ROOTDRINKER

CLOUDBURST - RED CELL

2012-02-06T22:39:00.004-05:00

I was thinking about the energy pattern of a cloudburst. I still don't understand the phenomena. Steve Lewandowski said it is caused by extreme temperature differences. I guess that is part of it, I am not convinced and besides it is the moving currents that are my focus. Cloudburst is found in breaking through as energy pattern. One in Rushville, New York had Stephen and I driving around looking at ditches -- twenty-five year event, hundred year-event, thousand year-event (forget-about-it). Next day in a cloudburst for over one-hundred miles driving east. I couldn't outdrive the storm. It brought visibility down to almost zero and my speed to 20 MPH. Then it would clear all the way to sunlight. I'd speed up to 70 MPH but I couldn't outrun this storm as you can with some rain.

cloudburst right with me all the way.

back in cloudburst fury. Our paths converged.

in one spot a deluge washes over gone and clear

cloudburst moves, huge weather patterns move

cloudburst a rip in the water-filled clouds

carried across continents, bigger than countries

I was caught in a cloudburst while driving from west to east along the New York State Thurway this September. It brought visibility down to almost zero and my speed to 20 MPH. Then it would clear all the way to sunlight. I'd speed up to 70MPH but i couldn't outrun the storm for some reason. The perspective of observation seem to be from the point-of-view of the rained-upon. I am interested in what I imagine as a tear in the cloudsky, all the water of a lake brought up and then "burst" and let go.

Robert Frost goes:

For when all that was rotted rich

Shall be in the end scoured poor,

When my garden has gone down ditch,

Robert Frost knowing the damage, 15-20 years of soil-building can wash away in a few minutes. Understanding cloudburst I start to realize is about being ready for even the cloudburst that comes once every thousand-years. I woke-up, wide-awake in the middle of the night a few days ago. I remembered that I did write a cloudburst poem a few years ago or at least one on the rushing intense weather coming on.The local weather news has the habit of emitting buzz noice whenever a strong run of lightening runs down the Mohawk Valley to Albany. Here's the poem.

RED CELL

A red cell on the weather map,

moving towards Albany

with incredible speed.

Racing into town to cause trouble

like the over-sized kid

with the angry look on his face

hurrying to reach the playground

and moving in the direction of your own child.

The lightning shook the house.

Hit so close, my son tells me,

everything flashed white.

We could smell burning

coming from the computer.

This is not good,

turned the computer off.

No tree seems to be down in the back.

I open a sliding-door,

to peer through sheets of rain,

looking for a smoking remnant.

June 27, 2007
Delmar, N.Y.

IMPRESSIONS BEFORE & AFTER

2012-01-24T21:07:00.005-05:00

IMPRESSIONS OF PEOPLE

Impressions of people
I have never met
when they touch and connect
with my heart
I am moved by
what leaves an impression.

……………………………………………………………………………………

Key: matter in square brackets is the etymology.
ME = Middle English, MF=Middle French, OE=Old English, ON=Old Norse, L=Latin, OHG=Old High German, Gk=Greek. G=German, Hitt=Hittite, Russ=Russian, VL=Vulgar Latin
Etymology: the history of a linguistic form (as a word)

Impressions: [ME, impressen, from L impressus, pp. of imprimere from in- + premere to press] syn see IDEA

Of: [ME, off, of from OE; akin to OHG aba off, away, L ab from away, Gk apo] used as a function word to indicate a point of reckoning.

People: [ME, peple, from OF peuple, from L poplus]

I: [ME from OE ic; L and Gk ego, Hitt uk, G ich, Russ ja] one who is speaking or writing

Have: [ME haven from OE habben; haven to lift (see heave)] to hold in possession as property

Never: [ME from OE næfre from ne not + æfre ever] at no time, degree, under any condition

Met: past tense of Meet: [ME meten from OE metan akin to OHG muoz meeting] join, find contact, conjunction with another direction

When: [ME from OE hwanna, hwenne} just at the moment

They: [ME from ON their] people, used in a generic sense. characteristic of a whole group

Touch: [ME touchen, VL toccare to knock, strike a bell

And: [ME from OEakin to OHG unti] indicate connection or addition

Connect: [L conectere, connectere, from com- + nectere to bind]

With: [ ME, against, from, with, from OE akin to OE wither against} comparison or equality

My: [ akin to OE me ]

Heart: [ ME hert from OE heorte akin to OHG herza, L cord, cor-, Gk kardia] (1.) muscular organ, (2.) playing card, (3.) whole personality (4.),\ the emotional or moral not the intellectual

I: [ME from OE ic; L and Gk ego, Hitt uk, G ich, Russ ja] one who is speaking or writing

Am: [ ME from OE eom akin to ON em am, L sum, Gk eimi]

Moved: [ ME moven from MF monvoir]
syn: see ACTUATE, DRIVE, IMPEL

By: [ME from OE, akin to OHG bi, near. L ambi- on both sides, around, Gk amphi]

What: [ME from OE hwaet, ] as adj. expressing inquiry about the identity, nature, or value

Leaves: [ME leven from OE laefan akin to OHG version of leiben to leave, OE be lifan to be left over]

An: [ME from OE an one}

Impression:[ME, impressen, from L impressus, pp. of imprimere from in- + premere to press]

Note: Thus poem hinges on different meanings for the word impression. Also in a number of words there is a choice between a material meaning and a meaning that describes relational situations. I think in each case it is the relational emotive form that is used, example “moved” Not physically moved but emotionally moved. “Heart” not the muscular organ but the emotional or moral encounter

Meanings of impression:

1.) Stamping or pressing

2.) Imprint of the teeth used in dentistry

3.) Marked influence or effect on feeling, sense, or mind

4.) A single print or copy made through meeting of inked printing surface and the material being printed

5.) A usually indistinct or imprecise notion or remembrance

6.) An imitation of salient features in an artistic or theatrical medium

I wrote the poem to use meaning (1.) in line one and meaning (3.) in the last line.
Alternatively the last line could be meaning (5.)
or the poem could be stood on its head and the meaning for the first line could be (3.)
and the last line (1.)

IMPRESSIONS OF PEOPLE

impressions of people

noiseless shadows,

tickle my mind.

never met

but do not doubt

their existence.

just at the moment

they touch they bind

my heart

moved by what

leaves an impression.

printed into blank surface

poetry inked & stamp; pressed

words from another language

January 14, 2012
Elsmere, New York

Strangely enough this poem now describes the experience of making it. The way words from another person in a poem are also words from another language, from another people and both the person’s words and the people’s words make their impression. If read with enough force, a deep impelling stamp, not a brush of chalk to be quickly erased. The reading of the poem is perhaps the mechanism, the printing press itself, which doesn’t get mentioned in this poem.

I did this work as assignment for a writing workshop I am taking with Bernadette Mayer. The assignment was to take a poem and research every word. Then rewrite the poem.

----- Alan Casline
1/14/2012

MY EZRA POUND EXPLORATION

2011-12-03T00:28:00.007-05:00

I spent a few months exploring Ezar Pound for a Posey Cafe presentation. It gave me an over all sense of Pound's Cantos that I had not had before. I looked at only four of the Cantos which I picked because they grabbed me and led me to areas of my interest. I also wrote a bit about my backward travel from the Curriculum of the Soul to Ezar's epic.

going backwards to find Ezra Pound

a poet with an epic poem THE CANTOS

my poetic education through Albert Glover and Jack Clarke, edited and published

A Curriculum of the Soul

understood to be multi-authored time and history capturing like Homer

cause Homer wasn’t one guy and submerged egotism ownership

issues, issued forth

some impressive poets

my education being
neither Clarke or Glover wanting to say their “great project” was they were creating an epic
instead it was aim at the target without looking at the target
empting mind, knowing the target, arrow etc. (zen tricks)
Greek hubris hanging out there with speculation on ancient Greeks, speculation from scholarly sources
while contempory other poets happy enough to make them a target

Charles Olson gave a start with his outline or plan plus also
THE MAXIMUS POEMS
an epic poem I think most would agree

Maximus is not Charles Olson/Charles Olson is not Maximus

Olson uses Gloucester history, the lives of past and present Gloucester residents, geological history, and current civic events to anchor Maximus to Gloucester. Sometimes Maximus seems to represent all of Gloucester, and at other times, all of humankind.
--- Carl Carlsen – web-site: Poetry of Places in Essex County

I see Olson walking the streets of Gloucester
Just before or just after midnight
Streetlights on, lights on parking lots and fish-factory buildings, a few bars open
The wind is a sea-breeze, chill night light coat
Clanking sound muted from the harbor
Noises small ships make tugging on their anchoring cables
The hills have curved sections, ridges that ungulate but hold an altitude, rough, the heights
Streets that follow parallel to the shore, go up & down, the city streets
Cut by straight steep roads direct to dock areas
Merchants and old traders homes, substantial, brick-hard, timber-strong
Large man’s large strides, at a pace covers ground, sets a self-propelled wind to mix
With a stronger wind blows clouds high out to sea

PATERSON
an epic poem by William Carlos Williams I think most would agree

poem as a field of action, energy field ..new physics calls for new poetry

Williams sense of time as poetic meter
applied consciousness of social and physical environment & unconscious possibility
in PATERSON. 1940’s found reality in form of letters, historical accounts lifted whole

PATERSON’s poetic collage

poetry of spontaneous association

Pound, Williams, Olson
used compound ideogram
for poetic structure

“creating images”
                  --Daniel Belgard writes in The Culture of Spontaneity
                                                           Univ. of Chicago Press (1998)

“images not from analogy or metaphor
but through synecdoche and parataxis.”

synecdoche:
special for the general make the object the image my red wheel-barrow /the wear on my shoes
general for the special
my hat my house
complex of my thought
shelter of my knowledge
thin shelter from the Chinook knowing the price of milk/scanning groceries

specific reference shows greater larger

in Canto VII applied to leaders of Irish nationalism
The words rattle: shells given out by shells.
The live man, out of lands and prisons,
shakes the dry pods,
seed case sound from rattling seeds
shell as shell protects the kernel
nut gone loose inside shell
only this year’s food
fed no land or prison
escaped that
more dangerous without

parataxis:
act of placing side by side

Mountain Sky Bird poem title 1974
“goose feather bag chest backpack books clothes radio tape music candelabra” line from poem 2011

materials, side-by-side, without comment on the relations

parataxis a foundational element in the poetry of Wallace Stevens. Rae quotes Stevens in saying that parataxis offers an “ambiguity that is so favorable to the poetic mind.”
    --Patricia Rae, in her essay “Bloody Battle-Flags and Cloudy Days: The Experience of Metaphor in Pound and Stevens"

Ezra Pound’s Canto LXXXI lines 34-36

sky’s clear
night’s sea
green of the mountain pool

connections left for reader
only seemingly disconnected fragments
without those connector words
like knife, pencil nub, shiny copper button, paint brush
all in a compartment
built into a desk drawer

Live man goes down into the world of the dead

Pound more alive than the rest of us
through “directed will”
moves “the outward crust”
of time, place

reveal past glories make a new age
not to destroy, clearing ground
mistake of Futurism, chrome hubcaps
mod use of words
like language stripped of prior meaning
- unrooted -

Dead and underworld of early CANTOS in their mythological place later
Pound’s contemporaries metaphorically dead
waking world with zombies populating

poetry is not entertainment pitched to the tune
of low and mid-brow culture –

poetry not fodder for the common people,

language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree

Subject: Will Nixon blogs Christman and Casline

2011-09-23T14:58:00.002-04:00

post on William Weaver Christman:Return of a Forgotten Poet

http://willnixon.com/christman

post of Trees by William Weaver Christman

http://willnixon.com/christmantrees

post on Alan Casline, Watershed Poet

http://willnixon.com/alan-casline-watershed-poet

2011-04-30T23:43:00.007-04:00

TURN TURN TURN AGAIN

A small creek with sand and flat stone in dry season,

snow melt stirs and carries brown waters swiftly in front of me.

Someone has strung a rope from one bank to the other

leaving me to contemplate how deep the narrow crossing.

Angry river, holes sucking in, walls racing by

Still, footsteps in mud of cattle and people go in the water and come out the other side.

They are wet despite it being two days since the last rain.

I look up and down the road and see no one coming from either direction.

The morning sun doing nothing more then drive a chill wind.

There is I see a faint pathway that follows the river bank

its paltry impression tells me there is not much to merit a turn either up river or down

I look at my shoes choose their soaking over cold toes on slippery purchase.

Roll my pant legs up, grip the rope and travel its sway

placing each step at regular pace just ahead.

There are tiny, unforeseen slips at foot

where the rope steadies, takes a bit of weight

and rights the man.

The water that runs off (excepting that inside my shoes) is a torrent, a trickle, then wrung drops

as I twist the cloth to remove its bite.

Twist the water from my socks as well and go on with bare feet in wet shoes.

Late morning the sun warms the sand so I walk unshod.

Shoes tied together, their string thrown over my shoulder

This is the day I turn for the mountains.

Against their pull I had set my exile.

Could there possibly be anything for me there?

Far distant their snow-covered peaks catch light or hold dark.

All the turnings I had made away I could not shake them

as I could not shake the caress of my other ghosts.

Stubborn for any illusion of freedom as the slaver’s lash sends me on my way

condemned by the laws of the over rulers court.

I don’t think then what strange guarded gates lay in high pastures.

When I set out it was to live, to sing any song, yes beyond their laws and censure.

I look again at the high pass. Maybe there is a different land beyond?

Maybe there is some turn I cannot see that turns me back or causes me to no longer care?

Alan Casline

Exile poem #3

April 14, 2011

Elsmere, New York

eerie from within radioactive Japan- raw video

2011-04-09T16:13:00.005-04:00

global warming solved by use of glowing cows instead of electric lights.

seriously this is a raw video of a trip along roads to close into the area of radioactive reactors in Japan.

http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/04/eerie-footage-from-inside-japans-radioactive-evacuation-zone/

not a disaster movie
not a road trip
no picnic either

TEXT AS ART IN A COMPARTMENTAL MIND

2011-03-20T13:04:00.006-04:00

I thought I'd send a few collage poems to, as it turned out, Nancy Klepsch the curater of a a show called TEXT AS ART held at The Arts Center of the Capital Region. I didn't have high expectations but thought, if they didn't have a lot of submissions maybe my collage poems would fit their criteria and I'd be included in the show. As it turned out the show was small with only seven pieces selected and I made the grade with a bit more RAPIDITAS and I'm told by Nancy exceptionalism (I never said my collage poems weren't good). We had the opening on February 28, 2011 in The Arts Center in Troy, New York. I have a compartmentalized mind. For example I have different publications and do books from my Benevolent Bird Press based on different sections of my thinking which often include different groups of people. Probably most people have different group mailing lists and here I separate even information about what I am doing or new discoveries...send my different arrows flying to hopefully receptive targets. I try to avoid the hive-mind and the blanket cover of "BIG EGO". The upshot of this is that after attending this TEXT AS ART event, I decided I need to start a new compartment/e-mail list. The show is now over but the effects of the show have the potential to go on. The Albany New York Region has a lot of practicing poets. I throw around the figure of 1000 and it is easily that if you consider the different venues, open mics, workshops, college programs, waitress who hand us doggeral written on napkins, the rappers and slam poets, the country music near-poets and the Irish... Experiencing Daniel Nester and Mary Kathryn Jablonski's contribution and reading on February 28th -- I had heard them both "feature read" in the area -- but the context and subject splash of this night just added something and made me think they and the other contributers and myself were held together in a special place. The other disparant souls brought together by Nancy Klepsh were by her design working through different media but the added on energy field of words/text and data rich surface made something different than Albany's 1000 poets all gathered in a single room. Examples: Susan Rivers * "Fabric Memories"; Sara Tack * motion typography; Mary Kathryn Jablonski * particitatory assemblage poem; Joelle Nadeau Hotaling * poster art; Daniel Nester * first-person conceptual performance and my collage poem.

Seeing is better than reading. I am really just writing this post so I can put up my photographs. The way blogger works if you click on any photo it will enlarge to full screen size. Help yourself!

