Kenneth REXROTH (1905-1982)

## Lyell's Hypothesis Again

An Attempt to Explain the Former
Changes of the Earth's Surface by
Causes Now in Operation —*subtitle of Lyell: Principles of Geology*

The mountain road ends here,

5. Broken away in the chasm where
   The bridge washed out years ago.
   The first scarlet larkspur glitters
   In the first patch of April
   Morning sunlight. The engorged creek

10. Roars and rustles like a military
   Ball. Here by the waterfall,
   Insuperable life, flushed
   With the equinox, sentient
   And sentimental, falls away

15. To the sea and death. The tissue
    Of sympathy and agony
    That binds the flesh in its Nessus' shirt;
    The clotted cobweb of unself
    And self; sheds itself and flecks

20. The sun's bed with darts of blossom
    Like flagellant blood above
    The water bursting in the vibrant
    Air. This ego, bound by personal
    Tragedy and the vast

25. Impersonal vindictiveness
    Of the ruined and ruining world,
    Pauses in this immortality,
    As passionate, as apathetic,
    As the lava flow that burned here once;

30. And stopped here; and said, 'This far
    And no further.' And spoke thereafter
    In the simple diction of stone.

Naked in the warm April air,

35. We lie under the redwoods,
    In the sunny lee of a cliff.
    As you kneel above me I see
    Tiny red marks on your flanks
    Like bites, where the redwood cones

40. Have pressed into your flesh.
    You can find just the same marks
    In the lignite in the cliff
    Over our heads. *Sequoia*
*Langsdorfii* before the ice,

45 And sempervirens afterwards,
There is little difference,
Except for all those years.

Here in the sweet, moribund

50 Fetor of spring flowers, washed,
Flotsam and jetsam together,
Cool and naked together,
Under this tree for a moment,
We have escaped the bitterness

55 Of love, and love lost, and love
Betrayed. And what might have been,
And what might be, fall equally
Away with what is, and leave
Only these ideograms

60 Printed on the immortal
Hydrocarbons of flesh and stone.
The Rose

5 1

There are those to whom place is unimportant,
But his place, where sea and fresh water meet,
Is important—

Where the hawks sway out into the wind,

Without a single wingbeat,
And the eagles sail low over the fir trees,
And the gulls cry against the crows
In the curved harbors,
And the tide rises up against the grass

10 Nibbled by sheep and rabbits.

A time for watching the tide,
For the heron's hieratic fishing,
For the sleepy cries of the towhee,

15 The morning birds gone, the twittering finches,
But still the flash of the kingfisher, the wingbeat of the scoter,
The sun a ball of fire coming down over the water,
The last geese crossing against the reflected afterlight,
The moon retreating into a vague cloud-shape

20 To the cries of the owl, the eerie whooper.
The old log subsides with the lessening waves,
And there is silence.

I sway outside myself
Into the darkening currents,
Into the small spillage of driftwood,
The waters swirling past the tiny headlands.

25
Was it here I wore a crown of birds for a moment
While on a far point of the rocks

30
The light heightened,
And below, in a mist out of nowhere,
The first rain gathered?

2

35
As when a ship sails with a light wind—
The waves less than the ripples made by rising fish,
The lacelike wrinkles of the wake widening, thinning out,
Sliding away from the traveler's eye,

40
The prow pitching easily up and down,
The whole ship rolling slightly sideways,
The stern high, dipping like a child's boat in a pond—
Our motion continues.

45
But his rose, this rose in the sea-wind,
Stays,
Stays in its true place,
Flowering out of the dark,
Widening at high noon, face upward,

50
A single wild rose, struggling out of the white embrace of the morning-glory,
Out of the briary hedge, the tangle of matted underbrush,
Beyond the clover, the ragged hay,
Beyond the sea pine, the oak, the wind-tipped madrona,
Moving with the waves, the undulating driftwood,

55
Where the slow creek winds down to the black sand of the shore
With its thick grassy scum and crabs scuttling back into their glistening craters.

And I think of roses, roses,
White and red, in the wide six-hundred-foot greenhouses,

60
And my father standing astride the cement benches,
Lifting me high over the four-foot stems, the Mrs. Russells, and his own elaborate hybrids,
And how those flowerheads seemed to flow toward me, to beckon me, only a child, out
of myself.

What need for heaven, then,

65
With that man, and those roses?

3

What do they tell us, sound and silence?

70
I think of American sounds in silence:
On the banks of the Tombstone, the wind-harps having their say,
The thrush singing alone, that easy bird,
The killdeer whistling away from me,
The mimetic chortling of the catbird

75
Down in the corner of the garden, among the raggedy lilacs,
The bobolink skirling from a broken fencepost,
The bluebird, lover of holes in old wood, lilting its light song,
And that thin cry, like a needle piercing the ear, the insistent cicada,
And the ticking of snow around oil drums in the Dakotas,

80
The thin whine of telephone wires in the wind of a Michigan winter,
The shriek of nails as old shingles are ripped from the top of a roof,
The bulldozer backing away, the hiss of the sandblaster,
And the deep chorus of horns coming up from the streets in early morning.
I return to the twittering of swallows above water,

85
And that sound, that single sound,
When the mind remembers all,
And gently the light enters the sleeping soul,
A sound so thin it could not woo a bird,

90
Beautiful my desire, and the place of my desire.

I think of the rock singing, and light making its own silence,
At the edge of ripening meadow, in early summer,
The moon lolling in the close elm, a shimmer of silver,

95

Or that lonely time before the breaking of morning
When the slow freight winds along the edge of the ravaged hillside,
And the wind tries the shape of a tree,
While the moon lingers,
And a drop of rain water hangs at the tip of a leaf

100

Shifting in the wakening sunlight
Like the eye of a new-caught fish.

4

105

I live with rocks, their weeds,
Their filmy fringes of green, their harsh
Edges, their holes
Cut by the sea-slime, far from the crash
Of the long swell,

110

The oily, tar-laden walls
Of the toppling waves,
Where the salmon ease their way into the kelp beds,
And the sea rearranges itself among the small islands.

115

Near this rose, in this grove of sun-parched, wind-warped madronas,
Among the half-dead trees, I came upon the true ease of myself,
As if another man appeared out of the depths of my being,
And I stood outside myself,
Beyond becoming and perishing,

120

A something wholly other,
As if I swayed out on the wildest wave alive,
And yet was still.

And I rejoiced in being what I was:
In the lilac change, the white reptilian calm,

125

In the bird beyond the bough, the single one
With all the air to greet him as he flies,
The dolphin rising from the darkening waves;

And in this rose, this rose in the sea-wind,

130

Rooted in stone, keeping the whole of light,
Gathering into itself sound and silence—
Mine and the sea-wind's.
Elizabeth BISHOP (1911-1979)

The Moose

For Grace Bulmer Bowers

From narrow provinces
of fish and bread and tea,
home of the long tides
where the bay leaves the sea
twice a day and takes
the herrings long rides,

5

where if the river
enters or retreats
in a wall of brown foam
depends on if it meets
the bay coming in,
the bay not at home;

10

where, silted red,
sometimes the sun sets
facing a red sea,
and others, veins the flats'
lavender, rich mud
in burning rivulets;

20

on red, gravelly roads,
down rows of sugar maples,
past clapboard farmhouses
and neat, clapboard churches,
bleached, ridged as clamshells,
past twin silver birches,

25

through late afternoon
a bus journeys west,
the windshield flashing pink,
pink glancing off of metal,
brushing the dented flank
of blue, beat-up enamel;

30

down hollows, up rises,
and waits, patient, while
a lone traveller gives
kisses and embraces
to seven relatives
and a collie supervises.

40

Goodbye to the elms,
to the farm, to the dog.
The bus starts. The light
grows richer; the fog,
shifting, salty, thin,
comes closing in.

45

Its cold, round crystals
form and slide and settle

50
55

in the white hens' feathers,
in gray glazed cabbages,
on the cabbage roses
and lupins like apostles;

60

the sweet peas cling
to their wet white string
on the whitewashed fences;
bumblebees creep
inside the foxgloves,
and evening commences.

65

One stop at Bass River.
Then the Economies
Lower, Middle, Upper;
Five Islands, Five Houses,
where a woman shakes a tablecloth
out after supper.

70

A pale flickering. Gone.
The Tantramar marshes
and the smell of salt hay.

75

An iron bridge trembles
and a loose plank rattles
but doesn't give way.

80

On the left, a red light
swims through the dark:
a ship's port lantern.
Two rubber boots show,
iluminated, solemn.
A dog gives one bark.

85

A woman climbs in
with two market bags,
brisk, freckled, elderly.
"A grand night. Yes, sir,
all the way to Boston."
She regards us amicably.

90

Moonlight as we enter
the New Brunswick woods,
hairy, scratchy, splintery;
moonlight and mist
caught in them like lamb's wool
on bushes in a pasture.

95

100

The passengers lie back.
Snores. Some long sighs.
A dreamy divagation
begins in the night,
a gentle, auditory,
slow hallucination....

105

In the creakings and noises,
an old conversation
--not concerning us,
110
but recognizable, somewhere,
back in the bus:
Grandparents' voices

uninterruptedly

115
talking, in Eternity:
names being mentioned,
things cleared up finally;
what he said, what she said,
who got pensioned;

120
deaths, deaths and sicknesses;
the year he remarried;
the year (something) happened.
She died in childbirth.

125
That was the son lost
when the schooner foundered.

He took to drink. Yes.
She went to the bad.

