175, and includes the poems from “The Work of Art” through “Fishing Devil’s Hole at the Peak of Spring.”
The final chapbook from which work for this volume was drawn (“Getting After It” through “Death and Dying”) is Piss-Fir Willie Poems, a suite of persona poems offered as an homage to the vernacular of Pacific northcoast working people, particularly loggers, restoration workers, commercial fishers, ranchers, and those, like my father, in the building trades. I tried to capture the idiom–the diction, cadence, phrasing–as well as that combination of aesthetics, attitude, and turn-of-mind that constitutes cultural style. To my sense of it, I was successful enough that I can’t honestly claim the poems as my own. Whatever virtues of language, wit, or wisdom the reader might find, praise should accrue to the speakers from whom I borrowed; any liabilities, alas, are likely mine. Piss-Fir Willie Poems was published by Tangram in 1998 in an edition of 200 copies.
Before 1980, I also published two other chapbooks– da Vaca in a Vanishing Geography and (with Robert Funt) Sollla Sollew–but because these Mad River Press productions were published anonymously and pointedly anti-copyright, I haven’t included that work.
New poems, written or substantially revised in the past decade, make up roughly the second half of this volume.
A few of the new and selected works have appeared in other books and journals:
A version of “Green Side Up” was first published in Dalmo’ma VI: Working the Woods, Working the Sea (Empty Bowl, 1986) under the title “Treeplanting in the Rain.” The poem, under the latter title, was also published in Paperwork (Harbour 1991) and Propriety and Possibilities (Harrish Press, 1996).
“Aweigh” appeared in From the Island’s Edge: A Sitka Reader (Graywolf Press, 1995) and Northcoast View.
“Unnatural Selections: A Meditation upon Witnessing a Bullfrog Fucking a Rock,” “The Banker,” and “Mahogany China” were published in Terra Nova (Volume 3, Number 4, Fall 1998).
“Hard Work” appeared in Forest News (Winter 1999).
“Learning to Talk” and “Bathing Joe” appeared in Wild Duck Review, Casey Walker’s excellent journal of literature, necessary mischief, and news.
All books are more than the writer’s words, and in that spirit I’d like to acknowledge Jerry Reddan for his design of this volume; Pete Stoelzl for his impeccable typesetting; Christopher Stinehour’s calligraphic designs; and Shannon Dixon at Proof Positive for his work in helping create the cover. The cover art is the second panel of a triptych from my mentor and friend Morris Graves’ The Great Blue Heron and the Great Rainbow Trout Yogi in Phenomenal Space, Mental Space and the Space of Consciousness (tempera on paper, 1979), used with the kind permissions of Morris’ archive executor Robert Yarber and the Humboldt Arts Council. I also wish to thank the production directors at Grove/Atlantic and Canongate Books, Muriel Jorgensen and Caroline Gorham respectively, as well as the copy editors and art directors involved.
Three bows to Gary Snyder for his usual tough reading of the manuscript and his suggestion for the title.
I also offer special thanks to my editors, Morgan Entrekin at Grove/Atlantic and Jamie Byng of Canongate for their steadfast support of my literary work.
Melanie Jackson, my agent, deserves particular mention for her unstinting efforts and merciful acumen on my behalf.
Finally, my deepest gratitude to family and friends for their unflagging faith, encouragement, and forbearance.
Short Prose
Whenever Jason said “beeber” for “beaver”
or “skirl” for “squirrel”
I secretly loved it.
They’re better words:
The busy beeber beebing around;
the grey squirrel’s tail
like a skirl of smoke along a maple branch.
I never told him he was saying
their names “wrong,”
though I did pronounce them conventionally.
One time he noticed, and explained,
“‘Beeber’ is how I say it.”
“Great,” I told him, “whatever
moves you.”
But within a week
he was pronouncing both “properly.”
I did my duty
and I’m sorry.
Farewell Beeber and Skirl.
So much beauty lost to understanding.
Coddington Mall was clogged with Christmas shoppers as I waited in line at the Cookie Jar, a bakery devoted to my favorite confection.
It was just after noon–lunch break–and a single clerk was left to work the counter, a young woman with a strained, scattered smile. She was working as fast as she could, but the line moved slowly. I was passing the time with the sports page, idly considering whether the 49ers were worth $100 and three points against the Rams, when my attention was drawn to the elderly woman in front of me in line. By her stoop and wrinkles I figured she was in her early 70s, or a hard 65 at least. She was wearing a grey dress, but it was nearly obscured by a heavy black sweater that hung almost to the hemline. She was leaning forward, weight on her cane, her nose to the display case, examining the cookies with the calm, fierce attention of a hawk. Taken by the force of her concentration, I folded the sports page and said pleasantly, “It’s always tough to decide.”
Her gaze didn’t flicker.
I couldn’t blame her for ignoring me. Why should an old woman, in a culture of muggers, rapists, and rip-off artists, encourage the idle conversation of some bearded and obviously half-demented hippie from the hills, where he probably grew tons of marijuana and did Lord-knows-what to the sheep. I felt the little wash of sadness that comes when your good intentions are blanked by cultural circumstances. I didn’t persist.
When it was the old woman’s turn, in a thick Slavic accent she ordered three chocolate chip cookies. “The big ones,” she specified, tapping the glass to indicate her choice.
The harried clerk dutifully plucked out three of the saucer-sized cookies with a confectioner’s tissue.
