tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post4046102590099954367..comments2024-03-19T21:14:01.007-07:00Comments on The Compass Rose: Snyder's Robin PoemsCurtis Favillehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-42299400363089409792011-02-23T13:03:19.512-08:002011-02-23T13:03:19.512-08:00Buddha-Co!
Approved by McJobs and Apple, Inc.
B...Buddha-Co!<br /><br />Approved by McJobs and Apple, Inc.<br /><br /><br />Beats were 95% hype, really--at least Ti Jean could vooley-voo a bit, and enjoyed real jass. Then so is most US "poetics"-- Hallmark, or in the case of the bleatniks & Co, Hallmark, stoned (or wit navel gazing, in leather, mental institutions, so forth). The never quite made it through the cliffsnotes to...Heart of Darkness (or forgot it)<br /><br />AS the tune went, they wuz in the Right place at the right time.Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-4710308459033662262011-02-23T05:16:01.700-08:002011-02-23T05:16:01.700-08:00to get back to robin -
robin is not joanne
joanne ...to get back to robin -<br />robin is not joanne<br />joanne is not robin<br />robin is an earlier love and museGary Lawless and Beth Leonardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18070973798758171723noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-11580114226373785802011-02-17T10:03:14.495-08:002011-02-17T10:03:14.495-08:00....his special mixture of sophisticated Zen attit...<i>....his special mixture of sophisticated Zen attitudinizing, celebration of physical labor, and vague, mystical communalism. I believed at that point that the most honest, direct thing an intelligent young man might do was dress like a back woodsman, with a big pack and sleeping bag strapped to his shoulders, and with this, and a little survival knowledge, hike up into the mountains and write shrewd little poems about nature and the sad state of the world. </i><br /><br /><br />As with much of the 60s--or Thoreauvian tradition-- Snyder's appeals to eco-topia do seem somewhat naive. Perhaps not as sinister as...maoism or..Nixon-Kissingerism for that matter, but narcissistic. A semester or two of german philosophy (or even...the greeks) might have helped out. Though granted, apres-Hiroshima (nazis, stalinist, el al) --not to say the return of evangelical morons (Kirbys!) western tradition does not look so promising . It's the ...optimism of the green sorts ..ie Emersonian, scientific, even American-- that should irk us, IMHE. Schopenhauer's readings of buddhism do not offer such hopes, for one. Death...wins, no matter which ideology or metaphysics you chooseJhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-17833236066620958142011-02-16T20:53:03.390-08:002011-02-16T20:53:03.390-08:00I lived in a logging town when I was in grade scho...I lived in a logging town when I was in grade school while my dad ran a project at the nearby mental hospital. We lived in an Elizabethan style house on two acres of land that was really a private park surrounded by three acres of cow pasture and three acres of cucumbers that Mexican migrants would harvest. We had two goldfish ponds with lily pads, a filbert orchard and a defunct nuttery for storing the filberts, all for $120 a month. <br /><br />Nearest neighbor was a mink farm with two or three horses awaiting retirement as glue and mink food. Mr. Earl used a shotgun when it was time to slaughter a horse, one blast through the nasal cavity into the brain. Past the mink farm was a creek with icy cold water where the cows would drink. The river was a mile downstream with more and more beaver dams the closer you got to it. <br /><br />Upstream a mile was the hospital grounds, perhaps a hundred acres or more of prime farmland, where the patients had furnished more or less free labor since 1912 when it opened for business. Beyond the hospital the creek climbed half a dozen miles into the foothills along a logging road that got steeper and steeper until you reached the donkey, where the trees were winched from the creek, stripped of their branches, turned into logs and loaded on trucks. <br /><br />My deskmate in sixth grade was Linda Willoughby. Each desk had two seats and only one desktop that you couldn't raise without disturbing your deskmate. She was a tiny little girl, irritating as hell. Her father owned a log truck.Craighttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05061304265345986242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-66841807451519161222011-02-16T17:25:41.108-08:002011-02-16T17:25:41.108-08:00.
