Dancing on the Brink

WHAT struck me most about coming home to the north coast of California after a long, wet summer in Europe, was the sharp, aromatic odor of bay laurel, sweet poison oak and sun-burnt hay, flavored with the acrid, thirsty dust—the mellifluous odor of Indian summer making me nostalgic for the past, for memory hidden in the crenulated folds of hills. Buñuel said: You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Pieces of memory resurrect in the mirrored San Francisco Bay and Mt. Tamalpais, the fire-ravaged Oakland hills. They resurrect against a cerulean sky, steep, tawny hillsides cloaked in sizzling non-native oat grasses like sleeping lions, and thick green-black oaks roiling in their crotches—so sexual—it surprises me anew each time I return. It steals one’s breath away, reducing all semblance of speech to that of monosyllabic moaning of prespeech. They say our earliest memories are the strongest. I was conceived on Mt. Tamalpais, my mother watching Point Reyes disappear over my father’s right shoulder at sunset. The lost pieces of memory, a mended patchwork quilt over the bed of time.

A South African writer I know coined the word outgasm. I want to tell Breyten an outgasm of light dances on the bay; I’ve taken in some of his memory into my own. The parched savanna juxtaposed against the funereal odor of escapee calla lilies. “Arum lilies here?” exclaimed a Capetown realtor from the group we led on a hike past an abandoned ranch to view the mouth of the Golden Gate from Indian Cove. I mouth the unfamiliar word, arum; the sarcophagi of Egypt or the pelican daughters of Lear comes to mind. Alcatraz. Angel Island. We resurrect place names of the Coast Miwok, mouthing a dead language: Tamalpais—the land of the Tomales, O’onopais—the land of buckeyes, and Yulupa—the place of the shining Golden Gate. Explorer John C. Frémont’s epithet, Chrysopylae, a historical footnote. Sadly, all that survives of the Ohlone tribal stories of this landscape is: Dancing on the brink of the world. We gently retrace our steps along the seething faultline, the Farallones and the Point Reyes Peninsula draw our eyes to the curvature of the sea’s final horizon.



© 1997, revised 2000 Maureen Hurley

Postcard from Adrian Mitchell

Amsterdam Journal: time slips away, Charles McGeehan's flat 7/10

10 July

How time slips away from me. I'm feeling guilty because there is always so much to do, and I'm not trying to accomplish it. Yesterday, I stayed at home, nursing my period. Such bad cramps. I had to soak in the tub at 3 AM to relieve the pain. My cousin Sinead called from Petaluma, she has an international line at work. She said to go out on the day trips and don't let the time fritter away.

I've been in Holland nearly a month now, and I have done very little by way of touristing. And I was so busy with Poetry International the first two weeks, I was truly exhausted by the time I got to Charles McGeehan's flat.

Charles is Bert Schierbeek's official translator. And then not having a physical space to sleep, was truly distressing. Charles lives in complete and utter chaos. Every room in the house is filled with paper, and there are tiny rabbit warrens where you can move from room to room. A lot of my time was spent in making his place habitable. Herman was right at home here. Neither have any domestic skills.

But I have limits. I literally slept mid-book stacks and made my bed with blankets on top of boxes of poetry. I was pretty busy during the first week at Charles's flat making some semblance of order out of decades of chaos. If we weren't on the ground floor, we'd be in danger of capsizing. Perhaps because Charles has had brain surgery, is why he's so chaotic. But Herman has no excuse.

Moving here was the first respite I've had in months and months. What did you do when you are truly tired, and need a rest? And too tired to rest? Fill it with things to occupy your time? Or catch up? My heavy periods didn't help. You're supposed to do things on vacation. I'm merely existing, living Dutch, as I always have, whenever I come here. My morning ritual of Dowe Egberts espresso, and wafer-thin slices of ouda Amsterdam cheese on dark bread toast sustains me.

Still so much to do. Visit Wim Hofman in Vlissingen, Maya/Maija in Almeer, and Jan Bogaerts in Liessel. I'm still not sure if we're going to France with Bertaijn, Bert's sister, and Charles' ex-wife, next weekend. A part of me is waiting for Waldo to call, dammit.

I still want to go museum-ing here and in Rotterdam. I gravitate towards museums the way others visit pubs or clubs. I still want to visit Leiden and Utrecht and Gouda. Groeningen is out as Maria van Daalen is teaching in Iowa.

I need to finish my translation article on Breyten Breytenbach and I need to also find an Afrikaans dictionary in order to finish my translations of Breytenbach's work. I am writing an article on Poetry International for Poetry Flash, perhaps interview Martin Mooij and Jules Deelder, the Night Mayor of Rotterdam, for it truly is the end of an era.