130
When Amos began to pray
even in the store and
finally the family had
to put him away.

"Yes . . ." that peculiar
affirmative. "Yes . . ."
A sharp, indrawn breath,
half groan, half acceptance,
that means "Life's like that.

140
We know it (also death)."

Talking the way they talked
in the old featherbed,
peacefully, on and on,

145
dim lamplight in the hall,
down in the kitchen, the dog
tucked in her shawl.

Now, it's all right now
even to fall asleep
just as on all those nights.

--Suddenly the bus driver
stops with a jolt,
turns off his lights.

155
A moose has come out of
the impenetrable wood
and stands there, looms, rather,
in the middle of the road.

160
It approaches; it sniffs at
the bus's hot hood.

Towering, antlerless,
high as a church,

165
homely as a house
(or, safe as houses).
A man's voice assures us
"Perfectly harmless. . . "

170 Some of the passengers
exclaim in whispers,
childishly, softly,
"Sure are big creatures."
"It's awful plain."

175 "Look! It's a she!"

Taking her time,
she looks the bus over,
grand, otherworldly.

180 Why, why do we feel
(we all feel) this sweet
sensation of joy?

"Curious creatures,"
says our quiet driver,
rolling his r's.
"Look at that, would you."
Then he shifts gears.
For a moment longer,

190 by craning backward,
the moose can be seen
on the moonlit macadam;
then there's a dim

195 smell of moose, an acrid
smell of gasoline.
Thomas McGRATH (1916-1990)

## Praises

The vegetables please us with their modes and virtues.

The demure heart

Of the lettuce inside its circular court, baroque ear

5
Of quiet under its rustling house of lace, pleases
Us.

And the bold strength of the celery, its green Hispanic
¡Shout! its exclamatory confetti.

And the analogue that is Onion:

10
Ptolemaic astronomy and tearful allegory, the Platonic circles
Of His inexhaustible soul!

O and the straightforwardness

In the labyrinth of Cabbage, the infallible rectitude of Homegrown

Mushroom

15
Under its cone of silence like a papal hat –
Please us.

All these

And the syllabus of the corn,

that wampum,

its golden

20
Roads leading out of the wigwams of its silky and youthful smoke;
The nobility of the dill cool in its silences and cathedrals;
Tomatoes' five-alarm fires in their musky barrios, peas
Asleep in their cartridge clips,

beetsblood,

colonies of the imperial

25
Cauliflower, and the buddha-like seeds of the pepper
Turning their prayerwheels in the green gloom of their caves.

30
All these we praise: they please us all ways: these smallest virtues.
All these earth-given:

And the heaven-hung fruit also...

As instance

Banana which continually makes angelic ears out of sour

35
Purses, or the winy abacus of the holy grape on its cross
Of alcohol, or the peach with its fur like a young girl's –

All these we praise: the winter in the flesh of the apple, and the sun
Domesticated under the orange's rind.

We praise

40
By the skin of our teeth, persimmon, and pawpaw's constant
Affair with gravity, and the proletariat of the pomegranate
Inside its leathery city.

And let us praise all these

As they please us: skin, flesh, flower, and the flowering

45
Bones of their seeds: from which come orchards: bees: honey:
Flowers, love's language, love, heart's ease, praise.
I must remember to scream & holler
more often {i.e. go ahead & write violently,
absurdly, idiotically} if it means an end to
fog, clutter, ill-painted scenery, machines
with squeaky pulleys .... Also, if I
misinterpret the echo from this noise as
being sounds of encouragement,
which will in their turn provide me with
enough confidence to continue the inspection
& interpretation of my own visions, I shall be
content.

*

Because I imagine that I'm so far ...
too far ... IN, I sometimes stop, when I'm
out walking, to grasp the branch of a tree, a
handful of foliage, put both hands on the tree
trunk, closely inspect the bark {& are there
mosses, licks, fungi or insects on it?} note
its color, thickness, texture. In the park
stop to press one hand flat on the ground
among the gravel, fallen leaves, dead grasses —
or simply lie down on one of the great lawns
{I pay no attention, then, to the sky, sun,
clouds, birds} and attend to feeling the
springy grass & solid earth beneath me.

I click my tongue at a squirrel.
It approaches me on a zig-zag course,
running, then stopping to sit up with one
fore-paw held to its chest, uncertain
what I'll do — feed it or hit it. { I do
neither, & presently it goes away. several
other squirrels must come to inspect me, to

5

10

15

20

25

30
35

ascertain that I'm carrying no food to them ...
as each one approaches, it points one paw at
its chest, excitedly, appearing to enquire,
"who, me?}

40

Inside, outside, may or may not be
significant distinctions. I know that I
can bore or frighten myself rather easily,
by thinking, "I am inside, I must get out."
... & I have felt what the ancients
called PANIC, i.e. been outside & felt
an irrational necessity for being indoors,
for going home... but the last time I felt
that way, I took out my notebook and re-
corded the fact. Soon I was writing about
the general scene, about particular objects,
that caught my attention, & the terror
left me.

45

50

*

55

The End

Of

MONDAY IN THE EVENING

(1963)
## Song of the Turkey Buzzard

For Rock Scully
who heard it
the first
time

<footnote n="49">⁴⁹ https://soundcloud.com/aloudla/gary-snyder-song-of-the-turkey-buzzard-the-poetry-of-lew-welch
Go to 1:21:50 to listen to Gary Snyder reading this poem.</footnote>
Praises, Tamalpais
Perfect in Wisdom and Beauty,
She of the Wheeling Birds

5

I

The rider riddle is easy to ask
but the answer might surprise you.

10

How desperately I wanted Cougar
(I, Leo, etc.)
Brilliant proofs: terrain,
color, food, all.

15

nonsense. All made up.

They were always there, the
laziest high-flyers, bronze-winged,
the silent ones

20

"A cunning man always laughs and smiles,
even if he's desperately hungry,
while a good bird always flies like a vulture,
even if it is starving."

25

(Milarepa sang)

Over and over again, that sign:

30

I hit once, with a .22
heard the “flak” and a feather flew off, he
flapped his wings just once and
went on sailing. Bronze

35

(when seen from above)

as I have seen them, all day sitting
on a cliff so steep they
circled below me, in the up-draft
passed so close I could see his
eye.

40

Praises Tamalpais,
Perfect in Wisdom and Beauty,
She of the Wheeling Birds

45

Another time the vision was so clear another saw it, too.

Wet, a hatching bird, the shell of the egg streaked with dry
scum, exhausted, wet, too weak to move the shriveled wings,
fierce sun-heat, sand. Twitching, as with elbows (we all have
the same parts). Beak open, neck stretched, gasping for air. O
how we want to live!

50

55

“Poor little bird,” she said, “he’ll never make it.”
*Praises, Tamalpais,*
*Perfect in Wisdom & Beauty,*
*She of the Wheeling Birds*

60

Even so, I didn't get it for a long while. It finally came
in a trance, a coma, half in sleep and half in fever-mind. A
Turkey Buzzard, wounded, found by a rock on the mountain.
He wanted to die alone. I had never seen one, wild, so close.
When I reached out, he sidled away, head drooping, as dizzy as
I was. I put my hands on his wing-shoulders and lifted him. He
tried, feebly, to tear at my hands with his beak. He tore my
flesh too slightly to make any difference. Then he tried to heave
his great wings. Weak as he was, I could barely hold him.

65

70

A drunken veterinarian found a festering bullet in his side,
a .22 that slid between the great bronze scales his feathers were.
We removed it and cleansed the wound.

75

Finally he ate the rotten gophers I trapped and prepared
for him. Even at first, he drank a lot of water. My dog seemed
frightened of him.

80

They smell sweet
meat is dry on their talons

The very opposite of
death

85

bird of re-birth
Buzzard

meat is rotten meat made
sweet again and
lean, unkillable, wing-locked
soarer till he's but a

90

speck in the highest sky
infallible

95

eyes find Feast! On
baked concrete
free!

100

squashed rabbit ripened:
our good cheese

(to keep the highways clean, and bother no Being)

105

## II

*Praises Gentle Tamalpais*
*Perfect in Wisdom and Beauty of the*
*sweetest water*
*and the soaring birds*

110

great seas at the feet of thy cliffs
115 Hear my last Will & Testament:

Among my friends there shall always be
one with proper instructions
for my continuance.

120

Let no one grieve.
I shall have used it all up
used up every bit of it.

125

What an extravagance!
What a relief!

On a marked rock, following his orders,
place my meat.

130

All care must be taken not to
frighten the natives of this
barbarous land, who
will not let us die, even,
as we wish.

135

With proper ceremony disembowel what I
no longer need, that it might more quickly
rot and tempt

140

my new form

*

145 NOT THE BRONZE CASKET BUT THE BRAZEN WING

SOARING FOREVER ABOVE THEE O PERFECT

O SWEETEST WATER O GLORIOUS

150

WHEELING

155

BIRD

Springtime in the Rockies, Lichen

All these years I overlooked them in the
racket of the rest, this
symbiotic splash of plant and fungus feeding
on rock, on sun, a little moisture, air —

5 tiny acid-factories dissolving
salt from living rocks and
eating them.

Here they are, blooming!

10 Trail rock, talus and scree, all dusted with it:
rust, ivory, brilliant yellow-green, and
cliffs like murals!
Huge panels streaked and patched, quietly
with shooting-stars and lupine at the base.

15

Closer, with the glass, a city of cups!
Clumps of mushrooms and where do the
plants begin? Why are they doing this?
In this big sky and all around me peaks &

20

the melting glaciers, why am I made to
kneel and peer at Tiny?

These are the stamps of the final envelope.

