Kingfisher
 a Journal of Northwest Art and Literature  

Dedicated to the appreciation of poetry, fiction, painting,
 literary criticism, drawing, sculpture, music, movies, video,
 but not exclusively that produced in the Pacific
 Northwest

C. Moore Glass, "Ambivalent Circles of Confusion," 18"X24," pastel on board, 2004,
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 Winter 2003-4, Volume Three, Number One, Second Revised Edition
 Copyright 2004 Kingfisher Press

POETRY SECTION
Selections from past issues of Kingfisher Journal

Poems by W.S. Merwin

NEW STUFF

William Stafford

We will next be looking into the work and personality of Oregon Poet Bill Stafford, who we came to late and enjoy a lot.

He wrote about 200 books, most of them poetry, but none of them until he had reached his mid-forties.  Good thing, too,  that he had a fairly long life and wrote daily and at length.

When The Sun Comes Up

To be ready again if they find an owl, crows
choose any old tree before dawn and hold a convention
where they practice their outrage routine. "Let's elect
someone." "No, no! Forget it." They
see how many crows can dance on a limb.
"Hey, listen to t his one." One old crow
flaps away off and looks toward the east. In that
lonely blackness God begins to speak
in a silence beyond all that moves. Delighted wings move close and almost touch each other.
Everything stops for a minute, and the sun rises.

And this one I particularly like and admire:

Why I Am Happy

Now has come, an easy time. I let it
roll. There is a lake somewhere
so blue and far nobody owns it.
A wind comes by and a willow listens
gracefully.

I hear all this, every summer. I laugh
and cry for every turn of the world,
its terribly cold, innocent spin.
The lake stays blue and free; it goes
on and on.

And I know where it is.

With his son Kim he had a little  joke  (a joke to be shared among writers) and coined the term "Stunts" to describe a unique form of poem that was highly elliptical and intentionally funny. It is an aphorism, as well.

One of them goes:

"Maybe" means
"No."

"Yes" means
"Maybe."

Looking like this at you  means
"You had your chance."

I want ask, but don't dare, "Do you ever say anything that translates 'Yes?' What might it be?"

Some Remarks When Richard Hugo Came

Some war, I bomb their towns from five
miles high, the flower of smoke and fire
so far there is no sound. No cry
disturbs the calm through which we fly.

Some day, a quiet day, I watch
a grassy field in wind, the waves
forever bounding past and gone.
Friends call: I cannot look away--

And my life had already happened:
Some saved-up feeling caught, held on,
and shook me. Long-legged grass raced out;
a film inside my  head unwound.

The bodies I had killed began to scream.

Poets are a close and empathetic group. Stafford knew about Hugo's war experiences as a bombardier, and his need to return to Italy and relive the experience. The poem is a salute to him.

 Stay tuned to Kingfisher Journal for more poems by Stafford. And of course we paid our own tribute to Richard Hugo earlier.

 See Vol.2, No. 1, hotlinked to the left, in the first column.

Robert C. Arnold
Editor/Publisher,
or write us care:
rcarnold@direcway.com

A young Morris Graves pictured by Painter/Friend Kenneth Callahan, about 1940

Guy Anderson, Sharp Sea, 1943
 

Poet Stanley Kunitz, in a picture taken by Ted Rosenberg for his Collected Poems

Salute to Stanley Kunitz

He will soon be a Centenarian, Stanley Kunitz . One year away. He has been writing poetry steadily since a young man--1928 or earlier-- though admitting tapering off some because of age. He still gardens and, though a shy man, seems eager to maintain his contacts in the world of poetry, especially with young people.

Fifty years ago, he befriended the formidable Sylvia Plath while she was still a student and, hyper-critical, she savaged him in return. He shrugged it off. And when he came to U. Washington to take over Ted Roethke's classes, when Roethke was undergoing psychiatric treatment, I was in the Army and missed knowing  him. In fact, I didn't pay close attention to  his poetry until recently.

My loss. He is a wise and knowing man; what is more, he is a first-rate poet. Here is a poem from his Selected Poems 1928-1958 that seems mildly prescient, yet with a twist that may be  happily wrong:

I Dreamed That I was Old

I dreamed that I was old: in stale declension
Fallen from my prime, when company
Was mine, cat-nimbleness, and green invention,
Before time took my leafy hours away.

My wisdom, ripe with body's ruin, found
Itself tart recompense for what was lost
In false exchange: since wisdom in the ground
Has no apocalypse or pentecost.

I wept for my youth, sweet passionate young thought,
And cozy women dead that by my side
Once lay: I wept with bitter longing, not
Remembering how in my youth I cried.

And then another on the same theme, but richer and more classical:

The Approach to Thebes

In the zero of the night, in the lipping hour,
Skin-time, knocking-time, when the heart is pearled
And the moon squanders its uranian gold,
She taunted me, who was all music's tongue,
Philosophy's and wilderness's breed,
Of shifting shape, half jungle-cat, half-dancer,
Night's woman-petaled, lion-scented rose
To whom I gave , out of a hero's need,
The dolor of my thrust, my riddling answer,
Whose force no lesser mortal knows. Dangerous?
 Yes, as nervous oracles foretold
Who could not guess the secret taste of her:
Impossible wine! I came into the world
To fill a fate; am punished by my youth
No more. What if dog-faced logic howls
Was it art or magic multiplied my joy?
Nature has reasons beyond true or false.
We played like metaphysical animals
Whose freedom made our knowledge bold
Before the tragic curtain of the day:
I can bear t he dishonor now of growing old.

Blind and old, exiled, diseased, and scorned--
The verdict's bitten on the brazen gates,
For the gods grant each of us his lot, his term.
Hail to the King of Thebes!--my self, ordained
To satisfy the impulse of the worm,
Bemummied in those famous incestuous sheets,
The bloodiest flags of nations of the curse,
To be hung from the balcony outside the room
Where I encounter my most flagrant source,
Children, grandchildren, my long posterity,
To whom I bequeath the spiders of my dust,
Believe me, whenever sordid tales you hear,
Told by physicians oar mendacious scribes,
Of beardless folly, consanguineous lust,
Fomenting pestilence, rebellion, war,
I come prepared, unwanting what I see,
But tied to life. On the royal road to Thebes
I had my luck , I met a lovely monster,
And the story's this: I made the monster me.

Wow! I hadn't read any Metaphysical Poetry in years. There are some echoes of Donne, of course, and perhaps Marvell and Herrick. Shakespeare, surely. And Friend Ted Roethke, done in his style and tone:

We played like metaphysical animals
Whose freedom made our knowledge bold

and from the first poem:

She taunted me, who was all music's tongue,

Is it as though the one poet is saying to the other, "Greetings! Here, I can do that, too. Watch me, Buddy." 

It is a kind of professional homage, a kindly sharing and a mutual recognition. There is nothing nicer in this world of men and women; men, women, and rhyme.