Undiscovered Country — Al Rempel (Mother Tongue Publishing)

Today's book of poetry:
Undiscovered Country.  Al Rempel.  Mother Tongue Publishing.  Salt Spring Island, British Columbia.  2018.

Today's book of poetry remembers where we were the first time we read Sir Charles Bukowski, Lord Alfred Purdy, Saint Jack of Kerouac.  And now we're going to remember meeting the work of Al Rempel.

Undiscovered Country is an undiscovered and staggering masterpiece.  Undiscovered Country begins with the long poem "Into The Cloud of Unknowing" and this is a truly great poem.  A life changing poem.

How is it possible that there is a poet that is this good and his name is not on every ones lips.  Today's book of poetry is embarrassed that we have never encountered Al Rempel's poetry.  Today's book of poetry will now correct that and acquire This Isn't the Apocalypse We Hoped For, Understories and Rempel's two chapbooks Four Neat Holes and The Picket Fence Diaries.

Today's book of poetry hasn't been this thrilled about discovering a new poet since our man in the south, David Clewell, introduced us to the poetry of David Lee.  Sir David of Lee.  That's how fine we think Al Rempel's Undiscovered Country is.  That's how wise/clever/smart Today's book of poetry thinks Al Rempel burns.

Undiscovered Country is a great pleasure to read.  You feel like you're in that movie where people are gathered at the knee of some old wise guy who doles out wisdom with each and every breath.  A sage.  Today's book of poetry knows these are ridiculously high claims, high praise.  But we can take the heat and welcome the conversation.  For Today's book of poetry - Undiscovered Country is simply one of the best books of poetry we have read.

He Talked In His Sleep

she wishes for a morning with wet snow

and the birds' flagrant disregard

their beaks stuffed with bits of straw

as they shuttlecock

between their peep-a-peep & the falling

she lets her eyes drift

once again the house lifts off

rising up to meet the snow

if only the only thing she could hear

was the clock

the inner works of the furnace

and the eternal hum

how he wore the shirt of his uniform

and played his old songs

how he would shudder alone downstairs

with the record player

the aura of the streetlamp pouring in

a sickly illumination

how he would carefully hang the shirt

back in the dark closet

scuttle crabwise into his side of the bed

as if under trip wire

💫💫💫

Today's book of poetry is in pure poetry pleasure heaven and Al Rempel's Undiscovered Country has taken us there.  These poems burn honest as a mother's promise, deep as a father's legacy, and yet always remain approachable, even tender, no matter how real/rough the world gets.

Undiscovered Country moved us.  Today's book of poetry thinks these poems will move you too.  Undiscovered Country is a delight because every poem works, as Dennis Cooley suggested, Undiscovered Country is "a rinse to the clouded soul."

Our morning read was held out on the front porch today's as our offices were taken over by a book club meeting.  The Today's book of poetry staff could all hear the city humming behind us, the weather muggy but still nice.  Maggie, our Jr. Editor, arranged our order and cleared the runway.

Al Rempel's Undiscovered Country sailed out into the cosmos, off of our front porch, with an enthusiasm matching these extraordinary poems.

I Thought I Saw Her In The Water

in territories of the mind, in middle distances I can't reach

with outstretched hand,

in dreams inlaid & lidded with a ceiling of leaves, some dangling

on threads, rear-tail swimming

in the air above me — we're all guppies you know, we're caught

on our backs

wordlessly gulping at what we cannot say

or at night, the grass a dewy halo around my head, like a chalk line

drawn about my arms & legs,

the stars are swimming too, unglued from the sky, they slide

past my vision

when I need them the most

could I reach into the depths of a lake at dawn, or a quiet river,

even in a flat-bottomed boat, I'd hardly dip further in than my elbow—

o mother

I know you're not down there, slipping between my fingers

bubbling through gills

or up here, skidding across the sky pell-mell with the stars, with leaves

on empty streets of morning, filling up with hours & hours

but I want you to be here, somehow, closer than dreams that clear off

like fog

leaving only the hard outline of crooked trees & a road that curves

out of view

💫💫💫

Al Rempel talks about love lovingly, he mourns with authentic dignity and he observes and understands it all.

You, dear readers of Today's book of poetry, never see and/or hear about the four books we read for every book that we write about.  You don't have to weigh through those empty pages, eat that burnt toast.  But Today's book of poetry will willingly endure mountains of dross to get to books as charming and fulfilling as Undiscovered Country.