Mary Kathryn Jablonski work Quicksilver

(L to R) Sara Tack, Mary Kathrym Jablonski and Daniel Nester
Nester at The Memoir Office

Susan Rivers work Meet Bella

Kate Laity work The Square Root of 1 is 1

Alan Casline work Saddam Don't Like It

Alan Casline at the Opening Feb. 28, 2011

BERNADETTE MAYER: SNAKES AND ICICLES

2011-02-09T19:48:00.021-05:00

Kinderhook Creek

It has been a great "old fashion" winter here in the northeastern woodlands. Last few winters have been too warm with little snow until February and March. Those late winter storms carry lots of moisture and are helpful for filling the streams but we haven't had a socked in storm piled on storm winter where the snow level goes up and down but never leaves until mud season finally arrives in more years then I can count. That's what we have this winter and despite the snow shoveling I think the earth is more comfortable covered under a blanket of snow and breathing cold air which translates to my comfort too. My daughter Liz gave me snowshoes and I have been watching the weather and snow conditions for the right days to head for the woods. I used to cross-country ski and for backyard trekking I know from experience some winters there are only a few perfect days and if you laze your way past them you are out of luck till next winter. Ever since I got the snowshoes I've been thinking about the hollow of land "cup of water" Tsatsawassa where Bernadette Mayer and Philip Good live. In early January I had found the book Mills on the Tsatsawassa (1983) by Philip L. Lord, Jr. in a bookstore in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.. It is a book I knew about because I researched the area as I wanted to understand the looping and winding of Kinderhook Creek and the confluence of other small tributaries that created the Tsatawassa "cup" but I never thought I'd actually see a copy for sale. When I did I bought the book for Bernadette and Phil. Now as I set out on my choosen perfect day, I was thinking it won't be a problem if they are home to be allowed to snowshoe down to the Kinderhook but just in case I brought a few trade goods. Besides the mills book, I had a bottle of wine and a set of the 2010 Benevolent Bird broadsides plus the mini-book Ten Thoughts About the Eternity of Day by Dennis Sullivan that I used graphics from the exterior plates of Gundestrup Cauldron on. The Cauldron is subject of a current obsession of mine as will be referred to later in this post when we get to the "snakes" part. Phillip was away at work but Bernadette made me welcome (you can't get that many visitors on that road in January). I did my snowshoe trek following animal tracks and staying up on the banks above the Kinderhook Creek.

snowshoe path

There was a layer of hard crust on top of about a foot of powder and on top of the icy crust was about ten inches of fresh soft snow from the last storm. The snowshoes cracked but did not break through the icy layer and the going was pretty easy--held up above the layer of deep snow. I turned up the Tsatsawassa Creek past a low area which showed signs of previous flooding and went on to where the road crossed above and climbed up the steep bank. I got my snowshoe caught under a layer of crust, fell, and had to back up and restart twice before I came out on the roadway again.

Bernadette Mayer January 2011

Back inside again, Bernadette and I fell into our conversation. It was talking about things like different strategies of insulation for which she encouraged me to take a trip to see the attic room, snow for snowshoeing and the need or not for ski poles when doing it. Also the history of the house (which was very interesting to me, twice a church for different congregations and then owned by a Rabbi -- when Bernadette moved in the rooms all had numbers on the doors and they would joke "I'll meet you in room 3 at 8:15")

attic view

The topic we spent the most time talking about was snakes. It was the Gundestrup Cauldron that pointed me towards the Celtic two-headed snake which is found in the interior detail. Celtic warriors wore two-headed snake torques as armbands. Bernadette knew of the Celtic symbol but didn't know any particular myth or story. She thought that maybe the two heads got into arguments, they disagreed. I don't know why I would get interested in any subject having to do with snakes because they make me uneasy. As I told Bernadette, it is not the sight of a snake, I can look at a snake, watch a snake--it is the rustling, the movement sound that startles me, gives me the heebie-jeebies, makes me jump (supposed to be a survival instinct as old as upright man). She is not brothered by snakes but said she has a friend who also has a snake phobia and whenever the friend visits and they go for a walk, they see snake after snake after snake. The snakes showing themselves. Bernadette asked me if I thought there was a decline in the garter snake population. We both fond of these foundation and sun loving little creatures. My mother had names for favorites who lived in the loose limestone flowerbed walls my Dad hauled stone for and rebuilt every Spring after frost heaves. I said I didn't think there were less garters as I am still seeing them regularly and have a number of nice photos of garter snakes that I have taken in my own Normanskill Watershed. I'll have to research it. I know there is a world-wide problem with frog and other small reptiles "disappearing" to possible extinction and I've already got bees, herrings and brown bats on my watch list.

garter snake at Christman Preserve

It was kind of an abrupt change of topic and really it was cool to just shoot the breeze but I thought I should ask Bernadette something literary if I was going to go to the trouble of writing some of our conversation up and what she had to say was pretty smart. I said, "I've often stated the position that I would not change a word in one of my poems for the sake of a particular poetic form. There are many poets who do, who change the language to make it fit the requirement of a form." Bernadette Mayer said well it would depend on how much you liked that particular poetic form. She said she could do that, she could take a Bernadette Mayer poem and then write a second Bernadette Mayer poem with the same words but an entire different form and put them both out there side by side. She said she didn't see any reason why a poet couldn't just have one poem they had written in their lifetime and just continually write the poem again and again, each time using a different spacing, line breaks, placement on the page. Made me realize I was thinking of form too narrowly.

We talked some more about wintercold. She said, "Before you go I have to show you my icicle. I show it to everyone who comes and visits." Outside the small kitchen window a massive icicle flowed down. A distance from the side of the house with the lightcatcher still maybe a body length to go before it reached the ground. A great season for icicles as well as the deep snow.

Where had I learned of the Philip L. Lord book? I googled Tsatsawassa because I wanted to understand and draw a map of the different streams and waterways that came together to make the landscape so unique around Mayer and Good's neighborhood. There are not that many internet addresses that mentioned "Tsatawassa." as I told Bernadette. There should be one for the magazine THE TSATSAWASSANS she thought so I volunteered to put notice of it here. THE TSATSAWASSANS is edited by Bernadette Mayer and published by Mademoiselle de la Staples Press. There are still copies of ISSUE #2 available for $7.00 (I'd include a few more dollars for postage) I know blogs like this one have an international reach and it would be cool if this little notice generated some poet to poet exchange. One thing a magazine is about is the associations or poeticworld created in combination, all shaking and shining and emiting an energy field. Besides Bernadette Mayer poems in the magazine there are experiments and colloborations, shared compositions, rewritten poems, eight different poems from eight different poets about neutrinos, a superbowl poem by Mayer and Good (you get the idea). Philip Good, housemate amd major contributor (I think he drove to Staples), editor of Blue Smoke and wrote the Drunken Bees Poems is found in the magazine.

COVER: THE TSATSAWASSANS, ISSUE #2

PLUS:

Jack Collom--Colorado based with attachments with Naropa-- elder with a Selected Poems 1955-2000 and Exchange of Earth and Sky (2005)

Jamey Jones--Blue Rain Morning-- You-Tube Jamey Jones:The New York Poems

Laura Goldstein-- published ICE IN INTERVALS (2008)-- writer & text sound writer--Chicago

Bill Kusher--NYC poet--praised, was in Creeley edited Best American Poetry 2002

Jennifer Karmin-- multidisciplinary projects, poet, artist--founding member of public art group Anti Gravity Surprise, curates the Red Rover Series

Jason Morris--Vermont Native

Deborah Poe-- fiction editor for Drunken Boat--wrote Elements (Stockport Flats Press 2010)

Layne Browne--born 1966 in Los Angeles--flora/fauna/present.

and Others

I notice Bernadette Mayer had a book Mutual Aid published by Mademoiselle de la Mole Press in 1985. I wonder what happened to that Mademoiselle? The 3rd issue of THE TSATSAWASSANS will be poets whose first name is Bill. Here is the opportunity to get ISSUE #2 pick it up while you can ( $7.00 ) at:

THE TSATSAWASSANS

53 Tasatsawassa Lake Road

East Nassau, NY 12062

USA

Tsatsawassa Creek and Bridge

UNLIKELY AS IT MAY BE

2011-01-24T17:07:00.010-05:00

Paul Doty, who is one of the St. Lawrence County members of Rootdrinker Institute, has been doing a blog for a Friends of the Library group at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y.. Unlikely as it may be, he just published my poem ON MY DESK AT COLLEGE IN 1973 (actually it makes sense for it to appear there.) I am curious to observe any reaction from the college community. Meanwhile, I think I have some kind of reverse energy going with Barbara Vink of the Thursday Night Poetry critique group that meets at the Voorheesville Library in Voorheesville, N.Y.. I brought this poem to the group to more or less show Barbara and the others a stretching of poetic form and to give the "is it or isn't it poetry" conversation another consideration from my work. Yet it seems that these experimental(or whatever you want to call them) poems find their own little homes. Somewhere I have the notes where I wrote down every object found in my backpack, either hitch-hiking or coming or going from Honolulu. Now I want to find that scrap as a follow-up. When I got to the blog, I was pleased to find posted the recording that Jason Crane and I did of Albert Glover's poetry reading at Caffe Lena. As I have been telling folks it was a "wish you could have been there" event and now it is available for listening to. Here is the link:

http://blogs.stlawu.edu/fodyll/2011/01/10/2011-starts-with-poetry/

My poem is just down the page with a January 24, 2011 publication date.

The poet Dennis Sullivan asked me, "What is it about Jason Crane that you like?" I said, "He reminds me of a young Dennis Sullivan." Which stopped the old Dennis Sullivan right in his tracks. Then I gave the rest of the answer. "I like Jason because he is doing things." His jazz blog is a marvel at

http://thejazzsession.com/

I also like him cause he listens to me. He has started a Zine called DAYLIGHT ROBBERY(Volume 1 Issue 1 - January 20011)and I tried to give him some advise about small press magazines (you know pit falls and mistakes people usually make). His endeavor is low budget by design and necessity. He put two of my New Mexico Rinconada Canyon Blues poems in the first issue. I am looking forward to his selections of poets (a national mix he says). The daylight robbery in my poems had to do with the petroglyphs being next to holes where other petroglyphs were cut out of the stone and then it goes yeah we steal what we see for our poems --we're thieves too. Other poets in the first issue are; Aaron Belz, Molly Lawless, Carol Graser, John Gallaher with design for logo by Carolee Sherwood. Carol Graser is the host for the Caffe Lena poetry reading series . See it all circles around.

Find Jason Crane and DAYLIGHT ROBBERY at info@snafupress.com or by mail at SNAFU Press, PO BOX 8660, Albany, NY 12208. Subscriptions are $5 per year.

Credits top: Gundestrup Cauldron detail from interior plate, middle: Albert Glover at Caffe Lena photo by Obeedude, bottom: graphic by Carolee Sherwood.

SOUL IN BUFFALO

2010-11-30T20:26:00.026-05:00

SOUL IN BUFFALO

A three-day free conference (18-20 November, 2010) in Buffalo, NY to celebrate and explore Charles Olson's legacy and extension through 'A Curriculum of the Soul", a series of poetic essays published as fascicles edited by Albert Glover and John C. (Jack) Clarke. Sponsored by: The Analytical Psychology Society of Western New York, Just Buffalo, Kareples Manuscript Library Museum, the Poetry Collection at University at Buffalo.

World-view with a vector. The talk of fields mixed in poetry, in lives, between covers and on the page. All those fields, all those fasicles, poets/ then & now and thinking just how the combined forces of these contributors would create image and movement. "What is the use of" was an opportunity (bunch of serious students of poetry, tied by some threads, bunch of different threads) to find common language. In a year of Charles Olson events this one was the from Buffalo out vector or so I hoped pulled together by Kenneth Warren of House Organ and fired by Glover/Clarke time factor. The combining of fields, the wave tank that rolls distinctions and allows for resounding surf. At the Conference, Joe Napora told a tale of whitewater kayaking the Colorado River (which I don't want to steal entire because he can probably keep telling it for five or ten years ) how at the last run of giant rapids it becomes important to follow the tiny bubbles. I listened in when Pat Glover asked him to explain more and he described the physical geography, a fold made between different million years-old rock formations on the river bottom. Not that that made paddler, kayak and white water all work together. I could be all over Napora's metaphor but like I said somehow it goes with him. I mean he's the guy with the paddle in his hand. Follow the tiny bubbles.

PHOTO KEY: top to bottom & left to right. 1.) Kitty Jospe 2.) John Roche 3.) group: Amarilys Lora, Pat Tansay, Kathy Tussing, Pat Glover 4.) Albert Glover 5.) Daniel Zimmerman 6.) Andre Spears 7.) Kenneth Warren 8.) David Landrey 9.) Stephen Ellis.

click on any photo and enlarge . all photos by Alan Casline on November 20, 2010

I want to post something on the celebration found at the Soul in Buffalo Conference. It was a low-cost (bring your own coffee) human event. The kind which happens sometimes when good intentions and civil people gather around shared ideals. Albert Glover, Daniel Zimmerman, Michael Bylebyl, David Tirrell and Michael Boughn all present and read from the completed CofS book their long ago work is a part of. Very interesting the book as object brought to life with Glover inspired method of not self protecting rather reading from any author/any selection. He did the same thing in Rochester at the Black Montain North Symposium in October when he read from Harvey Brown's JAZZ PLAYING section. He and Michael Boughn didn't read their own work this time but read from other sections. The voices of Zimmerman, Bylebyl and Tirrrell were all very welcome to me. I had read their individual CofS fasicles and perhaps now heard them joined. Kind of irritating that the whole book is not generally available to read but when online version appears that issue disappears. Cass Clarke in Buffalo I thought as talk drifted away from Olson to Jack's work she seemed energized and sharp.. She didn't come back for days two and three, however and expressed distrust of Analytical Psychology examination (as in Kenneth Warren's benevolent obsession) For me, meeting Joe Napora and Stephen Ellis was great. David Landrey and I were talking as the final clean-up went on that along with whatever else happened it was nice that the poetic corridor running from Albany through Rochester to Buffalo seemed alive and ready for more.

WORDS FROM THE BACKSIDE OF A POST-MODERN CURRICULUM OF THE SOUL MANDALA
collective torn images, twice collected
or more each migration heaped up
not yin/yang (once past the selection over mine and yours)
one over the other, on surface, over edge.
first dealing with the crap, the junk
tie it down in the middle
easy beyond beginning specs
balance bung, usu, low building with low-pitched roof
shared rhythm picked up
agreed to use care when overlapped
space remains, a vector world-view
spin toward the better
we say it, more of the good
turn over with grins
that now we can create chaos
KAOS
KRAFT
HANDS
CONCOCTION
POLIS
TYGERS
THESIS
THEMIS
Alan Casline
November, 20, 2010
Buffalo, NY

Ten Most Important Mountains in Poetry

2010-11-08T21:12:00.034-05:00

As part of the Black Mountain North Symposium I presented a selection of the ten most important mountains in poetry. I wanted to get a conversation started and also thought by putting together a hand-out I could impress upon people the background on my picks. Here is the list:

Ten Most Important Mountains in Poetry

Alan Casline List October 5, 2010

1] Black Mountain

2] Cold Mountain

3] Machu Picchu

4] Four Sacred Mountains of the Navajo

5] Inyan Kaga (Black Buffalo Horn) or Harney Peak

6] Mount Olympus

7] Sourdough Mountain

8] Mount Liupan

9] Fujiyama or Mount Fuji

10] Monument Mountain

Black Mountain has probably the least profile as a geological feature. Black Mountain College, Black Mountain Review and Black Mountain School of Poetry all carry the notation. There is a Black Mountain as part of the landscape in North Carolina but the actuality of stone and heighth is not as important as Black Mountain is as a place. All the mountains on the list have mythos and imaginative place as well as physical. Charles Olson in an April 1969 interview with Andrew S. Leinoff (Muthologos 2010) had this to say; Black mountain to my mind is not only not in past time but is a flag hanging out in the future which hasn't yet been, hasn't been redrawn, in a funny way.

Cold Mountain has a ancient and modern tale to tell. Han Shan the Chinese monk who legend has as the author wrote the originals and Gary Snyder provided an introduction to most of us through his translations. He famously used a language of the trails and mountains of the Pacific Northwest to shape and surprise us (scree, riprap etc.) These are poems that really place you on the mountain and helped me understand how mountain poems could be important. Also in my library the Burton Watson translation of 100 Cold Mountain poems has long held a prominent placement. For many years I had it at my desk at work.

They critcized the Old Poet of Cold Mountain
'Why write poems other people can't understand?"
"Unlike you," he offered, "I have read of the ancients,
beings not ashamed to be poor and humble..."
This caused laughter at his poem and his answer,
"How can you talk such foolishness?"
"Then carry on my friends, go as you are.
you let money be your whole life!"

Machu Picchu I selected because of Michael McClure's poems and visit to there. There was a program on the site that I saw on TV not too long ago which reinforced it's unique presence. It is in a part of the world still dangerous to travel to. McClure said "Machu Picchu is an interesting place. It can really get one into an entirely different way of feeling." He said he noticed "it's not the buildings that are interesting but where the windows look out to." He wrote the poem VILLANELL for Gary Snyder while he was at Machu Picchu. The poem is on "creating visions not solutions." When I wasn't sure about keeping Machu Picchu on the list, Gary Lawless let me know about the Pablo Neruda poetry that travels spiritually from lost jungles up the ladder of the earth to "Mother of Stone, spume of the condors./Highest reef of the human dawn./Shovel buried in the first sand." Neruda's poetry on Machu Picchu is expansive and moves the mountain city into literary significance and on to another list of mine, the list of poetry I need to spent some time studying.

Four Sacred Mountains of the Navajo like Machu Picchu and further down the list Mount Fuji are significant beyond the poets who might have created lasting impressions of them. There are some mountains that are sacred to a people and culture. You can say, of course, all nature is sacred to people and cultures. Some mountains, like the Navajo peaks, are specific in importance to the mythology and religion. My visit to New Mexico in Spring 2010 placed me in Navajo lands and I joke about spending too much time there talking to the Cloud People when I should have been paying attention to heavy traffic on the interstate (inner state?). Four mountains, as I have been multi-corrected, make my list of 10 actually 13 to which I am going to add three more Navajo mountains to total 16. Think of the Navajo mountains as boundary stones as the Navajos believe they were placed on the land between four mountains by their Creator. Four is a sacred number and the four mountains represent the four cardinal directions. Song poems from the native southwest use four as repeating form and rhythmic magic.

