Fort Worden Centrum summer writing conference, 1979

Fort Worden Centrum Writers Conference, 1979—with thanks to Jim Heynen

Jim Heynen posted a Facebook photo of the Fort Worden Centrum summer writing conference, from 1979. It was before my time there but the stories from that conference were still circulating in 1980 when Sharon Doubiago, Leonard Cirino, Susan Abbott, Tobey Kaplan and I crashed the Writers Conference in 1980.

The photo evoked such memories. I wrote to Jim: Ah, Sam Hamill with his curly red mop (I have a photo of him from the 1980 conference), and Bob Hass as a longhair. Migod, Levertov, and Kumin. Robert Bly was born old? We were all reading Thomas McGrath’s Imaginary Letters during those years. A hero of mine. What a handsome man. Can’t believe Bly was a belligerent asshole to Tom (hahaha). Shocked! Simply shocked, I am. We heard about that embroglio when we attended in 1980. And something about the baseball story with Levertov.... I don’t remember any of the details.

Tree Swenson and Kathleene K West. I miss her. Ever the chameleon—she said she reinvented herself every ten years. She was kind to me, got me on the Montana Poets in the schools roster. We reconnected on Facebook right before her death....I had no idea she was in such anguish. She sold me her old cellphone for $15 but never cashed the check—its name was Gravity. I deleted her pictures of New Mexico, thanked her for the phone, then I heard the news.

Jim Heynen replied: Mo, I guess Bly was actually quite good in his workshops, but he tormented McGrath during McGrath's reading by yelling from the audience, "Read the Tomasito poems!  Read the Tomasito poems!"  McGrath finally addressed him firmly with, "Patience, Robert.  Patience."
At a social event, Bly insulted Levertov by telling her she was being too hard on people in her workshops.  She started weeping and came to me, exclaiming "What a horrible man!"  But Levertov had no tear ducts to shed the tears she was feeling--so her eyelids just bulged and got red.  Another tidbit: Bob Hass was reluctant to come and teach a workshop because, he said, "I don't know how to do it."  Then he did a great job.  One exercise was having participants do an exact imitation of a poem they liked--the same number of syllables per line, and accented and unaccented syllables exactly as the original.

I told Jim, thanks for the backstory. I was standing with Tess Gallagher and Ray Carver, as they, and others were recounting the stories, which became interwoven with ours...a mythos of sorts.

I only remember vague fragments of the infamous Levertov story of baseball players, drunken writers conference parties and the dropping of the f-bomb. And something about Kumin too that made the gossip train too. The stories that survived.

Preserving the past: Centrum in the early 1980s (photo)

In the process of using old Facebook Memories to flush out the gaps in my blog, I discovered that I had met Meridel LeSueur, not in 1981, but according to the Centrum site, it was 1980. I will need to readjust many (undated) poem dates...

Not only that, as I attempted to fill in the gaps on this timeline, I discovered that I've been misspelling Meridel's last name for decades. It's LeSueur, not LeSeuer!!! Got that. Awg, egg on face. Blame it on dyslexia. (True—I had a hard time unraveling it—even now, when I knew it was wrong and I had to resort to a snapshot of her name to keep it right in my head.)

As to fluffing out this blog, the trouble is, my Facebook Memories only date back to 2009. So it doesn't help flush out those impoverished writing years. I'm still sorting old papers, so more work is coming, but the bulk of the poetry has been scanned and posted (a huge task). Now it's come down to transcribing old journal entries. (Not the highest on my priorities list, of sorting all my old papers, filing them, and eventually dispatching them.)

The year 1980 is particularly dicey in that I didn't seem to keep a proper journal. Napkins, paper place-mats and menus were pressed into service, along with carbon paper separator tissue, as well as the backs of old posters and poem revisions—an odd sleuthy way to date my many undated old poems.
 
So, I must've gone to Centrum three times. I know we were personae non gratae for crashing the gates of the kingdom when Meridel was there. Carol Jane Bangs in particular had it out for me. She actually chased me out of a poetry reading, screaming bloody murder, the only thing missing in that lunatic chase, was a cleaver in her hand. No matter that it was free and open to the public. Luckily she never knew my name. The nerve. Crashing a poetry reading/reception like that. I was an alley cat, hungry for poetry. Perhaps the free wine and hors d'oeuvres were involved as well. 

Jim Heynen, one of the other Centrum coordinators, apologized to me later. He didn't mind at all that I was there as a freeloader. We spiced up the conference. Jim read a hysterical poem about someone using false teeth to make the scallops on a pie crust, and hog farmer David Lee read from The Porcine Legacy. Worth the gate crashing entrance fee.

Writing at Centrum

1980 (I remember meeting Lisel Mueller, and Bill Knott as well as Donald Hall; I think this is the year I met Bill Root and Pan Uschek, and Rusty North.) 

FACULTY: Galway Kinnell, Meridel LeSueur, Richard Shelton, Ann Standork, James Bertolino, Madeline DeFrees, Donald Hall, Sam Hamill, Bill Ransom, Lisel Mueller, Bill Knot.