Thank you Al Rempel, this is what today's book of poetry lives for.

from Once Around The Sun

．

one night I left the sliding door too far open, my love,

I'm sorry,

the house went cold,

cold as the world is

each morning, when we went outside,

we could feel its chill

pressing on our pant legs,

and we blew into our cupped hands to warm them

every evening darkness arrived

a few minutes too early

as I sit here, the last flurry of seed fluff

drifts by my window like a parody of winter,

and when I walk through buildings,

I stop in the sunlight & its heat

and let if fall on my face

and blind me

what is this narrow band of heat

that keeps us alive, this fire we scoop on our plates

and pour into cups, again & again?

one day my eyes will close for the last time,

and my breath will leave as if through an open door

and I will grow cold

as the earth waits to cover me

．

💫💫💫

Al Rempel

ABOUT THE POET

Al Rempel’s books of poetry are This Isn't the Apocalypse We Hoped For, Understories and two chapbooks: Four Neat Holes and The Picket Fence Diaries. His poems have also appeared in various journals including The Malahat Review, GRAIN, CV2, Event, and Prairie Fire as well as in anthologies such as The Best Canadian Poetry in English, Rocksalt, 4Poets, and Half in the Sun. He was awarded Prince George's Arts & Culture Award for Poetry in 2012 and Shortlisted for the Fred Cogswell Excellence in Poetry Award in 2013. One of his poems was shortlisted for Arc's Poem of the Year Award in 2015 and his poems have been included twice in the Poetry in Transit project in Vancouver. Rempel has also had some of his poems translated into Italian by the poet Sandro Pecchiari. Rempel has also created a number of videopoems in collaboration with local artists. “Sky Canoe” was screened at the Visible Verse Festival in Vancouver, 2012, and at the Filmpoem Festival in Dunbar, Scotland, 2013, as well as Liberated Words in Bristol, UK, 2013. Three of the poems in Undiscovered Country have also been made into videopoems. Al Rempel currently lives in Prince George, where he teaches math and science at a high school, but grew up in Abbotsford and loves to visit the Gulf Islands.

BLURBS

"It is impossible to be unmoved by this book. Rempel hears 'the earth, the rain saying/fatherless, motherless...' and admits, 'I wish I could say I'm less afraid, now a father'—and we know the pained bewilderment in making our ways through the 'undiscovered countr[ies]' of our own lives. He sees the abysses that open within the details of the everyday; and at the same time, allows us to observe 'small green birds...circusing in the aspens,' and though he speaks of 'the stars...not meaning anything except/what we make of them,' Rempel sets us where "we sit aswirl in light.'"

     - Russell Thornton, author of The Hundred Lives

"Undiscovered Country is extraordinary in its focus. Rempel skillfully moves from internal landscapes—of grief, loss and mortality—to the external with crisp, fresh poetics: 'the moon was a giant rock/hovering up there in the sky/and ready to fall.' Undiscovered Country is about shifts in place, shifts in time, shifts in perspective—child turned adult, adult turned orphan, orphan turned parent. Rempel is beautifully pragmatic, yet hopeful: 'you could be anywhere—/but you're not, you're here.'"

     - Kerry Gilbert, author of Tight Wire

"Wow! A rinse to the clouded soul, tonic to the torpid. The poetry rejoices, grieves, muses. It moves and amuses and delights us, dares brazenly to embrace the palpable world and to love the words we provide it. In affection and anguish and deft comedy. Undiscovered Country celebrates extraordinary moments in our ordinary and temporary lives.  An absolute joy to read."

     -Dennis Cooley, author of The Home Place: Essays on Robert Kroetsch's Poetry

Al Rempel reads from Undiscovered Country

Video: Joanna Smythe

mothertonguepublishing.com

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DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies.  Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration.

Out of Place - Richard Jackson (The Ashland Poetry Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Out of Place.  Richard Jackson.  The Ashland Poetry Press.  Ashland University.  Ashland, Ohio.  2014.

Here's the thing that Today's book of poetry is only learning to accept, only learning to come to terms with.  There are so many fine poets out there it is impossible to know them all.  

To all you regular readers out there, we are doing our best to cover as much ground as we possibly can but we are not Kate Sutherland on the subway.  Sutherland of the beautiful Rhinos.  Bless her cotton socks.  We wrote about the brilliant Kate Sutherland and her book, How To Draw A Rhinoceros, last year.  You can look at that blog/review at the end of this paragraph.  Ms. Sutherland posts daily photos of a legion of unknown (to us) poets/poetry.  She doesn't do it everyday but it is something we here at Today's book of poetry look forward to.

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca/2017/03/how-to-draw-rhinoceros-kate-sutherland.html

All of that to clumsily say we know we are treading water in terms of the whole range of poetry out there.  But this is one of those cases where we feel a little guilt simply because we hadn't heard of Richard Jackson before.  Out of Place is Jackson's eleventh book of poetry, and as you will see in his biography below, he has won every award and prize but the Selke Trophy.

Bob Gainey has every right to feel nervous in his old Hab's sweater because Jackson might just start piling up those as well - this writing is that good.

There is a very good reason Richard Jackson has rolled up the awards and kudos.  This poetry is so good it is alarming.

About This Poem

          At the beginning...which is to awaken you to the right kind of joy

                        in serious times, we must list all those who have been killed

                                                                               since I last wrote......

                                                              - Bonhoeffer, 1942, Germany

It has to account for its untied shoelaces as well as its Extermination

Camps. Sitting among all those languages in the Munich beer garden.