25

How can the poisons reach them?
In such thin air, how can they care for the
loss of a million breaths?
What, possibly, could make their ground more bare?

30

Let it all die.

The hushed globe will wait and wait for
what is now so small and slow to
open it again.

35

As now, indeed, it opens it again, this
scentless velvet,
crumbler-of-the-rocks,

40

this Lichen!
William S. MERWIN (1927-2019)

Forgotten Fountain

Water dripping year after year
from the green mossed crevice in the east cliff
through my absences and through winter
through the shadows after midday
as they deepened to nightfall
the clear drops arriving through the stone
with no color of their own as they
appear one by one on the threshold
of the world in its full color
and each one pauses for a moment
before starting on its way down
to itself as it has been doing
ever since the cliff rose
from the seafloor and then the bees found it
the badgers the foxes the birds
until the day came with voices
from the village to clear the slope
singing as the tools rose and fell
turning the stiff yellow soil to plant
vineyards and peaches and I stood
by the clear source once listening
to their last singing together
with the mattocks keeping time and I
thought of Édouard and the village
as it had been when he was young
and his name was called with the others
to the colors as they put it
in the language of elsewhere and of
what it felt like in those last days
to be leaving for Verdun with no words
in a moment with no color of its own

5

10

15

20

25

30
For a Coming Extinction<fnref n="50" />

<footnote n="50">⁵⁰ Animals utter indivisible sounds so/ often yet/ Aristotle does not call any of *them*/ a letter. Still, an/ animal sound will/ make yourself happy. Listen to this/ Kitten. We can call its noises an alphabet without confusion.</footnote>

<footnote>*
They will never be done Never be/ done dancing If we wipe them/ from the face of the earth/ they will never be done
being/ part of it making the world with their/ sounds & feet & hooves// until they are done dancing the/ animals'
ghost dance &/ then they will be done</footnote>

<footnote>Eleni Sikelianos, *Make Yourself Happy*, 2017, 4, 84.</footnote>

<footnote>(V. Dussol’s footnote)</footnote>
Gray whale

Now that we are sending you to The End

That great god

5 Tell him

That we who follow you invented forgiveness

And forgive nothing

I write as though you could understand

10 And I could say it

One must always pretend something

Among the dying

When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks

Empty of you

15 Tell him that we were made

On another day

The bewilderment will diminish like an echo

Winding along your inner mountains

20 Unheard by us

And find its way out

Leaving behind it the future

Dead

And ours

25

When you will not see again

The whale calves trying the light

Consider what you will find in the black garden

And its court

30 The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas

The irreplaceable hosts ranged countless

And fore-ordaining as stars

Our sacrifices

35 Join your word to theirs

Tell him

That it is we who are important
Gary SNYDER (b. 1930)

## Straight-Creek—Great Burn

for Tom and Martha Burch

Lightly, in the April mountains—
Straight Creek,
dry grass freed again of snow
& the chickadees are pecking
last fall's seeds
fluffing tail in chilly wind,

Avalanche piled up cross the creek
and chunked-froze solid-
water sluicing under; spills out
rock lip pool, bends over,
braided, white, foaming,
returns to trembling
deep-dark hole.

Creek boulders show the flow-wear lines
in shapes the same
as running blood
carves in the heart's main
valve,

Early spring dry. Dry snow flurries;
walk on crusty high snow slopes
—grand dead burn pine—
chartreuse lichen as adornment
(a dye for wool)
angled tumbled talus rock
of geosyncline warm sea bottom
yes, so long ago.
"Once upon a time."

Far light on the Bitterroots;
scrabble down willow slide
changing clouds above,
shapes on glowing sun-ball
writing, choosing
reaching out against eternal
azure—

us resting on dry fern and
watching
Shining Heaven
change his feather garments
overhead.

40

A whoosh of birds
swoops up and round
tilts back
almost always flying all apart
and yet hangs on!
together;

45

never a leader,
all of one swift

empty
dancing mind.

50

They arc and loop & then
their flight is done.
they settle down.

end of poem.

55

1974

For all

Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream

barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.

5

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,

10

smell of sun on gravel.

15

I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun

20

With joyful interpenetration for all.

25
## At Big Sur

Lizard under the stone,
bees buzz around us through
the two trees full of canaries and
in the burnt grass
yellow poppies.

## Private Estate

Dancing dandelions
and buttercups in the grass
remind me of other summer
flowers, simple blossoms

roses and tiger lilies by the wall
milk pod, sumac branches
lilacs across the road, daisies, blueberries
snaps, cut violets

three years ago still grow in my mind
as peonies or planted geraniums, bachelor buttons
in downy fields filled with clover
lover, come again and again up fern

path upheld as memory's perennial
against stern hard-faced officers of imprisonment
and cold regulation more painful than lover's arms
or flowers charming but not more lasting.

No, the wild tulip shall outlast the prison wall
no matter what grows within.

6.21.69
global warming

or is it el nino? that's warming up these colder climes
these warm mild days in December
that come almost without interruption
you stop in a little park and bask awhile
as you make your way home
noticing the autumn leaves
that still hang tough on their trees
but there's also a little nip in the air
(difference between autumn and a Japanese acrobat?)

with it though this strange new warmth
and it seems so gentle
so rife with a kind of tenderness
you cannot help smiling and laughing a little
nonetheless thinking of all the bad things

that will no doubt occur due to this greenhouse effect
the caps melting
the seas rising
flooding of coastal towns and areas
disruption of various meteorological patterns

the deaths and dislocados
but for the poor up here in the north
this degenerative devolution
might mean a few more chances for awhile
a few less things closing in on them

before the “big bang”
and as you get up to leave
it suddenly strikes you
that this new pleasant warming
is like a drug perhaps

one of the worst no doubt
that floods for a moment
with some drowsy expansive warmth and embrace
leaves you nodding, chuckling
at some minor amusant

that in the end will perhaps do you in
but with a fatalism
that seems now almost complete
you cannot change any of it
why not accept then with a shrug and a smile
only a touch, a momentary remnant of irony
tree souls

if our close relatives
on the animal side
whales, chimpanzees, dogs, dolphins

5

on the plant side
we might be related to trees

perhaps we have two souls

one which travels, feels demonstrably
chooses, dances, the passionate train-journeying soul
whirlwind of discordant coloration
with Whitman in his "Song of the Open Road"
travels to the ends of the earth

leaving everything behind
for the sake of the journey
while retaining everything in microcosm

the other

stationary and rooted, almost trapped
speaks a quiet, somewhat abstract language
like the souls of trees
in which some instinctive nobility resides
it must endure enormous chunks of disaster and flood

hell-fire and damnation
catalepsis and transmogrification
children sometimes understand this tree soul
but as they grow up they are taught to forget

yet the stories trees would tell
if we could listen to them again
could hear them
seem to be of growing old
of friends cut down

30

the relationship of the forest
the land and the animals
of growing desuetude and loneliness
yet the tree endures
makes new friends

35

sings out again in whatever voice it can find
of some great longevity however short
but most of all
of the clarity and necessity of enduring

40

unexpected voices penetrate us
interpret for us these trees

45

if we could decipher
the magic knife stuck in the wood
quivering, singing this telepathic song

50
## for Joe

maybe it was the ferns
whose delicate frondescent density a green inweaving
and which were always pictured in prehistoric times as giant
and coexisting with the dinosaurs
or the explanation which told that the redwoods had existed
during their times
and that some still now lived to be 2000 years old
or the quote from Steinbeck that
"even the most irreverent of men
fell silent in their presence"
and you thought no, now the most irreverent of men
would not fall silent
but when entering the forest

5

10

15

you were struck
was it the creaking, lapping, murmuring
of the clear stream
which first on one side, then on the other
or that the trail was made by the CCC<fnref n="51" />
which you always thought was a good idea
and being unemployed you could have signed right up for
the deep shade of the woods
the immensity of the trees
are you a worshipper of gigantism?

20

25

the trilling of the birds in the openings
or mysterious glens
the peculiar red color of the cut or broken-off wood
some old smoldering darkened red like discolored brick
the crashed trees now lying on their sides

30

almost like elongated boxcars
sometimes with earth across the horizontal planes of them
growing plants, weeds
the toppled trees bowering the path
or acting as a bridge over the stream

35

remembering Hesse's 'Glass Bead Game'
that might be the forest equivalent
the old bikku said he was retiring to—
to put aside stories and pictures forever

40

or that you and your friend were the first ones up
and in to the wood
you grasped that you had to walk very slowly
slightly slower even than ambling
or then jumping down beside the stream

45

like a teenager full of bravado
drank from it and found it good
the silence when you stopped

<footnote n="51">51 CCC: Civilian Conservation Corps</footnote>
50

except for the faint hum of the birds and insects
in the presence of the great-lived longevity

hoary speechlessness
or the roots naked of the fallen ones
like thinking bones of the inconceivable head
the thought that your father made it to Seattle once
hitch-hiking on the bum

55

and your mother to L.A.

but they had probably never seen anything quite like this
and in their last creepings and staggerings
might be moved by this wood
the story that a family had lived

60

in the burned, hollowed-out portion of one
during the depression of the 30's
the five-fingered, lady, or sword-ferns
all you saw, ferns in general
or that the Chinese had their own "dawn Redwoods"

65

Metasequoia Glyptroboides

that no one had mentioned when you were there
north of Harbin up in Manchuria?
where you had always wanted to go
someone told you

70

that the most beautiful women lived there
a mixture of Han Chinese and White Russian
who had fled after the Revolution
the thought that of the many things you see and experience
one will stick with you

75

of the thousand accidents of time and space
that speak to you
and enter in to you
and might stay with you till the end
## be careful

i must be careful about such things as these.
the thin-grained oak. the quiet grizzlies scared
into the hills by the constant tracks squeezing
in behind them closer in the snow. the snared
rigidity of the winter lake. deer after deer
crossing on the spines of fish who look up and stare
with their eyes pressed to the ice. in a sleep. hearing
the thin taps leading away to collapse like the bear
in the high quiet. i must be careful not to shake
anything in too wild an elation. not to jar
the fragile mountains against the paper far-
ness. nor avalanche the fog or the eagle from the air.
of the gentle wilderness i must set the precarious
words. like rocks. without one snowcapped mistake.

