocks and drought. The farmers say they sell
this crimson crop to keep their children fed.
The poppy petals drop and seed pods swell;
just three hot months, then fields are harvested.
Their curved blades slice from base to crown, the sap
bleeds out and darkens in the air. I won't
find out what happens next because your nap
is done. The nurse tries to prepare me: Don't
be shocked; he found a knife again. I shrug.
You need to cut your flesh to get the drug.


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