Hitler's first speech a few blocks away. A masked ball where

the costumes are all switched around. Those carnival grab bags

filled with joy or remorse. Above me the clouds are paralyzed.

I have to wipe the dust from my soul. The wind holds its breath.

Bosnia, 1994: one group of men forced to bite off the testicles

of another group. Others to stand in the snow till their feet rot.

These things orbit now like a planet too far to see. Even the bee

can't figure a way out of my stein. Light staggers through the trees.

Every moment is filled with other moments. According to Bell's

Theorem whatever happens to this bee influences a history yet

to be written. Like the seed stars that smudge the trail of Mira as

it slips across the sky. All my maps are smudged with atrocities.

There are so many voices that are our own voices. Rhythm is just this

oscilloscope of the soul. We come from a place that has always

been inside us. Our words migrate helplessly. The world reflects

only itself. Which is why we have to create our own memories.

The paths from here spread out like shattered glass. The man

across the table's from Krakow. He doesn't want to talk about

the occupation and its lives turned to smoke. One the mechanical

Trumpeter in his church spire. The song stops where his real

ancestor was felled by an enemy's arrow. In the silence that follows

don't we all have to begin again? At the end of a line, the door

left open for a moment where you can fall in love, remember

what you wanted to forget, forget what you wanted to remember.

Why do you think our metaphors will save us? The world is only

itself. Time is just our way of imagining it. At least the bee has

ultraviolet vision to see everything we can't.  We have to light

our dark spaces with the sputtering matches of our words.

We have to follow wherever they lead us. There's this little

hole in existence we all pass through. Someone is always entering.

He's the one who invents me while I think I am writing about him.

...

Today's book of poetry has mountains of admiration, respect and awe where Richard Jackson's Out of Place is concerned, add in a little jealousy.  Jackson seems to have a simple formula, he picks a subject, writes about it with encyclopedic knowledge, dharma bum charm and whimsy and some sort of special poetry detectives trained eye.  This is cherse stuff.  There are no details left behind that we will need later, there is nothing extra to carry.  Jackson is thorough, candid and hard as nails/soft as clowns tears.

Day after day Today's book of poetry shares books of poetry we like with you, best job on the planet, but we are not about to index our poets or their books with scores -- but if you minions are paying attention this guy Jackson is in David Lee, Sue Goyette, David Clewell, Sharon Olds, territory.

Out of Place really is a remarkable book filled to bursting with remarkable poems.  It may even be a little unfair, Jackson having so much good poetry in him.  Somehow Richard Jackson is able to write about exactly what it is that you want to know about.  This is essential voice territory.  As in, the next time Today's book of poetry is asked "who should I read?", Richard Jackson will be part of that conversation.

Belief

                                 after the freeing of the West Memphis Three

Deep in our own inner caves the heart's canary sounds a warning.

On the other side of speech is a language that dreams us.

Echoes hide out in abandoned words. The air hardens.

A home invasion, a meth lab, a father killing his family.

It Had To Be You, Les Paul played on his guitar with seven

crippled fingers, but who is never named, or is us.

                                                                                 These

clouds begin to picket the horizon. Pine sap leaks from 

a wounded tree. Even the flowers seem to take on

the color of night.

                           There are times when it is better

to close your eyes to the world.

                                                  I have been watching

a fledgling drop from its nest, flutter a few feet, and again,

until it flew not back, but into another tree. The wind tests

itself against my torn screen. A few thorns of light jab

out of the darkness on the far hills.

                                                        Who are you

if your dreams are dreamt by somebody else? In a dream

of freedom we return to a place that is not the place.

                                                                                    Orpheus'

poems could not create the world he needed. How

many times do our words become cells? How do we

remove those splinters of memory and remain ourselves?

Most of our dreams are the seeds in sidewalk cracks.

By now my fledgling has its own dream.

        

                                                                 Tonight's clouds

will cover the meteor shower. I remember the fog in

the valley slipping forward like a glacier. At other times

a whole world rippled in the river.

                                                       It was David Hume

who said we had not a single reason to believe in reality,

but we must act as if we do. Even when a whole life

seems mothballed.

                             Now we know that our moon collided with

another moon whose remnants we can't see on its far side.

Moonglow is how Les Paul would have played it. And us?

Who are we if someone else's dream is really ours?

...

Today's book of poetry's morning read was spectacular.  You can blame Richard Jackson.  Many of our staff are becoming old hands in the reading game, at this reading poems aloud, and bless their cotton socks, they've taken a shine to the process.  Milo, our head tech, led the charge this morning while shaking his head with both wonder and the obvious.  Milo already knows his next assignment will be to find us the rest of Richard Jackson's books.  If they hold a candle to Out of Place Today's book of poetry knows they will be essential reading.

This is how the masters do it.  Solid.  Bold.  Beautiful.

That orange fugging fog that is over America is temporary and the poets tell us so.  This title from Jackson is from 2014 and has nothing to do with POTUS.  But it has everything to do with America and it gives us hope.  Jackson writes poems of reflection, inner examination, outer understanding and tolerance.  