1981 (I'm pretty certain I went to this one too as I have a journal entry on Jack Cady; and I spent time with Tree Swenson and Kathleene over at Copper Canyon Press. Kathleene West (what was her last name back then. I adored her. I found out that Linnerson was her maiden name, she said she was always reinventing herself. Anyway, she got me to apply to teach poetry to kids in Montana.) 

FACULTY: Margaret Atwood, Robert Haas, William Matthews, Sam Hamill, Tree Swenson, Leslie Marmon Silko, William Stafford, Jack Cady, Jane Yolen. 

 

1982  (I know that I went to this one too, I remember singing and drinking with Tess and Ray at the Town Tavern (note to self: don't try to keep up with them drinking); I fell head over heels in love with Thomas McGrath. I remember him reading from his imaginary letters, wow, and his talking about coal mines.)

FACULTY: Olga Broumas, Henry Carlile, Sandra McPherson, Carolyn Forché, Tess Gallagher, Sam Hamill, Paul Hansen, Jim Heynen, Thomas McGrath, Richard Shelton, James Laughlin, Raymond Carver, Gordon Lish.

This photo engendered an interesting conversation on June, 2013, which was worth preserving in situ.
Facebook conversation (photo) Lyle Daggett & me on Bukowski, Black Sparrow Press, Doubiago

And another much shorter version of this post was filed July 10, 1980, for continuity's sake.
Port Townsend Poetry Conference 1980 (photo)

Trolling Old Journals

I found a stack of old journals mixed in with newer journals, and since I've misplaced most of my old writing, I took a peek, to see if there was anything I could glean, or steal.

My 1981 journals, where I spent the summer in Port Townsend, the Olympic Peninsula, and Pulsbo, were particularly rich, so I've been typing up (dictating) a few poems and prose pieces.

I was able to date several old poems, having found the original draft. What I discovered is that the writing is much more solid than I expected. Funny how you think your old work is inferior. And your new work accounts for shit. Perception. Not what it's cracked up to be.

I am enamored with my Port Townsend prose piece, and my Mt. Olympus piece, where I had a very, very close encounter with a Rocky Mountain goat.

These prose pieces would've never seen the light of day, as I only typed up poems. Prose scared me. But for the most part, it's solid and muscular. What was I thinking that it was all so bad? Part of why I began this blog was to teach myself to write prose. But the urge for story ran parallel with my poems. Anyway, should you want to peak, this link is a shortcut. (New work also in 1997, 98, and 2000. Not a lot. Yet.)

►  1981 (29)

It all began when I was uploading old poems to this blogspace, and I discovered that many of my files were corrupted. In particular, the electronic version of the HOH RIVER VALLEY file is toast. And I still haven't found the hard copy. It exists, but I don't have access to it.

My other long-term goal was to fill in the posts where I have too few poems for a given year. I am/was a prolific writer, so this is a search for lost work. Retyping old work is a bit like reinventing the wheel. But on the other hand, I'm treating it like revision.

Most of the 11 years I need more work for, are the years I don't have journals for, they're tucked away deep in a box in storage. 1998 to 2000, the years I was in grad school are particularly paltry. I know I have writing, but where is it? 1982 I was in a car accident, so I probably didn't write much. Ditto 1997/98. Some of those years I was in Amsterdam, or Russia, so it may be a case of typing up work that I never had a chance to make an electronic file.

Letter to Michael Kettner, Catalyst

Dear Michael Kettner,

I noticed that you're selling a book I'm published in, under Abebooks.com. I'd completely forgotten about it...and AD Wynans...Migawd! How did you obtain a copy of the book? Would you like me to sign it to increase its value? Hahah. Um, what poem DO I have in it?

Maureen Hurley

CATALYST #17: 3nd ANNUAL EROTICA ISSUE
Bookseller: M. Kettner and Son, Booksellers
Contact: Michael Kettner
Address: M. Kettner and Son, Booksellers, 1501 NE 68th, Seattle, WA, U.S.A., 98115
E-mail: mkettnerbooks@juno.com
Phone #: 206-323-7268

Dear Maureen, 

How nice to hear from you again. Lest you have forgotten, i was the publisher of said CATALYST. Have taken a few years off writing to insure i have retirement income - to set up an on-line book biz specializing in poetry and sm. pr. stuff. Only have a few dozen of Catalyst 19 left, and since so popular, am selling them one by one on line;

Your contribution to #19 was a graphic, "self-portrait". thanks for offering to sign a copy. however with periodicals, there is little value enhancement with signatures unless multiple contributors do so or if signed by editor or famous person. in the case of erotica, the mere fact it is erotica, is usually enough. 

You did receive a copy or two of #19, did you not? don't remember you being on list of copies returned with no forwarding address. check out my list on ABE by clicking on booksellers. have over 1500 sm. pr. titles on line with at least as many to go. also have large list of general titles since it's hard to make a living on poetry alone. if you ever want to sell off part of your poetry collection, let me know. 

Take Care, M.

