As for poetry? “Wonder if my work adds up to summa, if it has a point” …

The night before (so where were we?): “the aging aesthete dismissing Pfingston’s piece, ‘This isn’t a poem,’ as though he knew, this uptight, pretentious high-school teacher whose 30 friends kept clinging to him, whispering comments about ‘classical forms’ and the ‘need for discipline’ and keeping a guard against ‘imitators’ and how Joan Stone can’t STAND Duane Niatum, ‘He borrows everything.’”

“That’s what happens when you get a PhD,” I almost said.

How many tall tumblers did that guy down — a dozen? How can any drunk evaluate a poem, appreciated its silence?

I’m tired of veneer, tired of poetry tasters — everything but the purely original, primitive, religious incantation …

[I had not yet delved into Jackson Cope’s “incantatory language” perspective on early Friends …]

When a batch of submissions go out, the first back are quick rejection slips — usually overstocked — then the mixed bag of acceptances and misses — and finally the slow anguish of almost-takens and those returned unread …

It’s almost a pattern

~*~

Wollah Wollah = whistling water = Walla Walla

~*~

When Coyote desired Beaver’s beautiful daughter, Rain sent his own beautiful daughter to plead with Coyote, who instead tried to rape her and make her his other wife. And thus, enraged, Rain punished the east — Coyote’s land — by raising the Cascades mountains so that Coyote and Wind could not steal all the clouds.

I’m left wondering about Beaver and his child.

~*~

Meanwhile, these local poets and artists who don’t study, don’t know what’s been done before, wouldn’t recognize ancient excellence, don’t know what’s being done now, don’t experience the nature out there or the scary, untapped energy fields within themselves … who don’t try to make each piece unique but merely a repetition of their static non-discovery closed-in closed-off non-lives …

[How’s that for non-judgmental?]

~*~

Hops, which are used to favor and stabilize beer in its brewing, were another famed agricultural product from Yakima. The vines would climb the ropes to the top, with the whole vines being cut down at harvest. Note Mount Adams in the background. (Photo by William Borg via Wikimedia Commons.)

~*~

 I used to write poems about the weather. But what can you say about a place where the weather’s always good? Only that the wind’s blowing?

[Think of a comment I recently heard, about a poetry editor who scorned Weather Report pieces. Gave them an instantaneous rejection.]

~*~

Watching clouds 50 miles away.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

As I noted in October, ’76: Good two weeks of poetry acceptance — 12-14 pieces taken.

That confusion some have, mistaking Jimm for Swami Jnana. Though they live together, they are distinct. One is the patron, who pays the bills by laboring on newspapers, complains about things, tries to live in some style, occasionally smokes, sometimes eats meat, likes to dine out (despite his income), listens to classical music, reads Newsweek, snuggles with his wife. Swami Jnana is his guru, appreciates silence, honest laughter, high country hiking, hardline poetry, animals, and fully human circles. Although they share the same household and many of the same interests, they are distinct. They met in early 1972 and things progressed from there. They have lived together in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and now Washington state. Since joining, Jimm has been calmer and happier while Jnana spreads Dharma seeds. Jimm’s childhood and historical roots have become less urgent; he may disappear altogether. There’s nothing more to say at this point. I’m not certain whose journal this is. It doesn’t matter. They each enter lines on these pages.

Rexroth amazing in the number of unknown poets he admires and the candidness with which he demolishes others. The Paris expatriates were, he says, drawn there by booze (Prohibition in the U.S,) and cheap dollars. Frost wasn’t modern at all but old-guard and compares poorly with similar English poets of a century earlier.

Duane Niatum an often bad poet who comes up with some fine lines, “pine cone city in rain.”

My introduction to Marnie Walsh of the Dakotas, sounding as if created by the people and place.

Her flattest possible diction with all of its crudeness almost a parody of pig-Indian English (“Um! You white!”) almost imitation Black and yet, how utterly devasting.

Yet with a freshness that cannot be ignored, especially in its directness.

~*~

Liz Sohappy, given her Palouse name, Om-na-ma, in 1969: “My Indian name has made great difference in my life. I really felt like a floating body until I received my name. My grandmother said that was how it was to be — no one else is here on earth until he has an Indian name”

I resonate with that, having been given the name Jnana in 1972.

As for the Native poet Dave Etter?

~*~

How strange, the Ginsberg’s The Fall of America is filled with place names and realizing he has no sense of place, but exactly the opposite — that is, a loss of place and roots and thus center, as in perspective, turning the Hari Krishna and Buddha to stop the movement, to cease the spinning …

~*~

Reviewing some of my work, wishing there were something more personal, intimate and yet more forceful there …

In W’s novel, it’s haunting freshness. No feeling of the veneer of (& chilling) revisions, editing …

If the book satisfied us, why would we want to read another piece by him or in the same voice, when there is no other

Andy Wyeth confession of losing himself in the character of what he’s creating but his lack of interest in the finished work; also, the difficulty of being watched while working: his need for secrecy, the self-consciousness intruding in the event of observation-in-creation, “Don’t talk out,” don’t analyze, don’t smooth out or you’ll lose the spark. The feeling of a compulsion forcing him to do a piece, submerge himself when there’s that sweeping instant of perception (a certain touch of light, for instance). The need for solitude and for tactile feeling to get beyond the eye’s flat view.

As for Christina, she is the essence of New England — even its witchcraft. (This, before I had ever been to New England.) Sprung something in me, a recognition of America and truths we do not allow ourselves to admit. A strand I kept denying in Binghamton and Bloomington, the Poconos and Fostoria. Some lack, too, in the Anglo culture, despite exorcism-slaying.

~*~

Wed. 17 Nov. 76, see I was reading Robert Bly “Looking for Dragon Smoke” … I would come back to its impact much later, somewhere in New England …

Snyder is to me what Thoreau was to generations of Americans.

But if Henry is the amateur, Gary is the professional.

Ginsberg, meanwhile, runs with old Walt Whitman.

Snyder works from the inside-out, where others try from the outside-in.

The difference is clear meditation.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.