## We Must Be Careful

Writing poetry, for me, began with the nature poem. Most beginning writers record out-pourings of their most personal emotions of adolescent conflict, usually love. I did that but not so much as pouring out my feelings about what I was doing, which was traveling around Alaska, Canada, the United States, and Bermuda "doing nature." I was an undergraduate research assistant in limnology, freshwater chemistry, collecting samples in the field, recording and analyzing data on a very simple level. My first nationally published poem as grand prize winner in the *Atlantic Monthly* sounds like the god of nature's undergraduate lab assistant: "must be careful . . ."

By the end of this early poem, nature turns into words; the poem is as much about the experience of writing as it is about the experience and observation of nature. I think this poem is also my early understanding of words as appropriation, not just a simple picture of the unknown focused into the realm of the known.

Appropriation implies that, in the takeover, the taken object is changed to conform to the taker, to the carrier. Those are *my* words carrying *my* carefully chosen deer, my grizzlies, not Nature's. Like stuffing and mounting them on the wall, I appropriate the grizzlies without active appetites or teeth, for a quiet, nonlethal poem. The teeth stay behind in Nature. The missing appetite and teeth reinforce my sense that human experience of nature differs from Nature, that there is always an unknowable, hidden aspect of Nature.

This mystery beyond words is our mythology, our religion, our poetry. We exist in the midst of living as other living. We have words for our existence; but after enough words, we come to the limits of—if not our living—our knowledge of the nature of human living. There is, however, no humanly containable limit to living Nature; there is no outside of Nature.

In most ecopoetics, a poet's way of writing about nature, man can't be outside Nature; our life exists inside as an act of Nature. Even our experience of a supernatural arises as a likeness to this limitation, out of our being.

Today's ecologically conscious poet sees the world of human existence resting in, on, or arising, precipitating out of the Earth: out of all life, out of Nature. The nature poem occurs when an individual's sense of the larger Earth enters into the world of human knowledge. The
main understanding that results from this encounter is *the* Ecopoetic: that the world's desires
do *not* run the Earth, but the Earth *does* run the world.

The Earth, or Nature, is very generous with this datum. The lines from “must be careful .
. .” came out of a job located geographically in Alaska, but come first from a place where the
unknown, uncontrollable aspects of bears and mountains step around the world *Alaska* to
locate me in the barely mapped nature of Earth.

Ever since Alaska, I've been "doing nature"; taking down the data in my writing, not only of the present natural world but the data on myself in that world, on myself as just another one of nature's innumerable components. This self-conscious attention to being in balance—careful, to being a part of nature, not separate as its master or crown—was to become one of the basic positions of my ecopoetics. My orderly handling of the nature poem came from my feel for basic scientific observation and technique, not the order of a metaphysical imperative. Not even a green peace.

I had been at the mercy of nature's "fragrant innocence" in the Upper Amazon jungle and climbing in the Andes Mountains; and the "green Thought in a green Shade" had been an actual jaguar probably seeing me with the thought of dinner. Off the page, Marvell's garden feeds both ways. My place in nature could be to feed an animal life as well as to be fed the nectarine and peach of Marvell's poem. The leveling fear exposed another difference between my experience and nature poetry. Against the eternal idyll of Romantic nature, I had to place the idea of subjective limit, of de-centered mortality . . .

A traditional *gomby*, or stilt walker, prays or chants himself out of his body into “spirit,” a state of possession that lifts him onto his stilts. To see the *gomby*, they appear to be flying bodies above the crowd; their legs stretched by the lift-off just barely touch the ground. In one of my poems, the *gomby* has the spirit of a heron, and I am the fish he is hunting. I am one of the preys of Earth; here, not to be eaten, but rather made to see my human world through eyes located elsewhere in the Earth/Nature. I am not made to see death, but rather to see what it is to almost instinctively turn and face knowledge beyond my current grasp. To be “possessed,” en-tranced by Earth.

Jonathan Bate says it is “the capacity of the writer to restore us to the earth which is our
home.” Nature is not a caring mother addressed solely to our needs; the Earth has no
perception of us as we see ourselves and our needs. “The initial relationship between
humanity and environment is in relationships of utility and potential resource.” Technology is
more likely to “conserve, regenerate and nourish the resource base of capitalism” than nature.
Africans who came enslaved to this country as a commercially exploitable resource
experienced how the parallels in policies of colonialism and the one-sided exploitation of
natural ecologies deform human relationships. But Africans also brought a relationship to
Nature with them that defended them against this distortion. “High John the Conquer
(conjure) Root” is a spirit plant you can eat and use to cure, but you had to know what to look
for to find him. This is not so much anthropomorphizing of Nature as it is an observant
accumulating of the knowledge of self in an also living environment.

At its base, like that African retention, Bate's idea of the need to be "restored to the earth" is to offset the developed alienation that comes with those commercial kinds of relationships, of exploitation we experience. In my own poems I try to show our social nature in and as the growth of our cities and city culture. Our technology, however, is more likely to conserve, regenerate, and nourish the limiting and exclusive resource base of capitalism than our larger human or Earth/Nature. Restoring this larger Earth to urban poetry, embedding city life within a living Nature focuses on an interrelation that should keep us sensitized to exploitative relationships which could cut us off, cut us out of life. [...]Maybe there's a whole new aspect of urban nature poetry that needs to be written.

*black nature*, ed. Camille T. Dungy (2009), 3-5
## Urban Nature

Neither New Hampshire nor Midwestern farm,
nor the summer home in some Hamptons garden
thing, not that Nature, not a satori
-al leisure come to terms peel by peel, not that core
whiff of beauty as the spirit. Just a street
pocket park, clean of any smells, simple quiet—
simple quiet not the same as no birds sing,
definitely not the dead of no birds sing:

5

The bus stop posture in the interval
of nothing coming, a not quite here running
sound underground, sidewalk's grate vibrationless
in open voice, sweet berries ripen in the street
hawk's kiosks. The orange is being flown in
this very moment picked of its origin.

10

15

## The Social Distance

Looking down from the window
into the bare augur sycamore          tree
in the park across the street
the surprise is how full

5

of red-wing blackbirds it is –
these notoriously territorial
bombardiers          who will whiz
your head twisted off if you get too close

10

and usually fight each other away
but are here making a joyous gang of making fuss –
unlike us          distanced socially away
from spreading further          pandemic. the laugh on us –

15

these natural migrations have to be taken
from the larger view          our local branch in chorus shaken.

April 20th 2020
Ezra Pound's Proposition

Beauty is sexual, and sexuality
Is the fertility of the earth and the fertility
Of the earth is economics. Though he is no recommendation

For poets on the subject of finance,
I thought of him in the thick heat
Of the Bangkok night. Not more than fourteen, she saunters up to you
Outside the Shangri-la Hotel
And says, in plausible English,

"How about a party, big guy?"

Here is more or less how it works:
The World Bank arranges the credit and the dam
Floods three hundred villages, and the villagers find their way

To the city where their daughters melt into the teeming streets,
And the dam's great turbines, beautifully tooled
In Lund or Dresden or Detroit, financed

By Lazard Frères in Paris or the Morgan Bank in New York,
Enabled by judicious gifts from Bechtel of San Francisco

Or Halliburton of Houston to the local political elite,
Spun by the force of rushing water,
Have become hives of shimmering silver
And, down river, they throw that bluish throb of light
Across her cheekbones and her lovely skin.
William MATTHEWS (1942-1997)

The Bear at the Dump

Amidst the too much that we buy and throw
away and the far too much we wrap it in,
the bear found a few items of special
interest—a honeydew rind, a used tampon,
the bone from a leg of lamb. He'd rock back
lightly onto his rear paws and slash
open a plastic bag, and then his nose—
jammed almost with a surfeit of rank
and likely information, for he would pause—
and then his whole dowsing snout would
insinuate itself a little way
inside. By now he'd have hunched his weight
forward slightly, and then he'd snatch it back,
trailed by some tidbit in his teeth. He'd look
around. What a good boy am he.
The guardian of the dump was used
to this and not amused. "He'll drag that shit
every which damn way," he grumbled
who'd dozed and scraped a pit to keep that shit
where the town paid to contain it.
The others of us looked and looked. "City
folks like you don't get to see this often,"
one year-round resident accused me.
Some winter I'll bring him down to learn
to love a rat working a length of subway
track. "Nope," I replied. Just then the bear
decamped for the woods with a marl of grease
and slather in his mouth and on his snout,
picking up speed, not cute (nor had he been
cute before, slavering with greed, his weight
all sunk to his seated rump and his nose stuck
up to sift the rich and fetid air, shaped
like a huge, furry pear), but richly
fed on the slow-simmering dump, and gone
into the bug-thick woods and anecdote.

5

10

15

20

25

30

35
## Night Sky, Pawnee Creek

Rigel leaves a ripple
otter
through black water.