In a message dated 8/28/04 12:24:34 PM, mkettnerbooks@juno.com writes:
<< if you ever want to sell off part of your poetry collection, >>

Hi Michael,

I've been thinking about it for ages, the books just sitting in my cabin in Forestville, some rare ones at that. And correspondence. Robert Bly/ Calliope Press...I put on that event at SSU. Lotta work & little gratis from himself.

Lee Perron--do you know him? also got into the rare book business--along with John McBride...who, if I have the story right, was laif off after 25 years from Moe's Books on Telegraph--recession, a sign of the times. As our friend Ken Bullock said, hell of a time to try & sell books. How are you doing with it? Are you still publishing journals? I did look at my resume and Catalyst is indeed listed--way back in the 1980s.

Ach, the book signing, It was merely a ploy to say hi via cyberspace...your name rang a bell, and certainly, Seattle....I'm trying to put a face/event/place to your name as I'm certain that we met...in SF? Or Port Townsend? I'm excellent with faces, even after 20 years...when & where? Obviously you've got my drawing, it must be a self portrait...

Gawd it's been a right long while since that epic journey we took north from Mendocino: Sharon Doubiago, Leonard Cirino, Tobey Kaplan, myself and Moonlight the Alsatian shepherd, in a white station wagon named Roses. An anarchy of northern California poets crashed the Port Townsend Writers' Conference...Carol Jane Banks was having apoplexy right, left & center.

We were all sleeping on the beach, one full moon night, the tide came in and nearly swept us away. Leonard was floating around in his down bag like a cork. Bill Knott was living in a big Victorian on the bluff with Pamela Uschuk (sp)?, we spent a couple of nights on the porch. We later found some barracks that were open after that. CJ Bangs was trying to get us bounced out of the conference but we were like bad pennies. Meridel LeSueur took to us, said we stayed or else and that was that.

Meridel took Sharon under her wing, and that was the start of something, all right. I kept out of the way, feeling like a poetry impostor, and years later, Meridel was asking me why I stayed away so long, was I mad at her...by then it was too late for a prodigal daughter.

I remember Ray Carver, a long cool drink of, er...uisge beatha, chainsmoking and we were all singing Irish songs at some bar with Tess Gallagher... and Michael Daley. Empty Bowl. And Marina Albert...putting us up. All these names bubbling up. it was a spur of the moment event that irrevocably changed my life, somehow I always thought it would continue like that, mad confabs of poets...but then long distances of time and isolation set in.

After finally breaking it off w / John Oliver Simon, I wound up in the USSR doing a poetry & art exchange. It was there I began to translate the Soviet poets. I ran into Marina in Moscow, we were both living in Leningrad with crazy Soviet singers. We'd hoard our dimes and meet at the Seagull Cafe on Nyevsky Prospect, we'd pay an outrageous sum (a week's wages for some) for lattes, worth every penny. 

One time we met Mendelstahm's publisher, it was Glasnost and there was hope. He brought his samizdat publications out of hiding and we held a piece of history. For that one publication he could've been killed. In Moscow, I saw Akhmatova's frail sister feeding pigeons in the snow. But I had to let go of Russia in order to survive. I came back to the States.

I did get to Poetry International in Rotterdam a couple of times, and was in on the Breytenbach translation project...with the likes of Holub, Heaney, Dove...I was onto something, in that I loved the process of translation, then I was nearly killed in 1997, a car accident, and with the shock and healing and all that, poetry sort of left me. I still write, but not with the fervor of the past. Dabbling in prose too, but what's a dyslexic to do with linear thought? After the accident I went back to school and got a MA/MFA at SFSU, w/ a side of Celtic studies at UC Berkekey. Did some playwriting too. But I blather on...

Maureen

Hey Maureen, 

no, 12 years of publishing was enough for me. still writing. on-line is the way to go with book biz these days. more one has on line, the more you make. been learning on-line biz from a couple of the masters here in seattle. left Kathleen after 23 years a couple revolutions about the sun ago. tough at first but had to be done. 

quit job of 16 years and decided to set myself up so i'd never have to work for someone again. just write and sell books. if your poetry collection is anything like mine, i'm very interested if you truly want to sell. i'm just getting past initial years of set-up and debt management it takes to get going and could probably work something out as autumn progresses. 

glad to hear you've recovered. the writing impulse is fragile. been observing it in others for years, studying, if you will, how to maintain it and have it thrive. not easy to do, especially as one ages and life's vicissitudes work on one. have to get ready for work (at Horizon Books). talk to you again soon. -M. P.S. No, we have never met. You were in town once but we didn't hook-up, if i remember correctly.

Take Care, M.

Dream journal

Dream journal

I was visiting Port Townsend with my old friend Carolyn. We were sitting outside the ferry dock which had moved and was now near the late-night market, the Breadbasket.

A big battleship pulls up to port. It looks like the MV Coho out of Port Angeles. Iron clunkers with layers and layers of paint added on until the sides were visibly thicker than the original walls.

I'm waiting to find you, you're going to drive into town at some point during the day and if I sit here long enough, I know I'll find you. It's a matter of waiting. Because you have no phone, the only thing I can do is to wait. That is why we're sitting in the sun on a park bench.All roads pass through here.

