Month: October 2002

Without a Guide

Section One of Traveling Light begins with the best of Wagoner’s nature poems written between 1956 and 1976. Since his nature poems are my personal favorite, I found it difficult to choose a single representative poem from this section. In his nature poems Wagoner usually discovers some truth about his own nature, this poems is no exception:

Do Not Proceed Beyond This Point without a Guide

The official warning, nailed to a hemlock,
Doesn’t say why. I stand with my back to it,
Afraid I’ve come as far as I can
By being stubborn, and look
Downward for miles at the hazy crags and spurs.

A rubble-covered ridge like a bombed stairway
Leads up beyond the sign. It doesn’t
Seem any worse than what I’ve climbed already.
Why should I have to take a guide along
To watch me scaring myself to death?

What was it I wanted? A chance to look around
On a high rock already named and numbered
By somebody else? A chance to shout
Over the heads of people who quit sooner?
Shout what? I can’t go tell it on the mountain.

I sit for a while, raking the dead leaves
Out of my lungs and traveling lightheaded
Downward again in my mind’s eye, till there’s nothing
Left of my feet but rags and bones
And nothing to look down on but my shoes.

The closer I come to it, the harder it is to doubt
How well this mountain can take me or leave me.
The hemlock had more sense. It stayed where it was,
Grew up and down at the same time, branch and root,
Being a guide instead of needing one.

Perhaps I like this poem because it reminds me of my nearly annual trek up Ruckle Ridge in the Columbia Gorge, a trail long ago officially abandoned by the Forest Service. Every year we take the hike we discover a new slide or another part of the trail that has eroded. As I look down the steep cliffs, I often think I’m crazy to be there. At times I also feel like I’ve gone “as far as I can by being stubborn,” though we always manage to go just a little further, usually because there’s no way back down those cliffs.

Of course, I would never be there without my hiking partner, but I’m sometimes sure that he’s only there “to watch me scaring myself to death.” This is “his” hike and I’m here only because he’s had to endure “my” hikes. Wagoner even knows we’re there so that we can look at rocks few have seen, though they’ve obviously been named by earlier pioneers. Of course, it never hurts to “shout over the heads of people who quit sooner,” though there’s little joy in shouting to someone who’s not there.

When you get to the top, your lungs are always exhausted and you’re light headed, gasping for air. And amazingly enough, going up is always the easy part. It’s coming off the mountain that eats up your feet and ankles.

While you’re there on the mountain, though, it all seems worth it. You never want to come down, wishing that you could stay there “forever,” envying the trees’ magnificent views. Year after year the mountain remains the same while it gets harder and harder to reach the top. The mountain, like nature, is forever; my stay here is at best temporary. Perhaps that’s the price we must pay for failing to put down roots in nature.

A Place to Stand

The first thing I noticed when starting to read David Wagoner’s new book Traveling Light is that some of my favorite poems have been dropped from the collection. Wagoner’s first book was titled A Place to Stand, and the title poem has long been one of my favorite poems.

Ironically, the poem explores the loss of familiar “objects” from the past and its effect on us. Since it was the title poem from his first collection, I was a little surprised it didn’t appear in “collected and new poems.” Has David finally found his “place to stand” and no longer worries about it? Or, has he given up all hope of ever finding such a place?

A Place to Stand

On ancient maps, they stood,
Explorers, cartographers-
Between the dew-lapped god
Of the wind with an icy beard
And the arrow etched at north-
And panicked among the stars,
And tried the sun, and heard
The kraken plunging south.

They said, "Where are we now?"
But whirlpools turned the sea,
Swallowed and uttered land,
And flames cracked at the bow.
What solid geometry
Could guide their astrolabe?
Which latitude of the mind
Could cast them on the web?

They watched, on every shore,
Gargoyle and griffon rise,
Clawing the parchment air,
Scaling the dark for miles;
Saw the whole ocean poured
Like separate waterfalls
Down the corners of the world,
The corners of their eyes.

