Sunday, March 31, 2019
March 31, 2019
Scheidt on the CD. Wind outside making the wind chime frantic. I didn’t write journal entries in Portland; let’s see what comes out of me now.
Tight scheduling forced me to get to my gate at O’Hare at a dead run, or what passes these days for a dead run. The amazing part of that is that somehow my bag made it too– someone must have been quick and attentive. Contrast this to Warsaw, where there were two lazy hours and still the damn thing got mislaid. I think the airline guy foresaw that I was going to call him an asshole and pulled my bag out. Portland is not as big as you expect (though people say that most of it is hidden ’behind the hill,’) brimming with coffee shops and, in my experience, excellent food. I noticed that its woods are luxurious and (to me) exotic conifers, and on the hills between the airport and the city stand innumerable homeless camps. The homeless are very evident in Portland, whether because they are actually more numerous or because they are less persecuted. The trolley ran practically from my hotel door to the convention center, so all was well there. Daily dramas on the train; you miss that driving your own car. I asked one woman on the train if she were a native Portlander. She was. I asked her what the great river we were crossing was. She said, “I really don’t know. Geography is not my best thing.” It was, of course, the steel-colored and inexorable Columbia. I couldn’t believe she didn’t know her own river.
The Conference was pretty much as it has always been. I managed to leave all my information behind, but they found me nevertheless. Something was mismanaged, so that the registration lines were so huge they finally gave up and let everyone in without credentials. Went to one session, and that only because Lori was in it. Half the sessions were about women. Three quarters of the participants were women. During one of my signing sessions, not one man stopped at the Red Hen Press. I spent most of my time either on the streets of Portland or in the Bookfair, roaming around or at the Red Hen tables signing copies of The Falls of the Wyona. The last corrections could not be included in the mock-up of the book they did for the conference, but it was glorious to see my little green book sitting there large as life anyway. There were bars of chocolate whose wrappers reproduced the covers of the books.
I am reminded that I can be quite convivial, but not for very long.
I reread the book in the hotel lobby. The takeaway? It is very good. It is almost flawless. I read it as though it were someone else’s, weeping at the sad passages, tensed at the thrilling passages. I was filled with gratitude, for it is very good. I can hardly imagine having written it. The Red Hen people seemed to share my amazed delight. One thing stands fully accomplished.
Met at least five men named David. One with whom I shared space at the bar had me write down the info for The Falls of the Wyona so he could order a copy for his wife. Another had written an autobiography of Frankenstein’s monster.
Drinks with MT Friday night. His presence gave me joy. He asked me what the highlight of the Israel trip was, and I said Adam’s skull under Golgotha. He didn’t like that as much I would have thought. He recites the dogma wherein Baptism and Repentance are necessary for salvation. I utter the new (to me) perception that salvation is fully and eternally accomplished, and Baptism and Repentance are sublime theater, which to enter into is delight, but irrelevant to salvation once demonstrated and fully sufficient from that time forth. We knew better than to argue about this. We met again in the Portland airport, for he and Wes and I were on the same flights home. I think all in all it was beneficial. If nothing else it was a weekend full of Something Different. But I think full confidence in my work, in comparison to the thousands of other works represented there, was worth the journey.
Call from the Grievance Committee chairman. Brian Hook is aggrieved about his firing from the humanities chairmanship, and wants me to recuse myself from the committee receiving the complaint. Oh dear God, yes. My hatred of him is just, but not what one would call impartial.
Half drunk on bloody Mary’s I sat in an airport bar and wept in apprehension of the glory of God.
Hoped to work in the garden today. The North Wind has other ideas.
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
March 26, 2019
Mother died on this day in 1974.
One of my first students, Keith Hall, writes:
Dear David,
“By some mercy the truth is kept from us” is a brilliant line, worthy of Shakespeare.
I am reading your book now for the second time, with joy, and in places, with tears in my eyes.
Engaging with you again over so much time is like a resurrection - of memory, of the imagination, of joy, including the joy I felt living in Asheville for 12 years, fond remembrance of life-altering moments I experienced at UNCA, of the vistas, the things The Voices told me to say, and the uncertain sense of power I felt over words back then. Thank you, (and thank you, Voices.)