Prophecy

                                                    You exist in the delirious illusion of language.

                                                                                                    - Robert Penn Warren

What I want to say to you has already disappeared like the flashlight

beam I aimed at empty space years ago. If Augustine was right

it will hit the edge of the universe in 15 billion years. If Einstein was

right then it will never get to the end of it. My own life is orbiting

a word I don't want to land on. Heisenberg said you can only know

where you have been. Freud said that where we are is the terror

of what we were. He was terrified by sex which he saw as a kind

of impalement. Polls say the happiest people are those in the middle

of sex. So tell me, why have you paused to listen?

                                                                                 Most of our words

come with dress codes to hide the world we never want to see.

Some march to the rhythm of goose steps. All I need to do is

throw another stone at the stars to know how far from any center

we are. Even Charon can't say which shore is which.

Every word here tries to pronounce something that has no name.

The words we don't hear are the words that control us. The words

I want to say edge over the horizon like a sunset sail. Every breath

disturbs the next. Every word erases another word. Nathan, the first

prophet, said no one would come after him. So what did he know?

I don't even know what the end of this sentence says because

while the clock is taking its time to decide, the homeless man

in the cemetery blows a few random notes on a dented trumpet,

a few cigarette butts in the flowerpot have a story they refuse to say,

the wounded day limps home alone, a few more protesters are shot

in Bahrain, a few mothers and children slaughtered in Mexico

in the middle of some drug war.

                                                   Isn't everything we say just some

bit of breath we can't hold any longer. Doesn't every word draw

a picture that hides what it really means. How did all those painters

know what the Apocalypse looks like? The bombed church

in Baghdad thought it was today. The man shot on his porch in East

Chattanooga thought it was another day.

                                                                Sometimes the moon rises

full of hate. Clouds scramble over distant peaks, the wind broods

in a ravine, the flycatcher, perched along, waits for darkness.

In truth, what I want to say to you are these trace elements

lingering in the spaces between words. In truth, nothing we say is

worth the way the hawk slides through the invisible air from

the top of the skeleton of a dead tree.

                                                           In a few years you'll decipher

how these words will create a whole world I never meant to say.

Our windows have their own prophecies. Birdsong crinkles the air.

Everything we say is a self-portrait. The radio preacher says

that flowers can't bloom in hell. I have it on good report that

you can fit 1,737 angels on the head of a pin, excepting fat angels.

Salvation comes before creation, writes Agamben, which is why

we have to say whatever words, however dark, puddle at the end

of each sentence.

                             And isn't what we can't say exactly what attracts us?

And you, would it have made any difference if I said what I wanted

to face back at the beginning, that we have to learn to love whatever

truth will say itself, oh, not at the safe distance words create, but

unconditionally, like the woman who cannot understand why she is

impaled on the branch in the Ivory Coast like one of Goya's

Disasters of War discovering words she never knew would lead her there.

...

Out of Place is another clear lesson for Today's book of poetry.  America remains full of greatness if you know where to look.  Poets like Richard Jackson give Today's book of poetry hope.

Remarkable, remarkable poetry.

Richard Jackson

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richard Jackson is the author of eleven books of poetry, Out of Place (Ashland Poetry Press, 2014) most recently, two books of criticism, and two translations, one from Slovene and one from Italian. He is a winner of Guggenheim, Fulbright, NEA, NEH and Witter-Bynner Fellowships, five Pushcart appearances, as well as prizes from Prairie Schooner, Rattle and Crazyhorse. Jackson's poems have been translated into 15 languages. He was a recipient of the Slovene Order of Freedom Award for Humanitarian and Literary work in the Balkans and recipient of the 2009 AWP George Garrett Award. Jackson has taught at the Iowa Summer Festival, Prague Summer Program, Bread Loaf and other venues, and teaches at UT Chattanooga and the Vermont College of Fine Arts low residency program, winning teaching awards at both schools.

BLURB

His lines are clouds of love, piercing the sky with enormous empathy, rolling in the azure, torrents of passion, and are arrows at the same time, reaching a peak where they break, crying, cleansing the air, becoming ether. It is impossible to describe this in discursive language. With a melody that is unmistakably his own, his poems seem to come to us in Europe from the heart of the heart of America, the totally open (and hidden) center from where the power of the continent sprouts. He is a kind of Scorzese in poetry, but where Scorzese almost succeeds in his films, then stops, seals and terrifies us, Jackson adds a tender, vulnerable voice that blossoms and transforms us and that is so unique and great, great in its truest sense in Richard Jackson's poems.
    - Tomaž Šalamun

Richard Jackson

Poetry@Tech

Video: poetry@tech

ashlandpoetrypress.com

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DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies.  Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration

Certain Details, The Poetry of Nelson Ball - Nelson Ball (Wilfrid Laurier University Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Certain Details, The Poetry of Nelson Ball.  
Nelson Ball.  selected with an introduction by Stuart Ross.  Laurier Poetry Series.  Wilfrid Laurier University Press.  Waterloo, Ontario.  2017.