*

## Suddenly in the Sky

The final days before departing the Pine Ridge country I went
out each late afternoon to the lovely hills along upper Bordeaux
Creek and sat for an hour in the late August change-of-things,
taking in the first of the cool autumn tones and bidding a grad-
ual farewell to a favorite place. One of those afternoons I heard
a plaintive bleat from down the wooded slope, and finally saw
a youngling goat emerge from the box elders. He had seen me
and proceeded straight up the hill, bleating as he came, to stand
beside me, obviously seeking simple nonspecific companion-
ship—I guessed he was a castaway. I scratched his brow and ears
and stared at his great gold-leaf mantis eyes. We sat there a good
while, enjoying the camaraderie, talking a little, not much. Just
before dusk, all of an instant, the nighthawks were there, sud-
denly in the sky, then more, and I believed I was actually seeing
them rise from the pines nearby at the very moment of stirring,
of takeoff, like the instant of a leaf breaking from its twig—
a tribe or family *moving out* against the pastel sky for the
evening's work, gregarious and graceful. They began to hunt,
looping and tacking in in a loose unassuming group. Every few
minutes they passed above, giving a soft, unfamiliar mutter of
a call among them—*wik-wik, wik-wik-wik*—and we looked up as
one to watch them go over.<fnref n="52" />

5

10

15

20

<footnote n="52">⁵² The two pieces face each other on opposite pages in *Red Mavis* (2014).</footnote>
Carol CIAVONNE (b. 1949)

## Statement of Belief

We believe there are other countries.

We believe there are moving molecules in solid objects, tables and empty chairs.

We believe people have been here and will be here, sitting next to us, talking.

We believe in history. Cities upon cities.

We believe what has happened although it did not happen to us.

We believe we heard a bird sing, light on the edges of leaves,

that the kettle will boil.

We believe that time exists,

and in the future because the past has proven it.

We believe that the branches of giant redwoods grow tall as trees, trees upon trees.

We believe there is a species of fungus that reaches in underground filaments further than any other living thing.

We believe in microscopic eyes.

We believe we have left undone those things

which we ought to have done

and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.

We believe that no one will rescue us.

We believe that there are other stars and suns; like the scent of honeysuckle, unseeable.

We believe we are hurtling through space on the star path, that the celestial equator extends infinitely;

what tropical landscapes we may find, what fiery forests

what winged creatures that flit from planet to planet!

We believe in the power of words, spoken and written.

What word from what being will make now always.

The hummingbirds, sungods, spoke to me.
Jorie GRAHAM (b.1950)

## The Geese

Today as I hang out the wash I see them again, a code
as urgent as elegant,
tapering with goals.
For days they have been crossing. We live beneath these geese

as if beneath the passage of time, or a most perfect heading.
Sometimes I fear their relevance.
Closest at hand,
between the lines,

the spiders imitate the paths the geese won't stray from,
imitate them endlessly to no avail:
things will not remain connected,
will not heal,

and the world thickens with texture instead of history,
texture instead of place.
Yet the small fear of the spiders
binds and binds

the pins to the lines, the lines to the eaves, to the pincushion bush,
as if, at any time, things could fall further apart
and nothing could help them
recover their meaning. And if these spiders had their way,

chainlink over the visible world,
would we be in or out? I turn to go back in.
There is a feeling the body gives the mind
of having missed something, a bedrock poverty, like falling

without the sense that you are passing through one world,
that you could reach another
anytime. Instead the real
is crossing you,

your body an arrival
you know is false but can't outrun. And somewhere in between
the geese forever entering,
and the spiders turning back,

this astonishing delay, the everyday, takes place.
Nin ANDREWS (b. 1958)

For I Will Consider Fracking<sup>liii</sup>

<footnote>liii Poem obviously written in recollection of Christopher Smart’s madhouse poem *Jubilate Agno*.</footnote>
For I will consider that fracking is the new American religion.

For I will consider that Americans believe fracking will give them energy independence despite reports to the contrary.

For I will consider that fracking is being falsely advertised as a cleaner form of gas and oil extraction.

For I will consider that fracking contributes more to global warming than coal production.

For I will consider that global warming is causing droughts and water shortages.

For I will consider that only 2.5 percent of the water on earth is drinkable.

For I will consider that aquifers are already being drained by the growing population.

For I will consider that between 70 and 140 billion gallons of water were used to frack 35,000 wells in the US in 2010,

For I will consider that 706 billion gallons of water is the annual water consumption of 40 to 80 cities with the population of 50,000 people.

For I will consider that frackers pump up to 4 million gallons of fluid as far as 10,000 feet below earth at up to 4,200 gallons per minute.

For I will consider that fracked-water contains water, sand, and a cocktail of chemicals linked to serious health problems,

For I will consider that this chemical soup is pumped back to the surface as frack-waste, which contains not only toxic chemicals but also heavy metals and radioactive material

For I will consider that fracking causes earthquakes,

For I will consider that these earthquakes can cause frack-waste to enter drinking supply,

For I will consider that the EPA admits that chemicals used in fracking have been found in drinking water near wells,
For I will consider that the EPA is still working on creating
standards for fracking and for frack-waste water
treatment,

50

For I will consider that fracking contaminates the air and the soil
as well as the water,

For I will consider that the list of towns and cities where well-
failure or soil and water contamination due to fracking are
said to have occurred is growing,

55

For I will consider that fracking has come to my backyard, and
well-failures and earthquakes have been reported,

60

For I will consider that the oil companies and gas companies deny
that fracking causes water contamination or earthquakes,

For I will consider that the oil companies lie, and the American
people love their lies and sleep peacefully when and if they
do not hear the oil compressors humming nearby,

65

For I will consider that the American people are saying, *Goodnight
Moon, Goodnight Sun, Good night Ocean, Goodnight Lakes and
Streams and Clean Air,*

70

For I will consider that I, too, should close my eyes.
Eleni SIKELIANOS (b. 1965)

From *The California Poem* (2004)

*for all the echinoderms and dinoflagellates*

(3)

to find a world, a word
we didn't know.

(p.9)

*Biotic Community: Rocky Shore*

A narrow strip between low tide and shoreline where sands and rocks are
often wet and damp, where reefs and rocks extend from shore.

*Surf grasses & sea lettuce*

*Sandpipe, Wandering Tattler, Heermann's & Western Gull*

*a crab, a barnacle, beach flea, an isopod, some beach hopper*

(27)

A silent land across which no animal moved & no animal made a sound
The earth fell in folds

& wrinkles into ditches, a shield of granite
over Hudson Bay, soft-bodied animals slipped in the tide

The great tribes
of armored arthropods stepped forth, ghost crabs sped along beaches

fish, stream-molded by Silurian rivers, we invented
mechanical ears & eyes

Soon cattle & their young corresponded
to the affections of the natural mind

Begin with a homophone, move
through numbers, animals & rocks participated
in the inventions of language
(from the snapping of twigs
we learned k's and t's)liv

& two-winged creatures, according to their species,
to my two minds; is why

<footnote>liv All sparrows' songs,
Granites, grasses, collaborate, language
is a shape
the planet takes</footnote>
my birds
fly with words
one wing for each
hemisphere to create
the worlds
by naming:
(38-39)

I might find “occasion to
sing war & perfect soldiers” —
the war that wages over the
face of the Earth, against
every edible turtle &
movable tree, the tyranny
of money
(43)

Biotic Community: Riparian Woodland

asked Virgil,

“should we
pillage woods, thick
coverts of game, point
to new-found streams”?

Sylvan Hairstreak, Satyr Anglewing
Dipper or Water Ouzel, Yellow-breasted Chat, Belted Kingfisher
Dusky-footed Woodrat
(64)

In the cold-crusted East
catch a swarm of blackbirds stenographing the sky

[...]
Sky a moving wave made of wings & they did not
stop, or want to stop, pouring between buildings in chafing braille

Can you
read that wingy language? Can you
typeset that sky?
(96)

Biotic Community: Freshwater Marsh

Wherever shallow, standing water remains; along the coast in brackish loops, around springs, ponds, lakes, and sluggish streams.

Common Tule, Bulrush, Cattails, sedge and spike rush, pondweed
Predaceous diving beetle, Giant Water Bug, toadbug
Gallinule, Coot, Marsh Wren, Redwinged Blackbird, Yellowthroat
Pond turtles, Treefrogs, Garter snakes

I believe I said

in the secret chambers
of the human
heart
in
Gold Ruin
amongst hydraulic quark scars
walked Dante
through
tule fog
bunchgrass
yerba santa & chamise, chinquapin, in
tinder-dry CA
in deserts turned to great cities
there were “books . . . . . . in the . . . . . . brooks”<sup>lv</sup>
babbling great poetry
(104)

*dream: all the wild beaches had been built upon*

Fancy hotels with eyeless, edgeless pools and all
rotting piers ripped out They built hundreds
of hotels a night on Haskells’ wild shores for Tom Hanks’s weekends

To the south, my beaches have been given over
to oil-
drilling companies, cargo
wharves, factory-built
blackness by the sea, squatting
buildings, black smoke
up to the edge of water, concrete
haunches jumbled

and built blackness right into the water —
a huge city lurking in absence of light lies
under the waves
as they roll—roll *evil*.

I have found one patch left—lucent creatures drift
along the coral under a
clean sea—an electrically-purple Elegant
Nudibranch (*Flabellinopsis iodinea*) with neon orange
fringe, Hopkins’ Rosy Nudibranch, red crabs, turning with the water in an
easy metropolis of sea—

<footnote>lv See Shakespeare’s *As You Like It*, Act II, Scene 1. (V.D.)</footnote>
but sooted lands lie at the Southern right, and I know
soon it will slip up in the night, with
the will of the people, & engulf this last bright
animal ditch.