Carolyn has an ex-lover living in Vancouver she wants to visit. We're just passing through. We're sitting in the morning sun and I tell her about you, my ex-lover I met when I was visiting last summer.

My ex-lover, DJ is a juggler. A street performer. He always uses his hands. Just as I'm telling her about him, I see DJ get off the boat and start walking towards town with a group of his friends. He's describing something to them with his hands. And they are all lost in conversation.

I yell out, hey, DJ! And he comes over surprised to see me. I could almost hear his mind clicking. What you doing here? Sure, I like her, was last summer. We talk, greet each other and are glad to see one another again.

Later, I'm on this hulk of a ship. The bottom has a trap door that opens out. It was an ex torpedo launch boat, now empty of cargo. Special pumps unload water after the floors are cleaned – we close the doors and pump the water out. The ship raises up out of the water because there's no ballast and the additional air in the hull makes it lighter like a balloon.

The ship is in danger of tipping over because it's top heavy, and too much out of the water. We're all standing out on the deck steadying the ship with our hands on the dock, doing okay until the glassine sea changes and becomes littered with debris.

The debris is made of the floating mussel shells and clams, and pumice rock floating on the waves. The waves rise higher in the sea churns. A carpet of stones,

Now we're off the boat, and to the right of us is an estero protected from the waves of the sea beyond the islands. The water is bath temperature and brilliant.

I have two books in my hands. One may be a Russian novel, or maybe a Bible, and the other is a text on critical thinking since Plato. They're big fat books. The kind that make your wrists hurt if you carry them with hand and thumb wrapped around the spine of the book.

I'm entering the water and both of my hands are filled with these books. For some reason clear only to my subconscious, I know I mustn't let go of these books, to lose them would be unpardonable. I am a keeper of these books.

The water sweeps me away and I am pulled toward the open sea.

I am able to keep my head out of the water but I can't use my hands to swim to safety because of the books.

The whirlpool inundates me and I still won't let go of the books. I start to swim in the books in my hands I use as paddles. They are only effective when I hold the spines and covers tightly closed as I raise my hands to make a stroke. The cramps in my wrist are unbearable. Fire shoots up the inside of my forearms as the ligaments knot into balls of oxygen-starved sinew.

I kick harder with my legs. They have the strength to get me through this turbulent water and I head toward shore. That opening maw of the ocean sucks at the gate of land wanting to devour anything in its path.

Some of the swimmers willingly forward. Others resist. I make it to the land and fall face forward on the shore. The beach is made of stones. The waterlogged books fall open with clumps of pages stuck together. It's as if the Bible were drowned. Pages stuck together and all those words locked within—and my friends are nowhere in sight.

9/29/1981
added 10/16

POEM TO THE MAN NEXT DOOR

POEM TO THE MAN NEXT DOOR

Newly divorced, you sit inside
listening to country and western.
The cabin, smaller than life.
Your possessions spill out the door,
And your wife comes to visit with the kids.
You thought about having the two,
maybe three kids with you,
but something came up.
Maybe it was the trailer
and the old truck you like to take fishing,
or the motorcycle,
or maybe it was the job that stopped you.
Newly impoverished,
you wear your genitals on your heart,
hoping someone will notice.
And the dog peed on the tires
of one of your lovers
the next morning.
When the toaster oven dings
you consider answering the phone.
But the game on TV
is winding down to a conclusion.

8/1981
10/15/2015

I thought that I typed this poem up before, here's the original hand-written copy from Port Townsend, so that definitively dates it; this is an original draft, the final poem probably had different line breaks, and revisions, so this is a placeholder until I find my old work.

Port Townsend

This town, once the biggest port outside of New York in the 1890s, is where the Chinese had carved tunnels under the streets, some tunnels are still standing. Dock Street is gone now, Water Street is the main drag.

They had to call it uptown because the uppity ladies wouldn't shop here. Water Street, where the red light is now, is for the ferry traffic.

Across from the Town Tavern, is a building the old guy inherited on the condition that he improve it, but he was caught tunneling under Water Street. Some say he was headed for the bank. No one really knows for sure. The city fathers were upset when one day Water Street caved in right in front of his building.

The year before last, he had boarded up all the windows, and before that, all the metal Victorian cornices were taken off. This year, he's unboarding a few of the windows and is painting the sashes blue. Like the sky.

This town, once a whore's town, is now a literary town. All the poets are well read. It's still a whore's town. There are red lights shining on the streets at night and, after dark, the literary whores flood the streets like migrant workers in a tent city.

Tourists and Winnebagos with California license plates cautiously drive through town to the ferry dock. They come into the Town Tavern looking for something harder than the soft liquor license allows. And we stare at their improbable attire, women wearings nylons with shorts, and men in perma-press suits. All the old hippies here are working as bartenders, and caretakers. it's all a juggling act.

I keep coming back to this town like a bad penny. A friend of mine, Sharon Doubiago, moved here to escape a broken heart. Little do I know, that this year, my heart will be in the same repair shop. Hearts are not made of porcelain, but of grist and sinew and blood.

There's that poignant moment of initiation. We all recognize the place where broken hearts either mend, or evolve into some other plane.