I'm hurt because Vins hasn't called me, or Marcel Koops, or Jan Bogaerts, for that matter—so much for old friends. I’ve been here a month. I guess it’s better that I’m staying with Charles after all.

Poetry International journal, photo notes, translations & postcards from Vins

I finally developed the Tri-X photos and pushed the developing time to 1600 ASA, I had 12 rolls from P1 to 11 and one from Nord Brabant and Belgium. I push the film to 1600 and everything looks pretty good. Not too grainy. Not having a real telephoto lens was a liability so there’s a flat sameness to the podium shots and I don’t have all that many close-up candid shots. 

I’ve got two more rolls of Ilford KP2 still to develop, and I still haven’t made proof sheets. I only got a chance to peek at the negatives, and most of them look clear. 

My instant camera is lousy at group shots. The electronic eye keeps focusing on the far wall, no matter how I try to trick it. So I have too many shots of Bei Dao, Duo Duo and Paul Vangelisti, but the flash is so handy. I need a compact flash system, and a better camera. My flash cable broke on my Pentax. The Minolta is fine for scenery where the focus isn’t critical. But other than that, it’s not worth carrying around.

In the mail arrives two more postcards from Vins, one of a pun on Magritte’s painting, This is not a Pipe. Mam-am fume une pipe: women bring home the bread. He wrote, “So good, your call, deep joy jumps up in me on hearing your voice. And I love you as deep, or deeper, yet than ever before.” 

The other card, with two translations of poems from a Dutch woman poet, about the writing process, called Children. 

I needed some photo IDs of our Belgium trip. We visited an outrageous oval castle outside of Belgium, a steel van Beersel in Beginhof, in the town of Diest. There was also a round church in the town of miracles is Scherpenheuvel, or Sharp hill. During the Middle-Ages pilgrimages were made by pagans to a holy cross-shaped oak. The tree was "Christianized" with a statue of the virgin Mary. Clearly a Celtic hangover.

The river in Louvain or Leuven is called the Dijle, where the medieval drown girl, Magrietken, or Mariika, met her end in the moat and became a saint.

No date given

Rotterdam journal, flying home

3 July. Last night, one of those final nights where hell is naturally defined as part of the process of saying goodbye. Poliny, a vice of icebergs as if spring, urged them south, ride the Gulfstream towards North America. Ice shelves at the north pole. I never knew that the polini were so tortures. It’s as if the eye of the sky had opened.

4 July. Flying over Baffin Bay and then, seeing the long striations on the rock, the finger lakes continue to amaze me. The relentless scouring of the glaciers from eons ago and still the land hasn’t recovered.

Am I looking at the Yukon territories? We’re pretty far north, you can see forest fires in the north, somewhere above Saskatchewan. The Columbia River below us, shining in the afternoon sun, a bend in the river. A lot of water even from this height. It’s big, not as big as the Mississippi, but bigger than the European rivers, even the Rhine. The mouth of the Rhine, Rotterdam, the world is poured in, and the mad rivers small by comparison. 

Herman, Ton and I took a boat trip up the harbor, visiting lock after lock, the cranes like strange beast at play, at rest. Ton, a drummer friend of Mark Peters, has become seduced by poetry, though. The festival is a bit sketchy. Herman brings him to several events as he is a houseguest. I had arranged the connection via Mark while I was in Lissel with Jan, but I digress… 

Back to the landscape, the only thing I can believe in.

Snowy summit, one of the cascade peaks, ravaged Mt. Saint Helens, and Hood at the end. We’re flying at a slight angle. Hard to get my bearings as there’s too much cloud cover all the way down. There is eternal sunlight this far north so close to the solstice. 

We experience mid-day all the way home, having left at 3:30 PM and arrive in San Francisco a scant two hours later with nine hours in the air. Stoppage in time. Suspended animation  Time is passing for us. Nine hours, we are experiencing some kind of adverse time travel where we age five times faster than the clock by flying with the sun. West to the edge of the continent. 

Of course the reverse is true when flying east, but it’s not so obvious that we arrive in a different timeframe. It was it is not so spectacular to fly back Mid day when there’s a cloud cover most of the way, or in the evening when it’s dark. I prefer to fly on the cusp of dawn and evening because the transition from light to dark is spectacular. 

Nothing has replaced that first vision of the earth’s curvature. When I was 19 on my way to London, over the Polar route, the plane turned, and I was looking straight up into the night, sky, stars, and all, and the curve of the earth casting a shadow upon the sunset, below me, in pale green and vermilions, and above me the stars. I have flown to Europe many times since then, and have yet to see such a sight. 

