David Wagoner

may not necessarily be my favorite poet, but I own eleven of his books of poetry, at least six more books than by any other poet.

Maybe I enjoy Wagoner’s poetry because he taught the first English class I ever took at the University of Washington or because he taught the first section of the year-long class I took on modern poetry my senior year.

Maybe it is simply because I was young and impressionable then and, no matter what he was teaching, he was as mesmerizing as Burt Lancaster in The Rainmaker. Anyone who can write lines like:

God bless me? Me be one for the cloud-capped, holy-
For showbiz, smug, sharkskinny, hog-certain, flowery Chosen
Harping for glory? Thumbs-upping glissandos on pure-gold G-strings?

could certainly hold my attention no matter what he was saying.

He saw the world in ways I, having been trapped in institutions, of learning my whole life, had never seen at 18 and 21 years of age.

Today, though, his poems probably appeal to me because they capture feelings associated with our common experiences, particularly those connected with the Northwest outdoors, as in the following poem.

GETTING THERE

You take a final step and, look, suddenly

You’re there. You’ve arrived

At the one place all your drudgery was aimed for:

This common ground

Where you stretch out, pressing your cheek to sandstone.

What did you want

To be? You’ll remember soon. You feel like tinder

Under a burning glass,

A luminous point of change. The sky is pulsing

Against the cracked horizon,

Holding it firm till the arrival of stars

In time with your heartbeats.

Like wind etching rock, you’ve made a lasting impression

On the self you were

By having come all this way through all this welter

Under your own power

Though your traces on a map would make an unpromising

Meandering lifeline.

What have you learned so far? You’ll find out later,

Telling it haltingly

Like a dream, that lost traveller’s dream

Under the last bill

Where through the night you’ll take your time out of mind

To unburden yourself

Of elements along elementary paths

By the break of morning.

You’ve earned this worn-down, hard, incredible sight

Called Here and Now.

Now, what you make of it means everything,

Means starting over:

The life in your hands is neither here nor there

But getting there,

So you’re standing again and breathing, beginning another journey without regret

Forever, being your own unpeaceable kingdom,

The end of endings.

David Wagoner from In Broken Country

Hiking, my metaphor for life, is a spiritual experience that reflects my journey to discovering who I am and who I want to be.

Each hike is an individual journey, and at least for one day all that exists is my goal is to reach the ãend.ä There is no outside world to worry about.

Of course, more than once I’ve wondered why I am doing a particular hike and whether I am ever going to reach the end, particularly on an extended backpack. When I do reach my destination, though, I feel physically and spiritually like “tinder under a burning glass.” That passionate moment justifies all the pain it took to get there. For that moment, there is only “Here and Now.”

As I start back the trail, forgetting the pain and struggle, I begin to think of my return or of my next great hike. And with the help of Wagoner’s poem, I realize that “the life in your hands is neither here nor there but getting there.”

A Mystical Brotherhood

Mt. Hood from Twin Lakes Trail

When I first encountered W.B. Yeats in the 60’s I dismissed his early pastoral poetry as naive and focused entirely on his later poems like Crazy Jane Talks to the Bishop or A Dialogue of Self and Soul. Upon rereading his poetry lately, though, I can certainly see the appeal of these early pre-Raphaelite poems.

Ah, how I long for the good old days, prior to September 11th, prior, even, to the 20th Century when Yeats was able to write:

INTO THE TWILIGHT
OUT WORN heart, in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
Your mother Eire is always young,
Dew ever shining and twilight grey;
Though hope fall from you and love decay,
Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.
Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:
For there the mystical brotherhood
Of sun and moon and hollow and wood
And river and stream work out their will;
And God stands winding His lonely horn,
And time and the world are ever in flight;
And love is less kind than the grey twilight,
And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.
W.B.Yeats from Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats

How delightful, indeed, to be able to escape the bonds of "wrong and right," not to have to worry about the morality or immorality of our country’s retaliatory attacks on Afghanistan, to find jo

You’ve Got Mail

I started reading Mark Strand’s poetry many years ago after I took one of his classes when he was a visiting professor at the University of Washington. Today his poetry is quite popular and several of his poems can be found on the web at sites like: A small collection of Mark Strand poems or Mark Strand (Bold Type Magazine)

I’m not sure I would have appreciated his poetry as much if I had taken his class as an undergraduate, but having just returned from Vietnam, I found his dark, surrealistic poems particularly moving.

When I started teaching poetry several years later, I always handed my students a copy of Eating Poetry as an introduction to my course to dispel any notions that poetry was merely sentimental verses written by lovesick romantics.

The ongoing anthrax letter scare reminded me of the following poem.

The Mailman

It is midnight.

He comes up the walk

and knocks at the door.

I rush to greet him.

He stands there weeping,

shaking a letter at me.

He tells me it contains

terrible personal news.

He falls to his knees.

"Forgive me! Forgive me!" he pleads.

I ask him inside.

He wipes his eyes.

His dark blue suit

is like an inkstain

on my crimson couch.

Helpless, nervous, small,

he curls up like a ball

and sleeps while I compose

more letters to myself

in the same vein:

"You shall live

by inflicting pain.

You shall forgive."

Mark Strand in Reasons for Moving

"The Mailman" is one of those foreboding poems that sits in the back of your mind until it is triggered by a certain event.

The poem’s ambiguity suggests the horror of having good news turn into bad news. We rush to the mailbox in hopes of hearing from loved ones or details of Apple’s long-awaited iPod. Imagine our horror, then, when we are greeted by the ever-friendly postman weeping loudly over the terrible news he is delivering.

In the past, the poem reminded me of the "Dear John" letter I received before shipping out to Vietnam, a little good news before sailing off to war.

Today, though, the poem seems to take on added significance in light of recent events. No matter how irrational the fear, today there is a moment of uncertainty when you receive a letter in an unknown handwriting and without a return address – even if does turn out to be an invitation to a baby shower.

Even the surprising ending of the poem where we discover that the protagonist is writing the messages to himself seems strangely appropriate: "You shall live by inflicting pain." On whom? "You shall forgive." Yourself? Your enemy?

Shine Perishing Republic

While this America settles in the mold of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,

And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens,

I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.

Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.

You making haste, haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly

A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic.

But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption

Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there are left the mountains.

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master.

There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught-they say-God, when he walked on earth.

Robinson Jeffers

Lest we delude ourselves into thinking America’s present crisis and people’s diverse reactions to it are anything new, this insightful, but disturbing, poem first appeared in 1926.

Those, like myself, who see the source of America’s international problems stemming from our attempts to extend our capitalistic empire, rather than our democratic ideals may, indeed, sigh with regret when we realize that as early as 1926 insightful citizens were warning of the dangers of empire, a warning never taken seriously.

Those who know history are only too aware that all empires decline and fall, whether they be Egyptian, Greek, Roman, English, or American. It is only a matter of time before ours, too, falls, though some may find some small comfort in the fact that this poem was written almost 75 years ago; so our decline may not be as "meteoric" as Jeffers envisioned.

For me, though, the most powerful, and frightening, line in the poem is beware the "love of man" for "There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught-they-say God, when he walked on earth."

The dilemma that each of us critical of America faces is whether to retreat within ourselves in order to save ourselves or to reach out to try to change a society that does not appear to want to change, that is happy with life as it is. And if we reach out, will we inevitably be pulled along with those we come to love?