Tsisnaasjini, dawn mountain, mountain white shell
boundary stone above San Luis Valley
over you comes the morning sun
your peak opens to the East

Tsoodzil, blue stone bead, turquoise charm
Laguna lies past your guard
arc of sun path in your sky
roads escape to the South

Doko'oosliid, mountain Abalone shell
late shadows trail dusty Flagstaff
you rise, sun passed over your head
faded light echos the distant West

Dibe Nitsaa, graze mountain sheep
high on your rock face grass grows
Cloud people gift on the La Plata mountains
North where clouds gather

If you are looking for them: Tsisnaasjini is Mount Blanca, Tsoodzil is Mount Taylor, Doko'oosliid is San Francisco Peaks and Dibe Nitsaa is La Plata Mountains. The three inner mountains added to Navajo sacred mountains are Dzil Na'oodilii or Huefano Mesa, Ch'oolii or Governador Knob and Naatsis'aan or Navajo Mountain. These three are all sites important to the mythology of the peoples. The three are known as the lungs, heart and head of Navajo country with their stories tied to the tale of Changing Woman. Now you can see why I didn't pick just one of these sacred mountains and why they make the list of the most important mountains in poetry.

Black Elk's Vision brought the site of his visionary trance, Inyan Kaga or Black Buffalo Horn to the list. Known as Harney's Peak in the Black Hills of Dakota, it is unfortunately named after the Military leader responsible for taking native land for US government land in the area. The Black Hills are a geologically old mountain range that have long been sacred to the native peoples. Most know the story of how gold was found and to protect the unlawful miners the US government pushed out the natives, mostly by armed intervention. Black Elk's story was told in the 1930-31 although he had his great vision at the age 9 in the year 1872. When first published in 1932, I suspect it fed the nostalgia and awakened consciousness of educated Americans. When republished in 1961, it was available for counter-cultural native lore seeking hippies and others in the sixties. I read the vision during my undergraduate college years in the early 1970's. It is a beautiful language net which you can see why Carl Jung found it interesting. In the tradition of magpie poetry there are many shiny pieces in thoughts, word phrases and images available in it. It could be a good workshop to have every poet read this text, go away for a few hours and then return to write a poem influenced by the experience. Here is a small sample of the words: "And as I passed before them there, each gave again the gift that he had given me before--the cup of water and the bow and arrows, the power to make live and to destroy: the white wing of cleansing and the healing herb; the sacred pipe; the flowering stick. And each one spoke in turn from west to south, explaining what he gave as he had done before, and as each one spoke he melted down into the earth and rose again; and as each did this, I felt nearer to the earth."

Mount Olympus seems like a no-brainer as an important mountain in poetry. Found in the poetry of Homer, Milton and must be lots of others. When asking other poets for possible mountains for this list Mount Olympus was always among the first handful mentioned. Mount Olympus, Home of the Gods, Big head faces looking down on tiny us and pinching out a life or raising storms and sinking ships, you know the whole pop cultural thing is so ingrained. I find, however, no signature poem(s) with Mount Olympus as subject or even as primary setting. It must be my lack of a classical education. Maybe someone else can help me out. As subject matter for poetry the Greek myths are used and reused. They trace the whole of poetry's ages in art and culture, however a Mount Olympus poem, I don't know?

Sourdough Mountain doesn't have that problem. It has a poem, SOURDOUGH MOUNTAIN LOOKOUT by Phil Whalen. Sourdough has more than one poem from the days poets worked as fire tower keepers but this one by Whalen puts one on the mountain and opens space to all-seeing transformation, a verse meditation, life/death poet stuff: This rock, me,/To no purpose/I tell you anyway (as a kind of loving...) He says, I destroy myself, the universe (an egg)/And time to get an answer. Let's generalize on these mountain poems, what for to go there -- to make a climb, the metaphor like Grandfather Carp swims upriver. Whalen ends the poem, Like they say, Four times up,/Three times down." I'm still on the mountain. I recommend the book POETS on the PEAKS: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen & Jack Kerouac in the North Cascades by John Suiter published by COUNTERPOINT (2002). The story is there with quotes from poems and journals with photos historic and contemporary to the books publication.

Rooting around in the material from the time of these poets in the mountains. Poet Lew Welch I believe also was a fire tower lookout or at least he spent time in the same mountain range. Gary Snyder's poem AUGUST ON SOURDOUGH, A VISIT FROM DICK BREWER is an account of Brewer's visit when they lay in their sleeping bags "talking half the night". Gary Snyder staying and Dick Brewer hitching to New York. Snyder ends the poem "me back to my mountain and far, far west." These mountains would have nothing in the human language to say without our involvement.

Mount Liupan is the most obscure and perhaps that makes it the most personal. In July 1983 when I lived in Saratoga Springs, New York I wrote and later had published a poem ON TWO POEMS OF MAO WITH RED BANNERS. The Mao Zedong poems were Jinggang Mountain (1928) and Mount Liupan (1935). My poem was an idealistic expression of the value for the character of a person and for a political movement of not giving up on beliefs even in the most difficult situation. Mao had written these poems while on the longest march. In looking Mao's poem up for this list I found he had written a later poem, Reascending Jinggang Mountain (1965). He finds new scenes have replaced the old. "Everywhere orioles sing, swallows dart,/Streams babble/And the road mount skyward." Thirty-eight years are gone in a snap and the old soldier knows wherever men live "Flags and bannners are flying" (political strife goes on). it is not on that note the poets ends however:

We can clasp the moon in the Ninth Heaven
And seize turtles deep down in the Five Seas:
Nothing is hard in this world
If you dare to scale the heights.

from Reascending Jinggang Mountain (1965) by Mao Zedong

Chinese cities on the moon. We may both live to see them!

Fujiyama or Mount Fuji is the Japanese sacred mountain found in poems for centuries. Like Mount Olympus a mountain included by everyone asked to help me with this list. From the haiku of Matsuo and Yosa Bunson all the way back to the poems of the Man'yoshu, the oldest exisiting collection of Japanese poetry. Still a potent symbol in the 20th Century, an anti-war poem by Mitsuharu Kaneko places us at the foot of the mountain as father and mother talk of hiding their son from the draft. Birth certificates, they ought to be burned right away./Nobody should remember my son. When night time at last ends this is the mountain he sees: The rain has let up./In the sky vacant without my son,/well, how damnably disgusting,/like a shabby worn-out bathrobe,/Fuji!. Not songs of praise and thanksgiving the Japanese poets make Fujiyama clear or obscured depending on each poems moment of insight. Here is my current collection of poems:

in the misty rain
Mount Fuji is veiled all day -
how intriguing!
-- Matsuo Basho

the wind of Mt. Fuji
I've brought on my fan!
a gift from Edo
-- Matsuo Basho

O snail
Climb Mount Fuji,
But slowly, slowly!
-- Kobayashi Lssa

Oh Mt. Fuji
Grey sky, green pine.
Soon will snow fall.
Grey will turn to white,
Will fall on pine,
Will flutter on ground.
I've got to sit down
and rest this heavy bundle
Which is making me
Black and blue.
I'll take off my tabi
and scratch my foot
which itches. Oh, Mt. Fuji!

-- Yosa Buson

pouring floods of rain
won't Mount Fuji wash away
to a muddy lake?

--Matsuo Basho

Immobile Fuji
alone unblanketed by
millions of new leaves

--Yosa Bunson

peacefulness ... today
Fujiyama stands above us
mist-invisible

-- Matsuo Basho

to celebrate new year's
we feast newly-opened eyes on
snowy Fujiyama

--Sokan

Monument Mountain is not that far from my home and is one of two of the Ten Most Important Mountains in Poetry that I have climbed to the top of. The other is Harney Peak which I climbed as a teenager on a family trip to the Black Hills. Monument Mountain is not a difficult climb. It stands tall with a sharp cliff-side and is quite beautiful with large sections of white marble stone. There is a poem Monument Mountain by William Cullen Bryant that tells the story of a fair Indian maid who loved her cousin, a forbidden love which so upset the girl that she began wasting away and became "sick of life". Her friends went to the cliff edge with her and sang all day songs of love and death. And decked the poor wan victim's hair with flowers,/And prayed that safe and swift might be her way/To the calm world of sunshine, where no grief/Makes the heart heavy and the eyelids red. Kind of tribal assisted suicide on moral grounds. She jumped and they buried her upon the mountains southern slope. A pile of small stones marks the grave. This cone of stones was added to by each visitor and according to Bryant is the monument the mountain is named for. There is a lot to chew on with this poem.When hearing it, poet Tim Lake supported the notion that now centuries old social and cultural conventions could intensify emotions to the point love unrequited could physically harm and even kill (through physical neglect) the tragic lover. Monument Mountain's importance grows because on August 5, 1850 Herman Melville, the editor Evert Duckinck and Oliver Wendell Homes joined a party on the mountain that included their host, David Dudley Field Jr. and Nathaniel Hawthorn. The meeting and friendship that began between Melville and Hawthorn started on the mountain ridge where the party read Bryant's poem. The story goes when a thunderstorm arrived Holmes built an umbrella from branches and they passed around Champage in a silver mug.

Now that I have a list what about the mountains I have left off? Shelly's Mount Blac is mentioned by Gary Lawless and Stephen Baraban. Stephen Lewandowski suggested Mount Tamalpais writing Snyder, Whalen and Welch all have a poem about Tamalpais. John Roche had the most suggestions so far. He says Olympus is good, but Mount Parnassus, home of the Muses, even more essential to poets; Dante’s Mount Purgatory; Yeats’ Ben Bulben; the Hill of Tara (Red Branch Tales, etc.); Mt. Tamalpais, sacred to SF Zen Center and all those poets (Snyder, Whalen, etc.); also for Kerouac, Desolation Peak; Mt. Katahdin in Maine: “In the 1840s, Henry David Thoreau climbed Mount Katahdin. His observations are recorded in a chapter his famous Maine Woods. Katahdin had such a profound effect on Thoreau that he was inspired to call for a creation of a national parks system.” What was John Muir’s favorite Yosemite peak? N. Scott Momaday: Rainy Mountain. Noah’s rock (Mt. Ararat); Gilgamesh’s mountain (Mountain of Nisir); On Top of Old Smokie; The Mountains of the Moon; Mt. Etna must be in a lot of poems; Everest, the Matterhorn, etc. must be in many..

Many good mountains to add but I am sticking to my list for the moment.
--- Alan Casline

OLD MISTER LITTLE TREE

2010-10-17T19:29:00.005-04:00

Picked up an old post card in Pottersville, New York last Thursday. With United States election day coming up it a few weeks I was amused by the comments attributed to Hosteen Yazzie, an old Navajo. The back of the postcard has this to say:

"Old Hosteen Yazzie, was one of the last Navajo Indians to surrender to the Army Scout, Kit Carson, and the U. S. Soldiers. He has been a familiar figure throughout the Southwest. His "LAMENT" gives an idea how difficult it is for him to understand "White Man's Ways". He is past 110 years of age."

J.R. Willis, Gallup, New Mexico is company responsible for the card.

A little internet research finds he is also known as
Hosteen Tee Yazzie. The Navajo meaning is
Hosteen (Mister, Sir, a very Respected Elderly Man)Tee (pronounced "Tsh E") (Little)Yazzie (Tree)Old Mr. Little Tree

JIMMY OLSON, CUB REPORTER

2010-10-07T21:19:00.007-04:00

Click on image to enlarge

On a rainy wet moist night (It was October 6, 2010. It was too many adjectives on purpose) WOW! My Black Mountain North adventure took a predictable turn, a run around the block on Irving Street in Albany New York (the dirty, the mean streets, urban decay, wet leaves waiting for street cleaners) Yes we waited. We waited for street cleaners as a few of us, braze souls, waited for MORE! Cleaning like the fire that swept through Clarksville, New York burning houses, rumbustious old photos, that have caught--yes predictable, inevitable has caught the eyes of Obeedude. "Bird, Bird ", he said. "There is a lot of history in Clarksville." Braze meant "hardened". With the end in the beginning, I see cosmic sorting out. Said to Jason Crane, "Surely you know from jazzchasing the sound certain times when the players, the sound is perfect & right and you look around and see who is there, how the heck you got there to that club at that time and the wonder of the sorting out not formula though you could probably do it mathematically but as I know there are wee people inside the numbers on the page as well. It was a daRK ANd storMy night when into the Parting Glass Tavern in Saratoga Springs walked Tim Cook who unsurprisingly greeted Albert and Pat Glover first. I had arrived earlier. Glover had his nose in Obeedude's IPAD. Now there was a meeting strong in ROOTDRINKER mythos, "Obeedude meet Glover" "Albert this is Obeedude" I was dejected like Creeley. No not like Creeley, "Creeley was Creeley" as Albert was kind enough to school me. I thought instead of lesson of silence when I wasn't shouting and strutting my stuff.

The scene moved. I am overcredited. On Phila Street next to Hattie's Chicken Shack above a comic book store lying in wait Cafe Lena.

No joke Albert Glover gave us a great poetry reading. Jason Crane recorded the event which means at some near point he and I will make it available to the World-O-Sphere. For Ken Warren, Michael Boughn, Hoa Nguyen, John Roche and other A Curriculum of the Soul (the book version) fans here is what happened. Carol Graser the open mic host asked me if I had any personal bits she could use in introducing Al. I went over to Glover's table and hijacked the copy he had in front of him brought it over to her, I took it out of the plastic bag it was in and then out of the box the book fit in and put it in front of her. She opened it and spent a minute or two looking at pages. During her introduction she referred to it. She wanted to say "Bible" but then changed it to "Dictionary". I guess other people there were paying more attention to this all then I thought. Glover read beautifully from RELAX YR FACE and OMEGA SEQUENCES. Then something happened that had never happened in Cafe Lena poetry history (to anyone there's memory). Carol asked Albert (after he had already sat back at his table) if he would do an encore and the crowd (not those of us with intimate knowledge of the CofS) started calling for Albert to read more poetry and started calling for A Curriculum of the Soul. "Read from the Curriculum" 'Read from the big book" The crowd actually called for the Curriculum to be read to them. WOW! again (more sincerely this time) so Albert read briefly from the Charles Olson Introduction, read the Table of Contents and then read a nice piece of THE MUSHROOM

If you have not yet seen here is a taste http://jasoncrane.org/2010/10/

Now Thursday morning a respite from many-armed Black Mountain slopes. Blue sky

HEARING FROM HERRING

2010-08-31T20:49:00.006-04:00

A global problem with local impact. Still not understood the decline in what are unfortunately seen as "bait fish" will lead to a catastrophic decline in sea life if the overharvesting does not stop soon. Harvesting from lower in the ocean food chain is an all too familar example of the trail to ecosystem destruction. Think of a forest impacted by over cutting. Soon the large trees are gone and harvestable timber is redefined as younger and smaller growth. The demand for wood fuel in many parts of the world strips the forest of the growth of small trees and bush. If conditions allow it grassland appears for a time until over grazing and erosion finishes the job. On the way back home after a weekend in Maine, my alternator and battery quit, resulting in a night at Motel 6, not quite the fun poet Obeeduid had had the previous two nights camping out at Lake St. George State Park. Developing awareness and raising consciousness the poets Gary Lawless and Karin Spitfire held events all summer in the coastal towns of Maine where an once thriving sardine fishery allowed small town factories to process and can the fish for later consumption. The closing of the last operating sardine factory this year punctuated the effort.
One cosmic connect of the extra day on the road was the discovery of a column in the Worcester, MA. Telegram & Gazette newspaper (8/20/2010) by the outdoors writer Mark Blazis (markblazis@charter.net) The title "Giants gobbling up fish"

SHOW CAVES OF CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA

2010-08-09T14:12:00.007-04:00

Crave an underground view
streams flowing out of dark chasm
deep below surface
water currents head down to deeper lair.
Darkness of side passages
branch channels in limestone
room to crawl away from the electric light
but not on a wild cave adventure today.

A Show Cave is all upright
grandmother with a walking stick
teenage girl shivering in shorts
stairs to climb, damp flattened floor
the wiring nearly as old as discovery day.

Light brought to show melting form.
Eyes open to beautiful structures
Water drip carried stone deposited
grows an inch in a hundred years.

Later shut my eyes and minds-eye
sees the glowing multiple forms
calcite crystal flowers, thousands of stalactites
pure white flowstone not frozen
but so slow time stills.

Inconsequential cave crickets above the entrance
the usual tales of fish without eyes
names carved on walls
near the surface roots dangle down,
they find a way.

Ceiling and walls black from woodsmoke
natives stored their corn
made a trading place for tribes
spirit world was strong
phosphorescent flakes a star map to a different heaven.

Our guide calls cities concentration camps.
She is still pissed about the small pox blankets.
She has been touring this stone
for most of her life.