Whore hearts, we're all whores with hearts of gold, the wrong color for blood. Gold, the correct color for lizard blood. As we sniff out the color-coded hearts of those around us, our lizard eyes narrow, we taste the air with our forked tongues, and we retreat into reptilian silence.

Tourists pour into the Town Tavern. You can tell what time of day it is by the number of disembarked people at the bar. Like the ebb and flow of waves, the oak and glass double-doors swing to and fro, as the tourist surging in from the ferry, feel the need to slake their great thirst.

The man I am having an affair with is having trouble finding the bedroom where he last left his heart. He thinks his capacity for love is greatly influenced by his capacity for pain. I'm a transient blow-in. There's the bond that ties us all together, here in this town of whores. Down at the bar, we paint it red.

August, 1981

ACROSS THE BLUE OF GLACIERS

ACROSS THE BLUE OF GLACIERS

A thin line of flowers stretches
across the blue of glaciers

Mountains meet head on
like rippling bones bleached gray

Glistening whales resurface among the ice flows

Their spume spraying great hunks of sky

Across the water  blue streaks on sparkling snow

The alcoholic snores of glaciers calving,
wraps around the heart like a blanket
as we snuggle in, summer nightfall on the tundra.

I am not a fisherman's wife
throwing back the day's catch

The snow is the color of roses,
red roses, and I dream of primordial suns.

7/1981
Port Townsend, Washington
added 10/16

FROSTBITE

FROSTBITE

The glacier rose up like a tongue
lolling out of the frigid mouth of the water

Ptarmigans, half white, half brown feathers

chuckled in the low undergrowth
of huckleberry and mountain heather.

The sun warmed us as our feet
crunched over bauchy ice and rotten snow
as we approached the summit.

A thunderbolt cracked,

stirring the thick air and our senses.
Ptarmigans dove for cover
as snowflakes covered their mottled backs.

Hypothermia begins
with a rhythmic rotation of frozen fingers.

Soon numbed cheeks cease to sting,
earlobes feel warm. And skin turns from red to blue.
White patches of creamy skin
are the first signs of frostbite.

One begins to feel the need for sleep,
such euphoric warmth, and dreams,
a jumbled series of memories
out of proper sequence, taking you further.
Soon you reconstruct your memories
to fit the shape of snowdrifts
and then you float into that warm tide
of snow, smiling.

7/29/1981
Port Townsend, WA
added 10/16

THIS KISS

THIS KISS 

    for DJ Hamilton

This maiden voyage of tongues,
Sleek suckle of cavorting seals
Undulating in kelp beds,
Capriciously nesting,
And antlered,
Rutting under the gibbous moon
Not the watery abyss
Licking shriveled toes and lips
Left too long in the bath.

7/29/81 Pt Townsend
rev. 8/81; 4/87 Sonoma County Stump 8/18/81

On the Dosewallips Trail, take 2

Stones sink into the snow leaving holes that drop down into the pack. The pack rearranges itself with a slow downhill crunching steps down from its own weight.

The roaring of last nights trees gives way to the multiple drone of today's flies. I am the only living thing around. The horse flies follow me for miles, flying a halo around me, each wanting to claim my flesh as his own.

A few clouds drift by, leaving folded shadows like black snow patches draped over the peaks. Talus slides encourage the flowers to grow in long lines downward, one plant below the other, the upper offering protection to the ones below, and the ones below offering protection in turn, and so on.

As I hike on the trail, my feet crunching on rocks slowly convert the finely shredded talus into dust.

The mountains are breathing the honey of flowers. The panorama of the Olympic Mountains becomes too beautiful for words. Soon the eyes ceases to see. I drop over the crest into the eastern rim where the starkness of The Brothers and Anderson Pass pacify my burning, too bright eye.

The vegetation too is different on this side. Taller shrubs and flowers. Also less variety. The trees are tortured trunks leaning upward into the hill for stability. Sometimes they crawl back up the slope 4 feet or more along the ground, trying to get back to where they first set root.

July 1981
added 10/16

Oral History: The old fisherman said

The old fisherman said: (I didn’t get his name).

I'm originally from East Washington. Always wanted to fish. So I got myself a boat. Sold my ranch. Always wanted to see the ocean. Wanted to fish. Wanted to ocean fish.

 I wound up in a partnership. I had a gas store back in the day, those were too loose and fancy free days, I was in a partnership. See that gas store, the feller paid for half of it. Then he wanted me to buy him out. I didn't have the money, and he gave it to me.

Then one day out of the blue, I was out of business. I sold it and bought me a another boat, a cruiser 24 feet, by golly. I fished it a year. Then I got another boat. Fished two or three more years. 

Met a fellow down in Glencove, I traded my boat in for three or four lots. Then I traded those lots for a 30-foot cruiser. I converted it into a trawler and finished eight or nine years. Salmon mostly. 

Yeah, moneywise, I made a good deal. Made $2000. Good money then, by golly. I could've traded the two of those lots and had the lots and the boat yeah.

