Issa's Untidy Hut: Robbie Gamble

Friday, March 25, 2011

Wayne Hogan: Master Artist, Lilliput Review Division

I can't speak for the world of big publishers, but as a small (well, ok, micro) press publisher in the business for over 20 years, I get amazing things in the mail with a fair amount of regularity. The book pictured above may, however, take the cake for all-time surprises.

The incomparable Wayne Hogan, artist and poet extraordinaire, put together a book of his own artwork that has graced the covers and interiors of Lilliput Review for a good part of those 20 years.

And it is amazing. I am not going to waste your time trying to describe what he has done - I'm going to show you (for maximum enjoyability, click each image to enlarge):

What we have here is 32 pages jam-packed with the kind of joy only Wayne Hogan can communicate with the tip of pen and a whole bundle of talent. His work, while often levitating, nonetheless has kept this mag grounded for all these years and I am eternally grateful for that. I asked Wayne if this was a limited run and he said no, but at the moment there are a handful of copies available. Here's the details:

The chap sells for $11.56, which includes postage, and I'm nothing if not prompt in sending things out when I get a request---within no more than 2 days, barring drastically unforeseen circumstances.

So there you have it - fantastic art at a very reasonable rate. Mail payment to "Wayne Hogan", little books press, PO Box 842, Cookeville, TN 38503.

One final note on the chap; it comes complete with a bevy of blurbs, which were quite a delightful surprise to me. Here's the back cover:

click to enlarge

The quotes are all genuine, coming from various issues his work has appeared in. Perhaps, I need to reel in my effusiveness.

It could become ubiquitous.

Then again, perhaps not.

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This week's feature poem comes from Lilliput Review, #145. This morning, I'm particularly struck by this poem as I've been preparing for a poetry discussion session next month on Walt Whitman: Father Walt. One of the poems I'm considering covering is "As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life," a poem that captures him during one of his infrequent downside moments. The tone of this week's poem, "Ebb and Flow" by Robbie Gamble, is distantly related to Whitman's and called it to mind immediately.

There is something about the pensiveness, the taking stock, we humans seem to do on returning to the ocean, that is captured in these works, as well as E. E. Cummings "maggie and millie and mollie and may." I will follow Robbie's poem with one of my favorite modern haiku that I use when doing introductory classes, a poem by Peggy Heinrich.

Ebb and Flow

my beloved strides the water's edge
trailing her pain in a wake

I sit on the lip of the boardwalk
walking up with the turning tide,
trying to imagine what she passes through

each of us
is pulling toward something new
as water pushes on the skin of the earth

how miraculous, to both be warmed
by the same sun-soft air

Robbie Gamble

Peggy's poem is so brief and so simple that it contains the world entire:

ebb tide
turning to look back
at my footprints

Peggy Heinrich

And, finally, we continue to think very often of our friends in that land of the sea, Japan. Here is Issa, touching a deep, deep chord:

mother I never knew,
every time I see the ocean,
every time.

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Random Notes: James Wright, Kerouac, Jane Campion's Keats

In preparation for a session of the 3 Poems By ... discussion group, I've been reading all things James Wright. Could I have a better job, getting to research one my favorite poets in preparation for a work project? And the things I've learned.

I mostly detest reading about poetry. That's not a hard admission, though it is a bit of a damning one. In any case, I am beginning to realize how wrongheaded that is. Here is a quote I ran across in a Paris Review interview with Wright (a .pdf) from 1972:

"Tolstoy was asked in a letter by a pacifist group if he could give them a definition of religion and, if he could do that, to explain to them the relation between religion, that is, what a person believes, and morality, that is, the way he acts in accord with some notion of how he ought to act. Tolstoy worried about this letter, and as I recall it, he said: 'I can only go back to myself. I look around myself and I see every year that, no matter what people do to themselves and to one another, the spring constantly renews itself. This is a physical fact, not a metaphysical theory. I look at every spring and I respond to it very strongly. But I also notice that every year the spring is the same new spring and every year I am one year older. I have to ask the question: What is the relation between my brief and tragic life and this force in the universe that perpetually renews itself? I further believe that every human being asks this question. He cannot avoid asking it-it is forced upon him. And his answer to that question is his religion. If he says the relation between me and this thing is nothing, then his religion is nihilism. As for morality, what ought I to do? I wish I knew.' That was a great letter."

The understatement of that last line, though it doesn't quite have the sheer power of "I have wasted my life", packs a considerable wallop. Interestingly, the quote was in part in reply to a question asking Wright's opinion of the poet John Berryman, whom he greatly admired.

Though one might be tempted to write it off to the interviewer's observation that a jug of wine, which needed to be refilled, sat between them during the interview, really it is the poet's natural inclination to inform her/his topic obliquely, metaphorically, if you will. James Wright considered himself a teacher first and one mustn't argue with a writer's opinion of himself. Perhaps he was a teacher first, but his instincts are purely lyrical.

I highly recommend this interview to anyone with the least attraction to his work. PC, it ain't, but insightful it is.

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Today is the anniversary of the death of Jack Kerouac, variously attributed to alcohol, ulcers, or the swallowing of a piece of tin from a tuna top; a subtle combination of all three probably did the deed. At least that was my understanding. Gerald Nicosia succinctly summarizes: Jack Kerouac died on October 21, 1969 “of hemorrhaging esophageal varices, the classic drunkard’s death."

As is the case when remembering him, I like to pull his Book of Haikus off the shelf and randomly open it. Typically, the facing pages contain a total of 6 to 8 poems and I always find at least one that grabs me.

Bluejay drinking at my
---saucer of milk
throwing his head back

Missing a kick
---at the icebox door
it closed anyway

Lonesome blubbers
---grinding out the decades
with wet lips

Ah, the birds
---at dawn,
my mother and father

A current pimple
---In the mind's
Old man

Here's a online selection of his haiku for those craving more. Jack's work in the form is better than I ever imagined it might be. The relationship between the direct pointing of haiku/zen philosophy and first thought, best thought, is as natural as might be.

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The new Jane Campion movie on John Keats, is getting high grades from folks I talk to. Ron Silliman has a fine tuned take this week over at his blog. Here's the trailer:

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As of this writing, entries for the 2nd Annual Bashô Haiku Challenge (scroll down here for prize update) have already handily surpassed last year in number. Keep 'em coming, folks: there is still 10 full days before the deadline.

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From this week's featured issue, Lilliput #156, a sequence of poems from the middle section. Hope you enjoy them.

far
from the hurricane's path
farther from myself