July 31, 2010
near Huntington, Pennsylvania

CHARLES OLSON CENTENARY CONFERENCE

2010-06-08T13:08:00.058-04:00

Back from the Olson Conference held June 4-6, 2010 at Simon Fraser University's Segel Graduate School of Business in Vancouver, British Columbia. I was surprised at how comfortable I felt with the people and the surroundings. I have to think they found a way to a great success for this conference where the participants did not seem to need to create conflict inorder to be noticed; but strived to communicate instead. There were great differences of opinion but also careful conduct expressed in willingness to entertain ideas for their own sake. Course that is just my opinion. Who knows what dark underpinning of antithetical representation appeared when I was not looking? None I hope.

My comment the first day to the first of two roundtables on The Future of Olson Studies followed me around a bit for the rest of the conference. There was talk about the complexity of Olson and the necessity to study and understand his systems and antecedents (which wouldn't hurt, you understand) before reading his poetry. I just said, "Well, you don't have to. You can go ahead and read, enter the text. Bring whatever you have with you. Look around and bring out what you find, what is useful to you." Oh yes, 'negative capability' someone in the audience said. Probably because they were thinking the same thing themselves, a bunch of people came up to me and said they were glad I made those comments. Whoever said 'negative capability' really had it right. Those who know me know I am not a champion of ignorance. The anti-intellectualism of American culture is one of my country's biggest failings. Studying Olson has its own reward. The collection and archives at the University of Connecticut is suppost to be filled with material from a poet who wrote on all available materials with great profusion. Those who have visited these archives recommended them to the assembled as an almost necessary stop. You have to have "certain" credentials to be admitted, however. I'll have to try some time to see if I can get in.

One of the most interesting presentations for me was by Jonathan Skinner. He showed a photograph of Charles Olson standing next to his research collection of notes, diagrams and map overlays of the Gloucestor, MA area, stuck on probably the biggest wall area available in Olson's Fort Square apartment. A continual work in progress for Olson. The partly disassembled map survives in the archive. This got me thinking about the levels of thinking interfacing the unknown and familiar. You have the map. You have the interior mental map and then you have walking the place mapped. Plus the rest like mythic, chronological and knowledge of prior events all brought to cognitive structure and perception

Having Ralph Maud present was invigorating. His life and sharp mind are what I want when I am 82 years-old as he is. Those of us still at the conference late Sunday got to hear his presentation of a dramatic reading of Olson's play Apollonius of Tyana. When I first met him on Friday afternoon, I wanted to ask him about one of the points of the larger dialog our panel members had been having in preparing for our presentation (one I have returned to more than once). The specific of it is that Tom Clark in his biography of Olson refers to the poem Cole's Island as an example of allegory. I do not find allegory as I place this poem's poetic work in the mythological present. I said to Ralph Maud in the poem Olson meets with the Death not some distant reference of. He said he met someone there. Which reminded me that the poem never identifies the stranger as Death absolutely, "it was not one thing more than that he was Death instantly that he came into sight." We talked some more about his biography of Charles Olson. How he felt he needed to write it as for all of his work showing inaccuracies in Tom Clark's biography of Charles Olson, Tom Clark went and published a second printing without making any changes.

Of use was Kim Minkus talking about ways of reading a page, new technology and "the high energy construct" of Olson's Projective Verse being available and generated by performance using internet tools. I should say Minkus's Presentation was on Rachel Zolf's work which no doubt limited her talk. She did trace the investigative form of poetry to Charles Olson and made a nice point about the poet's use of space being invaded by digital space.

Jeanne Heuving gets my award for HOW COULD YOU LEAVE THAT OUT? Her presentation "Whose Projective Poetics?" shared ground with Jacqueline Turner's, who went just before her. The published letters between Frances Boldereff and Charles Olson showed he had a deep debt to Boldereff in regards to the ideas that shaped Projective Verse and other works. It was when she talked of "other energy sources" and even "stealing projective away from Olson" looking at contemporaries that followed in the decade of the 1950s without mentioning a prime energy source Jack Kerouac. Kerouac even said he invented "projective verse". Look at Mexico City Blues, the pages themselves how he broke open form and used space

Continued on Saturday morning by attending presentations on Projective Geometry and Dance. The three panels found under this topic were diverse and all very well done. Lisa Siraganian "Administering the Poem" As a propagandist and "artist/bureaucrat" Charles Olson had a life of qualitative success before he choose the life of a poet. What Siraganian intuited was the Idealized Admininistrator where an administrator must be a method expert and methods triumph over specialized knowledge. Interesting Olson life history in World of Ideas. He did a publication "projection of America directive" and progressive pro-labor circulating multi-media. How much carry over and carry on are the questions to fulfill. I can see forward, onward, projective as thematically similar but find the whole question less interesting then one good Olson poem. People have heard me say this before, the work is in the poetry itself. If the poem is not any good then the rest of it doesn't really matter. There are lots of words that if you are not sure of your originality you would be afraid to touch. macro and micro social norms also come into play. It is already fading but can anyone remember the word you were not allowed to say at this Conference (prophetic)

Kate Markoski brought us the dancing of Merce Cunningham. Mindscape picture of large Charles taking Cunningham's class at Black Mountain College and dancing with great particularity. Cunningham brought vision of dance being always individual, dancers own center the focus with position not oriented towards center front of stage. In Letters for Origin (letter of May 8, 1951) there is a passage on dance. "an investigation of the body as instrument" and the movement Olson was seeing in the glyphs he was studying, "the graphic of drama." He states as dictum: any player is (has to be) 1st dancer. I can report on the weekend's big mystery. Unless there is another description somewhere? Martin Duberman quotes Merce Cunningham on Olson as a dancer. "I enjoyed him... he was something like a light walrus." Looks like "walrus" wins and "elephant" loses.

I wondered if David Herd's presentation was on Secrets. I don't think it actually was. This was a case (and not the only one) where the presenter needed either more time or a less intellectually stacked setting. Herd's presentation required concentration which I apologize for not having enough at the time. Herd's title was From him only will the old state-secret come. I would like to read the whole paper if the opportunity comes my way. He pointed out how Charles Olson searched for sources on whaling used by Melville, however conceptualized deeper and gathered additional data which revealed more of the underlying social-economic structure. I could be off on this, but perhaps Herd then brought his own perspective to the source material as well as both Melville's and Olson's use of it. I did think; "Hey there are other poetic uses of that material" when Herd equated Capitalism with image of:

eight skeletons in a cave
shipped wreaked
by a whale stoving in
their vessel

Answering my question, he cleared up that he was referring to the eight men themselves. How their own choices had put them in a death trap. The reference to Capitalism put me more immediately in mind of the distant owners.

I went to the Panel: Olson and/or Apocalypse. This was a last moment choice. I was aimed at first at the panel that was going to discuss "the Archive" since Rootdrinker Institute has an archive which is growing but not as yet organizing. But after earlier discussion of "the Archive" I was not sure I could even get past the gatekeepers there. Now the gatekeepers to the Apocalypse that is a different story. There I have a seat saved. Peter O'Leary was the only announced presenter in town. Stephen Collis contributed a poem impression which was a imperative pleasure for me. What if they went to an Olson Conference and poetry broke out! Peter O'Leary's talk was titled "Fire against Wisdom:Olson and Synchronicity" Peter's own energy was pouring out like the sun. I enjoyed his style and conviction completely until later when talking with Jonathan Skinner, we discussed that topic (indirectly). There can be a bit of the zealous in presentation speech but it is a tough line because of the easy dismissal of the overzealous. I don't think Peter was overzealous except for maybe just a tiny tone. No problem, really, but for myself it was a reminder to keep questioning. The content of Peter's talk was along pathways I have traveled. Jung writes in his Forward to the I Ching a certain moment, not of time as in hours and calendars, but as "an indicator of the essential situation prevailing in the moment of its origin." O'Leary spoke of acausal connective, not causal, meaning full of cross connective. Here are a couple of Casline bumper stickers: THERE IS ORDER IN RANDOMNESS (which is how I organically design my vegetable gardens) and CHANCE DOES NOT HAPPEN BY CHANCE.

The Panel I came to Vancouver to be a part of was the last panel on the last day of the Conference. called A Curriculum of the Soul: from Buffalo Out. It is like reviewing a friend's poetry book or even worst reviewing your own poetry book to comment on the panel you yourself are on. I think I'll take a clue from the proceedings and say a bit about the development and hoped for impact and let others give feedback and critiques on the panel itself. John Roche, who I met after seeing and then publishing his poem Joe the Poet in Rootdrinker, was able to swap information and stories about Charles Olson's Buffalo days and The Institute of Further Studies. I remember asking him if he thought Charles Olson would be remembered as a poet or if he would be assigned to "the dust bin of history" (cliche). Ken Warren and House Organ became known to me through multiple vectors. Michael Boughn and Shuffaloff, I believe I found on my own even though I first read his work in the CofS fascicle Mind. I unconnectedly found a website when on a search through the innersphere and remember showing a copy to Dennis Sullivan in Smitty's Tavern and saying this is a guy we should meet. Hoa Nguyen also became interesting after I read an interview in which she discussed her personal take on teaching Olson's work. I had heard of Skanky Possum through Albert Glover. Glover I first met on campus at St. Lawrence University. He was carrying his medicine pouch and had a carved staff decorated with feathers and was pointed out to me as the poetry teacher which looked about right. The lead up to the panel presentation in Vancouver involved some long e-mail streams; Hoa's Buffalo reading when I met her and Ken for the first time; compressed research into the letters between Jack Clarke and Albert Glover regarding CofS and other matters and distribution of From Buffalo Out poem packet. We had shared and individual goals for what we wanted to accomplish in Vancouver. Sharing the stage as a panel and helping to create space for Albert Glover to expound and share insights on the "great project" brought to culmination in the form of a book A Curriculum of the Soul was one of the ones our gang prized.

Whatever wave of the event I was riding put me next to Renee Rodin and other poets from local Vancouver at the concluding poetry bash at W2-Storyeum. A great cave of a place with about seventy people there to hear poets from out of town and from the Olson Conference read. Stephen Collis happy to introduce me as from the Normanskill Watershed and not Albany, New York. Nice to leave their city with such bright and affectionate support as I return to the local, something like water seeping from a hill. Each poet dependent on their own time situation. Our application of poetry depending on who we are (who I am) with the variation always fitted to the individual's moment, though the fundamental lines of direction are of course the same.

MICHAEL CZARNECKI: 28 DAYS ON US ROUTE 20

2010-05-17T14:06:00.025-04:00

Michael Czarnecki May 15, 2010

Michael Czarnecki is traveling and writing his way across country for the next 23 days, 28 days all told. Day 3 was spent in Albany County, New York State. Michael Czarnecki is poetry reading and blog journaling his way along US Route 20 all the way. Here is his site where he records his journey: www.foothillspublishing.com/us20/. You can look up his schedule and maybe meet up with him at one of his readings. He is also poetry reading 4 times in Montana on his way back (Route 20 doesn't go through Montana...too bad). We got the only workshop on the trip. A three hour affair on the travel writing form Haibun. In talking about travel writing Michael mentioned David Grayson, who he discovered while reading Lin Yutang. He said Grayson doesn't actually travel all that much but has a style of observation and simple prose that Michael tries to incorporate in his own journal work. The criticism that Grayson has language that is too simple is not at all a negative to Michael. "Simple good!" he said in a monosyllabic way (just kidding Michael) For the Haibun form itself look to poet Matsuo Basho's famous travelogue The Narrow Road to the Deep North described as a journey away from the familar in search of deeper meaning through zen. Writing Haibun is a choice as it requires a different focus. Not just for writing of spiritual poetic pilgrimages as Basho did, but for riding prose over the changing journey of sensation, writing to move one along and then add haiku to bring a stop and fill the moment.

tea, coffee, water
old writings brought to surface
quench poet's thirsty mind

After the workshop Michael has said he wanted to explore Route 20. I took him to the Albany pine bush to show him the old native's road, a footpath network, the literal beaten path of a time before whitemen and horses. Following East Old State Road I looked for a stop for some walking off into the pine. True exploration as I had never walked in this area before. I did take a group of schoolkids on a traverse of the State Preserve a few years ago so I knew it was terrian where it would be easy to get lost because of the sameness of topography and vegetation. The size of the pitch pine was impressive. Michael pointed out the sharpe prickles on each tip of cone scale which are an outstanding feature of this tree. There were old cones on the trees and ground. New cones ripen in September.

against the bright sky
twisted trunk sprays grasping branch
turns backward forward
A little map reading got us to our next site. Glass Pond in Guilderland. These small ponds form where the east branch of the Hungerkill joins the main branch. They are right on Route 20 so both locals and travelers notice the marshy expanse and see duck and other waterfowl visiting. Not much farther along the Hungerkill joins the Normanskill just upstream from the Route 155 bridge. The Schoolcraft family ran a glass factory next to Glass Pond where Henry Rowe Schoolcraft learned the family business. Schoolcraft and his wife Jane Schoolcraft did some of the earliest collecting of native folklore and mythology with emphasis on native culture and language. I wanted to show Michael Glass Pond before I took him to the Guilderland Library History Room which has a nice collection of old books including some written by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. In my FootHills Publishing book Thirty Poems my poem THE MYSTERY OF THE GHOST HAUNTED HILLS is dedicated to the late local historian Arthur B. Gregg. I was able to show Michael the heart of this fine collection of books was Arthur Gregg's private library. In the poem Gregg looks for the grave of Colonel Abraham Wemple and speaks of the flooding of the Wemple homestead to make a reservoir. On this day we were able to trace the landscape mentioned in the poem and add to the "history" by making some new memories.
Later in the evening, after some good conversation and a few homemade beers (gift of Martha Healy and Sandor Schuman) Michael, either loading or unloading, lost his photos from the day. I had wanted to make Czarnecki's US ROUTE 20 Journey known to readers of this blog. There are good number spread across the United States. Also I wanted to post some Day 3 photos that I took.

scraps of paper fall
sent machine by machine home
memory recalls

LEAP AND THE STEEP ROCKY TRAIL WILL APPEAR

2010-05-03T16:06:00.018-04:00

Our Poet's Tour of the Catskill Mountains included views of greening mountains, small two-lane roads and indirect routes to almost everyplace we wished to reach. Woodstock area poet Will Nixon met Martha Healy, Sandor Schuman and me at the parking lot for the hiking trail up Mount Tremper. Our day was to also include a visit to Woodchuck Lodge, poet John Burroughs' summer house and grave site in Roxbury, New York (build on his old family farm). Burroughs had another writer's retreat built in a wild area less then a mile from his West Park, New York home. A small building with slabwood siding called "Slabsides." For over two years a group of local poets met there to share their own and others work. In part, the result is a new anthology of contemporary nature poems titled Universe at Your Door:The Slabsides Poets, edited by Will Nixon and Alison Koffler from Post Traumatic Press, 104 Orchard Lane North, Woodstock, NY 12498 (dswbike@aol.com). Will started our hike by discussing John Burroughs and I had brought some poems and quotes of his. As Will pointed out for a poet who today is largely forgotten, John Burroughs was amazingly popular and in his life time read by millions. He hung out with Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Teddy Roosevelt on the level of collected friendship. Will said Burroughs hated the automobile at first but then Henry Ford gave him one and he changed his opinion. You do not have a million readers without having influence and celebrity. At his funeral the photographers, newspapermen and other reporters outnumbered family members and seemed more interested in photographing the rich and famous than anything else.
Since Will has written of quail in his book My Late Mother as a Ruffed Grouse. I read a stanza from John Burroughs poem The Partridge:

Ah! ruffed drummer, let thy wings
Beat a march the days will heed,
Wake and spur the tardy spring,
Till minstrel voices jocund ring
And spring is spring in very deed

This seemed like a nice energetic poem to start our hike with but first Will Nixon demonstrated how by flapping wings a partridge makes their drumming sound. We soon discovered we had hit the peak of spring flower bloom on Mount Tremper. The different colors and varieties of violets alone could fill a guide book. Sandy was taking his own pictures, especially of the few he couldn't identify. I pointed out that violet leaves make good salad greens and ate some to prove it.

We joked at the headlines, Noted Bioregional Poet Dies From Plant Ingestion Outside of His Known Watershed. I checked, violet leaves are edible and so are the flowers. Reading more John Burroughs while on the hike, we got I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order. We didn't hear any patridge druming but I did hear the quiet of an owl in flight. What we thought was a fish crow was also determined by sound, more croak than caw.
Leap and the net will appear is another John Burroughs quote. This "wisdom" led to some good natured (pun intended) revisions and warnings. It was agreed that Burroughs didn't mean this literally. "It's a metaphor!" Sandy kindly pointed out.

The trail wasn't steep but the way was long. Martha decided to enjoy a spot part way up the mountain and Will and Sandy decided to take pity on my weary legs and removed a nice portion of the upward trail so I didn't have to go as far that last 3/4 mile. Then they added it back plus more on the long downward hike so I am not sure I gained anything and man it was a long way back to the parking lot.
The visit to Woodchuck Lodge was a great end to the day. Visually different then the trails with weathered house, stone fences, broad fields and ancient trees. I was interested in the Spring Houses at the Lodge and also near the John Burroughs grave site. One old apple tree had to be well over a hundred years old

Will Nixon pointed out the hill named "clump" mentioned in a Will Christman poem. In a sense we were recreating Christman's annual visit to see his friend John Burroughs and even followed the same roads back to Albany. I drove down past the Christman Preserve to show Williams Hollow Farm, the Christman home, to Sandor and Martha.

