CATALYST

I always imagined him hunkered down in his enclave 

between appearances, exploring remote trails,

weaving his way through deep New England woods,

observing the splendor of light among granite boulders, 

in boreal gardens of calipso orchid and ladyfern,

where wilderness and the throat of summer were untamed. 

Where intricate clouds of mayflies gathered 

over a glassine pond reflecting the sky,

broken by lucky salmon leaping skyward, 

and the concentric rings merged like Celtic knots,

an old rowboat riding low in the water,

with its tendrils of moss and pond scum

trailing like a threefold beard of wisdom,

and thunderclouds roiling on the horizon, 

promising a storm, that other ink-stained darkness, 

and something infinitely unnamable at the edges. 

Starry-eyed I admired him from afar through his poetry, 

through distances, and in workshops, something spoke 

of a kindred language we shared that went beyond the page.

Perhaps it was our Irish blood recognizing long lost kin.

Each in the other, and all in one. Cromlech and dolmen.

Out of the blue, I invited him to do a poetry reading.

I remember how he arrived on the bus on Railroad Square,

how his books and his eyeglasses headed northward

in a satchel on the Seattle-bound Greyhound, sans tickets. 

I wondered what someone would make of his poems

at the end of the line, would they toss out the books, 

try on his glasses? See the world through the poet’s lens?

As I gathered up my copies of his books for the reading 

he borrowed my car for the afternoon to visit the vineyards,

he was all elbows and knees in my old blue Bug,

that famous forelock of hair over a glacial blue eye,

He taught me to trust the veracity of Anglo-Saxon words,

that were uncomfortable in polite poetry schools, 

that poetry itself was a dangerous traverse over  “bauchy ice.” 

He said to me, Listen to the awkward music of the generations.

You can’t quit writing, ever. The becoming and the dying 

of life cycles is poetry, and the music of the poem is the poem.

I remember how he held me when I returned from the coast, 

a friend, off his medication, had plucked out his own eye.

I stumbled blind in grief, fell over a stone wall, 

how his hands held me up, and he offered solace 

and animal comfort during a time when I could not see.

That night, in the dark, we were all thumbs and elbows.

The braille light of our hands bespoke an older story, 

we had moved beyond the realm of mentor and student 

into something akin to family harboring dark secrets. 

When he returned home, his wife had enough—

a lifetime of wandering eyes, the last straw among many.

Did he return to the deep solace of the woods, 

to measure dappled light splayed among the trees?

I heard he died alone in a hospital bed in a living room,

watching the slow progression of shadows cross the ceiling,

but his mind had wandered onto other wordless shores.

5/25 Write On! Terri Glass workshop

Scanning old negatives of the Napa Poetry Conferences 1981-1986 (photos)

I've added more photos under the Comments section on Facebook. Check it out.

While scanning old negatives of the Napa Poetry Conferences (1981-1986), I didn't realize how profound a sense of community there was with the Napa Poetry Conferences (NPC), a tribe of poets, similar to California Poets in the Schools, that met once a year, and included poets from the Americas, and beyond.

Founder Dave Evans began the NPC with a group of Berkeley poets in 1981, the original series, where no one was ever turned away for lack of money, and the series ran until his death, in 1987, The late John Leggett, who retired from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, developed the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference (NVWC) fiction portion of the workshops in 1986, and the NPC took on its present form. Not the same. That's my uncredited photo on their web page (albeit a terrible copy). I hope to rectify that soon.

I'm still friends with many of the original NPC poets, among them, I treasure my long-term friendships with Donna Hilbert, Florence Weinberger, Kathleen Lynch, Sharon Doubiago, Sandra McPherson, Carolyn Forché, Bob Hass, Robert Pinsky, and others. I just found Joan Maiers on Facebook and I'm thrilled to connect with her after all these years.

