Category: David Wagoner

Part 3 of David Wagoner’s “Traveling Light :From Collected Poems, 1956-1976” focuses on various aspects of creativity. While I found more poems I liked here than I anticipated (I’m not too fond of artists discussing creativity), my favorite poem was still one entitled “Every Good Boy Does Fine, ” a poem I encountered years ago in an anthology for high school students. It has everything I admire in a poem: simplicity, vivid images, and rich symbols:

Every Good Boy Does Fine

I practiced my cornet in a cold garage
Where I could blast it till the oil in drums
Boomed back; tossed free throws till I couldn’t move my thumbs;
Sprinted through tires, tackling a headless dummy.

In my first contest, playing a wobbly solo,
I blew up in the coda, alone on stage,
And twisting like my hand-tied necktie, saw the judge
Letting my silence dwindle down his scale.

At my first basketball game, gangling away from home
A hundred miles by bus to a dressing room,
Under the showering voice of the coach, I stood in a towel,
Having forgotten shoes, socks, uniform.

In my first football game, the first play under the lights
I intercepted a pass. For seventy yards, I ran
Through music and squeals, surging, lifting my cleats,
Only to be brought down by the safety man.

I took my second chances with less care, but in dreams
I saw the bald judge slumped in the front row,
The coach and team at the doorway, the safety man
Galloping loud at my heels. They watch me now.

You who have always homed your way through passages,
Sat safe on the bench while some came naked to court,
Slipped out of arms to win in the long run,
Consider this poem a failure, sprawling flat on a page.

The delightful irony of this poem title may be what makes it so memorable. This poem rings true to my experiences and even more so to the experiences of my children, probably because their childhood seems so much more vivid to me than my own. First attempts, and often many after that, meet with failure. I can remember my own stage fright when I had a part in my grade school play, a part based on my classroom performance, by the way, not on any desire to expose myself to public ridicule. While outgoing and boisterous in class with people I know, I have always been extremely shy around strangers. I decided from that day on that I never wanted to be on stage again, even though I was convinced to volunteer again in high school. Gradually public speaking became easier, but I have never really felt comfortable in front of an audience.

Luckily I’ve never had the bad experience of forgetting my gym clothes, but you’re not as “preoccupied,” or absent minded, as I am without being unprepared for many an event. I still remember a long hike where I forgot my boots and had to wear sandals on my trek up the mountain. Despite my dreams, I never made my high school football team, but the first time I played in the army I got an elbow to the chin that left me without hearing for a day and a half and stunned enough that I had to leave the game. Still, I was out on the field game after game giving it my best shot, even if I was 40 pounds too light to play on the line. I’ve never regretted it.

When my kids were growing up, I only had a few rules about participating in different activities: if you started something you had to finish it; if you played you had to do your best; and, you could always quit at the end of the season if you wanted to, it was your choice, not mine. As a result, they both seem to have grown up more confident than I ever was and are both willing to risk many things I never would.

All of us are probably haunted by our failures, but the real failures are those who are afraid to take the chances to do what they really want to do. There’s no reason to play football, or participate in one particular activity, but it’s a mistake not to play football or participate in a play simply because you’re afraid you will fail. Failure is less destructive than not giving life a chance.

Needless to say, I don’t consider this poem a failure.

Section Two of Traveling Light covers some of the best of Wagoner’s non-nature poems written between 1956 and 1976. It’s easy to see why Wagoner doesn’t want to be limited to being a “nature poet,” as there are some fine poems here, though it was much easier for me to settle on a poem because there weren’t nearly as many competing for my favor.

While “The Labors of Thor” and the delightful “This is a Wonderful Poem” caught my attention first, “Bums at Breakfast” was equally fine, and seemed more representative of this section, which focused on the down-and-out, or, at least, the down-and-out in all of us. “Bums at Breakfast” suggests a possible reason why Wagoner, like his fellow poets Richard Hugo and Richard Wright, identifies so strongly with the common man:

Bums at Breakfast

Daily, the bums sat down to eat in our kitchen.
They seemed to be whatever the day was like:
If it was hot or cold, they were hot or cold;
If it was wet, they came in dripping wet.
One left his snowy shoes on the back porch
But his socks stuck to the clean linoleum,
And one, when my mother led him to the sink,
Wrung out his hat instead of washing his hands.

My father said they’d made a mark on the house,
A hobo’s sign on the sidewalk, pointing the way.
I hunted everywhere, but never found it.
It must have said, "It’s only good in the morning-
When the husband’s out." My father knew by heart
Lectures on Thrift and Doggedness,
But he was always either working or sleeping.
My mother didn’t know any advice.

They ate their food politely, with old hands,
Not looking around, and spoke in short, plain answers.
Sometimes they said what they’d been doing lately
Or told us what was wrong; but listening hard,
I broke their language into secret codes:
Their east meant west, their job meant walking and walking,
Their money meant danger, home meant running and hiding,
Their father and mother were different kinds of weather.

Dumbly, I watched them leave by the back door,
Their pockets empty as a ten-year-old’s;
Yet they looked twice as rich, being full of breakfast.
I carried mine like a lump all the way to school.
When I was growing hungry, where would they be?
None ever came twice. Never to lunch or dinner.
They were always starting fresh in the fresh morning.
I dreamed of days that stopped at the beginning.

Luckily, I was too young to experience The Depression, but my mother used to tell me how her mother always left food at the back door for those out of work. When times we’re as hard as that, there was no shame in not holding a job, simply joy when you were lucky enough to have full-time work. And apparently a feeling that you had an obligation, at least among the mothers, to help others in need. Seems like that’s what it used to mean to be a “Christian.”

Perhaps I like this poem so much because it reminds me of my own mother’s concern for others less fortunate than herself and of her life-long commitment to organizations like The Salvation Army. She would never have thought of holding a garage sale to earn money or even taking a tax break for donations. She’s also the one that passed on tales of the Depression and emphasized the need to help others. Though my father shared many of the same beliefs, he, like Waggoner’s father, emphasized thrift, the value of work, and the need to take pride in your work more than the need to help others, though he used to find ways of keeping men working that others would have fired long before.

I suppose I’m less generous than either of my parents were when it comes to giving handouts to “bums,” though I probably devoted more of my life to trying to help people, both as a caseworker and as a teacher. I’ve always respected people for who they are and seldom looked down on others who were less fortunate than I was. I’m not really a Christian but do believe that we are all “God’s children” and equally deserving.

Maybe if I’d been there when my grandmother fed the bums I would have wondered how they spent their day and dreamed of hitting the road, too. Maybe I, too, would have become a Jack Kerouc. As it turns out, though, my family moved so often when I was young that all I wanted to do was settle down in one place and make some life-long friends. You can only stand so many “fresh starts” before you realize you need to stick with something long enough to make a go of it.

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.

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.