--- Alan Casline

View of Clump Hill at Burroughs Farm

John Burroughs at Woodchuck Lodge

ON SITE: BRUCE HOLSAPPLE NEW MEXICO

2010-04-09T18:41:00.018-04:00

DRY COUNTRY

waiting for a white truck
at United States Post Office
Magdelena, N.M. 87825
no one told me half the
people in New Mexico
drove white pick-ups!
Bruce Holsapple says “I figured”
spying me standing outside
writing in my pocket notebook
and then I still almost followed
the wrong white truck—only
paused cause I saw a passenger
Bruce stops at every turn onto a
different road—“Did you notice how
the last road followed along in the arroyo?”
ravens roost in the cliff
below his house—drink from
the small pond he fills—
at his doorstep

poem by Alan Casline
3/26/2010

ravens roost cliff

Alan Casline: I have the whole world against me. I can’t even get the ink out of the pen. There is something not allowing me to write.

Bruce Holsapple: Pencil—go to pencil.

A.C.: I know. I know. I don’t have one with me. I like pencil. I went to look at the pictographs (I call them) near Albuquerque.

figure of man
next to spiraling form
next to scar in rock
where petroglyphs
were broken away
were cut/ sharp tool
on canyon ridge
sun glare precedes
1st ray over the rim

powerline
glyph
different power
airplane rumble
dig for a quiet energy

B.H.: So what do you think of New Mexico so far?

A.C.: I like it, I like it.

B.H.: Yeah…real different than New England or New York.

A.C.: Yeah, well—what watershed, rivers, creeks, I consider myself to be a Normanskill poet—I live in that watershed, which is an approach—I have three little poems called the three pillars of local poetry—one of them is called THE WELL. It just talks about the town may change but the well doesn’t change—that not just the well but those people you find using the well—that’s where you find wisdom.

B.H.: That’s in FROM BUFFALO OUT isn’t it?

A.C.: No, no—there’s another piece in there, which is my piece on local poetry. Says “dig out the spring”—literally dig out the spring. Which is true, I have dug out more than one spring. But—as far as the Southwest goes…what I’ve found out since I got here - wow – it is even more true here – the well is the town!

B.H.: Everything revolves around the water.

A.C.: All these settlements…

B.H.: Yeah – you can’t do anything without water for sure. We are up above the Rio Grande—this water here if it flows anywhere it flows down into the Rio Salada. The Rio Grande is a central rift and the mountains are lifting up on either side – we are up above here so the water is kind of flowing down, wherever it is flowing down – it loops around down here.

A.C.: The Rio Salada, that’s a tributary of the Rio Grande?

B.H.: Well—tributary is kind of a funny word. It flows sometimes and other times it doesn’t flow. We came up the road from Magdalena and then took dirt roads for the last eighteen miles. The house is close to where Abbe Spring is and this is called Abbe Spring Canyon. Where the water flows is basically into the Rio Salada which goes down into the Rio Grande eventually and you crossed over that when you drove south—a big wide swath of sand, that’s the Rio Salada. It flows two or three times a year tops. It is still watershed. It is flowing under the surface all the time. That is where, it was on the Rio Salada, when the Navajo were trying to escape persecution, settled a camp over here and just stayed put and out of everyone’s way until they were rediscovered in almost 1900 - No one knew there were a band of Navajo here. They were staying where the spring is.

A.C.: When you send me a picture of where your house is I thought—Oh you live in the brush land, now I get out to New Mexico and I find you live in a forest – comparatively. There is a lot of cellulose, a lot of woody fiber out there.

B.H.: Ha, ha! The elevation allows—they call them cedar out here. They are actually juniper trees and Pinyons. Some are old, really old.

BRUCE HOLSAPPLE POEM

Elevation

Out walking the dirt road
past my place (for exercise)
& as the road climbs
the pinion & juniper
give way to scrub oak
ponderosa pine

good for the lungs—humph!
(all the dust that drivers
swooshing by, put up)

spot a half-familiar plant
grassy tuft of thick blades
amid native grass & goldenrod
I know you, I said
kneeling, then peered down
over my shoulder
back to where I first learned
this weed, “goat’s beard”
saw through myself
to that desperate time

the distance
took my breath

***

Mysterious older man
named Charley, can’t hear well
thin body, white beard
slightly stooped
bicycles to town & back—
keeping active
I’d guess

walking the mountains
with his dog
I’d seen their tracks
& it takes them half the time, an hour
to reach the top of North Baldy

but the inspiration is what I want to know
for he’s climbed the peaks hereabout
many times

huh, he says, looking in my eyes

it’s a personal question

fear would be one response
the lack of integrity

fun would be another

huh, he says, looking in my eyes

***

I climbed Ladrones on Thanksgiving
where thieves once hid sheep
stolen from pueblos to the east
3 hours up, no path,
ate a precarious tuna sandwich on a protruding rock lip
wide eyed, huge reddish plains
east & north, & the other ranges,
Magdalenas or Gallinas

felt changed, saw differently—
to the degree I had climbed,
overcome myself
—thought so, at least

& working back down thru
a stony crowded canyon
pushed thru brush & cactus
hopping rocks, sliding on my backside,
wore holes thru my pants, both back pockets—
I discover this at home—lost my wallet,
credit cards, licenses

Going back up that canyon the next day
2/3s to the top, where it narrowed,
such a tangle of scrub oak, apache plume,
cholla, up, around, thru,
massive rocks, drop offs,
I’m down on all fours
cactus thorns, arms streaked with scars
close to stopping, stopped at
a small cliff I’d slid over,
flopped down from,
my fat black wallet
plunked into the sand

BIG NIGHT: FEATURING POET HOA NGUYEN IN BUFFALO

2010-03-01T13:53:00.017-05:00

Dear Hoa,

So nice to meet you face-to-face in Buffalo last Saturday. You got to go snowshoeing at a preserve and saw great grackle you said and I arriving early got to walk around downtown with wet snow above, below and running off my hat. I won't pretend I'm noble and gave money to all the panhandlers, just two out of three. For one it was "busfare" and for another "to call home" but the third guy wanted money for a cup of coffee, that's a no...I could of used a cup myself about then, so screw him... I kept walking reading the names of streets. I saw Jefferson Street so I thought it was going to be a President thing but turned out not. As I like to say, I wasn't lost just off the path and I got all swung around somewhere and back to the 468 Washington Street place about a hour later. The trip to hear you read made too much sense in a solid extension of impulse and urge. You live in Austin, Texas and I doubt you will be this close again before our panel in Vancouver. Of our two vehicles, I took the one with 4-wheel drive and living as long as I have in New York State the Thurway becomes a familar road. Wasn't bad, there were bands of storms but nothing that sat down to wait for you, just kind of blowing in and blowing through. Bring Jack Kerouac into it (lunacy, wild foolishness and extravagant folly are the fountain for creative art) so of course I would drive three hundred miles to hear a poem (BALLERINA IN A MUSIC BOX).

Don't get me wrong, not to throw all of my poems out the car window as I drive down Main Street, good sense and my wife's concern meant I had a motel room in Batavia for Saturday night. I got to meet Kenneth Warren and John Roche was there so only Michael Boughn was not in the room. I was not there to make waves. I was explicitly not there to make waves. Calm deep still pool, that's me. Seriously, great crowd & on a stormy night had to be over a hundred people. This is not like a critical review or news report so please, to the other performers "I enjoyed it all" and to say anything is to slight the scope of everyone's efforts. Thanks Just Buffalo and Buffalo Poets Theater and the band Gut Flora. When Hoa Nguyen started to read there came over me a sweet contentment. The first poem out was one of hers I remember best. The NFL football playoffs are on T.V. and she is there in the room pretending they are all celebrating her Aquarious birthday. It is just congruent, weirdly so, as so many poets would detach & maybe add their social commentary but Hoa emerses. Here is the action, the tension and ultimately in the totality of her work the vector towards decency and the good. She brings her poetic consciousness and not judgements, awareness shapes, picking out bits (but I can't say "no joke or no lie" right Hoa?) and then we get it, all the commentary fuzz on the furniture "I disappear - I disappear."

When you mentioned tonic, Spring tonic, I wanted to yell out sassafras root! which the traditional Spring tonic of the St. Lawrence River Valley farmers was kept in a glass jar just inside the door to the cellar and I can remember this one old woman saying her father made her drink four or five swallows every day starting in late March to shake off lethargy. The recipe was secret and could contain a number of ingredients (the mints, ginger, willow bark, etc.) but they all had sassafras root from what I can tell. (Rootdrinker) Any of my good poet friends, I would of yelled out, but I couldn't with you, we are barely introduced. There is something to look forward to or maybe not? I enjoyed when you said "That is the herbal lesson portion" and again you had another lesson for the audience. Handing out lessons as part of a poetry reading that is an opening concept for me. Like hearing Ed Sanders be funny and thinking there is a use for humor and I can be funny and not be irrelevant. Poet as teacher and we haven't even gotten into the authority of Charles Olson. If you can, send me a copy of your essay that The University of Iowa is publishing in their anthology Poets on Teaching. I say the three hats of poet, editor, publisher are the same hat. You must know about that. Your thread involving grackles interests me and that you hated them at first and then came to love them. UGLY POEM of line "raucous perches" does get ugly, such uglies are the seasonings of reality. There is alot more to talk about when we meet again. We poets have a corner of our own in Smitty's Tavern in Voorheesville. I had Kiss a Bomb Tattoo, your book from Austin's Effing Press, with me on Sunday and it got passed around. Sorry if that hurts book sales and none of the pages were upside down either.

It was cool to talk with you, John and Ken at one time. Maybe using the power of the allmighty staple we can put together a poetry bundle to send around. Hope all is well.

Best, Alan

BARE HILL ABOVE VINE VALLEY, CANADAIGUA LAKE WATERSHED

2010-02-11T17:26:00.007-05:00

BARE HILL

bare hill — Seneca sacred place

bomb-fire hi-jinks for villagers

and faded lovers – blacken memory

windswept of snow

winter day — sky solid blue

jet like ant on pebble surface

slice of sky

--- Alan Casline

NANAO SAKAKI

2009-12-22T09:42:00.029-05:00

IN WHICH I THROW A FLAT DEAD SQUIRREL OFF THE NORMANSKILL BRIDGE IN HOMAGE OF NANAO SAKAKI

Nature is not fuzzy and warm.
-Gary Snyder

Charlie’s walk on suburban streets
He’ll sniff-out I’ll see
dead carcasses
pets and predators
Village Street Cleaners will eventually come by
or the Village Crew that chips fallen branches
and picks up owners’ trimmings left
at the curb
a bird, or a snake or a squirrel
might lie in the road for weeks

without rhyme or reason
but sometimes
I’ll come back with a shovel and bury the squirrel
you could throw them in the garbage bin
ship them on to the landfill
that’s what happens to most
small creatures

under a leaf pile is enough for fleeting life wren
it is nothing about sanitation for me
just a little bit more
to cover a creature with earth
pray soul
wings to heaven

Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe
a memorial today held for
Nanao Sakaki
died last year on December 21st He was 86

cold snap for days when I see the squirrel
“Some car got you good”
Charlie sniffs. I pull him away
squirrel’s mouth is pulled back in bloody maniacal grin
one dead eye open and looking at me
I bet you are frozen flat I think
funny true when I kick him out of the road
he comes up solid frozen stiff
top side sprawled limbs
bottom flat as a piece of paper

three days later, the twenty-first of December
a frozen dead squirrel sits in the passenger seat
of my old green Windstar Van
cirrus clouds up high blue sky wide straight drifted apart vapor trail line
“The poetic arguments,” I tell the squirrel. “shouldn’t be bandied about
as if a trail of words and the uncertainty of perceptions
even a call for cultural revolution
really would convince anyone. If you don’t feel alive, every particle alive,
every piece alive,
every dead squirrel carcass alive, stone, sound, breath,
every journey, every time Nanao appears alive
then it must be a dead world.
But I don’t have to tell you that do I squirrel”

the Comfort Inn parking lot is close to the bridge.
red and blue police lights flash on the Albany side
either a breakdown or a traffic ticket
nothing to concern a man with a dead squirrel and a mission
three crow reluctantly move out of my parking place
“Scavengers. You’ll get your due”
a cloud of small brown birds flow in and out of the field in front of us
exhale, breath in beauty… thank you Nanao

dance with high step lighter touch
cleared path
of roadway on to the 9-W bridge
to the very middle
cosmic giggle praise to the burning mad ones
ahimsa, nonharming, go in peace, totem squirrel,
totem bridge
tossed high over the mesh restraining fence
down to the icy water of the stream
out of sight destination unknown

Alan Casline
December 21, 2009
Normanskill stream

SPONTANEUS GLYPH POETRY AND READING IN CANTON, NEW YORK

2009-11-08T17:37:00.019-05:00

elm trees at dawn November 7, 2009

When in Maine this October I picked up a nearly complete set of Science History of the Universe, published by The Current Literature Publishing Company, New York (1911). There is something especially interesting is reading one hundred year old scholarship and science. I do not have any of the "oh we are so much smarter now" attitude. I'm intensely interested in the words, phrases, metaphors, threads of thoughts, all the older ways of thinking. The section on Literature by is by the Managing Editor for the entire series Francis Rolt-Wheeler. He says in beginning that the essential difference between Speech and Writing is "the former appeals to the ear, the latter to the eye." He writes that the Chinese never conceived a smaller unit than a word and only when "an alien people" the Phenicians took to their own language the best "expedients at which Egypt arrived"did the alphabet come to be.
glyph of poetry at the yoga loft

For some time as a book-maker as well as a poet and writer, I've wondered at what the poem as an energy field consisted of when the page is "decorated" by an additional graphic image. Another book that is holding my interest is Daniel Belgrad's THE CULTURE OF SPONTANEITY published by The University of Chicago Press (1998). Both books have chapters on the beginning of writing, movement from picture to pictograph. Details of time and abstract conceptions are difficult to convey from the single picture. A record in pictograph form ( think a cartoon strip) can more completely tell a story. Belgard's Chapter 3 is titled Ideogram and his interest is how the avant-garde artists used native american pre-Columbian art to link ideas in paintings through "spontaneous picture-writing" Belgard also associates a number of poets ( such as Charles Olson's cultural-political project of reaching back and down) with a rejection of the abstract and impersonal qualities in modern culture's lack of attention to the local and specific life. The next stage of writing, referred to as the ideogram and as "hieroglyph" or simply "glyph" (think Chinese characters) is favored because it avoids the complete abstraction of phonetic alphabets and operates differently as "image" Ezra Pound wrote on his poetic method (1914), "the image is itself the speech. The image is the word beyond formulated language." The associations found with the field create complexities of meaning, expression and energy.

Poets from Top: Albert Glover, Dale Hobson, Paul Doty

Such is my introduction to my glyph of poetry at the yoga loft. After our four person reading set up in the yoga loft above The Blackbird Cafe in Canton, I left town and drove to my cabin. I knew I was staying there on what might be a cold November night and so I had set a fire in the woodstove the last time I was there, earlier in October. I had driven the four plus hours from Albany, N.Y. staring out at about 2 pm and found the mountains and highland from Newcomb to past Colton covered with snow. Thankfully as I came down off of Waterman Hill there was only a powdering of white. It turned out to be a cold night with temperatures in the twenties. Liquid in the evening, the marsh was frozen surface by the next morning. I was still buzzed from poetry by the time I got the lamps lit and the room warm. There was a good poetry crowd at the reading and my fellow poets, Paul Doty, Albert Glover and Dale Hobson delivered in good form as I would expect them to. My mind and heart were racing, filled with their words and of the social "intersubjectivity" of new and old voices, new and old friends. I took advantage by craving two new woodblocks and inscribing the ideogram in which I hope to communicate to them (and you). The greek is graphein to scratch, write and so I scratch and record an inspiring event.

HOLY RELIC OF OLSON CULT RETRIEVED FROM SUBTERRANEAN GROTTO

2009-09-23T19:52:00.009-04:00

It started out innocently enough, I mentioned so many of the fascicles of A Curriculum of the Soul were printed by mimeo and they were so beautifully done. "Because of Guy Berard," Albert Glover said. Berard was the artist and designer involved. "Where is the machine, I'd like to take some photos of it?" I asked. "You did the printing yourself, right?" "Photos, yes, photos - that's a good idea, that's a very good idea.." he said looking me up and down as if measuring something in a distracted way. "Can't do it today. You'll have to come back tomorrow, today we have the..the piano tuner. Yes that's it the piano tuner. Come back tomorrow at three. The mimeo is not here. It is up on campus. We'll go tomorrow." The next day he drove. Said he'd be able to find parking. I noticed a small archaic symbol and mystical number combination struck to his window. "This will let us pass." he said. The road turned and twisted in the labyrinth of odd appearing building. They were typical two and three family wooden structures like those found in rundown slums through-out the Northeast. Yet these had no peeling paint and there were crowds of carpenters swarming the buildings, rebuilding porches, replacing weak boards and putting on new shutters. I was hopelessly lost and feeling more discontent looking over at my intently focused driver.