I’ve spent over four months in Amsterdam since last July and I’m coming back to teach a two-day class, a $200 commitment that wasn’t worth it, but I had promised. I could’ve stayed another three weeks. I love the process of living elsewhere, a part of the year but when I return, I don’t want to be here. This place doesn’t seem so much like home, but like stepping back into a mold, where I no longer fit.

My second night home, I dreamt I was still in Europe, and everything was cluttered and dark. I slept, walked to the front door and stood naked in the waxing moonlight, looking out over the shadows, thinking I was still in Europe, only to discover this cluttered dark past was my home, it was America and I didn’t feel like I belonged to her any longer. 

Living so long with Russians and Europeans since 1989 and half-and-half since 1998. I’ve lived nearly a year abroad since August 1989. It is my intention to try to get away from the states at least one time yearly in three month intervals.

Well, I’ve managed to fritter away several hours, watering, picking boysenberries, making pie and doing laundry. I’m housesitting at Marsha Connell’s in Santa Rosa.

I am in need of mindlessness and tranquility alone in America on the Fourth of July, the sizzle of sprinklers, the sighs of pines, the fireworks and sirens. The heat has bleached the color from the horizon as if in the pastel landscape not favored by Mary Silverwood, or Marsha Connell for that matter. 

This is the kind of day to sit on a chaise lounge and let the water ply over my feet. Anything to keep from writing about what matters—why do I keep avoiding it? I barely wrote while I was in Amsterdam, I’ve barely written anything since February. I’ve barely dreamed and suddenly I’m remembering my dreams for the first time in ages. 

Also, today was the first time I actually slept in until 9 AM, too keyed up at my place, too many things to do, too many pressures upon me. To sleep, per chance to dream.

And all those feelings towards the futility of life, call it depression, or am I deeply discouraged. Hard to say. Only that I want another life and I seem to be locked into this one, which allows me to travel, but something is missing and I know the lack of family in relationship is part of it. 

I’m finally tired of being alone. Funny most of the time. I love it. Maybe it’s because this is the first time I’ve been alone in months. First living part-time here at Marsha’s while doing the book, then with Vins for six weeks. I can barely stand to be still, some inner force is driving me onward every 10 to 15 minutes. This is how I’m writing this journal today, in spurts, afraid to be all in. What is lying in back of my subconsciousness? I never finished the journal.

We fly over Crater Lake, and see the bathtub ring of the central valley as we near Shasta. Shasta! An extraordinary snow, God, rising from all that lava. The return to America punctuated with the pristine beauty of the land compared to Europe’s cities and ruins and civilization. This is why I need both places. 

A part of me can never be free, or relax without the wilderness, another part needs the antiquities. Somewhere in all of this, I need both alone and a home and a relationship. Lee is right. Where I live is depressing. 

I still don’t know if I have my CAC grant, I am at a 3+, number 50 and the budget hasn’t been cut, I suspect I’m right on the borderline for funding, all residencies have first priority. We shall see. Reentry is rough.

Poetry International 1993/1994, v1

POETRY INTERNATIONAL 1993/1994 (1st draft)    Maureen Hurley

Holland's enormously successful Poetry International festival is the cultural highlight of Rotterdam—a futuristic concrete city known for its shipyards and little else. Razed to the ground by the Nazis in 1940, the city completely rebuilt itself from the rubble; some say it's culturally brain-dead. It's the largest industrial port in the world. In 1968, there wasn't much happening: no TV or radio stations, no publishing houses—in short, no culture. There still isn't much to see in Rotterdam today, and little to distinguish it from any other modern city if it hadn't been for a ship of fools who decided to declare verbal warfare on Rotterdam's lack of culture by hurling poems at it.

“WWII was long over, it was obvious something had to be done,” says Martin Mooij, the director of Poetry International. According to Mooij, the budding Rotterdam Arts Council invited him to become their director of literature. His job, to develop a literary community, was a bit like sending Don Quixote out with oars to joust with windmills. The 25-year-old organization has spawned other innovative projects and events besides the readings: a Dutch and Italian poetry exchange, translation workshops, a poetry archives and documentation center, putting pressure on repressive governments to release incarcerated poets, painting lines of poetry on garbage trucks. . .

Yes, painting lines of poetry on garbage trucks. . . It's an odd ark indeed when all 400 of Rotterdam's municipal garbage trucks flaunt lines of poetry: “Good morning beauty,” and “Always be clean so that the air will be clean.” Mooij explains, “One was the title of a book, and the other, a line from Rafael Oberti. Sometimes I just get crazy ideas for publicity. Rotterdam gets 30 to 40 new trucks a year. That's 30 to 40 more poets whose work gets read. At this point, I know everything about the cleaning service.”

