488. Hold the Thorns
Reflection on Poetry Postcard Trees (& Photos!)
We need to learn from Fujitaro and see the gardens that can grow from our wastelands, from the Pacific trash heap to the City of Seattle dump to the logged former forestland to the filled in estuaries of rivers like the Duwamish that make the Port of Seattle or Marshlands that make Baltimore’s inner harbor to the sprawl of LA and suburbs around all cities in this country to the merciless businesses of insurance and pharmaceuticals and lobbying and media (social, in particular) and AI and bottled water and so on.
Investigative Poetry: which is what I’ve always said I was doing, starting with Hard Country. I don’t recall reading Ed Sander’s essay, published by City Lights in 1976, but to read it last night brought that time back vividly. Jack Hirschman raved to me about all the guys in this essay, even Hart Crane’s the Bridge, which I did read. I’ve never been able to tolerate Ezra Pound much, not just because of his Hitlerism, anti-Semitism, fascism, authoritarianism, and his betrayals of H.D. but because all that shows in his screaming poems. At least Ed Sanders says so too, though saying even so you got to read him, and I think it’s been Jack whose always called him Ezra Dog. Yet still the homage continues: an old poet friend Michael Gregory has just completed a booklength poem in study of Pound. In writing The Visit–I’m polishing it now–I’ve anguished over many things, but mostly maybe about why I undertake writing on such huge issues that most poets wouldn’t recognize as poetry!(And realizing that this particular narrative probably should have been prose.) Then I remember, of course, this is Investigative Poetry! “Investigative Poetry: that poetry should again assume responsibility for the description of history.” Thank you Ed Sanders. I think I first knew of you when you covered the Charles Manson trial for the Los Angeles Times. Facebook, Oct 6, 2014