The unreal village went on forever. Suddenly he swerved, miraculously a place opened, where I saw none but a moment ago. "It has been thirty years since I have been this way." Glover said. "I must go first, to be sure the way is still open."
We entered a building and walked through the corridors with more strangeness. There were no people living here, just desks, offices with people sitting with piles of papers before them. They all seemed to know Albert. They said hello while ignoring me. I wondered how many others had been lured on the path I was on. We came to a door

Relics of Olson Cult revealed

which opened on to steep descending stairs. I took a deep breath and began my descent. They way was dark, time had no meaning on the endless stair. At last we came out in a subterranean grotto. Glover began speaking. "The mimeo machine is a Gestetner and there is a stencil maker also. They were left over here, in this corner." Quietly, carefully he began removing centuries (or maybe thirty years) worth of debris. There they were. My breath caught. I took out my camera and began taking pictures. Glover kept removing accumulated coverings. He maneuvered the printer till it came loose.
"We are taking these," he said daring me with his eyes to say "no". "Yes, lets do it," I said.
He grapped one end and I the other. A different doorway suddenly came into view opening to the daylight and green grass. We carried first the printer and then the stencil maker to his car and he drove us back to his home. Taking the mimeo printer out of the trunk and downstairs to his study area he said "Pat is going to kill me!" It was the obligatory remark of any married man which could have been left unsaid as it was alreadly implied by the situation. Albert Glover digs out Gestetner

The Gestetner machines were set up in a sort of altar area in a side room. Instead of incense an open can of mimeo fluid would be used during ceremonious visits. (Special Warning: Do not breathe in the mimeo fumes in imitation of the Rites of the Delphi Oracle). "It will never run again," Glover says. I respond, "You know how I've spoken of ambrosia. A different way of measuring life, not the bio way but by the life that is in something. Something has more life in it, it has more ambrosia. You can see it like a bowl of fresh picked fruit or a special bright beautiful day. If you drink ambrosia, that is the life that is restored. Those Gestetner machines have more life in them now then they did before." "Ambrosia," Glover says, "that is a good name for a magazine."

WHEELER HILL READING SEPTEMBER 13, 2009

2009-09-14T15:53:00.028-04:00

click on pictures for larger view

A day of high slow grey clouds with warnings of "sprinkles" coming through brief breezes of cooler and moist promise. Periods of sunshine visited regularly and no hard rain was seen to fall. The weather was "perfect" some were heard to say. I took my usual all-accepting attitude and, as directed, picked flowers so the outhouse would smell purdy. Host of the Wheeler Hill Readings (an outdoors series of poetry held in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State) Michael Czarnecki was amused when the weatherman stated there was a chance of "sprinkles". What sort of self-respecting weatherman uses the word sprinkles in an official sounding public report?
None that I knew of and I bet this guy doesn't know which way the wind blows either. But was "sprinkles" related to "sprites" or "fair" weather to "fairies?" I never got a chance to ask Michael as I was joining in and helping out with the domestic chores, chopping onions and trimming chapbooks. The Fair Folk are the fairies so I think there must be such as "fairy weather." I'll have to call up that weatherman to see what he knows about it. Looking it up I say we can rule out "sprites" as sprinkles comes from Middle English sprenklen; akin to Middle High German sprenkel spot. "There may be a spot of rain on Wheeler Hill this afternoon."

The other featured reader, Jennifer Campbell from Buffalo, New York arrived and shortly after the chairs and hay bales were filled with listeners and raconteurs and the reading started. Jennifer is co-editor of Earth's Daughters (a feminist literary journal) and has a FootHills Publishing book available Driving Straight Through (2008) Her poems displayed a variety of movements, comings and goings, strong swimmer knowing the tides and able to challenge and respect the natural forces. She also writes poems of human relationships, man/woman, family, friendship, toil. I get the sense she uses observation as we sometimes say "the power of observation". One poem she read titled That M.C. Escher Drawing puts her and another in the familar Escher imagined space of doors and stairways. "Its me, he says on voicemail/confident in your automatic reply."

Creature of expectation, you call back
right away, lead with the full name
your mother used to yell from the bottom of the stairs.

I liked the new unpublished poems she started her reading with and hopefully she'll stay in touch and sharing her work with us at Rootdrinker. Then I read next. I guess I did O.K. Some people said they really liked my reading and poems. These were the same people who thought the weather was "perfect".

My own FootHills Published book Thirty Poems was released on this day. The title is not an attempt at concrete obviousness like naming your dog, "Dog". There is a literary tradition surrounding the title and I intend writing about that tradition as I introduce the book to others. If you want to do your own research, mine is not the first book titled Thirty Poems. The poem I finished my reading with I DREAMED LAST NIGHT OF THE CIRCLING OF STARS had been mentioned by many poet friends and this day Michael Czarnecki pointed out that the outdoors was the right setting for reading the poem. My own field of vision expanded as the poem asks us to see:

Horizon is not a line.
Horizon is also a circle, turn around,
circle as the stars circle, look in all directions,
each shows horizon
the boundaries of a great circle
as well as the sky.

The day before my wife Jennifer Pearce and I had gotten lost on some of the back roads as we tried to drive from Seneca Lake to Hammondsville on Lake Keuka. Many smaller country roads did not have route markers. Even intersections were unmarked. We were approaching the crest of a long straight uphill stretch. Ahead you could see lighter sky and the deep downhill road beginning right behind the crest. "There's the lake right ahead," she said and I agreed. We came over the rise to see straight ahead a landscape of pastures in a series of brilliant green swelling hills. No lake but I immediately said, "Look at the lake today, the water is so green and the size of those swells-- must be a heavy wind out there on the surface to cause the waves to be so huge and rise that high."
On Wheeler Hill you can see out over many acre sized hills. The landscape of the Finger Lakes Region has large hills that fill horizons with summits that themselves cover areas big enough for homesteads, clusters of farms and hay fields of 50 acres or more. A city on the hill could be built here pretty easily. There is no city here now. My expectation of a tent city and acres of R.V.'s all parked for the upcoming poetry readings was alittle unrealistic. There was a gathering of friends. One of my suggestions to local poets of the northeast woodlands is to develop a calendar of events and I'd like to add the Wheeler Hill readings to just such a calendar. Totally informal at this point. The evolution of territory is the evolution of the brain.

A FINGER LAKES CREATION TALE

Mother Turtle and Grandfather Carp
were together at the beginning.
They named Lobo, they named Trout
Bear came upon them
"Let us have Bear help us create this world"
said Grandfather Carp
"Fine" said Mother Turtle
"Bear, What is the name of that green frog?"
"That is Green Frog."
"What of the black bird with red on the wings?"
"That is Red-Winged Blackbird."
They all thought this so funny,
they laughed till their bellies hurt.
'Oh Bear," said Mother Turtle
"You are very good at the naming of things."
"Yes" said Bear, "but I have to go. Before I do
I shall name my kindred"
"No." said Grandfather Carp still laughing.
"That is Brown Bear and that is Black Bear"
"Delightful," said Bear, "Exactly as I would."

Note: As Stephen Lewandowski might point out carp are not native to the Finger Lakes Region, however Grandfather Carp was present and involved in the naming of things back at the time of creation. He did not stay around and returned to Asia by swimming through the mysterious sprenklen, also known as "the doorway to infinity" found at the bottom of a deep hole in the water of Canadice Lake ( Which had a different name at the time)

BERNADETTE MAYER'S 10th Annual Poetry BBQ & Poetry Reading on July 4, 2009

2009-07-05T14:34:00.073-04:00

click on images to enlarge

Bernadette Mayer on July 4, 2009

Bernadette Mayer and Philip Good's place near where Tsatsawassa Creek joins the Kinderhook in East Nassua, New York has hosted great July 4th get togethers and I was fortunate enough to be invited to this year's 10th annual. I really caught the spirit of the event about half way through and by the end I was handing out invitations for poets to do Benevolent Bird broadsides like a month had a hundred days and looking to extend new friendships and opportunity to learn from worthy poets all and even more. O.K., I missed way more than I saw but I did sit through the entire poetry reading and enjoyed some long but easy conversations with folks. I brought a box of free poetry broadsides, my Buffalo drum, wine, and a large strawberry & apple crisp. There were less broadsides in the box when I left. I enjoyed drumming my way to creekside and back to blue sky and cumulus accompaniment (and I wasn't on anything, although I did notice some of the wanderers had a peculiar smile and look in their eyes).

Susan Deer Cloud and I talked about her publishing plans and the Blue Cloud Quarterly and then Dave Brinks joined us and Susan discovered that Dave is part Cherokee.

I didn't get to eat any of the strawberry & apple crisp but I'm told by those who did it was tasty. I did get to chow on a bowl of the Alligator Crawfish Jambalaya and really enjoyed the flavors and satisfaction which came from the dish.

I got to meet Karen Skelton and Phil Johnson from the Berkshires region. He was interested and we started talking about small press publishing philosophies and Karen is starting a press with the understanding her artist gifts are foremost to any shaping the endeavor undergoes. She is looking towards the more commercial publish-by-demand with printing and binding done elsewhere. I like doing it all, assembling the books by myself, by hand. Time is the cost there but I get some satisfaction from the work. I went out to my car and came back with three different types of books.

Karen Skelton and Phil Johnson

Paulette Swartzfager

The poetry reading began in mid-afternoon with those presenting showing restrain and respect by selecting a few works and then delivering the goods. I didn’t take any notes and so some notable poets will be unreported upon. There was some sort of velvet hamburger to be presented to the best poet or poem? I don’t know who won it but you can see it in some of the photos sitting on the desk. I came to the picnic with Vincent F.A. Golphin, John Roche, Paulette Swartzfager and Susan Deer Cloud and it was nice to see them up behind the microphone and to hear their work. John Roche read Joe the Poet from out of the Big Powwow issue of Rootdrinker. The poem reminds me of The Smokey Bear Sutra and this reading of it also got me thinking there was in it a comment on the New Troubadours we had discussed in regards to local poetics. Dave Brinks came out of the attic and delivered two poems of the moment. The poet from Nigeria wanted to know why poets in America choose the 4th of July for their gatherings of celebration. “Because it is a holiday and everyone has a day off” was Bernadette’s reply although I also see a connection with Philip Good’s comment “Independence Day” which he asked me to insert into the record. I liked Philip's poem. I think he got “watershed” in there. Really, I wish I knew the names of so many of the poets who were all at least interesting (which is my highest praise). I noticed our technological modalities at occasional dissonance. Someone joked the microphone looked like the type used during Senate investigations and the speaker phone cackling was like the radio phone in some mine cave-in disaster movie and when the Blackberries paused the poor poets themselves got froze like a stopped DVD on pause button. But what do I know, my batteries ran out on my digital camera and I still haven’t figured out how to take photos in low light situations although I’m sure it is just a button. However here I can interject, when the nice young lady poet offered me a wild berry from the handful she had picked and was passing out, I was able to tell her she had picked blackcaps, which are near but not the same things as wild blackberries.

Well no more carping about technology, Bill Berkson, Andrei Coidrescu and Simon Pettet came to the reading via dial-up speakerphone. And Tom Gizzi was Tom Gizza and not ORPHEUS. I thought Hector was ORPHEUS but insider knowledge passed me by completely maybe if I had come the other nine years of these parties I’d know. I mean I WOULD KNOW. It has something to do with the pseudo German Indians damming the creek. Someone even wrote a book about mills on the Tsatsawassa but it is out of print and no one can find it. Bernadette asked me about the water quality and I said it was good there was no industry up stream but it comes down to ‘Cup of Water”. Tsatawassa is “Cup of Water” People kept telling me that so I know it is important.

John Roche and Bernadette Mayer

The day reached perfection as I got to have a long conversation with Bernadette Mayer as evening turned to night and a near full moon rose. I wanted to talk about the NYC poetry and culture past and present, which we did some but surprisingly we talked more of the local bio-region. She has explored the area well and it was cool to share memories of places like Pittsfield State Forest, Cherry Plain State Park, Tsatawassa & Nassau Lake and Kinderhook Creek. The challenge she put out to those of us in the conversation around a picnic table to find a nearly famous but not truly famous poet who we all knew. Finding someone “nearly famous” turned out to be tough and when we came up with a name we could not go the next step to find someone such we all knew. Conclusion: 1) There are no nearly famous poets in America; 2) Scary thought , We are the nearly famous poets in America; 3) Since most names were known by half to three-quarters of us, half to three-quarters of the entire poetic consciousness was represented by attendees at BERNADETTE MAYER’S 10th Annual Poetry BBQ & Poetry Reading with poets from NYC, New Orleans, Florida, Rochester, Nigeria, Vermont and other places near and far.

Philip Good was asked as the fantastic day at his home crumbled to an end what his summarily astute pronouncement on the experience might be.
“Tears and cheers” he said

buddha needs a bath

2009-06-15T19:18:00.008-04:00

water of vision
your dreams for later
today I fill my cup
to quench my thirst

rain earlier left wooden bridge soaked
clouds darken again
still I savor
the extinguishing of my desire

wind carries tiny flowers
their pattern spots my world
on paper, shoe top, float in spring,
drop like stones, rotted stump,
ferns, exposed wash root

June 9, 2009
Springs Hollow

ビジョンの水

あなたの夢へ

今日私は自分のカップを埋める

私の喉の渇きをいやす

以前の木製の橋を左雨ずぶぬれ

雲が再び暗く

まだ私は十分に味わう

私の願望は、消火の

風の小さな花を運ぶ

そのパターンを自分の世界観光スポット

紙の上に、靴の上、春に浮かぶ、

石のようにドロップし、断端腐った

シダは、露出を洗うルート

2009年6月9日

Edward Sanders POEMS FOR NEW ORLEANS

2009-06-12T19:31:00.029-04:00

Edward Sanders At Caffe Lena

Hey Click On the Image and It Will Enlarge
A while back, a now dead poet named Ron Newsome did a review of Ed Sanders book Investigative Poetry for ROOTDRINKER during the Journal of the St. Lawrence Border Country days. I saw Ed Sanders when he featured at the Caffe Lena Poetry Festival on April 11, 2009, I asked him if he remembered the review. "Remember the review," he said, "It was the only review." I was shocked at that possibility, but not totally knocked into the land of disbelief because I get the reality that even readers are rare as cricket-frog's playing violin when the swamp is frozen and a review, well that is not put out there that often. I don't call this a review, just some comments on his latest, POEMS FOR NEW ORLEANS, sent in the spirit of friendship and communication.

Ed Sanders wanted to write this book. He has lots of projects he is working on and thus he didn't have to make time and space for this one. Actually, there is a bit of a story. Michael Minzer offered to fly Sanders and his wife Miriam anywhere in the world where he would write poetry for a CD for Minzer's Paris Records. They eventually picked New Orleans where the recording began during Mardi Gras '07. In his introduction he says "I decided to create a sequence of works steeped in the history of the City, past and present. The poems seemed to pour out, many more than could fit on a 70-minute CD, so a book came to life!" I have the CD also but I'm a fan of paper & ink: the black crows of ink, as Sanders himself once said.

History, why it has to be here? You know the old saying that history is written by the victors. There is official school text book history and even books about what they left out of the tale (ugly things which as a historian myself I could tell you a few). Ed Sanders creative force able to be a synthesizer of particulars. New Orleans as Sanders evokes (conjures) and invokes through memories, words left & made, poetics backpacked in... Why New Orleans found here is the only place worth studying, although of course you come out the other side? Through-out this book when he says polis its like a little chime that rings "Olson" "Olson" Katrina then hovered above the Polis/as if waiting for an e-mail. Anger at "Unearned Suffering" and "Secret Poverty" and "Bead Greed" as he writes of Truckers hauling FEMA trailers/at hyperinflated rates! Ed Sanders poet on the ground reporting from The City of New Orleans. Bush, Chertoff, Brown, Blanco but other devils were dancing too.

Here's a phenomenon I try to avoid. You meet someone new, discover they have liberal to radical politics and then you emotionally charge through a litany of anecdotal and factual items with them discussing the ills of the world only to run out of juice and both sink into depression. I doubt that would happen with Ed Sanders. I'm sure he gets tired and discouraged like the rest of us but his mind, his art, his language leap beyond and fundamentally jubilate human universe with his humor and love of life. When I crack an Ed Sanders book I'm already anticipating creative language, often making me smile at the hipster rag he ragas.

The control of testosterone
& the patterns of anger in the genome

came about through generous waving of the Bible
plus structures of fun and politeness
--from poem Teeming Docks—New Orleans 1820-1860

Maybe it is the beatific sense but the only others are Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg where I do find such spontaneous verve. When Ron Newsome reviewed Investigative Poetry he said Poetry must address ourselves to the actual problems of Polis-Bios-Cosmos Relationships not solved by the powers-that-be as well as point out thoses failures and dismantle the war machine. Ed Sanders is a poet easily covering that scope. As much an instruction as any of his earlier work, the poems On the Way (She was afraid of bees/ and wore an expensive veiled cap from the internet); Unearned Suffering (The River of Malice/ is one strong force/ to block); Echoes of Heraclitius (O my God!/one of my neighbors was floating with/ her hair entangled in a tree limb)and My Darling Magnolia tree (The secret mind no longer/whispered through the axions of wonder.) All instruction for the City of New Orleans on the Mind. Make the revolution a tall tale, Some FEMA Trailers in Hope --- I don't believe it could of happened compared to Ed Sanders who writes it down. Actually, I lied-- I do believe this story poem entirely, including the humor of its telling incredulous action and lean back off a barstool accounting by Jonathan Abner Tobias Pissoff and with other guys involved Tony the Beatnik and Marnie, Jimmy Joe the Hillbilly Boy's cousin. Seems there was 10,000 FEMA trailers sitting unused in a lot in Hope, Arkanas that sure could be used in New Orleans where people had no place to live. Story goes they did six runs and the last just barely past a police stakeout with the idea to leave the last FEMA trailer by Marie Laveau's crypt in in St. Louis Cemetery. Man we were happy, poem says, Mark Twain could have put our little caper/in one of his books. I feel better just for the humor released. Definitely an Ed Sanders trait but for me a release cause I'll write a humorous poem and think well this has to go over here away from my serious work and it be good to be reminded truth and fun go together.

