My late friend the poet Patrick Schnoor and I were profoundly influenced by the example of Robert Grenier in our undergraduate years at UC Berkeley, where Grenier had come to teach writing in the late 1960's. We--both of us--were classicists at heart, but Grenier easily swept aside our notions of the fixity of traditional formal patterns, in favor of a practical, down-to-earth and close-to-the-skin poetics based on a keen sensitivity to words, and an honesty about the facts of our lives. These were aspects of living-as-writing that you weren't taught by traditional teachers.
Patrick was a better writer than I was, or ever would be. Here is a sequence of "minimalist" works he did towards the end of our second term in Grenier's poetry writing class at Berkeley. I published them in my little magazine during the early 1970's, and I believe they're the last of Patrick's publications. (He may have been submitting work to other periodicals, but I'm not aware of any, then, or now.)
when she comes
1
she comes
through, and
when
she comes
through
she comes
through
over, the
rainbow
2
when
she comes through
she comes
and when
she comes through
she comes
over the rainbow
3
she, her over
comes through
the
she, her over
the comes through
and she
her over
the rainbow
Preludes: Tulare Lake
Basin, California
1
air wavers
sheets
like a skillet
2
back water
soothes back
the range
brush
creased hills
west
to comfort
3
hot reflexive crows
eye you
in the corn
dry yellow
afternoon
4
delta bugs
and the dust tinted dusk
of sunset
dry up
the fetid bottom
where the lake'd
been
5
birds
lost
open
in air
6
a canal
slick with fish
and the mauve
accomplishments
of frogs
7
the distressed
chirp
of a trapped
cricket
8
the dispersed pierce
of sun noise
sharp
in the cloud
toured sky
9
where
as
an
unwavering
gazette
of that
heat
10
some
single
locus
locust
zones
those grainy
fields
Preludes: Afternoon
1
the
tall
bell
tells
all
2
the
stream
streams
slowly
through
the pages
3
I cross
a cross
across
the street
4
walk the lines
of the squares
played upon
the plaza
5
there is no lack
here
beer
6
I praise
the hymns
of glory
Preludes After A Thing (Painting)
1
more
than blue
it
frights
2
stop it
river
3
the sky
is
in the/river
I
am
in the/tree
4
stars
make triangles
and the river
5
hide and seek
show and tell
the 'tree'
is worry
6
field
tree
river
sky
the north
star
Preludes: The Poem and the Sun
1
let us attend then
to the unintended meaning
of the sunset
for instance
as to what
the poem could refer
If not itself
2
it elicits
me
like a ghost
3
why must
the sun
set west
4
the rays of that
same light
swallow me
5
that sun
sets
in my mind
6
that sun
alone
is enough
7
that sun
going down
in the dust
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