I live right on the beach now. No home, no boat. Yeah, but that fella, he had a heart attack and died in his sleep. And then his two brothers took over. They'll inherit the lots I owned, and the trailer and the boat. And damned if they didn't sell at all for hundred grand. 

To think I got it all going with that first boat that I paid $700 for, after I sold my ranch.

I felt like hell today, my wife, she went downtown, and maybe she'll bring me some dinner. Yeah, I fished eight or nine years for salmon. I'll be 80 next month. Doubt if I'll make it through the winter. My dog's 17 years old. He's deaf. Been that way for years. He doesn't pay much attention to my wife. Yes sir, he's a one-man dog. Yes.

7–29–81 Jefferson County Beach, Port Townsend, Washington

SANGRE DE LUNA (poem)

SANGRE DE LUNA
Only the heart remains now...
—Eugene Ruggles

1. The water, within the foot of the ferry dock
is in full flood tide. The sand shifts,
raises like water, in syncopated rhythm.
Fish leap towards the dock light.
Its red glare rippling on the water,
floods the high ceiling of the loft,

On the beach, a senile dog
gives two barks and a howl—
like a child that's forgotten why he's crying,
but likes the way the air stings his vocal chords,
a primal sound wrapping the heart like a blanket.

The showerhead drizzles on my body.
Somewhere in this hotel, another mass of water
is flushed hack into the Sound,
and I stand soaped up like a cloud
in a dry shower waiting for the toilets to fill
and the drains to quit backing up.

A strong odor of kelp in the shower stall
and the water whispers to me
the name of a woman. Jasmina.
Her kelp hair, thick fistfuls  of it
like a prayer rug, cover her back.

2. She was in the cantina where you didn't stop off.

She  invited you in and you entered  like a demon lover.

For two dollars you drank all  the tequila you could  hold.

Balanced like a tightrope walker on a slack rope,

you swung great hunks of the sky across the room.

But I am telling you this. You wouldn't remember. 

You were never there. It was only a dream.

Jasmina, with the silvered earrings 

in the red skirt, never danced  for you.

Late in life, you decided to take up climbing trees.

The apples were as red as the roses on her skirt.

You remember the scent hung heavily in the room.

More memories flood back. A bare window 

and a door covered with an old woolen army blanket.

A gift from someone who couldn't pay.

She danced  for you.

The record player rasped its last melody.

She danced, the fire of the rhythm 

beat into the floorboards

and the dust sifted through the cracks

into the drinks of the men    

who were waiting in the barroom below.

But you were never there. It was only a dream.

You awoke in a strange hotel bed alone.

A red line running across your neck  

from your ear to your throat

and the only thing missing was your pants.

The needle hisses at the end of the record


to the alcoholic snores of an old man

yellowed spittle and hair oil on the pillow.

Outside the window, the red glare of the harbor light

offers a semblance of perpetual day, 

a primordial sun, volcanic glare, red smoke, red ash.

You thought you heard the whispering of skirts

but it was a seagull that landed on the dock.

The odor of pitch oozing from fallen trees.

3. In the Town Tavern, we bang down another beer,

watch sunlight sneak across the border into Victoria.

This gloom hangs over the peninsula 

like a shelf fungus jutting from a tree. 

Clouds cling to mountains 

rising two miles straight up from sea level.

I followed one canyon in from the ocean

deep into the heart of the mountains.

One step out would have saved me from remembering

but I was distracted by flowers growing in a crevice.

Glaciers across the continent are retreating

except the one I'm standing on front of,


it cracks and shudders like a god trying to get out.

The  only way to escape is by water—drop by drop.   


We're waiting for summer, but the night is dressed in winter.

I am not afraid of the frozen wave of the glacier,

or of its undertow of blue light.

Who is playing the strains of the guitar?

The room is encased in black velvet 

except for the red light pouring in from the docks.

Sangre de Luna. The seagulls are asleep. Sangre.

That red light  shining on the water, like blood.

Sangre. Sangre. An eclipse bleeds into the dream.

Somewhere a man cries out in his sleep for Jasmina

and the odor of tar hangs heavily in this room.

Maureen Hurley

7/29/81

Pt.Townsend, WA
from Sangre de Luna (dream)

added 10/16, revised 7/17 (David Bromige's suggestions.)

Sangre de Luna (dream)

Sangre de Luna

The cloudbank rests on the Olympics like a shelf or a tree fungus, cuts off sunlight with mist a thousand feet thick. While Victoria is in full sunlight across the Straits.The smell of the tide overpowers the odor of breakfast, it was a bargain for $0.69. I got a whole-wheat sticky bun, coffee in a Styrofoam cup, muddy coffee by Cremora.

Last night was an unusually high tide, was it the full moon? In the water, within the foot of the ferry dock, a flood tide. The sand shifts, races like the water, only in a slower syncopated rhythm. Fish leap towards the dock lights. Its red glare rippling on the water, the same lights that flooded our high ceilings.

 Under flannel sheets we snuggle. God I haven't had those since I was a kid sleeping in my grandfather's bed, in my grandmothers room painted green. When he died, I moved into that green room, and his quilt became mine. It had roses on it, I remember.