As the delightful Dame Edna might say, "Welcome back puppets."  Today's book of poetry has been on an extended leave and would like to thank each and every one of you for sticking around.

We ventured to Gaspe to the see Jardins de Metis http://www.refordgardens.com/english/ and once again we were amazed and delighted.  Spent a few nights sitting on the porch of our motel watching a seal frolic while we sipped beer and watched the sun set over the water.

Today's book of poetry started getting packages from our Southern Correspondent, the Twangster, a few months ago.  Since then there has been a beautiful barrage of David Lee, Dave Etter, Rodney Jones and others.  Today's book of poetry has been on leave but we've been reading.  Mr. Clewell has enriched the archives here and we just wanted to tip our hat in his crazy direction.

***

Today's book of poetry doubts that he is alone when he wishes he wrote like Nelson Ball.  Ball is some kind of Canadian Zen Nature poet -- who doesn't stop at nature.  Everything under the sun may be considered but what we get is some crazy (in the very best way) condensed vision that whispers instead of shouts.

When Nelson Ball whispers every poet in Canada leans in to listen because no one does it better.

Dead Flies

I

Three small piles

             of grey dust

flies expired

             on white paper--

a sheet of notes

             easily brushed off

II (with boots on)

Resting on hind legs and rearmost tips

of 

wings

             tilted

             like a rocket launcher

it died

just like that

...

Certain Details, The Poetry of Nelson Ball was selected and is introduced by Stuart Ross.  Any regular reader of this blog will be familiar with his name.  Stuart selected, edited and introduced my most recent book, Bad Engine (Anvil Press, 2017) http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca/2017/06/bad-engine-michael-dennis-anvil-press.html 

Mr. Ross has an excellent skill set when it comes to showing poets in their best light.  Certain Details looks at work from eight previous Nelson Ball collections as well as a generous sampling of previously uncollected poems.

Nelson Ball isn't what I would call a minimalist but he's awfully careful with his word dispersal, selective to say the least.  It compels the reader to lean in closer and listen harder.

The Real Story

I've often wondered why Jesus Christ

who historically was one of many Jewish prophets

became famous, really famous.  Yes, he was

a good man.  There have been

many good men, some recorded in history,

most, probably not.  The real story

is that Jesus Christ had friends

who were writers.

...

Certain Details closes with a rare look inside Nelson Ball's world with a candid and humble essay Afterword: Me and My Poetry: An Autobiographical Essay.  And it is worth the price of admission alone.

Today's book of poetry has taken you readers into Nelson Ball territory more than any other poet and it is not hard for me to see why.  Others see it too.  At this morning's office read the entire staff were back from their various adventures and it made for a festive atmosphere.  Then Milo and Kathryn really got the party started when they said it best.  Milo stepped up in front of the room, rolled up his left sleeve and there, just above his wrist, in tiny lower case letters, "ball".  Before any of us could think or comment Kathryn stood up beside him, rolled up her right sleeve and there, in the appropriate spot was "nelson."

Writing A Poem

Writing a poem is like felling a tree.

The poem's point of attention, like

the tree's centre of gravity

is held back in rhetoric--

thick bush--if the

path isn't clear.

...

The Laurier Poetry Series has enhanced their legacy with the inclusion of Certain Details, The Poetry of Nelson Ball to their canon.

Today's book of poetry applauds these excellent poems as well as the future poetry of Nelson Ball, a quiet but true national treasure.

Nelson Ball

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nelson Ball, poet and bookseller, lives in Paris, Ontario. He has worked as a labourer, chauffeur, office clerk, forest ranger, record store clerk, and janitor. From 1965 to 1973 he ran Weed/Flower Press. The author of over thirty books and chapbooks, he is featured in Catherine Stevenson’s video “Nelson Ball & Barbara Caruso | Home Project | A Photo Documentary.”

ABOUT STUART ROSS

Stuart Ross is a writer, editor, and writing instructor. His recent books include A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent (2016), A Hamburger in a Gallery (2015), and Further Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer (2015). He has maintained a micropress, Proper Tales, since 1979, and has his own imprint at Anvil Press. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

wlupress.wlu.ca 

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DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies.  Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration.

Bluebonnets, Firewheels, and Brown-Eyed Susans or Poems New and Used From the Bandera Rag and Bone Shop - David Lee (Wings Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Bluebonnets, Firewheels, and Brown-Eyed Susans or Poems New and Used From the Bandera Rag and Bone Shop.  David Lee.  Wings Press.  San Antonio, Texas.  2017.

Back on May 9th, 2016 this all started.  It was almost one year ago today that Today's book of poetry wrote about the former Missouri Poet Laureate David Clewell's excellent book Almost Nothing To Be Scared Of (University of Wisconsin Press, 2016).  The esteemed Mr. Clewell started corresponding with us here at Today's book of poetry, started sending us books we'd never heard of.  Then he introduced us to the Twangster, Mark Twang.