We ask, "Where are those ships?"
Keeled over on a chart.
"What lies around us, since
They foundered on old maps?"
The whirling continents,
The sky seen through a hole,
The stars flashing apart—
What master calls them real?

This always seemed to me a perfect poem to begin a volume of poems. Poems, like all literature, at their best serve as a semantic map of our world. Our very sense of reality is determined by our maps of the external world.

What better way, then, to challenge our view of reality than to show how ancient maps portrayed the world. Although the maps were certainly more romantic than modern maps, few of us today expect to find a “kraken” plunging in the oceans. What kind of man could sail forth with such maps? How miraculous that explorers dared cross the Atlantic with maps that showed a flat world with water running off the edges.

Do we dare to doubt that our own maps of our world, particularly those verbal maps we use to decide “right” or “wrong,” “good or bad,” will one day seem as “fanciful” as the ancient maps that confront us in this poem?

Even if Wagoner has found his final standing place and no longer has a need for this poem, I often feel the ground shake under my feet and I still find myself wondering if what I’ve believed for years is really true. And losing “old friends” does little to reassure me of my footing.

Truly, I have not yet found a place to stand.

Let’s Live Cheerfully

Almost as interesting as the poems in Triumph of the Sparrow is the interview with Shinkichi Takahashi. I particularly liked the distinction he makes between the poet and the philosopher, “ The poet deals with absolute truth, offering witness to it directly, experientially – the philosopher relative truth, using strategies of all kinds to assure understanding.”

His statements that, “I am doing what Zen artists have always tried to do – change those who stand before my work” and “Else, why bother, why give oneself the trouble. I say through my work that it is possible for man to be freer than he finds himself, awaken to things he has hardly noticed around him.” are good reminders of why poetry is important.

Of course, at times it’s easier to have someone explain the truth to you than to experience it directly, but Beach certainly creates the sense of confusion that many of us experience in life’s helter-skelter moments:

Beach

Gale: tiles, roofs whirling,
disappearing at once.

Rocks rumble, mountains
swallow villages,
yet insects, birds chirp by
the shattered bridge.

Men shoot through space,
race sound. On TV nations
maul each other, endlessly.

Why this confusion,
how restore the ravaged
body of the world?

Perhaps this poem just seemed appropriate because President Bush was giving a speech justifying the invasion of Iraq, but we seem to be ready to re-experience nations mauling each other live on TV. And here bloggers stand by “the shattered bridge” chirping their own song amidst our mutual destruction.

In case we feel guilty about enjoying life while others die, Takahashi gives us:

Let’s Live Cheerfully

Dead man steps over sweaty sleepers
on the platform, in quest of peace.

Thunderously dawn lights earth.

Smashed by the train, head spattered
on the track-not a smudge of brain.

Nothing left: thought-smoke.
A moment-a billion years.

Don’t curl like orange peel, don’t ape
a mummified past Uncage eternity.

When self’s let go, universe is all-
O for speed to get past time

All of these are traps, traps not easily avoided, of course. There’s little we can do about most of these tragedies, but his advice seems the same as Yeats’ advice in “Lapis Lazuli,” where the ancient Chinese scholars climbing the mountain midst all the tragedies are still happy: “Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,/Their ancient, glittering eyes are gay.” Of course, his method may be a little different, for it would be difficult to imagine a romantic writer advising, “when self’s let go, universe is all.”

Though Takahashi advice to “be here, be now” will hardly seem new to most readers, it still serves as a necessary reminder that we cannot let our times destroy the joy that is a necessary part of life:

Spring

Spring one hundred years ago
was very warm: it’s in my
palm, such life, such gaiety.

Future is a bird streaking
aimlessly, past is dregs-
everything’s here, now.

Thought sparking thought
sparking thought: headlands
pocked by time, the ram of tides.

Rock rising, rock sinking.
No space, what was is nowhere-
a hundred years hence,

spring will be as warm.