Downgrade
I recognize that sound…
that wild ....<br /><br /><br />Downgrade<br /><br /><br />I recognize that sound…<br />that wild whisper of freedom.<br /><br />No, I guess not.<br />Just the drone of a truck upwind<br />on the highway down the mountain.<br /><br />But I know this sound…<br />that soft voice sweetly singing.<br /><br />Well, maybe not.<br />Just the constant loud roar of the<br />neighbor’s brand new fountain.<br /><br />Still I think can recall<br />the sound, remember that whisper.<br /><br />Singing from long before.<br />The sound of alone, a song<br />gentle though stark.<br /><br />Ah, yes…now I remember…<br />the wind through the pines<br />in the dark.<br /><br /><br />Copyright 2008 - Tall Grass & High Waves, Gary B. FitzgeraldGary B. Fitzgeraldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12096685990751580031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-64439795738860697322011-02-16T12:34:37.841-08:002011-02-16T12:34:37.841-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-88154139854743459992011-02-16T12:25:06.221-08:002011-02-16T12:25:06.221-08:00Bob A:
I'm not sure what you mean by your que...Bob A:<br /><br />I'm not sure what you mean by your question. Did I actually write the words "run away"? Of course I did. <br /><br />Did I actually consider "running away" into the wilderness at some point in my youth? Oh, yes, for a brief period, the idea of living in the Sierras, close to the land, seemed a very tantalizing prospect. In retrospect, I think it would have been a mistake, but I did have those sentiments once upon a time. <br /><br />I remember telling my Stepfather, perhaps in 1970, that "going back to the land" and doing subsistence farming, might be a better choice than looking for a job as an insurance adjuster. Needless to say, that brought guffaws and wisecracks. <br /><br />These were the dreams of youth....Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-40776319363182063522011-02-16T12:17:36.334-08:002011-02-16T12:17:36.334-08:00Strange Big Moon (2000) is reprint of
The Japan a...Strange Big Moon (2000) is reprint of<br /><br />The Japan and India Journals: 1960-1964<br /><br />I in 1973 with some friends out of Eugene who were studying the life-forms that were living in the top-most branches of Giant Red-wood trees... I think it was down-around Cave Junction or Takilma<br /> those are SOME trees ... tall tall tall...<br /><br /><br />loggers speeding down fro mountains trucks carry timber...<br /> WOW!<br /><br />too many ...Pretenders in Berkeley then too.... political ..<br /><br />took a blanket (and a cute girl) hopped a train and "boogied" forth.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-61213356867376646742011-02-16T12:14:57.024-08:002011-02-16T12:14:57.024-08:00Hello Curtis,
"The manly thing was to should...Hello Curtis,<br /><br />"The manly thing was to shoulder the burden, not run away into the wilderness."<br /><br />"run away"?<br /><br />Did you actually write this, or did you make it up?<br /><br />all's well, BobBob Arnold / Longhousehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00016178166202192089noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-51400477902745199202011-02-16T10:01:11.865-08:002011-02-16T10:01:11.865-08:00Olsonberg for Wobblies. What a joke.