Beyond the human dimension self-centered me first polis there was "a heartless act of wild nature." On the stage at Caffe Lena and in his conversation back at his table Ed wanted to share his poetic touch on the mythology (a mythological present also a trait in his body of work) he had kenned from the gumbo of his New Orleans experiences - that Poseidon (who's not very bright as the gods go) was the hand that flooded the city. He adapts from Euripides, TROJAN WOMEN lines 48-97 how Athena (protectress of ancient cities) enlists Poseidon to destroy the Achaeans even through she just helped them to capture the City of Troy for Ajak raped Cassandra in my Shrine Athena tells Poseidon bragged to the Greeks, and goes unpunished. Ed Sanders asks 3,289 years after What crime does Athena descry? Is there any? He lets Ajax loose in New Orleans in the poem Rape with MOM (motive opportunity means) for scions of Ajax to depredate. Tells of Grace Lebage who wrote a song about her personal horror she preformed in San Francisco to raise money to rebuild a couple of cottages. In the poem To Poseidon he addresses the god as he stands after the flood:

Maybe you were just trying to build some wetlands?
But we are not crayfish

we are, for better or worse,
sacks of sentient water
about to leave Gaia

for the Pontchartrains of the Beyond

GATHERING AT CHRISTMAN PRESERVE & SMITTY'S TAVERN

2009-06-02T14:59:00.041-04:00

The Daoist folk deity's known as t'u-ti (literally land, soil, territory) are the little local gods of a particular place. For the third year a gathering has taken place on June 1st on a tall bank above the creek that tumbles through a series of waterfalls at the Christman Preserve. The Preserve is located in the Town of Duanesburg in New York State. A Tribute to local farmer and nature poet William Weaver Christman (1865-1937) the gathering of poets and their friends was joined this year by Anne Christman, his granddaughter, and by two neighbors representing families that have known each other for well over a hundred years. Here at the gathering spot there might be a t'u-ti belonging to the location. Any who visit the overlooking bank remark on the special serenity, the unclouded feeling present.

The t'u-ti sent out an invitation for the ceremony. The Fisherman of the Susquehanna watershed, the poets of the sacred Finger Lakes, the Normanskill poets of the number one hundred and twenty, the thirty-two officials of environmental conservation, the Great Spirits in charge of wind, rain, thunder, and lightning, the three ghosts of bards of local history, the five benevolents of small press publishing, the eight Immortals of poesy, the ten open mic readers of the Hells -- all were present on the appointed day.

These t'u-ti seem to be like numen, little gods of oak grove and sacred spring. I've been thinking about the mechanics of it all ever since I first learned of them a few months ago. One thing that is different from the western tradition is that some t'u-ti are celebrated persons, community servants who when living gave to others. Not like ghosts haunting or spirits being unable to pass on, these t'u-ti are new entities. The souls of a community's good servants still enter heaven but somehow something of the them is left as guardian spirit to protect and preserve what they accomplished in their lives. (I'm just making up this metaphysics as I go along.) It may not be measurable but at each touch (physical, emotional & spiritual) lets say a little tiny unmeasurable but there piece of the person touching moves to the touched. Someone's favorite hat; tools like a carving knife or loom; a room a person spent much enjoyable time in -- Did you ever get the feeling that something of the person lingered? We have identity, walls between us and the world, maybe for those giving of themselves to their works, to the needs of others, the walls allow a tiny bit of the person's essense to move from their essense to the world. I can think of a few people, Will Christman among them, who still evoke influence on others many years after their deaths.

Words are another thing. Writers, poets, singers and others in the expressive arts know about the energy transfer from sender to receiver. With sixteen people and twelve poets reading poems, Will Christman's words, thoughts, and poetic art were broadcast among those gathered in celebration of his life and legacy. Mike Burke added to the event by reading poetry of Will Christman's son Lansing and paired his his own poem with a similarly themed Will Christman poem In a Neglected Graveyard. Michael Czarnecki read a poem he had written minutes before and then marveled both his poem and Christman's broke into song. "A glee sparrow waking/Trills an old love dream:/Here in the shadow of lintel and eaves/I too am singing," Christman wrote. In general having so many readers made for a rich environment because, as each read at least one of Will Christman's poems, there was a nice variety of language and delivery. Walt Franklin had the most interesting tale having written and had published a tribute poem to Will Christman. In its original envelope he shared a letter Lansing Christman wrote him thanking him for the poem and including a cancelled check with W.W. Christman's signature on it for an autograph to keep.

Anne Christman was gratious enough to discuss her grandfather with the gathered. The whole question of a visit to the land by Robert Frost and the arguments he and Will had while touring the property couldn't be verified by Anne. There were strong opinions, with some having certainty that the visits happened and others still holding out for hard evidence. When I explored the Christman family papers at the New York Historical Association archive in Cooperstown, New York, I couldn't find any documentation. I asked her what Will would have thought of we poets going to the tavern for some drink, food, poetry and conversation after we were finished at the creek side today. She said "He would have been right with you. He liked people to enjoy life and did himself"

As everyone left for the parking area and on to Smitty's Tavern in Voorheesville, people separated and took different trails. I made a quick dash to creek side with Michael, Tim Lake, and Obeedude coming along. We then hurried back to the parking area only to be put in wait mode as the others meandered along. When Susan got there she realized she had dropped her green velvet blouse and went back to look for it. With other people waiting , I set off to cover the drive to Smitty's Tavern in as little time as possible. A nice crowd of poets were waiting and Tom Corrado had provided and set up his a mic. We got going "only" about 20 minutes late. What the impractical M.C.(me) thought might be three times around the circle of poets turned out to be only once around. The poets from "far" or "the west" were well received and excellent of course. Local poets were not too shabby either. Here's the line-up: Dennis Sullivan, Therese Broderick, Michael Czarnecki, Tom Corrado, Alan Casline, John Roche, Mimi Moriarty, Susan Deer Cloud, Tim Lake, Paulette Swartzfager, Mike Burke, Walt Franklin, Obeedude, Alan Siegle, Philomena Moriarty, Barbara Vink, Tim Verhaegan, Ron Pavoldi, and John Abbuhl. I wish I made good on my threat to continue the reading in the tavern's parking lot but as chairs went up on the tables and I gathered my papers, posters, and drum, I got to the front of the tavern and saw the poets had just moved to there and the conversations were whirling. I distinctly heard Mike Burke tell Michael Czarnecki he was going to pursue a shared interest in Chinese poetry. The poets from the Finger Lakes wanted to know more about the "Normanskill" poet Ron Pavoldi and damm if Ron had not earned the honorific by poetically documenting playing in the creek beds. It is not how many poems you have published but how often you've gotten your feet wet. John Abbuhl, I expect, learned more about poets today ( if not poetry itself) then all the other days of his life. I guess it is payback for the poets who toured his Pine Hollow Arboretum earlier in the afternoon and learned more about evergreens then they had any day of their lives. John now goes by the name "John of the Arboretum" within certain poetry circles of watershed intelligensia. Arriving back at my house, noted patroness of the arts and my wife Jennifer Pearce took (well to be fair it was two looks not one) and then went up to bed. She said she went from irritated to jealous because we were making so much noice and laughing so much. Very good and interesting conversations kept us going till early in the morning. After breakfast everyone went on their ways. What a warm and enjoyable time. We'll have to do it again next year.

POSTSCRIPT:

On Tuesday I went out to the Christman Preserve to start tracing the small waterway that flowed past the Memorial Stone and had the small bridge built across it at the begining of the woods part of the trail. I didn't go far before I saw a fair-sized beaver pond. I turned around there, giving up my search for the source spring. Next time I'll have to be prepared to circle this little pond. I walked around looking, elusive sighting of deer near our spot and a large winged waterbird from the stream. I saw white and silver feathers on ascending wings through the trees. I'd say it sounded like a heron, but really my ears aren't that trained.

CHARLES OLSON AT THE HARBOR by Ralph Maud

2009-05-23T16:00:00.029-04:00

Had enough interest in Ralph Maud's biography CHARLES OLSON AT THE HARBOR to read it in three days. I knew most of the particulars of Olson's life and was aware that Maud's book was a counterview to another biography of Olson by Tom Clark CHARLES OLSON: THE ALLEGORY OF A POET"S LIFE. It wasn't till I got about two chapters in that I realized this was no telling but a critique and opposition based on Maud's scholarship and personal experience of Olson. He tries at points to give Clark his due but at a ratio of about 10 to 1 points out "mistake" after "mistake". Chapter, verse, particle, page number, letter, nuance, pharmaceutical, the words right after the words or the words right before the words. I know people really care about this detail, I'm not being snide. Maud's larger point that Tom Clark has a strong prejudice is adequately demonstrated. I wish that he had delivered a counter biography with little or no mention of the earlier work. Again, I understand there has been some taking sides and Maud is playing to his strength. He sees his literary forebearer as James Boswell with Charles Olson as Samuel Johnson with an important job to be, as he quotes Boswell, the hope to present a true and fair delineation. I couldn't even begin to enter this quandry. There are not enough biographies yet.

The Berkeley Reading that Charles Olson gave July 23, 1965 is a event of divided opinion. The audience and later interpreters find lots of room for different experiences. If we ever achieve the trick of time travel, I expect Olson's reading to be a favorite destination of poets and literary historians. I've read parts of the transcripts and don't find them any more difficult than other Olson transcripts. Context and environment of course effect the doors of perception. Call it crowd mentality, gestalt, collective group consciousness -- whatever the reason, Olson didn't connect with the people in his audience that night. Many luminaries, admirers, associates were numbered among the casual designates in attendance. Olson arrived drunk and drinking according to Robert Duncan. Olson had been given two dexamils "in some stupid sympathy" in the attempt "to lift him out of his actual depresset pre-reading temper." This I do notice from the transcripts I've read, Olson's language shows signs of speed freaked racing with thoughts at time struggling to connect trains of cognitions that had long left the station. What you might expect from the mix (how the evening might have differed without the dexamil?) Tom Clark considered Olson's performance "intermittently coherent". Ralph Maud wasn't at the event but undertook the task of recreating it "accurately on paper for myself and others." The Muthologos version appeared in print, I think that's the one I read from. Here in the current book he writes Olson gave "a brilliant talk/reading: fragmented, disturbed, and chaotic on one level, but completely lucid on another."

Albert Glover told me that upon returning to Buffalo after his Berkeley reading Olson appeared to have experienced something momentous. Both liberation and despair over what he took to be the irreparable loss of friends who had not supported his new outpourings. CHARLES OLSON AT THE HARBOR ends sparsely saying little about Olson's return to 28 Fort Square and the late period of his writing. Applying the ruler that measures human behavior, I see Olson as a great enough poet and thinker to be called a major literary figure. He is a vast enough ocean of complexity that we can swim in his expression and set our personal narratives on different paths in his story. If he is epic, his words will inform and teach us, generations onward... His personal habits apply to us now in time because we share his context (some more than others). Later readers will have the luxury of less context and more focus on the poems. Glover calls for our understanding of Charles Olson to be developmental in his biological and emotional chronology. Of course his many friends and associates each want "their" Olson to be "the" Olson. I'm not opposed to that. The unqualified dimensional picture can only be clarified by observing multiple points in the cosmic grid. Writers, describers, editors, scholars all may add to the show. I'd have to get philosophical to say anything more and poetic to say anything beyond.

I do think the most interesting Charles Olson to the local poets I talk with is the life's end Olson of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Early bio-regional poet Charles Olson.... (not really, but see how easy it is to go there)

The landscape (the landscape!) again: Gloucester,

the shore one of me is (duplicates), and from which

(from offshore, I, Maximus am removed, observe.

from poem by Charles Olson THE LIBRARIAN

Back by popular demand! That classic chart topper: THERE IS A SOURCE FOR EACH RIVER by Alan Casline!!!

2009-05-19T17:33:00.003-04:00

The ultimate Trailer for the untimate collection of poems!
See the previously posted post below:

Viet Nam Grandfather Carp

2009-05-14T12:11:00.005-04:00

A poem by Nguyen Quoc Chanh presented in translation by the Viet Nam Literature Project includes Grandfather Carp, dragons, and a bit more of the folklore of the relationship between humans and these transformed beings.

from Relationships

I

In the legends of dry springs, there are the pebbles’ intonations.
In the forest’s recollections, there is the waterfalls’ fable.
In resin singing, there is my mother’s shade.

A carp’s negative doesn’t know to speak.
A relic left over from dry ponds.

Where armies and generals of the lotus and water lily dispute their beauty.
Where swords and sabers of ponds and swamps yearly fight each other.
Where aquatic corpses lie, ghosts possessed with visions of lotus and water lily.

Their beauty becomes miasma, tired and spoiled.
It is the nourishment in soil’s unconsciousness.

They blossom into flowers white and yellow.
They blossom without hands or feet.
They are spices lacking in my mother’s kitchen corner everyday.

She carefully puts them away, they are strong and have the smell of mud.
From tender mud, a spongy bull frog just escaped the drought.
It croaks announcing that the grandfather carp is still alive.

The old man is a Dragon.

From a reptile transformed, to the urgent moment in flight, the Dragon lets drop a whisker.

A carp opens its mouth yawning sleepily, comes upon it, stores in stomach.
When becoming a Dragon, grandfather carp wakes up, daydreams in the reptile’s venom.
A copperhead crawls onto the roof, where the Dragon resides, dancing circles a medium, ashamed for lack of whiskers.
The Dragon is deliberate, emotionless, without headache or high blood pressure.
My mother drinks ancient and Western medicine, still cannot shake off the stomachache caused by the Dragon’s whisker’s damage.

Whiskers on a dragon, definitely the Eastern (Chinese version.) Thinking of drawings I've seen where , yes! there are whiskers on the dragons, never saw it before, but carp whiskers are mentioned in at least one folk tale, held on to by a little boy who needs to escape a phantasmic kingdom to get back to his real life. The boy uses the painful tug to direct the carp to take him home. Reptile's venom, aquatic corpses, ghosts possessed, beauty becomes miasma (an influence or atmosphere that tends to deplete or corrupt) this poem by Nguyen Quoc Chanh brings all to a mire. I would point to the river metaphor in my north american dragon journey found in Grandfather Carp poems. Here is a version where a swamp dries and a landscape dies. Does grandfather carp even survive? Grandmother attempts ancient and modern medicines but the whisker has fallen off and is impossible to stomach. Is the whisker also a hand hold on some creature getting out?

Grandfather Carp by Alan Casline

2009-05-13T17:32:00.012-04:00

Now Available from bRAINdROP bOOKbENDERS a new book of poetry by the writer of this blog (among other things). Price is $5.00 plus $2.00 Shipping & Handling. Send check or money order to bRAINdROP bOOKbENDERS, P.O. Box 216, Voorheesville, New York 121186. The publisher is Mark O'Brien, who after hearing a number of my poems about a river carp making a long journey up a river said "Come on finish it will you and I'll publish it." Poets like to be published, as I always say when any publishing opportunity comes by, so it was a good way of getting me to focus on the few remaining parts of the tale. I am prone to say "Life is a spiritual journey" and in these poems I carry Grandfather Carp through youth and experience to trust and transformation. The last poem only became apparent when everything else was finished. Mark and I worked together on the book design.

A sample poem

A STEP IN OUR RIVER’S STAIR

mandate of the sun
runs from beginning to end
apollo nuancing blazing horses?
rabbit's burned off tail?
Grandfather Carp looks up
at a floating peach petal
wondering, now where did that come from?
color of the spirit
numinous water

August 5, 2008
Elsmere, New York

Just as I’ve written poems and stories about the Normanskill watershed’s folk hero Perious Frink, here we find Grandfather Carp as another example of how a few words can ignite imagination and artistic possibility. The first draft a long poem written in September 1997. This volume has pieces of the first long poem along with factual bits and collected materials from Chinese, Japanese, Native American folklore and mythology and the poet’s imagination. In The Flight of the Wild Gander (Viking Press, 1969) Joseph Campbell writes myth is a picture language but the language has to be studied to be read:

In the first place, this language is the native speech of dream. But in the
second place, it has been studied, clarified, and enriched by the poets,
prophets, and visionaries of untold millenniums.