All writers, whoever they are, bear the mark of their masters, their Big Ghosts, as William Stafford said. Anything I wrote after your poetry workshop that I attended - in 1984-ish, 85-ish (?) bears your mark. I had read The Glaciers Daughters, and stopped wanting to be T. S. Eliot, or William Stafford, or John Berryman, or James Applewhite, or Jim Wayne Miller, or Robert Lowell, all Big Ghosts to me. I wanted to be you. I had no surfeit of ideas; I was bursting with ideas but at that time had no concept of how to channel that slow, continual lava flow of images, impressions, ideas into some complete and coherent form. I read everything in the UNCA library that had a poem in it. I was looking for something. You gave me that direction, either verbally in class or in my reading and re-re-re-reading of your own work. God gave me the voices; you gave me the inspiration, the discipline, and the structure. Anything I have written since the day I met you is partly your fault! Bless you for that.
I learned that, as a poet, I am a sprinter, not a distance runner. I am good for short poems, maybe with breath enough for a sonnet or a full page, but I never mastered the longer, more discursive and intellectual forms. One reviewer told me I had a talent for the “gnomic phrase.” Fred Chappell once said in a letter to me that my poems had “a whittled quality.” Whatever that means.
Over the years, I have met or communicated with some significant poets, most of whom would be classified as “regional” – James Applewhite, James Still, Jim Wayne Miller, James Seay, Fred Chappell, RHW Dillard, David Huddle.
The book you sent me is named "Peniel" which is the title of one of the poems that I submitted for my final project at UNCA eons ago. I was thrilled to see that and wonder if that is accidental or on purpose. God lurks in my poems, like a face on a billboard you see only for a second when flying down the highway. He's there but in the wings, behind the curtain, watching but the audience doesn't see Him. Your engagement with Him is much more direct and open and eloquent.
The poems you sent in typescript are brilliant, a joy to read. I am reading your book for the third time. You have hammered the hot nail back into my head. Thank you for your inscription. “My first baby poet.” Yes, if that is so, then I am happy to be your first born.
God bless you for reaching out to me. I love your writing. I always have.
Let’s stay in touch, regularly and frequently.
Always,
Keith
The bloodroots are in bloom.
Monday, March 25, 2019
March 25, 2019
Matthias Weckmann on the CD.
The AWP site is up, and the fact is that I have no reading. I was relying on Tobi’s having said on Tampa, “Of course next year you’ll have your own reading” and put down to disorganization the fact that I’d heard nothing more. But I do have several book signing sessions, one with Erica Jong, who was famous among us when we were in grad school. I signed off on the layout of the book on Saturday morning. I don’t see how they can have anything printed and bound by the middle of next week, so I am anticipating a completely useless voyage to Portland. But it will be, in any case, a voyage to Portland, where I have not been before. So, well.
Jaki Shekton Green, our new NC port laureate, on the radio. We met 30 years ago at the North Carolina Writers’ Conference, to which we were invitees and new members. We have been fine friends on those rare re-encounterings. She is sublime when talking about poetic process, about the public life of the poet. I realize that, unless I have to make something up for class, I have nothing to say about process. Never missed it when I was actually working. I suppose a bird in flight is the last person you’d ask for an examination of the art of flying.
Sunday, March 24, 2019
March 23, 2019
Gesualdo, acquired in Tel Aviv, on the CD player.
Received the final version of The Falls of the Wyona and mailed in my “I approve of cover and text as-is.” Dropping my eyes on any page was exciting, gratifying. I repeat the sensation that it seemed not my work, that I was learning it rather than reviewing it.
Read part of Book I of The Iliad for Sophie’s Homerathon. Very bardic, in the cold with a cutting wind blowing under a fierce bright sun.
Bestirred myself and went to the theater last night. Excellent cider now in their cooler. Left at intermission. Much actorly energy and directorial ingenuity in the service of nothing. The script never surpassed–and seldom rose to the level of–camp skit night. Was it funny? Sort of, but the funny of a guy in a clown costume screaming “wacka wacka” and squirting water out of his lapel, so you feel a cad if you don’t laugh from time to time. The cutest actor is going to be in my play later on, so that was a comfort.
How can one institution approve both last night’s fare and what I do? Aiming for breadth? Include all possible audiences? Or does my work and this have something in common that I don’t perceive?
Day of supreme writing in the morning and excellent gardening in the afternoon. Put in quince, rhubarb, a couple of exotic conifers I saw at Reems Creek.
Friday, March 22, 2019
March 21, 2019
Since making my determination public (to one person anyway) I have felt a change. Sat in a creative writing meeting today indifferent and impatient, not really caring about anything we talked about, wanting to be elsewhere. The university is not, at this moment, going the way it ought, but it is soon wholly in other hands. One shrugs. One moves on.
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