The GOP kill...Olsonberg for Wobblies. What a joke.<br /><br />The GOP killed off the IWW sometime like in the 50s (with help from the mainstream unions), and it's mostly forgotten except for a few nostalgic creeps in collegetown.<br /><br />Anyway his authentic poetic visions were generally set in the sierra nevada (as with riprap)--and those who've never been in high Sierra (say 13,000+) are not likely to understand 'em, or should stick to the bay area beatnikdrahma.Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-22527168772952269412011-02-16T09:28:01.495-08:002011-02-16T09:28:01.495-08:002 violent incidents with regard to Snyder in Kyger...2 violent incidents with regard to Snyder in Kyger's Strange Big Moon journal of 1960-1964 (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2000).<br /><br />"Gary stops playing guitar...Later he kicked me for some reason and not long afterwards disappeared to be violently ill on the lawn for the rest of the evening" (54).<br /><br />"Asked Gary what if I was involved in doing something & didn't want to do the dishes for a few days... He would not grant me that, he said. We argued and talked about it for sometime, at last in exasperation I rose from the bed and said I was going to sleep in the Genkan whereupon he grabbed me around the knees and down I fell striking my head against the edge of the table splitting it open. I couldn't believe what had happened, feeling a furrow in my head & blood pouring out. Thoroughly frightened we drove to the BAPTIST hospital and had it stitched up..." (33).<br /><br />It was in Japan where they were pretending to be Buddhists, but please note that it was a BAPTIST hospital that stitched her up.<br /><br />I thought I remembered it saying 60 stitches somewhere in the book. That's a LOT of stitches, so is maybe too many.<br /><br />The main thing to recall is that Snyder is the author of the book, but his narrator is an invention, the Buddhist eco-saint. The real Snyder is angry all the time and very promiscuous. This isn't in the poems.<br /><br />You get instead a kind of good honest clean life, and as you say, respect for the clean WOBBLY workmen of the northwest woods.<br /><br />I have a friend who loves to go up mountains and drive on bumpy roads, but the few times I did it, I hated it. I got headaches. <br /><br />But the mountain flowers around Rainier, and other places in the woods, are nice to reflect BACK on, and if you can have laughs out there with a pal, and end up in stitches of another kind, that's swell. I try to hike around here. There used to be mountain lions all over the place (hence the name, Catskills) but they were all killed off, and now there's just rumors of them. No one has any actual photographs or DNA samples of them.<br /><br />Hard not to like Snyder's poems. I like Ginsberg's poem called Seattle Afternoon in which he and Snyder talk about what they have to offer to the next generation -- a kind of strategy session.<br /><br />Snyder offered a vision of the northwest -- based very much on what your relatives were clueing you into. <br /><br />A lot of young people took up their backpacks and went for it. I like the vision.<br /><br />The reality is different, especially once you have a family, as you put it. Then it's 9 to 5 in a cubicle with coffee breaks, and Dilbert cartoons.Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-77574042266033574092011-02-16T08:38:05.869-08:002011-02-16T08:38:05.869-08:00I (also) thought (still do) that the 'girl Bea...<i>I (also) thought (still do) that the 'girl Beats" were far-and-away better poets/people than the guys</i><br /><br />Baker's typical PC-liberal appeal.<br />Did any of the fembeats pen "On the Road"?? Nyet. (ahd still rank Kerouac as King of the beats, anyway, and the one who introduced Japhy Ryder) Maybe some haikus or hymns to sappho, but no epics. Beat kitties aren't really my cup o' tea but ...Edski's in error.Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-1459959418839413822011-02-16T08:24:39.162-08:002011-02-16T08:24:39.162-08:00In Joanne Kyger's Big Moon Journal she mention...In Joanne Kyger's Big Moon Journal she mentions a fight with Snyder over who would do the dishes (they were in Japan) that ended up with her receiving 60 stitches. She said she would do them later. He pounded her face against the table, and said do them now, is, I think, how it went. He was sorry about it later and took her to the hospital.<br /><br />I don't think he has many poems that celebrate this incident.<br /><br />I wrote a piece on Kyger that I must have published somewhere (perhaps in the Corpse), and we corresponded briefly. She was mad that I was a Lutheran, and said Christianity was all about blood.<br /><br />I didn't mention the 60 stitches that she received at the hands of a Buddhist eco-saint over who would the dishes.<br /><br />Lutheranism is about restraint.Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-83127082568221406922011-02-16T07:26:59.580-08:002011-02-16T07:26:59.580-08:00nice essay
but
do jog my memories...
...nice essay<br />but<br />do jog my memories...<br /> is/was "Robin" Joanne<br /><br />and, yes Rip Rap, Cid Corman published it...<br /><br />thought Gary Snyder the best of (the beat) lot<br /> me too<br /><br />I (also) thought (still do) that the 'girl Beats" were far-and-away better poets/people than the guys<br /><br /><br />lots of JK's pieces in Japan and India Journals...<br /><br />check-out her JUST SPACE I yet have a green<br />St. Mark's book-mark in it...at the<br /><br />"Bob Creeley has died (....)" poem.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-10943665178621790252011-02-16T07:05:48.437-08:002011-02-16T07:05:48.437-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.com