Gary Lawless

2009-05-03T09:49:00.020-04:00

It was a too quick visit with Gary Lawless at Gulf of Maine Bookstore in Brunswick, Maine yesterday. As usual I left him a stack of Benevolent Bird publications to give to friends and some for sale. Bought some books too. Of note Ralph Maud's biography Charles Olson At The Harbor ( a book I have Albert Glover's review of. A review I'm holding on to until it is first published in some mag in Australia) and Jonathan Skinner's new poetry With Naked Foot out of little scratch pad press, Buffalo, NY. Jonathan Skinner, I know from Gary and some communication between us. Skinner has interest in ecopoetics and holds a professorship at Bates College. Gary was in the back eating and was soon to be off to visit his 92 year-old mother.
He and Beth Leonard were leaving for France in a few days with trip focus on getting close to animal paintings on cave walls. He was looking forward to his art exploration and I expect something to be written of what he can glean of the motivation behind those who crawled deep inside rock to leave images of the hoofed and clawed painted by light from flickering flame. It is all spectulation as to why? he reminded me a couple of times. Franz Boas in Primative Art writes of both symbolic representation and representation by means of perspective. In North American northwest coast art the whole animal form is presented as an assembly of disconnected symbols. A beaver is adequately represented by a large head with two pairs of large incisors and a squamous tail. It is in the painting of later paleolithic found in the caves of southern France and of Spain that Boas finds perspective realism "fully developed" Interestingly, Boas does not find perspective of groups in these paintings but rather of the single figure. Much has been analyzed and discovered since Boas wrote in 1927 and so I bet many more cave painting images are available for study. Perhaps Gary can let us know if he sees the herd and pack represented in the cave art he sees and also if he thinks the artist is actually creating a picture of a specific animal and not a symbolic representation of the animal kind?

I got to talk about the reactions of some poets to his poem Lynx Liberation Communique. Art Willis had told me he had seen a mountain lion near his property close to here in the Normanskill watershed. That got us talking about different wild cats and I mentioned Gary's poem which I then sent to Art and a handful of others. A few of the comments were interesting and I thought worth running by Gary. Starting with Albany poet Dan Wilcox who commented "Nobody votes, they just eat each other" Gary thought that was a good comment. He said he wasn't trying to imply anything having to do with democracy or even the standard political process which wasn't working for the benefit of the lynx at all. Two Republican Senators and a Democratic Governor had not resisted Federal actions during the years of George W. Bush that offered no protection for the lynx forest habitat in the entire, every square mile of the State of Maine. It was the political power of the land developers (former lumber companies) that put the lynx in a bad situation. At least Gary was able to tell me that the Obama administration had changed course and that now a sizeable territory of the northern Maine forest was protected. For the lynx and other animals, Gary said it was presumptuous to think you could take their side and speak for them and yet by undertaking that poetic voice you could gain consciousness and something of a different species view on important matters. I shared my response to Dan Wilcox:

Democrary in the Wild

2 legs + 2 hands = 1 vote
4 paws =1 vote
2 wings + 2 claws = 1 vote
I never did like snakes
4/27/09

"No backbone no franchise to vote", Gary said. And also on the whole democracy question "They vote by their diet."

The other comment on on Gary's Lynx Liberation Communique was from fellow bioregional poet Stephen Lewandowski, who wrote "wishful thinking." I wrote back to Stephen "Gary Lawless has that quality. Chanting the words. I'm sure not naivete but in the face. Hey "wishful thinking" you already said that." Gary went though almost the same circle of thought to arrive back at Yes, wishful thinking. He agreed that his poetry is wishful thinking, magic words. He originates his poetry in traditional shaman song and storyteller form. The realized imagination shared with all gathered. Speaking from a world that has been lost but not destroyed or disappeared. Check out another poem of his in Big Powwow, I still talk to the animals.

That was another time when
We knew there were other worlds

My too short trip to Maine ended with some time at the Atlantic. Looking up and down these posts, I see I am becoming quite the nature photographer but I guess you can't post from Maine without some water spray.

NOTE: illustrations from Primitive Art by Franz Boas. Top: beaver from Haida and from Tlingti cultures. Bottom: Paleolithic bison painting CLICK ON IMAGE FOR FULL SIZE

AND YOU CAN CLICK ON MYGRATIONS ABOVE AND READ ABOUT THE VISIT BY GARY

Shiffendecker Farms Preserve, Town of Bethlehem

2009-04-29T18:45:00.019-04:00

photo: trout lilly NOTE: Click on any photo for enlarged version

An area that can be seen when driving on Route 32 (The Delmar By-Pass) is interesting at all times of the year. When driving towards the east and the connect to 9-W you can look down into an inviting small valley with stream, shaped by mounds of steep-hilled terrain. During hunting season, I'll see trucks parked off the highway and I expect the deer walk a little more wary on their paths in and out of the brush. I've often thought I'd like to venture into those hollows to perhaps find an unknown spring or wildlife inhabitation in a sanctuary area created by geology more than by man. I wasn't sure where Shiffendecker Farms Preserve was exactly but I was hoping the property was within the Normanskill watershed. Those hunters (if they were such) will have to find others fields because, yes, the land I had looked at for so many years (thinking that land should be a park or something) is actually now Shiffendecker Farm Preserve held by the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy.

I went on a hike on those lands today led by Dan Driscoll of the Conservancy. "Wear boots" and be ready for rugged terrain was the advise given to those who had an interest in getting out into the fresh air.

photo: mushroom colors

photo: hike leader Dan Driscoll

photo: thick and hilly terrain

photo: beaver craved totem

photo: bottom land

2009-04-28T18:18:00.003-04:00

Here is a first. I set my camera at video when I was at Christman Preserve.

2009-04-26T09:44:00.012-04:00

ROOTDRINKER PRESENTS

Reading for

Will Christman

June 1, 2009 at 8 pm
At Smitty’s Tavern
Voorheesville

Hosted by

Willbe Roundtable
with poets

from Near and Far

Reading in honor of famous local poet
William Weaver Christman (1865– 1937)

2009-04-25T09:41:00.014-04:00

Visited Christman Preserve last night. Got there at twilight's start with the sun just setting on the horizon. No orange light show just a little pink glow on a puff of a cloud floating opposite the sunset. My purpose was really to time the drive from Smitty's Tavern in Voorheesville to the Preserve (it is 35 min.) because the June 1, 2009 William Weaver Christman Tribute has grown to include a public poetry reading at Smitty's staring at 8 pm. When I got there the open field on the walk in was still brightly lit and I spent some time photographing the volunteer pine trees with an eye for any WILD PASTURE PINE. It was already darkened within the pine forest that leads down to the stream. I traveled upstream along a stairway of waterfalls. I learned recently that the Bozen Kill has other folk names including Drunkard's Creek because of the up & down and side to side water flow a reminder of the drunk's walk home. Wanting to practice my slow down meditation skills I sat down on a rock and stayed to listen the the deepening sounds in fading light. I'll wait till I see the first star I thought but when a bat flew along the watercourse and into the pine forest I decided it was time to walk back to the car. Looking straight up from the gully I was in, I thought I saw one faint star straight up but the when I moved my head I couldn't find any. I had written John Roche one of the poet's coming on June first that I enjoyed walking in the woods without a flashlight. It was not pitch dark but my walk had naturally slowed with my strides feeling smoother and the firm contact with the trail almost a pleasure to my foot. I stopped a few times looking for stars which of course I saw just as I was leaving the wood.The evening star like a crystal jewel unlocked from greed.

I think the dark moonless path
is one with no flashlight
or cell phone but mine
is one I've walked
in sun light enough
for memory to take a few strides
enough unbalanced sense
to control a stumble
the longer you look into the dark
the more light you find to see
never wait to see
3/3/09

Will Christman

2009-04-18T20:48:00.006-04:00

William Weaver Christman Tribute

on Monday June 1st at 6:00 PM

Poetry by the Bozen Kill in honor of our own farmer, tree planter, nature lover, poet

Held at the Christman Preserve

Contact: Alan Casline at ACASLINE@AOL.Com if you plan on attending

Bring your own poems and/or your Will Christman favorites. If you are traveling in from out of the area let Alan Casline know and he'll coordinate a place to stay if you need one.

This the third year Rootdrinker is holding a get together along the Bozen Kill at the Christman Preserve. I always worry that too many people will attend the event held at a realtively small preserve that is in a beautiful spot. The first year of our series we had five people and the second it was two so I guess I shouldn't really worry about the crowds. This year it is a Monday but as we are following a tradition started by Will Christman's family and friends in the years after his death, I feel it most appropiate we follow the calendar and days of the week and keep the event as always on June 1st.

HERE IS ONE OF WILL'S EARLY POEMS

Robin Rhymes

I

Steep my rhymes, May, in your bloom:
Drench them in your rich perfume.

Dandelions wink at night;
Orchard trees stand pink and white;
Sweet as sandalwood or myrrh,
Lilacs white and lavender;
And springlong in shine or rain
Boyhood’s song, the robin’s strain.

Let the jocund bobolink
Tinkle on the meadow brink,
And the veery breathe and blow
On his silver piccolo,
Robin with his boxwood flute
Makes the greatest artists mute.

II

Oh, I’ll make a song sometime
Out of bits of robin rhyme
Sung in tip-top elms, the sun
Loves at eve to dwell upon:
“Skylight pales
And twilight veils
All the fragrant dells and dales;
Night is near,
But have no fear,
Perfect love abideth here.
Sleep, my dear,
Love bides here”

III

Now I hear the lyrist sing
Where the lilac censers fling
Incense to the dewy dawn—
Oh the spray he sings upon—
Joy in callow babes and mate
Makes the ruddy breast elate.
Robin of my liacs—who,
Having such a home as you,
Would not be a poet too?
Thus at dawn I hear him sing
Where the lilac censers swing:
“Here’s the hour
Of love again;
Here’s the bower
We wedded in:
Daybreak’s near,
Awake, my dear;
Here, clear, cheer!”

His later work also included blank verse and evolved philosophical to include more of the social critic and preservationist only too aware of human folly. This one examines a natural world that the mystic could see but never join.

SLOW, SHUTTLE-WISE

Slow, shuttle-wise, the green-gold caterpillar
Weaves out and in and so prepares for cleaving
The airy ways, a butterfly or miller,
But he shall not win heaven for all his weaving;
Only a night of fireflies, stars and shadows,
A moon-bright night in June-time’s golden weather,
Or one brief day over the daisy meadows
On wings as buoyant as a flicker’s feather.

No miracle these lives of twofold birth:
The maggot born in dung, awaiting wings,
The locus springing winged from chambered earth,
The dappled dragon fly from sedgy springs;
But man, under a stone and trod in clay,
Relies on God to roll the stone away.

And here is one of my contributions from last year.

Sacred place - - - invited by Christman to dream beside his brook

Open the portal to elsewhere

enchanted substance

birdsongs calling...
red squirrel
runs up tree
disappears wait silently
as if by magic for living home
to accept
your presence
poetry magic words
requiring a singer

chant the oak
shadows color pools
setting sun lights waterfalls
walk in a grove of elder pine

field mouse left piles of broken cones a scattered feast

Will Christman planted these trees

understory clear
slate wall standing

He and his father before him
made the wall
hauling stone out of harrowed ground

Alan Casline June 1, 2008
Bozen Kill Watershed
Christman Preserve

A "Grandfather Carp" "Teaser Videoem"....

2009-03-29T02:19:00.013-04:00

Yes! We are currently calling this form a "Videoem" ...partially because we have never heard of anyone calling one that, but mostly because we are smarmy elitist snobs, who have nothing better to do than to make up words, that no one has ever heard of !!!

(oh, and voem was already taken...)

:)

~

This is a "Teaser" for the forthcoming collection of poems by Alan Casline entitled: "Grandfather Carp". It was filmed on location along the Vly Creek in beautiful downtown Voorheesville N.Y. off of Pine Street. (Defiantly "the" Smarmy Section of Town.)

Hope you enjoy it!

Very Smarmally Yours,
bRAINdrop bOOkbENDER the III

2009-03-11T18:46:00.009-04:00

MARCH 2009 * BIG POWWOW * ROOTDRINKER NUMBER 17

Available at cost of $10 plus $2 Shipping and Handling
50 pages * small press publication *
hand bound and trimmed as perfect bound 8 x 5 inch book

Check or money order to: Rootdrinker Institute
P.O. Box 522
Delmar, NY 12054

Alan Casline and Stephen Lewandowski are holding a big powwow for

Rootdrinker Magazine #17. Beginning in 1975 in Canton, New York,

Alan Casline’s Rootdrinker is a long standing magazine of watershed

poetics, folklife, natural history, art, and photography. The magazine’s

legendary tradition is continued with the 2009 publication of BIG

POWWOW. Co-edited by environmental leader and poet Stephen

Lewandowski, the issue draws from work by writers and poets from

throughout the Northeast, many of them early supporters of bio-regional

politics and local culture. The issue presents work concerned with myth

and story, creation of family myth, myth of a shared community, nation

and world.Poems wise in their craft by poets who question both the

representations of native culture and that of topical reality. BIG

POWWOW finds beauty in native sensibilities and rural life.

BIG POWWOW finds wonder in curiosity about animal and human

society and succeeds in celebrating the moment using a confluence of

ideas and visions to praise the natural world.

I see this as a “pebble in the pond” style publication. One small

wave will generate a larger wave. Contributors each given an

opportunity to speak and others the opportunity to hear.
— Alan Casline

Here’s what interests me and might expand on the Powwow
Theme: HOW do we become the equivalents of, if not the natives
of this place. So it’s Powwow Now/How.

— Stephen Lewandowski

The list of materials found in BIG POWWOW includes:

Billy Finnegan

[Waiting for the Train in Figueres]

Mark O'Brien

What if "The Beave" were an Ulster-Scot?

Albert Glover

Basics
Mistaken Identity

Alan Casline Not What You Know...
Briefing for the Poem Not What You Know...
Around a Public House Table

Dennis Sullivan

Civil Seer

Walt Franklin

The Stones Deliver a Sermon on the Duty of Staying Home
Headwaters Mountain, 1985

Alifar Skebe

Mockingbird Song

Joseph Bruchac

Between Two Thunders
On Padre Island, Texas

Helen Ruggieri

Rock City Hill Exercises

Gary Lawless

Two for the Po
I still talk to the animals

Stephen Lewandowski

Early Limnology
Not Alone

John Roche

Joe the Poet
To the Red Fox

Barbara Hatch Vink

How Magnolias Smell

Dale Hobson

Half-life

Karin Spitfire

Be Belfastian: A Triptych

Michael Czarnecki

Rediscovery

Contact information for Co-editors:

Stephen Lewandowski e-mail: stachu 14512@yahoo.com
Alan Casline e-mail: acasline@aol.com

Mailing: Rootdrinker Institute
P.O. Box 522
Delmar, NY 1205

2009-03-09T11:42:00.000-04:00

Normanskill at Vale of Tawasentha

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864)

When I came across a reference to Longfellow mentioning Tawasentha in The Song of Hiawatha, I went to the text to find it. The passage is there and it is printed below. By the pleasant water-courses, dwelt the singer Nawadaha. Why Longfellow would start the story of Hiawatha with our local stream escaped me? Until I read in Arthur B. Gregg’s history Old Hellebergh the conviction Longfellow was placing a tribute to Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who perhaps is represented as the singer in the poem. Schoolcraft is credited by Longfellow with saving the native lore he used in his poem. Schoolcraft is a local Normanskill watershed poet, born in Guilderland, educated at Union College, wrote lots poems and impressive works which got his papers to the Library of Congress. Quite a story, most of his life was lived out of this area but he always kept his ties and a home here.

In the vale of Tawasentha,
In the green and silent valley,
By the pleasant water-courses,
Dwelt the singer Nawadaha.
Round about the Indian village
Spread the meadows and the corn-fields,
And beyond them stood the forest,
Stood the groves of singing pine trees,
Green in Summer, White in Winter,
Ever sighing, ever singing.
And the pleasant water-courses,
You could trace them through the valley,
By the rushing in the Spring-time,
By the alders in the Summer,
By the white fog in the Autumn,
By the black line in the Winter;
And beside them dwelt the singer,
In the vale of Tawasentha,
In the green and silent valley.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

From Introduction to The Song of Hiawatha

A native name given to the Normans Kill is Tawasentha.

2009-03-09T11:01:00.001-04:00

ROOTDRINKER INSTITUTE STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

Rootdrinker Institute encourages artists, musicians, writers, and crafters to use local images, lore, and legends.

Rootdrinker promotes rediscovery of the inspirations and creative visions of earlier artists and writers of each unique watershed.

Rootdrinker advocates increased interest in nature, local history, and local traditions. Rootdrinker continues to publish small press books that reflect these purposes.

At the center of Rootdrinker Institute’s philosophy is the vision of people defining the territory they call their own in terms of their local watershed. This focus allows the natural rather than the political to inform their education. Such an orientation stimulates a sense of place, and the growth of a unique to its area cultural life. To promote this viewpoint, and to further its encouragement of the artistic community, Rootdrinker Institute sponsors publications, readings, concerts, conferences, seminars, and social gatherings.

On hiking trails, along streams, in libraries, through prose and poetry, the goal of preserving and improving the land and keeping alive the heritage of its people by joining with friends and neighbors is inherent to all of Rootdrinker Institute’s work