In the dream I was hunting for dinner—razorback clams, any
soft-bodied animal that oozes at the edges
of symmetry, anything delicious, wearable,
lovely
(108-109)

Removing the heart of the turtle to a jar
of saltwater, it will beat when prodded twenty-
four hours later
the mermaid's purse is a sandshark unhatched & now the tiny fish is pickled in alcohol
a turtle's flesh will continue to respond even
when you place the white cubes of
meat
in a pot

moving pictures of the color & patterns
change in the bonito during death
as they bear their tails against the deck, colors pulse & fade, pulse & fade and then they are dead

animals have one color when they are alive
another when dead

"This smooth blue water runs out of time, . . . and a kind of dream"^lvi^ sits in it

the "playing porpoises" do not "play opposites," "turtles, the great schools of fish" under
the ruffled waters
all the thing was alive and alive when
you saw it the teeming surface of the watery
earth barnacle & hydroid riding the turtle's
back pelagic rock-lobsters in his gut a crab
inhabits his ass the waters stuffed
with living plankton through which the big fish
swim

moving pictures of langostino littering
the water's currents & soon put them in a white porcelain pan

now the film is
"immersed . . . in alcohol which promptly removed
their brilliant color"

"the heat of a great furnace" (Cortés), *Calida fornax*
not the denomination of New Mexico, Apaches' land

<footnote>^lvi^ All quotations across p. 110-111 are from Steinbeck's *The Log from the Sea of Cortez* (1941, 1951). (V.D.)</footnote>
but of shorespeople, *sxa'min*, a small sea cave and arch, sexy *cala-y-fornix*, rooted
in primitive magics, names
will stick or fall away, a list

of disappearances

what disappeared, has
disappeared, is
disappearing, will disappear. I can't tell for they are
disappearing. It is happening
around us in forests, on highways. What
is appearing? This remains to be
named and seen.
(110-111)

I too will wrestle with the human hurricane, hulking black storm

—Wait, what is
“the human”? : the will, & “I have a hand”
that disintegrates into darkness

fate, false history, I cannot
make this list because
another it
is “at it with a vengeance, and what [this]
*it* is is Nature”
(127-128)

In sun-helmets come down to the beach, J.S. continued, the intrepid
interloping cormorants in radical black diving subversively
off cliffs to catch the fishermen's fish
“And they are . . . slaughtered, as all radicals should be,” *Heliaster kubiniji*

dark pendant gorgonians swaying under reefs
[...]
Starfish in the brittle numb curricula
make secondary pentamerous radial symmetry<sup>lvii</sup> / radical syllabi; the Asterozoa might teach us
autonomous habits
(132-133)

A thought wavy and loose
showed me
the endings of matter
(140)

<footnote>(lvii) xviii Of Phylum Echinodermata (Starfish, Brittle Stars, Sea Urchins, Sand Dollars): “although the larvae start life in bilaterally symmetrical form (with a mirror-image on each side of an imaginary longitudinal midline), the adults of most species attain a radial symmetry . . . around a common center point . . . which in this phylum is based on a plan of five” (Hinton, *Seashore Life of Southern California*). (191)</footnote>
a physiography simple
a mountain fringe along the rim of ocean
a splendid valley of imperial extent
a great area of arid, barren land
a big block of the Earth's crust faulted & tilted into sharp
escarpment, a gentle curvy slope at its back, the finest mountains offerable
rising 10,000 miles above the sea

The tectonics of
props we
lay upon
proved themselves willing
to shift

I too, moving viewer
in the indeterminate land, an always-moving
horizon at my front
or at my back
(145)

(sand, sand dollar, rock...) Your job is to
tell the history of each & every piece

Begin with lost houses
lost loves
lost boxes or keys
Continue with a description
of a journey

Conclude with the real
subject

which is
quiescence
among the trees

reflecting
a way to extinguish the will

a nursing wind
gone berserk

through noctilucent clouds
in high summer
high sky

made soft & breezy, the wild
wind having taken the piss
out of it
It, the sky, that is

Invent a language, “the tongue
of the mirror,”<sup>lviii</sup> into which
anything, everything can be
perfectly translated, but in which
nothing can be said
(152-153)

Biotic Community: Chaparral

Dense cover of evergreen shrubs with thick leathery leaves over plains, mesas, foothills; many with fire-resistant seeds that sprout quickly, and only, after fires.

Chamise, Scrub Oak, Hard Tack, wild lilac, Bear Brush & Quinine, manzanita, Sugarbush
Mountain Quail & Scrub jay, Wrentit
Bluebelly, Fence & Horned Lizards, Striped Racer, Rattlesnake
Silk Moth, Hedge-Row Hairstreak, Callippe Fritillary, mariposa, mariposa, mariposa
Mule Deer, Coyote, Gray Fox & Brush Rabbit, California Pocket Mouse, Nimble
Kangaroo Rat, Chupacabras &

*Bobcats* exploding with design, a symmetry for the mind
to take shape in
(155)

in the united states of all this place, every
amalgamated rock & singing string & dirt, our sexual
flowering earth, vectee crowded
with vectors. What
have you made
flower?

anther

anthem

atom

Little planet, crystal ball
tells the tale of a many-layered dustcake

*From an ending star, iron becomes the dust that clumps to make a solid planet*

As seen from afar:
mirrored tufty, spinning
pellet. Close under
our feet, our cloudy reflections
cast down
underground—

when the body
melts back into shadow, beginning
with the toes

<footnote>A reference to Nabokov's *Pale Fire*. (V.D.)</footnote>
**California Grizzly Bear EXTINCT (1925)** / Point Arena Mountain Beaver/ Sierra Nevada Red Fox
**Southern California Kit Fox EXTINCT (1903)** / San Joaquin Kit Fox / Island Fox / **Giant Deer Mouse EXTINCT (1870)** / Pacific Pocket Mouse / Salt-marsh Harvest Mouse / Southern Sea Otter / Riparian Brush Rabbit / Fresno Kangaroo Rat / Giant Kangaroo Rat / Morro Bay Kangaroo Rat / San Bernardino Kangaroo Rat / Stephens's Kangaroo Rat / Tipton Kangaroo Rat / Guadalupe FUR Seal / Steller Sea Lion / California Bighorn Sheep / Peninsular Bighorn Sheep / Buena Vista Lake Shrew / San Joaquin Antelope Squirrel / Mohave Ground Squirrel / Amargosa Vole / Blue Whale / Finback Whale / *Gray Whale DELISTED (1994)* / Humpback Whale / Right Whale / Sei Whale / Sperm Whale / Wolverine / Riparian Woodrat
[... ]

**Animals of Prey (Federalized Extermination, 1914/15 Congressional Act; the Cooper's Hawk "a species to be destroyed")**

After they had killed the hawks, raptors, cougars, coyotes, wolves, the bobcats, the grizzlies, one night in the oil town of Taft 100 million house mice advanced. They “invaded beds and nibbled the hair of... sleepers, chewed through the sides of wooden storehouses to get at food ... and crawled ... into children’s desks at Conley School.”

Advancing to the southwest, mice killed a sheep and devoured its carcass in less than a day. A column slipped past poison-filled trenches to touch off an exodus of women from Ford City. . . . Another column captured the Petroleum Club golf course after token opposition from fleeing golfers. To the north, hordes swarmed over the Taft-Bakersfield Highway, where thousands were ground to death under car wheels, making the highway dangerously slippery.

"At first local authorities tried to destroy the advancing rodent hordes with mechanical harvesters, but the blades became choked with fur, flesh, and blood to the resemblance of a sausage mill."
(165-168)

Do I have a clear picture of my field?

The picture is wide & colored & varied [beautiful]
with strength & energy of mind, "the tide pool stretches
both ways back
to homunculus and leaping out toward Pluto"
fossil echinoderms & evolutional series thrust
"toward death and renewal";

In this horology, "twist the tide pool and the stars into the pattern of paleontology and time"
(174)
MAKING THE BIRD HAPPY

House finches bobbing on the branches
like fitful punctuation marks, comma in a puff of snow, blobs
of feathered exclamation
points bouncing
in the cold.

(p.43)

**THE WIND IS** a thing I'm reckoning with.

In the morning the trees bend for the breeze.

To make yourself happy be like the trees.

But the live oak, you say, stays stiff, and
So it does, under its dress of Spanish moss—so
I guess you'll have to decide which tree to be like.

Anyway as I'm sitting here in the morning watching I
Can't make anything happen. "World, world, come to
Me," I say, but world won't listen. Not even the birds
Who are something to hear, fuzzing the air with their various

Urgencies: "Listen up! I'm over here on this branch!"

And to the human ear that fought the wind it's
The morning's sweet word even if the bird

Is saying to its neighbor, "Shut the fuck up, Motherfucker."
(p.52)
Sikelianos’s revisiting of ancient Greece’s atomists
(A montage drawn from *Make Yourself Happy*)

1. Introductory (significant paronomasias from *The California Poem*)

"world"/ "word (9 & 38-39)," "matter"/master (48), "early"/ "earthly (82), "books" /"brooks (104)", "fame" /"flame (112)", "eagles"/ "angles (135)", "holes"/"haloes (7)", "pursue"/"peruse (187)",
"annals"/ "Annelids (177), "otters"/ "offers (29)"; "egret"/ "regret"
"hinder"/"Pindar (32)", "radial"/"radical (133 "clock"/"cluck (42)",
"anther"/ "anthem"/ "atom (161)."

2.

NO ONE KNOWS how it began/ A few atoms lying in the sun/ began to click and burn./
Then, man." (MKH 121)

*

Human science is also a human story. We gossip around the atoms (MKH 163).