I found in my Napa Poetry Conference negatives from 1983, a photo of Susan Herron Sibbet! I didn't realize that I knew her way back then. So many poets are gone, founder Dave Evans, Susan Sibbit, Maggie Meyers, Mary Rudge, Carolyn Kizer, Galway Kinnell. So many writers whose names I've forgotten. Let this scanfest be the beginning of an homage to our extended writing community, to both the living and the dead. In some small way, what I can give back to those who have nurtured me, are these old memories, photos chronicling the past. 

So many people I wish I had kept in touch with: Tess Gallagher, Diane Glancy, Laurie Deusing, Jess River, Cindy Frank, and more.

This is a sneak preview. I’ve scanned all of the 1983 negatives, and am about 2/3 through 1984. Need to clean them up before I post (mostly artifacts, or dust embedded in the negatives). Still to do, 1985....and I’ve only found a few 1982 negatives. Hope they turn up.

If you can figure out a way for me to get funded for doing this work, a grant, a scholarship, a residency, please let me know. Also, I am daunted by how I can present these photos, so many of them. I made a Facebook prototype where I used one photo as a main subject and the comments section to post related photos.

Here is a link to the NPC Bahamas poetry conference on Facebook, it's open to the public. A gathering of poets, Orange Hill, Nassau Island, The Bahamas, 1985. There are many more photos posted as comments below each main photo, which you may not see on a smartphone or tablet unless you click on the comments. You might notice the photo has three comments, that’s three more hidden photos.

— with Dave Evans, Robert Hass, Marcella Taylor, Glenna Luschei, Nathaniel Mackey, Carolyn Forché, Gary Sange, Kris Lauritsen, Sharon Doubiago

See A gathering of poets, Orange Hill, Nassau Island

More poet scans from National Poetry Week: Poetry Flash marathon reading, 1983, Fort Mason. With Gene Ruggles, Herman Berlandt, Mary Rudge. QR Hand, AD Winans, Max Schwartz, Darrell Gauff, Diana Sainz.

Mystery poets, 1980s, early 90s? National Poetry Week. Fort Mason. Herman Berlandt is the only poet I could identify.

Why I Teach, or Why I am a Writer, final draft

WHY I TEACH, OR WHY I AM A WRITER   MANIFESTO   —Maureen Hurley

due 12/13 SAT  5 min presentation/performance.

It's hard to choose between teaching and writing

each process informs the other.

See, I was an artist before I became a poet.

I was a poet before I started teaching kids art,

but I was also literary jailbait. It was a bootstrap affair.

 I arrived late to poetry all out of breath,

with things to say and nowhere to channel them.

I was a bad student in high school and college.

Least likely to succeed. I couldn't keep what I learned.

It was like a hive of bees swarming inside my head.

Stinging my tongue so I couldn't speak.

Why I Teach, or Why I am a Writer. 1st draft

WHY I TEACH, OR WHY I AM A WRITER

It's hard for me to choose or to make a distinction between teaching and writing as each process informs the other.

I was a poet before I became interested in teaching for California Poets in the schools, but just barely. The two events were nearly twinned. I arrived to poetry all out of breath, with things to say and nowhere to channel them. I wasn't a writer and I was a below average student in high school and college. I couldn't retain or access the information I learned in school. It was like a hive of bees swarming inside my head.

Napa Valley Poetry Conference publishes book, Napa Valley Register, photo

Napa Valley Register Galway Kinnell photos

Napa craft lecture, Galway Kinnell and Tess Gallagher, The music of poetry, journal

The rhythm allows a poem to breathe effortlessly, things that seemed impossible before you start writing, to be out of reach, become within reach. Writing is not the last ornamentation, but a part of the poem itself. The music of the poem is the poem. All of life is based on cycles, the becoming and the dying. The rhythm is the first expression of life. To attach to that rhythm, that’s what art does for us, it’s the music first, then the poetry. 