Holland's second most important city, Rotterdam, has put the Netherlands on both the shipping and the poetry map. Amsterdam is the capitol of the Netherlands; both cities support one million inhabitants. (For those of you a bit shaky on geography, think Dutch: wooden shoes, Edam and Gouda cheese, tulips, windmills and canals: sorry, the story of the little boy Hans Brinker with his finger in the dyke is an American invention. I'll skip the historical legacies we owe to the Dutch: the pilgrim fathers, and New York nee  Nieuwe Amsterdam, Waal Straat, Haarlem. . .)

Since 1970, over 1000 poets from all over the world have boarded Rotterdam's gangplanks to participate in the annual ten-day festival held during the third and fourth weeks of June. For many poets from Holland and Flanders, the festival offers a unique opportunity to read with poets of international repute. Past luminaries include the European poets: Herbert Zbigniew of Poland, Vasko Popa of Yugoslavia, Miroslav Holub of Czechoslovakia, Lar Gustafsson of Sweden, Gunther Grass of Germany, Seamus Heaney of Ireland; The Russians: Bella Akhmadulina, Andrei Voznesenski, Yosef Trotsky; poets from the Americas: Allen Ginsberg, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Octavio Paz of Mexico, Pablo Neruda of Chile; from the Middle East: Yehuda Amichi of Israel; and Randra from Indonesia. (PI archives.)

Poetry International journal, Solstice

19 June: I took photos of Joseph Brodsky, Hugo Klaus, and Japanese poet Makoto Ooka, along with Lars Gustafsen, Seamus Heaney, Miroslav Holub, Bert Schierbeek, Yehuda Amichai, Rempo Campert, and the Buddingh prize winner from Belgium, Herman Leenders.

20 June: I never got a chance to finish writing in my journal, I’m sitting by a canal in Delft again. Alone. I found the fortress at the edge of the city after going 180°, the wrong direction. Apropos. 

Vins is agitated, he forgot that Herman is supposed to come over and stay tonight, so he takes it out on me. I don’t like it one bit, I choose my battles, so I am determined not to let it bother me. I don’t want the double bind. I step outside the circle. So now Herman is going to hang out somewhere until 11 PM to assuage the situation.

It seems I have been interrupted for the nth time. I cannot go back to this journal and pick up the lost threads—even to record notes. Oh well, sometimes you just have to let it go. Happy solstice.

Poetry International journal, more networking

17 Thursday. I took photos of Lars Gustafson, Charles Simiç, and Rutger Kopeland, and some of my drawings are coming out OK. I draw in between headshots. A woman came up to me afterwards and said, you were transfixed by Rutger Kopeland weren’t you? I asked, was it that obvious? She said yes. The photographer took a photo of you too. It was so funny when Lars read a poem about a photo, he said click! just as I clicked; he looked at me sideways, and the audience laughed.

I missed the Chilean poet, oh well. I have two more nights. I was supposed to stay in Rotterdam because the metro is locked at midnight, before the readings are over. My friend Vins was a bit pissy, cranky and blue, because it’s his birthday and he was upset the whole night long. 

The big antique mirror we scored one night on the street, fell off the wall and shattered. Ominous. Glass like escaped ghosts, everywhere. So I made him a cupcake, and brought him roses and chocolate; it helped to ease the pain a bit. Anyway, I arrived late for the evening reading, but I was in time for the second set so it was OK.

Lars has performed with Poetry International four times. He was part of the first event in 1971. We went to the hospitality room afterwards and definitely that’s where the action is and where the networking happens. Leo Vroman showed me a copy of a most unusual book he made with overlays, etc. He also does some visual poetry. 

Karoly Bari and I had a strange double-translated conversation from English to Russian with Dmitri Prigov until he got the bright idea to speak to him directly in Russian; he gave me several poems already translated into English for our magazine. I also gave Dmitri Prigov copy of Glasnost. He knew many of the poets we had published and promised to get them copies. We actually did translate and print two of his poems and he admitted they were from the late 70s. I was surprised as they are totally different than, his sound poetry which borders on gibberish.

Ilya Kutek also gave me some poems as did Marjan Meijer. I gave Marjan a copy of my poems, but I don’t know if it’s particularly useful. I didn’t have flyers so I don’t know how to spell their last names. I told Rutger Kopeland that I liked his poetry, but his books were so expensive. He said to tell the bookseller to give me a copy for 20 gilders. I’m thrilled by his generosity.

