Napa Poetry Conference poems 1982

After a Galway Kinnell reading

The stillness of time, bones, 

hands filled by the harvest of want

There is time, still time for one 

who can groan, who can sing 

for one to be healed.

August 1982

Galway Kinnell workshop


Drowning

Bone-kelp fingers of the dead

clutching at my ankles
slip off, harmless and beckon
to the breeze, lifting the clouds 

over the mountains. 

August 1982

Alan Soldofsky workshop

When writing, you are balancing language and experience. It's a balance between experience and metaphor there is little reward in poetry except a sense of posterity. Why do this? To try and write great art is to put everything into the line, and give up everything else.

August 1982

Alan Soldofsky workshop

Every bed is a mouth
That's what poetry is.

August 1982

Alan Soldofsky workshop

In the blue regions of afternoon
there is but one desire, for a boat,
a red reflection plays off the water
And it is a slow levitation of joy.

A bowl of dead bees covered with rose petals 

a green dream emerges from the rind 

of a cantaloupe and everything seems possible 

There is no need for narration in the poem 

the ravens will keep us awake
Only the force of brushstrokes
keep lilacs from the pathos

Lilacs against white houses
You can hear pain singing, it is not a song

it is hard to let go of summer 

remembering, then forgetting loss.

launched a lunch of raw butterflies

Bob Hass workshop Bantu Rhythms

August 1982 (also 85)

added 9/2016
I need to edit them