9/1/83 freewrite from a craft lecture with Tess Gallagher and Galway Kinnell

Moon fragment with Galway Kinnell

To type the ambiguous is to launch into something new. Where in the outer stretches of boredom, does creativity lie? To talk about nothing is nothing—how it is a “no thing” thing. It balloons like flaccid cock, dangles from the lamp stem. La Luna esta brilla en El Mundo. There is no moon. It’s a cat eye. Venus in the sky is casting shadows before the sun arises. Galway said Jupiter and Saturn were so close together that long shadows were cast on the New Mexican desert last summer. And I spent years watching these planets, follow the stars across the night sky. They conjunct in darkness.

(No date, but I wrote a poem to Leonard on  4/12/82 So, close enough. I was a mess after taking care of Leonard, and Galway was reading at Sonoma State for me. If it wasn’t for Galway, I don’t think I would’ve gotten through that week.)

Port Townsend journal, Michael Daley

7/25 it has taken me three days like Christ to come home. The transcendence into pain, self-pity, thoughts of suicide, quitting teaching poetry, quitting organizing readings, putting my past – all is an act of self pity.

Galway Kinnell said that and Sexton indulged in the ultimate form of self pity, selfless suicide. I have been sulking, I've been pouting inward, no lower lip projecting anymore. No longer acceptable.

Waves of sorrow are flooding the rock strewn beach. My heart unwinds itself like a snail poking its antennae out to see if the coast is clear.

The clouds paint an illusion of color over Mount Baker and is smaller twin poking out of the marine layer of mist, whether the cloud are real, no matter. It exists behind those islands, floating on the water.

Galway says to me: you can't quit writing, ever. Not the way a dog quits killing chickens when the carcass is tied to its neck till it rots.

I wanted to hang my heart around my neck. Proclaim myself smarter, saying I cannot love again.

My wounds run open with black blood deep inside my heart lies, my heart lies. The day and not days and nights of poems yet to come.

The clouds of Mount Baker are expanding back into cloud. The smoke has subsided.

The true skin of writing never buries itself moisture like under the waves of sorrow.

The mountains and the curves of land are breasts of the earth. The clouds milky teeth white breast in the air and sky. And while I sit on Michael Daly's porch, contemplating dusk, I wait for time to pass. I evaluate the sunset. I saluted the sunset yesterday with a bottle of California wine, drinking little sips from the stems of grapes before the harvest, calling me home.

Michael Daley founded a literaty journal, Dalmo‘ma

The sun reminds me that it rises again just as surely as it sets, like the low hum of the well oiled machinery the ships on the Straits of San Juan de Fuca interrupt the whispering of waves along the island shore. I've spent so little time writing. I do not offer my craft a place to sail. I'm learning to sit study and listen.

Michael confesses he was an altar boy, but his face darkens. He escaped the seminary after studying to be a priest. He carries the wrath within still. Our common thread, we're all poets teaching in the schools. All, on the outside, looking in. Poet fugitives.

Last night, I swung the double headed axe, splitting wood to earn my keep. Michael thinks I'm a lightweight. I resent it. The kindling flies off into the bush. I glare at him. He shrugs, re-evaluates, and smiles at me beatifically. Breaks the silence with his broad Boston Irish vowels.

I'm striking at the anger off my bones the previous night, the news of losing both my lover and my friend. My lover and my friend have found something to ease their souls and my burden becomes weighted doublefold and that axe is unsteady at first, becomes sure, the pile of kindling grows exponentially from out of nothing.

Michael resents my presence. He is like a jealous god. Doesn't want to share Sharon. Last night I heard them whispering. I lumber off to sleep in the backseat of the VW bug. He says to stay another night. He doesn't know I overheard what he said. Where will I go?

I have exercised hard, I have stretched and used muscles. I have poured new oxygen into my blood, the tissues and my heart are becoming fine-tuned as I run through the pineleaf forest. Sharon says you must listen to your heart.  You must write about it no matter what. I am learning the readiness of lung and leg as I take the time to stop and eat the thimbleberries and the blackberries. But my tongue awakens to acidic fruit, rotting before it is ripened.

Sharon Doubiago

7/24-25/1981
Pt. Townsend, WA
added 9/15

See True Writing, another version of 7/25 entry