*

It was silent as the atoms were gathering
Then it got noisy
[what can no longer be held in language]
[sieve]
[sieve]
[where does the future take place]
[words were sent through the collider]
[letters atomize, chinks in the particles]
I look up at the sky, scan
for atoms, colors, vowels
[...]
There are quite a few things breaking
sound stops I
use word-waste to build it, Oracle
spine lost its e
spin th carousl round
again

at th nd of tm
spn th carousl round
agan
th rctr
Nclr
Hrt tm
cm
[do a biosphere]/ [do a new biosphere]/ [do a new]
(MKH 121-149)
Timothy LIU (b. 1965)

The Crisis

If only you remembered
to shut off the lights, leaving

your phone on airplane mode,

maybe I wouldn't have
stumbled across an eagle

with its neck broken

at the base of your building
before dawn. Looking up,

I saw window washers

lowering themselves on ropes
and pulleys hand over hand,

transforming the glass

façade into clear sky—a feat
even Narcissus would have

died for. So much for

classical myths in an age
where mortal can fly

themselves straight into

paradise while skyscrapers
commit suicide and send

global markets tumbling back

to earth. Please return my
texts—I can only take so much

before giving up all hope
Juliana SPAHR (b.1966)

Gentle Now, Don't Add to Heartache

I.

We come into the world.

We come into the world and there it is.

5 The sun is there.

The brown of the river leading to the blue and the brown of the
ocean is there.

Salmon and eels are there moving between the brown and the brown
and the blue.

10 The green of the land is there.

Elders and youngers are there.

Fighting and possibility and love are there.

And we begin to breathe.

We come into the world and there it is.

15 We come into the world without and we breathe it in.

We come into the world.

We come into the world and we too begin to move between the
brown and the blue and the green of it.

II.

20 We came into the world at the edge of a stream.

The stream had no name but it began from a spring and flowed
down a hill into the Scioto that then flowed into the Ohio that
then flowed into the Mississippi that then flowed into the Gulf
of Mexico.

25 The stream was a part of us and we were a part of the stream and
we were thus part of the rivers and thus part of the gulfs and
the oceans.
And we began to learn the stream.

We looked under stones for the caddisfly larvae and its adhesive.

30 We counted the creek chub and we counted the slenderhead darter.

We learned to recognize the large, upright, dense, candle-like clusters of yellowish flowers at the branch ends of the horsechestnut and we appreciated the feathery gracefulness of the drooping, but upturning, branchlets of the larch.

35 We mimicked the catlike meow, the soft quirrt or kwut, and the louder, grating ratchet calls of the gray catbird.

We put our heads together.

40 We put our heads together with all these things, with the caddisfly larva, with the creek chub and the slenderhead darter, with the horsechestnut and the larch, with the gray catbird.

We put our heads together on a narrow pillow, on a stone, on a narrow stone pillow, and we talked to each other all day long because we loved.

We loved the stream.

45 And we were of the stream.

And we couldn't help this love because we arrived at the bank of the stream and began breathing and the stream was various and full of information and it changed our bodies with its rotten with its cold with its clean with its mucky with fallen leaves with its things that bite the edges of the skin with its leaves with its sand and dirt with its pungent at moments with its dry and prickly with its warmth with its mushy and moist with its hard flat stones on the bottom with its horizon lines of gently rolling hills with its darkness with its dappled light with its cicadas buzz with its trills of birds.

50

55

### III.

This is where we learned love and where we learned depth and where we learned layers and where we learned connections between layers.

60 We learned and we loved the black sandshell, the ash, the american bittern, the harelip sucker, the yellow bullhead, the beech, the great blue heron, the dobsonfly larva, the water penny larva, the birch, the redhead, the white catspaw, the elephant ear, the buckeye, the king eider, the river darter, the sauger, the burning bush, the common merganser, the limpet, the mayfly nymph, the cedar, the turkey vulture, the spectacle

65
70

75

80

85

90

case, the flat floater, the cherry, the red tailed hawk, the longnose gar, the brook trout, the chestnut, the killdeer, the river snail, the giant floater, the chokeberry, gray catbird, the rabbitsfoot, the slenderhead darter, the crabapple, the american robin, the creek chub, the stonefly nymph, the dogwood, the warbling vireo, the sow bug, the elktoe, the elm, the marsh wren, the monkeyface, the central mudminnow, the fir, the gray-cheeked thrush, the white bass, the predaceous diving beetle, the hawthorn, the scud, the salamander mussel, the hazelnut, the warbler, the mapleleaf, the american eel, the hemlock, the speckled chub, the whirligig beetle larva, the hickory, the sparrow, the caddisfly larva, the fluted shell, the horse chestnut, the wartyback, the white heelsplitter, the larch, the pine grosbeak, the brook stickleback, the river redhorse, the locust, the ebonyshelf, the giant water bug, the maple, the eastern phoebe, the white sucker, the creek heelsplitter, the mulberry, the crane fly larva, the mountain madtom, the oak, the bank swallow, the wabash pigtoe, the damselfly larva, the pine, the stonecat, the kidneyshell, the plum, the midge larva, the eastern sand darter, the rose, the purple wartyback, the narrow-winged damselfly, the spruce, the pirate perch, the threehorn wartyback, the sumac, the black fly larva, the redside dace, the tree-of-heaven, the orange-foot pimpleback, the dragonfly larva, the walnut, the gold fish, the butterfly, the striped fly larva, the willow, the freshwater drum, the ohio pigtoe, the warmouth, the mayfly nymph, the clubshell.

And this was just the beginning of the list.

95

Our hearts took on many things.

Our hearts took on new shapes, new shapes every day as we went to the stream every day.

100

Our hearts took on the shape of well-defined riffles and pools, clean substrates, woody debris, meandering channels, floodplains, and mature streamside forests.

Our hearts took on the shape of the stream and became riffled and calmed and muddy and clean and flooded and shrunken dry.

Our hearts took on the shape of whirligigs swirling across the water.

105

We shaped our hearts into the sycamore trees along the side of the stream and we let into our hearts the long pendulous polygamous racemes of its small green flowers, the first-formed male flowers with no pistil and then the later arriving hairy ovary with its two curved stigmas.

110

We let ourselves love the one day of the adult life of the mayfly as it swarms, mates in flight, and dies all without eating.
And we shaped our hearts into the water willow and into the eggs spawned in the water willow.

115

Our hearts took on the brilliant blues, reds, and oranges of breeding male rainbow darter and our hearts swam to the female rainbow darter and we poked her side with our snout as she buried herself under the gravel and we laid upon her as she vibrated.

120

We let leaves and algae into our hearts and then we let the mollusks and the insects and we let the midge larvae into our heart and then the stonefly nymph and then a minnow came into our heart and with it a bass and then we let the blue heron fly in, the raccoon amble by, the snapping turtle and the watersnake also.

125

We immersed ourselves in the shallow stream. We lied down on the rocks on our narrow pillow stone and let the water pass over us and our heart was bathed in glochida and other things that attach to the flesh.

And as we did this we sang.

We sang gentle now.

130

Gentle now clubshell,

don't add to heartache.

Gentle now warmouth, mayfly nymph,

don't add to heartache.

Gentle now willow, freshwater drum, ohio pigtoe,

135

don't add to heartache.

Gentle now walnut, gold fish, butterfly, striped fly larva,

don't add to heartache.

Gentle now black fly larva, redside dace, tree-of-heaven, orange-foot pimpleback, dragonfly larva,

140

don't add to heartache.

Gentle now purple wartyback, narrow-winged damselfly, spruce, pirate perch, threehorn wartyback, sumac,

don't add to heartache.
145

Gentle now pine, stonecat, kidneyshell, plum, midge larva, eastern sand darter, rose,

don't add to heartache.

Gentle now creek heelsplitter, mulberry, crane fly larva, mountain madtom, oak, bank swallow, wabash pigtoe, damselfly larva,

don't add to heartache.

150

Gentle now pine grosbeak, brook stickleback, river redhorse, locust, ebonyshelf, giant water bug, maple, eastern phoebe, white sucker,

don't add to heartache.

155

Gentle now whirligig beetle larva, hickory, sparrow, caddisfly larva, fluted shell, horse chestnut, wartyback, white heelsplitter, larch,

don't add to heartache.

160

Gentle now white bass, predaceous diving beetle, hawthorn, scud, salamander mussel, hazelnut, warbler, mapleleaf, american eel, hemlock, speckled chub,

don't add to heartache.

Gentle now stonefly nymph, dogwood, warbling vireo, sow bug, elktoe, elm, marsh wren, monkeyface, central mudminnow, fir, gray-cheeked thrush,

165

don't add to heartache.

Gentle now longnose gar, brook trout, chestnut, killdeer, river snail, giant floater, chokeberry, gray catbird, rabbitsfoot, slenderhead darter, crabapple, american robin, creek chub,

don't add to heartache.

170

Gentle now king eider, river darter, sauger, burning bush, common merganser, limpet, mayfly nymph, cedar, turkey vulture, spectacle case, flat floater, cherry, red tailed hawk,

don't add to heartache.

175

Gentle now black sandshell, ash, american bittern, harelip sucker, yellow bullhead, beech, great blue heron, dobsonfly larva, water penny larva, birch, redhead, white catspaw, elephant ear, buckeye,

don't add to heartache.
Gentle now, we sang,

180 Circle our heart in rapture, in love-ache. Circle our heart.

IV.

It was not all long lines of connection and utopia.

It was a brackish stream and it went through the field beside our
house.

