things i saw at paul hunter's house

I'd say Paul Hunter is probably best known for his farmer's poetry, detailing and honoring the everyday tasks and stories of rural life. I also haven't seen a single poem of his that uses punctuation. This style of writing irks me to read at first, but a second look lets me see line after line of beautiful fragments or phrases.

I had the privilege last winter to meet Paul Hunter and visit his house with my poetry class. It's a cozy one, his house, built on a steep hill of the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. His home is lived-in, full of things collected over time. Taking the creaky steps down to his basement and carefully edging around stacks of boxes, brimming shelves, instruments and tools, we crowded around his workspace where he does his wood carving and runs his own printing press (Wood Works Press).

Hunter is just as welcoming as his home. Friendly, full of advice, a great reading voice, and an endearing graying mustache.

Things I saw at Paul Hunter's house, a list:
large paintings of men walking down the street
stacked cans of ink sorted by color
a variety of wooden chairs in the living room
oriental rugs on a hardwood floor
a cartoon of a bull shitting, with an X drawn over it (think about it)
a sketch of something that looked like a hand
printing presses, at least three, each about 100 years old
a wall of framed poems (by other poets)
a record collection collecting dust
an unfinished wood carving clamped beneath a light

To listen to Paul Hunter talk about and read his poetry and to see some of his house (specifically his porch and his basement), watch the Online NewsHour's interview.

kooser's valentines

Friday afternoon I had a full schedule, but everything fell through. Disappointment led to opportunity, and I picked up a book to read at the library. I ended up with Valentines, poems by Ted Kooser. (I do realize that it's in the middle of August, not Valentine's Day. Deal with it.)

In 1986, Kooser started a project in which he started sending Valentines to his female friends and fans. He'd write a poem, print it on postcards, send them to Valentine, NE to be postmarked from there, and have them mailed out to his list of ladies. He started writing to 50 women, and by 2007 he was sending his Valentine poems to around 2600. Kooser decided that last year was his last year to do this, but now all of his Valentine poems are collected in this book. They're not mushy or sexual, but thoughtful or playful.

His first Valentine poem was "Pocket Poem", which is my favorite of the entire collection. You can hear him read it at the NPR link "Ted Kooser shares the poetry of Valentine's Day".

Poem of the Day

I Googled "Poem of the Day," and sure enough such a site exists. Here's today's feature, by Pierre Martory.

a little out of my range

We've been studying Louise Glück (pronounced "glick") all week in CAP. I must admit, she is a hard poet for me to engage. She uses nature imagery as symbolic for her own life, and after 40 poems it gets a little old. Nonetheless, here is one that I can stand more than the others, mainly because the last three lines are fascinating to me:

Spring Snow

Love at the night sky:
I have two selves, two kinds of power.

I am here with you, at the window,
watching you react. Yesterday
the moon rose over moist earth in the lower garden.
Now the earth glitters like the moon,
like dead matter crusted with light.

You can close your eyes now.
I have heard your cries, and cries before yours,
and the demand behind them.
I have shown you what you want:
not belief, but capitulation
to authority, which depends on violence.

breathtaking, or at least a little slice of delightful

Little Blues

There is no pain. A cracked
teacup rose says hover
in this fracture, your lips
like bees that love

the too ripe pear
nearby. Mist's in the air. Jerry
is filling his pipe again.
There's that song.

-Christopher Howell (a professor at Eastern Washington University, in fact).

My note: If you don't read this one aloud, you just don't get it. Seriously.

i like this one

THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

--Robert Hayden

I might as well share the wealth

My comprehensive paper on Elizabeth Bishop is due Monday at 5 p.m. As I have learned from the dear Mrs. Stairet's class, I can pretty much write a 10-page paper of b.s. in less than 4 hours. Granted there are still some holes and I need to find some more secondary support, but overall I'm rather pleased with myself. Here is one of the poems I included in my in-depth analysis, from her collection Questions of Travel:


On the unbreathing sides of hills
they play, a specklike girl and boy,
alone, but near a specklike house.
The sun's suspended eye
blinks casually, and then they wade
gigantic waves of light and shade.
A dancing yellow spot, a pup,
attends them. Clouds are piling up;

a storm piles up behind the house.
The children play at digging holes.
The ground is hard; they try to use
one of their father's tools,
a mattock with a broken half
the two of them can scarcely lift.
It drops and clangs. Their laughter spreads
effulgence in the thunderheads,

weak flashes of inquiry
direct as is the puppy's bark.
But to their little, soluble,
unwarrantable ark,
apparantly the rain's reply
consists of echloalia,
and Mother's voice, ugly as sin,
keeps calling to them to come in.

Children, the threshold of the storm
has slid beneath your muddy shoes;
wet and beguiled, you stand among
the mansions you may choose
out of a bigger house than yours,
whose lawfulness endures.
Its soggy documents retain
your rights in rooms of falling rain.