That was when all hell broke loose.  Twang, our correspondent from the south, thinks nothing of walking into my office unannounced and throwing down a book with a demanding "read this now!" Not sure where fear ends and respect begins but Twang has certainly opened some eyes around here. Today's book of poetry is ashamed to admit that we'd never really heard of B.H. Fairchild or Rodney Jones, and we certainly had never heard of David Lee.

Today's book of poetry doesn't know exactly how to say it but try this; David Lee is the poet Today's book of poetry has been waiting for.  Reading Lee is like taking a ride in a jet fighter when previously you'd only been riding a wagon.  David Lee is a whole new ball game.

The editor at Wings Press had this to say about Lee: 

      "Imagine Robert Frost simultaneously channeling Will Rogers

      and Ezra Pound.  Imagine Chaucer with a twang."

Today's book of poetry would add that you could throw that witty wordsmith Woody Guthrie and old Willie the Shake to that compendium.  

Bluebonnets, Firewheels, and Brown-Eyed Susans or Poems New and Used From the Bandera Rag and Bone Shop is a stunning social history of rural Texas, mid twentieth century or earlier.  Most of it from a woman's perspective, a woman's voice.  This is astonishing magic.

Hooter

and down they forgot as up they grew

                   E.E. Cummings,

                   "anyone lived in a pretty how town"

1

Back in the once upon a time days

Hooter Hagins got to be famous

a lot longer than the rest of us

but until Maurine Huffman

told her story to her Bobby Jack

almost everybody

even those of us who knew her then

and were there had already forgotten

that we all thought

it was a miracle

or a terrible accident

She had only one breast

No one was really sure

if they had to take it off

when she was a baby

or if she was born that way

and nobody ever thought

to ask her or her mama

which was what

to resolve the dilemma

none of us seemed to notice it

until we were in junior high school

on a day like a bolt of thunder

Monroe Newberry who was so innocent

he didn't know any better

made the longest speech of his lifetime

when he said Jesust Hooter

you only got one tiddy

from then on as long

as we could remember to think

about it she was

as important to our self identity

as President Eisenhower or Sputnik

or Governor Shivers or Coach Darrell Royal

in high school it seemed

she'd managed to find a way

to get it centered so we could look

forward to sweater days

to see Hooter's point of view

then along came Ella Mae Blodgett

with snow cone brassieres

Hooter got one to work for her

so well the Mr. Bennett

in general science quit

trying to teach any at all

on those days and had work sheets

in his drawers

ready to pass out so he

could practice on his personal theory

of successful sight alignment

wore it to class next semester

on biology test day

after ten minutes Tommy Bouchier

who was a Baptist and refrained

from all lustful contemplation

until he went to college

got up and walked out

sweat running down both sideburns

took it in the library after school

on his own time and still

graduated class valedictorian

nobody could hold

any of it against him

2

years later at the Dew Drop Inn

across the tracks drinking

bootleg liquor Jimmie Ivie asked

Bus Pennell how he lost his eye

Was it a hunting accident?

which gave Bus the opportunity

for personal loquaciousness

he said Partially

it was on a Saturday night

in my pickup out in the bushes

with Hooter I goosed her

she jerked loose

her gazoobie was like a brick

with a carriage bolt

stuck in the end of it

tore it right out of its sockets

he should have laughed

at the end of his story

and reminded them of what

they'd misplaced in their remembrance

that Charolotte Paducah before

she married Bobby Joe Rushing

shot it out with a Chinaberry

in a slingshot

when he came into her yard

after she told him not to

but when he didn't

went as quiet in there as when

Jerry Banks puked in church

during communion service

after Charles Ivins told him

it was made out of dead

ground up body parts

he wouldn't put it in his mouth

and be a cannibal

Miss Lela's eyes all wide

because her mama was midwife

saw it at Hooter's birth

them people didn't know

if it was from the Lord or the Debbil

but she had surely been touched

way back before Bus Pennell

got to her in his pickup

rumor of it spread all the way

to Odessa we heard

3

we were in line

at the picture show on a Saturday night

somebody we later thought Wheelis House

brought his cousin

down from Tahoka to go to it

he'd forgotten to warn him

the potential consequences

of silliness in our town

he said too loud

Looks like a Chinese rhinoceros

yall ought to call her Ichiban

like that Jap wrestler in Lubbick

Harold Wayne Clayburn said

You want us to call you a doctor

or a vegetarian? he said What?

never saw a thing

she hit him holding a half drunk

R.C. Cola bottle with peanuts in it

on the point of his chin

went down in a squatch

like a jellyfish

that lost its bonnet at sea

one eye rolled up and the other one

looked straight out like it's

been painted on

knocked him right out

of one of his shoes

she said to Harold Wayne

It's a veteranarain dumbass

whoever it wases cousin

that brought him

probably Wheelis

tried to say He didn't really

mean nothing by it

but Glenda Hutto

who was her friend that night

beside her standing in line

said It's too late already

you don't call the roofman

when it's raining.