On the beach an old dog barks and howls, more like the way a child who is forgotten why he is crying, does, but likes the way air passes through his vocal chords, weaving primal sounds around the human heart. I understand his loneliness, like the way the waves understand the slant of the shore.

It's a soft Irish day. No it's a grand one. A fucking grand one. It doesn't matter which. Take your pick, they all mean the same thing in the end. This is not Ireland. My grandfather, dead these past 25 years.

The rain drizzles, the shower drizzles more rain on my body. Somewhere in the building, another mass of water is being flushed back into the sound, and I stand there soaked up like a sodden cloud in a dry shower, waiting for the toilets to fill up, and the drains to quit backing up.

There's the odor of kelp in the shower stalls, and all I can think about is a woman I made up in a dream, named Jasmina, whose red roses could almost be plucked off her skirt, and she danced to the strains of the guitar. Sangre de Luna. Her kelp hair, thick fistfulls of it, like a prayer rug down her back.

She was in the cantina where you didn't stop off. She invited you in, and you entered like a demon lover. For two dollars you drank all the tequila you could hold, balanced like a tightrope walker on a slack rope, you swing great hunks of sky across the room.

2. But I am telling you this you, you wouldn't remember, you were never there. Jasmine never was a Mexican queen with the silver earrings, in the red skirt who danced for you.

Late in life you decided to take up climbing trees. The apples were as red as the roses on her skirt. You remember the scent of apples that hung heavily in the room. Windows and doors covered with old woolen army blankets. A gift from someone who couldn't pay.

She danced for you. The old record player rasped out a melody. She danced on the fire of the rhythm that beat it's way back into the floorboards and dust seeped into the drinks in the barroom below.

No, you were never there. You woke up in bed alone, a red line running from your ear to your throat. The only thing missing was your pants.

In the next room, the hissing of a needle on the old record, the alcoholic snores of an old man. The spittle, yellowed and dry on the corners of his mouth and the three days growth on his beard contrasted with the oily black smudges on the pillow.

Outside the window, a steady red glare in the water, I am not afraid of its undertow. What if my feet should get stuck under its advancing embrace? What if I had stepped off that ridge? Or in front of the moving car stolen by this kid who ran away from yet another foster home, and the town police knew him by sight?

Only I am hearing the strains of the guitar. I am throwing back my kelp hair and dancing. I have been dancing so long, my feet no longer have shoes. of the light brings about a perpetual day.

The primordial volcanic sun viewed through red smoke and ash. You thought you heard the swish of a skirt, but a seagull lands on the dock and creosote is a kind of oil oozing up from the pores of fallen trees and great lumps of tar float in from the tankers offshore.

And in another part of town, a kid climbs an apple tree. His red shirt does not have roses embroidered on it. From the tree, he can see the ocean and the tankers anchored offshore are old US fleets sold to foreign countries for scrap. He jumps down and runs along the sand singing a song about a dancer named Jasmina.

3. In the Town Tavern you sit and drink down another American beer and see how the sunlight is shining in Victoria across the border. This weather hangs over at the Peninsula like a great shelf fungus jutting out from a tree. Only the clouds are attached to the mountains that raise nearly 8000 feet up from sea level.

Did I tell you I followed one of the canyons in from the ocean. I penetrated deep into the heart of the mountains. At the pass, I turned towards the ridge. A spine of land, and I stood a long time looking down at 2000 feet drop.

On three sides, one step out could've saved me. But I was distracted by the color of flowers growing in a crag, that the mountain goats, for some reason, avoided. There were alpine roses in full bloom, like the ones growing in the Swiss Alps that summer nine years before.

The glacier is retreating. All glaciers over all the continents are retreating, except the one I stood in front of, the Columbia glacier, and I listened to it crack and shudder like some great God trying to get out. His only method of escape was by water, drop by drop. It was as if he waited for summer, a day warm enough, to melt ice, but ot always brought the chill.

I placed my hand on the edge of that dirty blue tongue but could feel no sensation in my fingers, it was more of a burn and ice. My fingers went into my mouth instinctively, like a child.

I am not afraid of the frozen wave of this glacier, or its undertow. What if my feet should get stuck under its advancing embrace? What if I had stepped out off that ridge? Or in front of the moving car, stolen by the kid who ran away from yet another foster home, and the police knew him by sight.

Only I am hearing the strains of the guitar playing. I am throwing back my kelp hair and I am dancing. I have been dancing so long my feet no longer have shoes.