185 But we let into our hearts the brackish parts of it also.

Some of it knowingly.

190 We let in soda cans and we let in cigarette butts and we let in pink tampon applicators and we let in six pack of beer connectors and we let in various other pieces of plastic that would travel through the stream.

And some of it unknowingly.

We let the runoff from agriculture, surface mines, forestry, home wastewater treatment systems, construction sites, urban yards, and roadways into our hearts.

195 We let chloride, magnesium, sulfate, manganese, iron, nitrite/nitrate, aluminum, suspended solids, zinc, phosphorus, fertilizers, animal wastes, oil, grease, dioxins, heavy metals and lead go through our skin and into our tissues.

200 We were born at the beginning of these things, at the time of chemicals combining, at the time of stream run off.

These things were a part of us and would become more a part of us
but we did not know it yet.

Still we noticed enough to sing a lament.

205 To sing in lament for whoever lost her elephant ear lost her mountain madtom

and whoever lost her butterfly lost her harelip sucker

and whoever lost her white catspaw lost her rabbitsfoot

and whoever lost her monkeyface lost her speckled chub

and whoever lost her wartyback lost her ebonyshell

210 and whoever lost her pirate perch lost her ohio pigtoe lost her clubshell.
V.

What I did not know as I sang the lament of what was becoming lost
and what was already lost was how this loss would happen.

215 I did not know that I would turn from the stream to each other.

I did not know I would turn to each other.

That I would turn to each other to admire the softness of each other's
breast, the folds of each other's elbows, the brightness of each
other's eyes, the smoothness of each other's hair, the evenness
of each other's teeth, the firm blush of each other's lips, the
firm softness of each other's breasts, the fuzz of each other's
down, the rich, ripe pungency of each other's smell, all of it,
each other's cheeks, legs, neck, roof of mouth, webbing
between the fingers, tips of nails and also cuticles, hair on toes,
whorls on fingers, skin discolorations.

225 I turned to each other.

Ensnared, bewildered, I turned to each other and from the stream.

I turned to each other and I began to work for the chemical factory
and I began to work for the paper mill and I began to work for
the atomic waste disposal plant and I began to work at keeping
men in jail.

230 I turned to each other.

I didn't even say goodbye elephant ear, mountain madtorn, butterfly,
harelip sucker, white catspaw, rabbitsfoot, monkeyface,
speckled chub, wartyback, ebonyshell, pirate perch, ohio
pigtoe, clubshell.

I replaced what I knew of the stream with Lifestream Total
Cholesterol Test Packets, with Snuggle Emerald Stream Fabric
Softener Dryer Sheets, with Tisserand Aromatherapy Aroma-
Stream Cartridges, with Filter Stream Dust Tamer, and
Streamzap PC Remote Control, Acid Stream Launcher, and
Viral Data Stream.

I didn't even say goodbye elephant ear, mountain madtorn, butterfly,
harelip sucker, white catspaw, rabbitsfoot, monkeyface,
speckled chub, wartyback, ebonyshell, pirate perch, ohio
pigtoe, clubshell.

I put a Streamline Tilt Mirror in my shower and I kept a crystal
Serenity Sphere with a Winter Stream view on my dresser.

I didn't even say goodbye elephant ear, mountain madtorn, butterfly,
harelip sucker, white catspaw, rabbitsfoot, monkeyface,
speckled chub, wartyback, ebonyshell, pirate perch, ohio
pigtoe, clubshell.

I bought a Gulf Stream Blue Polyester Boat Cover for my 14-16 Foot
V-Hull Fishing boats with beam widths up to sixty-eight feet
and I talked about value stream management with men in
suits over a desk.

I didn't even say goodbye elephant ear, mountain madtorn, butterfly,
harelip sucker, white catspaw, rabbitsfoot, monkeyface,
speckled chub, wartyback, ebonyshell, pirate perch, ohio
pigtoe, clubshell.

I just turned to each other and the body parts of the other suddenly
glowed with the beauty and detail that I had found in the
stream.

I put my head together on a narrow pillow and talked with each
other all night long.

And I did not sing.

I did not sing otototoi; dark, all merged together, oi.

I did not sing groaning wounds.

I did not sing otototoi<fnref n="59" />; dark, all merged together, oi.

I did not sing groaning wounds.

I did not sing o wo, wo, wo!

I did not sing I see, I see.

I did not sing wo, wo!

<footnote n="59">⁵⁹ The play *Agamemnon*, by the Greek dramatist Aeschylus (525–456 b.c.e.), depicts Cassandra as knowing that she is about to be murdered and wailing "*otototoi*." (V.D.)</footnote>
Natasha TRETHEWEY (b. 1966)

## Liturgy

for the Mississippi Gulf Coast

To the security guard staring at the Gulf
thinking of bodies washed away from the coast, plugging her ears
against the bells and sirens—sound of alarm—the gaming floor
on the Coast;

5

To Billy Scarpetta, waiting tables on the Coast, staring at the Gulf
thinking of water rising, thinking of New Orleans, thinking of cleansing
the Coast;

10

To the woman dreaming of returning to the Coast, thinking of water rising, her daughter's grave, my mother's grave—underwater—on the Coast;

To Miss Mary, somewhere;

15

To the displaced, living in trailers along the coast, beside the highway,
in vacant lots and open fields; to everyone who stayed on the Coast,
who came back—or cannot—to the Coast;

20

To those who died on the Coast.

This is a memory of the Coast: to each his own
recollections, her reclamations, their
restorations, the return of the Coast.

25

This is a time capsule for the Coast: words of the people
—*don't forget us*—
the sound of wind, waves, the silence of graves,

30

the muffled voice of history, bull-dozed and buried
under sand poured on the eroding coast,
the concrete slabs of rebuilding the Coast.

This is a love letter to the Gulf Coast, a praise song, a dirge,
invocation and benediction, a requiem for the Gulf Coast.

35

This cannot rebuild the Coast; it is an indictment, a complaint,
my logos—argument and discourse—with the Coast.

40

This is my nostos—my pilgrimage to the Coast, my memory, my
reckoning—

Native daughter: I am the Gulf Coast.
Dre CARDINAL (No date of birth found; she grew up in Texas)

## Trash

In one of the last times I saw her,
she toted a gallon-sized Ziploc of prescription pills.
When I slid open her bedroom door, there she was sitting on the floor,
squinting at the label of the bottle in hand,
pill bottles scattered everywhere.
She looked up at me like a child in a sea of toys.

Sometimes, I wonder how many safety-twist orange bottles
are floating in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Reminds me of Midway Island, a docu-short I saw once,
1:45 – mother albatross feeding her baby
a red plastic cap,
2:23 – breeze teasing bits of grey fluff around
the skeleton of a chick
with a razor in its stomach.

5

10

15
The following sources have been used to gather this course reader<fnref n="60" />:

Lucretius. *The Poem on Nature – De Rerum Natura*. Translated with an introduction by C.H. [Sisson. 1976. Manchester: FyfieldBooks – Carcanet. 2003. 36, 38, 62.

Fletcher, Angus. *A New Theory for American Poetry: Democracy, the Environment and the [of Imagination]*. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England. 2004. 127-128.

Descola, Philippe. *Beyond Nature and Culture* (2005). Translated by Janet Lloyd. University [of Chicago Press, 2013. 16, 70, 79, 83, 86-87, 91, 92, 102, 106.

Rasula, Jed. *This Compost. Ecological Imperatives in American Poetry*. Athens: University of Georgia Press. 2012. 26-27, 39-40, 40-41, 125-126, 128, 153-154.

Jacobson, Dale. E-mail message to Vincent Dussol.

Gerhardt, Christine. *A Place for Humility: Whitman, Dickinson, and the Natural World*. Iowa [City: University of Iowa Press. 2014. 221-226.

Shoptaw, John. "Why Ecopoetry? There's no Planet B." *Poetry Magazine*. January 4th, 2016. [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/70299/why-ecopoetry](https://www-poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/70299/why-ecopoetry)

Whitman, Walt. *Leaves of Grass and other writings*. Edited by Michael Moon. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company. 2002. 51-52, 212-214, 229-230, 300-301, 309-311, 377, 428, 444.

Dickinson, Emily. *The Poems of Emily Dickinson*. Edited by R.W. Franklin. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 1999. 370, 379, 721, 741, 778, 1491.

Frost, Robert. "The Bear." *The Poems of Robert Frost*. With an introductory essay "The Constant Symbol" by the author. New York: The Modern Library. 1946. 303-304.

*The Norton Anthology of American Literature*. Shorter Sixth Edition. General editor: Nina [Baym. Specialized editors: Wayne Franklin, Ronald Gottesman, Philip F. Gura, Laurence B. Holland, David Kalstone, Jerome Klinkowitz, Arnold Krupat, Francis Murphy, Hershel Parker, William H. Pritchard, Patricia B. Wallace. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 2002. (William Carlos Williams 1941; Elizabeth Bishop 2658-2662; Jorie Graham 2820).

Nelson, Cary. *Anthology of Modern American Poetry*. New York, Oxford: Oxford University [Press. 2000. (Robinson Jeffers 248; Marianne Moore 269-272; Theodore Roethke 599-602; W.S. Merwin 916.

cummings e.e.: https://allpoetry.com/poem/8494115-l-a...-a-leaf-falls-on-loneliness--by-e.e.-[cummings](https://allpoetry.com/poem/8494115-l-a...-a-leaf-falls-on-loneliness--by-e.e.)

Gordon, Don. *Collected Poems*. Edited by Fred Whitehead. Urbana and Chicago: University [of Illinois Press. 2004. 195.

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