No matter what has happened to us or will happen, spring was warm one hundred years ago and it will be warm one hundred years from now. Life goes on. We cannot control the future and the past is merely the “dregs” of what was. Happiness is here and now. Every thing that’s important is here and now. Only the here and now is controllable, so we must fully participate in it if we are to be happy.

Knitting Our Own Existence

Despite the fact that I’ve read considerable Chinese and Japanese poetry, I’ve read very little “modern” poetry. In fact, I think that The Triumph of the Sparrow is the first entire book of poems I’ve read by a modern Japanese poet.

One of the things I’ve always admired in Japanese poetry is the “concreteness” of it. I like poetry that conveys its ideas concretely rather than talking about ideas. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be a trait of Takahashi. Like many modern, western poets he seems to rely on discussion rather than on concrete images to convey his ideas.

Although I try to present my opinion of any poet’s work as clearly as possible, I’ve always pointed out what I consider some of the best poems in the work. After all, I think every poet worth reading has something important to say to us. I’m not going to limit myself to just the strong points of any poet, but I hope I do offer a clear enough view of his writings so that the reader can judge for himself and is not unduly deterred by my own biases. “Flight of the Sparrow” is one of those poems I found thought-provoking but also wished that Takahashi could have found a better way of expressing the ideas:

Flight of the Sparrow

Sparrow dives from roof to ground,
a long journey-a rocket soars
to the moon, umpteen globes collapse.

Slow motion: twenty feet down, ten billion
years. Light-headed, sparrow does not think,
philosophize, yet all’s beneath his wings.

What’s Zen? "Thought," say masters,
"makes a fool." How free the brainless
sparrow. Chirrup-before the first "chi,"

a billion years. He winks, another. Head left,
mankind’s done. Right, man’s born again.
So easy, there’s no end to time.

One gulp; swallow the universe. Flutter
on limb or roof-war, peace, care banished.
Nothing remains-not a speck.

"Time’s laid out in the eavestrough,"
sparrow sings,
pecks now and then.

It seems somewhat ironic that, although the poem seems to be rejecting excessive thought and the expression of ideas through words, it does so through simple declarative sentences rather than through concrete imagery. Perhaps, though, it is the contrast between lines like “Thought makes a fool” and “How free the brainless/sparrow” that is required to convey these thoughts. While I find the idea interesting, I find the poem strangely unsatisfying.

Although “Life Infinite” seems equally dependent on words rather than concrete images, I found I liked it better because of the poems relative simplicity:

Life Infinite

Beyond words, this no-thingness within,
Which I’ve become. So to remain

Only one thing’s needed: Zen sitting.
I think, breathe with my whole body-

Marvellous. The joy’s pure,
It’s beyond lovemaking, anything.

I can see, live anywhere, everywhere.
I need nothing, not even life.

I particularly liked the lines “I think, breathe with my whole body” because the lines seem to capture the essence of mediation. The line “I need nothing, not even life” captures the sense of freedom one can gain from suspending life through meditation.

Strangely enough, though, my favorite poem in the middle section of this volume of poems is “Stitches,” which probably could be found in any work of poetry in any culture:

Stitches

My wife is always knitting, knitting:
Not that I watch her,
Not that I know what she thinks.

(Awake till dawn
I drowned in your eyes-
I must be dead:
Perhaps it’s the mind that stirs

With that bamboo needle
She knits all space, piece by piece,
Hastily hauling time in.

Brass-cold, exhausted,
She drops into bed and,
Breathing calmly, falls asleep.

Her dream must be deepening,
Her knitting coming loose.

I must admit, the poem first reminded me of Penelope who promised to marry the suitors at her door but unraveled her knitting every night in a desperate attempt to stall until Odysseus could return. Later though, it reminded me of my mother who would sit knitting for hours, creating marvelous garments from mere space and an apparently endless ball of yarn. It was almost as if the sweater would appear magically, as if she was knitting “space” itself, only requiring “time” to make it appear.

Perhaps we all try to knit our existence from the skein of time we are given, only to have it unravel at night when confronted with our dreams of what we wanted our lives to be.