One bookseller was enchanted with my student anthologies, she wants to take 10 copies to see how it will sell, with a 25 percent commission and she will pay postage. Wow. I also got a tentative job offer to work in South Africa at Durban University if they can get funding for a poetry festival. I take it all in stride, lucrative, or not. 

Someone told me that the California CPITS program makes them envious. I said that I’m here to teach poets how to do it; I just can’t seem to make contact. Naochem Winberg and Charles Simiç overheard me as they went to get wine and he handed me two glasses. His work is very mythic, but it’s more like a mini play with objects. Very surreal.

I asked Leo Vroman for a copy of his visual poem that was in the newspaper. I made a tentative date with Victor Manuel to go to the museum tomorrow, but he wasn’t sure. He had to work on translations, he reads tomorrow night.

After midnight we all went over to the all night staging of Derek Walcott’s play, Omeros, but it was in Dutch. Some of the poets read on the radio. The theater is also a live radio show. Wild. The play is in seven parts, and last until 7 AM, so there are videos and banquets going on simultaneously as the play and radio program air. Also, there are installation pieces shrines of sorts to Derek. 

I stayed till 1:30 AM and got bored and then went to the metro but everything was locked up tight so I couldn’t get to Ton’s place, and since I had a train ticket back to Amsterdam, home it was.

I made tentative plans to meet with Victor tomorrow and/or go touring with Herman and Ton and now it looks like I won’t be able to do either. Victor Manuel Mendiola said he wasn’t going to the Omeros play, and as I walked out of the theater into the lobby, a small hole in the crowd opened and we spotted each other, and there we were, dodging around bodies to verify each other with our eyes. It was pretty comical, but he was busy with the translator, so I didn’t join him.

Leo Vroman introduced me to Dutch-Israeli poet Judith Herzberg, we were a little stiff, since I had tried to make contact with her in October and she blew me off. Maybe I was stiffer than I needed to be, but I felt put off by her, and really had nothing to say to her. I surely didn’t feel like gushing. We shook hands formally, and that was it. I think I do better with the Dutch poets as they like to hang out. They are more gezellig. Not Judith.

Poetry International journal, a spontaneous combustion of translation

14. June. The Monday evening Reading schedule included Roberto Juarroz, Anne Vetger, Gonzalo Mitlán, Leo Vroman… I missed Yehuda Amichai and Homero Aradjis, two poets I actually wanted to meet, but I wound up doing some spontaneous translations with two poets I met in the hospitality café. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.

Since I wasn’t feeling up to snuff, I missed two events today, plus the beginning of the evening show. I’m not networking the way I should. I just don’t feel like chasing the stars for photos, to give them my poems, etc. it’s exhausting work, and I’m not up for it. (Not that I have anything to give—but poetry, in myriad tomgues, is the only true currency).

My poetry partner in crime, editor Herman Berlandt also never showed up for the evening event. So I was a little worried about him, but they assured me he was OK, and he was seen earlier today with a young man who must be Ton. 

A Dutch-Argentinian couple sitting at the table next to me and I spontaneously translated a Dutch poem someone left at the table. First he translated it into English and then Andrea helped with the Spanish, because his Spanish was about on par with mine. Still, it was fun to do. This is why I missed the Amichai and Aradjis reading. They won’t read again. I am bummed.  Somehow the process of translation helped to restore my nascent social skills. 

Roberto Juarroz’s work seems fine, but my mind took its own time shifting into Spanish. So I understood the words, but not the poetic sensibilities. I didn’t go to the Bal de Festival because I was feeling funky and that antisocial streak still prevails. Oh well. When it descends like a wet blanket, there’s not much I can do. Pre-party panic syndrome. Sign of a true introvert.

I met a woman from England who bought copy of Soviet Poetry Since Glasnost from me, a Helena Hinn. from England. I took down her address and she said she would send some poems nlater. It seems I am madly collecting poets addresses that the front and the back of my journal is beginning to read like a who’s who in poetry.

As it turns out, a poet I met, Victor Manuel Mendola not only knew John Oliver Simon in Mexico, but he has a copy of our chapbook, Falling to Sea Level. He asked if I was the woman of John. And I answered, no longer. We were not sure if we met at Elsa Crosses’ house in Mexico City. It certainly is possible. 

He’s done many translations of poets that I like including Valerio Magrelli, and Tomaž Reizwicž. I gave him one of our poetry tabloids on Saturday and he said that he’ll give me a book on Wednesday. Poetic reciprocity in action. God, how I love the insane babble of many audacious tongues.

(Revised for clarity—added some connective tissue, but mostly swapped paragraphs)

(PI archives.)

• Letter to Valerio Magrelli, Via Condotti, Roma