I walked 17 miles in one day just to get out of that valley and away from that cliff. I am barefoot, my calves are swollen. Who is playing the guitar? The room is dark except the red light coming in from the docks. Sangre de Luna. I hear the swishing of skirts. This seagulls are asleep. That red light shining on the water. Sangre. Sangre. Somewhere a man cries out in his sleep the name of Jasmna. The scent of apples hangs heavily in this room.
Port Townsend
7/29/1981

missing final prose hardcopy so it has typos. Needs revision.
See also  SANGRE DE LUNA (poem)
added 12/16

The Woman in Question: A Story

This is a story, someone else's story, not told quite right, almost not told at all, about a man who forgot and what happened because he forgot to remember. It could be a story about the trickster coyote, or it could be the man next door, but most likely it is about your ex-lover whom you never quite forgave and never quite forgot either. However, this is not an essential element of the story. There are no parables, no great hidden truths. But I can't convince you, your opinions are your own. There is always the possibility of meaning derived from the most thinly veiled of stories. This is a story about a man who thought really there was nothing he kept hidden from himself. Like some great body of truth. And of a woman, for no good reason, loved this man. This story is not about the woman who never quite recovered her heart, but of the man who owned his own heart so thoroughly, he knew what he was about. Once upon a time there was a man. What did he forget? Besides the fairytale. He said he never loved the woman and yet he couldn't stop touching her. This went on for years, just touching without feeling. And he said he never loved. Her. An anorexic parable of plenitude denied.

July 1981

SEA URCHINS

Sea urchins, with mouths like Diogenes lanterns.
River otters swim facedown and eat on land.
Sea otters swim on their backs and eat on water
using their chests as tables, they're
madly hammering clams with rocks.
I think of this same stretch of ocean
up and down this coast—from Baja
to the Bering Sea, ah yes, teaching me
of the return, the return. Prodigal.


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

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

Dream Sequence journal

7/24  dream sequence

Didn't sleep till 4 AM. Thought of Lee and Mora together until it drove me frantic with rage and I was saturated with sweat. When I finally did sleep the dreams that came forth were bizarre.

I was given a rare mouse with purple fur. I had to transport it to the other end of the school corridor where some lockers were. I got on someone's case for having my key to the locker. She was using it for too far too much. 

And I was also dragging this heavy lamp base and stand with my left hand. No one would help me. It caught on a crack and struck me. My hand was wet. I looked down at the blood, feeling no injury. 

The mouse was on the pavement facedown. Death twitches, its right side eviscerated, and from his stomach, protrusion, like a clam foot, he was struggling for life. I thought for a moment he could be saved by a few stitches but I realized he was too badly injured. The mouse, other than it's purple, and cuddly, didn't mean that much to me. That I had gotten attached to it.

While walking down the corridor I wondered what shall I do with it? Kill it myself? Finish suffering? I, who it accidentally inflicted it all upon this mouse? From under a sweater crawled a white cat who immediately grasped the situation and started to eat the mouse before it fully died.

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

See True Writing, another version of 7/25 entry

SONG OF THE PRAIRIE

SONG OF THE PRAIRIE

         —for Meridel LeSueur & Sharon Doubiago

The mindful trust of this body is held

in the blind spots of the eye; a memory

of the prairie where Crazy Horse last

stood. Flowers grow naked on the graves

of those whose blood nourished the soil

a hundred years after the last buffalo

robe rotted into dust. The circling

sparrowhawk encompasses the souls

of those who were lost in anger, hatred, 

and in feat. A song of sorrow for those 

who walk alone.

July, 1981

Port Townsend, WA

The Child in the Bell, CPITS Statewide Anthology, 1981-82

True Writing

1. The clouds of Mt. Baker and its smaller twin poke out of the marine layer of mist. Whether cloud, or real, no matter. It exists behind those islands floating on the water. Galway says, "you can't quit writing, ever. Not like the way a dog quits killing chickens when the carcass is tied to his neck until it rots."

The lenticular clouds of Mt. Baker expand and contract into cumulous shapes. The true skin of writing never buries itself oyster-like under the waves of sorrow. The mountains and the curve of the land nourish the horizon of the sky, and, the milk teeth of clouds sink into the air.

Like the low-oiled hum of machinery,  the sound of ships on the Straits of San Juan de Fuca interrupt the waves of sorrow, and, the whispering of the inland waves tells me that I've spent too little time writing, denying my dubious craft. I am learning to sit steadily laden with words, waiting for wind, to set sail.

2. Last night I swung the double-headed ax, striking at the anger in my bones. The axe swung unsteadily at first, became sure-bitted, and I find my rhythm, swinging the singing blade that bites the smooth inner grain of gleaming heartwood. Stacking wood for long winter nights.

My  lover, and a friend have found a way to ease the ticking of clocks, and a way to outwit the silent whitewashed walls standing in evening shadow, I wanted to hang my heart around my neck and let the open wounds run into the streets with the black blood of the sewers. Deep inside is where the days and nights of poems lie like sleeping dogs.

I imagine waves of sorrow flooding the cobbled beach of the Sound, and my heart is tucking itself in like a snail, afraid to poke wayward antennae into the air. Stasis. The shell of home, a prison.

Climbing the mountains, I have labored long, stretch unused muscle, sucked new air into my lungs. I am learning the readiness of lung and leg. As I stop to browse on thimbleberries and wild cherries, my tongue puckers to the strange acidic tang of fruit, rotted before it's had a chance to ripen. Like my writing.

At the end of my journey, I sit on the beach at sunset with a bottle of California wine, taking in the secret green heart of grapes before the harvest, this lifetime vow of words, a rare vintage calling me home.

7/24/1981
Pt. Townsend, WA
added & revised 10/16