we heard all over town

that at the Rotary Club meeting

Pastor Brother Gene said

It was a stampede

of accumulated wisdom and grievance

that she chose to unleash

upon that poor foreign boy

at that very moment

in order to provide the incentive

and momentum for possible redemption

and on the other hand

he probably just should have stayed

at home in Tahoka that night

even though they all laughed

it was standing room only

at the Methodist Church

next Sunday in anticipation

that Hooter might show up

for admonishment or praise

4

she began to disappear

from our collective consciousness

when she married down horribly

to Paulie Joe Wheaton after

he came home from his two years

Army service in lieu of the penitentiary

then another divorce after him then

married Byron Hainey who drifted

on the lam from Arkansas

got him a job at Piggly Wiggly finally

sacking groceries and stocking shelves

by then time and gravity

had done its duty

along with cancer getting popular

and other women getting one

or both of theirs cut off

so it wasn't much unusual any more

we forgot about her mostly

until the new husband we never accepted

either for us or her

got the prostrate cancer

took him to Dr. Tubbs

who called in Hooter

the first time said Your husband

is a real sick man but

would be a whole lot better

if he had sex once a day

on weekdays and twicet on Saturdays

when she came out of the office

he asked her what the Dr. said

with everybody listening

she said Dr. Tubbs said

you're going to die

on the next visit

Dr. Tubbs told Hooter

he had to get serious with her

said We can operate on him

try to get it out but you need to know

that would probley make him

pure flat impotent

she said Well that's fine

but would there be

any negative side effects?

that piece of gossip

brought her right back

to her previous hero status.

5

he ran off home to Arkansas

where we heard he died

and the church ladies social club

decided it wasn't right

Hooter should be alone

took her out to the old Wheaton place

where her ex Paulie Joe

who it was thought

still pined for her

had put in a trailer house

over the foundation of the burned one

Wheaton Texas-house with a sitting porch

pulled up he was lounging

on the furniture outside all bigfat

with his shirt off grinning

needing a haircut

in the sunshine

she said Turn the car around

and get me out of here right now

they said What for?

he's wanting read bad

to get back together with you

she said He looks like

a Chester white hog sitting up

with two rows of titties

hanging down his front

I don't need the reminder

or the competition

wasn't anything they could do

but take her back

she turned to look at him one last time

standing up waving his arms

his whole front belly looked like

a little boy sloshing in the bathtub

spillwaves going up and down

she said Oh set down

you silly sonofabitch

you're embarrassing me

Sybil Cockrum almost run the car

off in the ditch

them church social club women

laughed all the way in to town

they all sworn a  vow

not to ever tell anybody

Ruth Lee laughed so hard

she peed herself on the carseat

6

then Maurine Huffman told

her boy Bobby Jack after that

about Hooter back in high school

how she was world famous

all the way to Abilene

put a boy in the hospital

for making fun of her

and then why

pretty soon the whole town

was all over it again

she was once more our celebrity

but when the new Cambellite

preacher's wife Sister Parker

without understanding the true essence

of the matter said

as part of her conversational duty

checking out at her register

at Piggly Wiggly I heard

somebody say you was

really something way back when

that you was maybe

the most famous person in this part of Texas

Hooter said Yes ma'am

we all were

legends in our own minds

but that was then

and today is now

and that's exactly why

most stories start Once upon a time

and then go straight

backwards from there

but at least mine

had a point to it

and the right two words

for a conclusion

so we don't have to think

about any of it any more

and that's just about

all they are to it

I hope you have

a real nice rest of the day

and we all decided with her

it was time to let it go

...

Bluebonnets, Firewheels, and Brown-Eyed Susans or Poems New and Used From the Bandera Rag and Bone Shop weighs in at well over two-hundred pages and when you are reading it you might feel like you're caught between memories of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and the whispered words of wisdom from every woman in rural Texas.  Bluebonnets... is the anecdotal history of a time most of you are too young to remember, Lee's women remind us.

David Lee and his Texan women broker no hypocrisy and they do it in chicken-fried, glowshimmer style.

Veal, 1948

All afternoon grandmother

dressed the meat

divided the cuts

steaks and chops

a small roast

for the ice box

and sliced the round

into thin pieces which

for the first time

she didn't pound

with a saucer's edge

and for the meal

a private portion

chicken fried

for everyone at the table

including kids

so tender adults weren't requited

to do cutting

the savor of fresh beef

filling the air

on the tongue

lingering on the mind

"This is so good"

"So so good, mama"

"Never so tender"

"Where'd you get this meat?"

and grandmother

head down to her plate

as if in prayer

"Milk cow shed her calf"

"Shed her calf?"

"Still born"

...

One Reason Why You Didn't Want

Kristine Thornton To Talk During

Town Board Meeting

While Arguing Over Redistricting With Moe Bob Trammel

If the Lord wanted you

to have an empty head

and a cob up your ass

He'd of put popcorn seeds

in your daddy's spurem

                                       From sidebar minutes of the

                                      monthly Town Board Meetings

                                                        19 September 1950

...

Our southern correspondent, the Twangster, didn't stop with Bluebonnets..., no, he also sent along some other David Lee titles full of real life and wonder.  Today's book of poetry recently read A Legacy of Shadows - Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 1999), Driving & Drinking (Copper Canyon Press, 1979,1982 and 2004), The Porcine Canticles (Copper Canyon Press, 1984) and we listened to the CD David Lee: A Listener's Guide where Lee reads from A Legacy of Shadows and News from Down to the Cafe.  

The Today's book of poetry staff have been taking turns taking home the David Lee CD.  It is simply riveting poetry from a voice so authentic you have no choice but to believe every word uttered.

The fact of it for Today's book of poetry is that every poem David Lee writes seems to contain more truth than the last.  Lee isn't mimicking voices, he is remembering them, pitch perfect.

David Lee's eloquence is humbling but it is an awful lot of fun.  Bluebonnets, Firewheels and Brown-Eyed Susans or Poems New and Used From the Bandera Rag and Bone Shop is a kind of local, oral history rendered universal.  The stories and characters are new to us, they are new to everyone, but the moral playground they dance on is one we know, recognize from our own small part of the world.

One Reason Why You Didn't Want Kristine Thornton

To Talk During Town Board Meetings

                                   on an unnamed citizen

                                   running for town board

He's meteoaker

just trash not worth picking up;

a bucket with two holes

in the bottom

and a tore out pouring edge

                                     From sidebar minutes of the monthly

                                                             Town Board Meetings

                                                                           12 May 1953

...

The palette stacker

Let me tell you something, Travis

woman to man as your Assistant

Personnel Director  this one time

Hoyt there is in charge

of this entire mill's palette stacking

being a one man team

and if I were you which I'm not

I'd be careful about how

you've been talking to him

he's an odd duck and just doesn't

take to teasing any

and here' the consideration

I'm thinking I might take

if I were you which I'm not

that skinny little man

lifts 10 boxes of sheets every minute

and stacks them on his palette

that's 600 boxes of sheets an hour

which means in a workday

he lifts and stacks just about exactly

4,800 boxes of sheets

each box weighing 44 pounds exactly

which if you do the sum

comes to just a tad over

211 thousand pounds of lifts and stacks

on his palettes every day

five days a week and six

once we get to the holiday sale season

Travis, to put this in plain linguitch

as the good old boys say

so you might understand it

that skinny little man

who is from Shakeslovaskia

which is why to you he seems

to talk funny but he doesn't agree

has muscles in his shit

and if you tick him off making fun of him

bad enough to have him come at you

I can tell you for a certainty

the next one to wipe your butt

will be the undertaker

if you catch my drift

...

At one point Today's book of poetry was all set to tackle ALL of the marvelous David Lee material we have in the stacks but then realized we simply wanted to copy out every poem and share them with you.  This extraordinary poetry deserves to be celebrated, and loudly.  

If it were possible Today's book of poetry would lead a David Lee march right into the ballroom of The Poetry Hall of Fame.  How often do we get to call a living poet Great?  Here's your chance.

David Lee

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Lee was raised in Post, Texas (southeast of Lubbock, northeast of Lamesa — think hot, dry and flat), a background he has never completely escaped, despite his varied experiences as a seminary student, a boxer and semi-pro baseball player (the only white player to ever play for the Negro League Post Texas Blue Stars) known for his knuckleball, a hog farmer, and a decorated Army veteran. Along the way he earned a Ph.D., taught at various universities, and recently retired as the Chairman of the Department of Language and Literature at Southern Utah University.

After 30 years in Utah, Lee and his wife Jan took to the road to become more-or-less full-time wanderers. Passing through Bandera, Texas, Lee says, "We just fell in love. We noticed nine bars and two churches and thought this is where God lives." They settled in Bandera for a few years, but spent half of the year traveling, mostly on the backroads of the western U.S. They now live somewhere in Nevada.

Lee was named Utah's first Poet Laureate in 1997, and has received both the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award in Poetry and the Western States Book Award in Poetry. Lee received the Utah Governor's Award for lifetime achievement and was listed among Utah's top twelve writers of all time by the Utah Endowment for the Humanities. He is the author of over twenty books of poetry. In 2004, So Quietly the Earth was selected for the New York Public Library's annual "Books to Remember" list.

BLURBS

If we were a civilized nation, we would declare David Lee a national treasure.
     — Sam Hamill, author of Habitation: Collected Poems

This one's a lucky pick: Rural Texas back when — memory filtered through the eloquent country vernacular and irreverent, bawdy imagination of David Lee, who can stretch the truth until delight shines straight through, unspool a nonstop sentence like a bad cat with a ball of yarn, see through the eyes of a woman just the same as a man, and hilariously take down hypocrisy and pretention, especially "preaching, zeal maintenance and overlording." (Full disclosure: love the guy, but then, read on and I bet you will too.)
      — Eleanor Wilner, MacArthur Fellow, author of The Girl with Bees in Her Hair and Tourist in Hell

David Lee

Poet Laureate David Lee at Geneva Hills, Ohio

Video: danceshadowmoon1

wingspress.com

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DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

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