Frivolous, fragile, tenuous, all important. So I did go hear Robert Creeley give a talk during the afternoon on aging and Whitman at a crucial point in what you see as nationalism, two years after America’s second invasion of Iraq. I did go hear him read poems at a bookstore later that night too, a few feet from where Poe walked over a century before. I honestly never expected to see Creeley read. But there I was, on the back row, watching this elder craftsman of English language poetry dig through his consciousness, watching him hold a small cannister that pushed oxygen up a tube to his nostrils, hearing him talk about life and death and memory and war. At the reading his breathing was much more pronounced than it had been that afternoon, you could hear the rush of gas through the microphone at every pause. He reminisced about Paul Blackburn and Ed Dorn. He described the world as being malignant. He remembered signing up for duty, being outfitted by Abercrombie & Fitch, heading for Bombay and elsewhere. He said “dark nights of the soul.” He said “is happiness this?” He said “I sure hope it isn’t man.” He said “we dream of heaven as a climbing stair.” He said “keep looking keep looking keep looking.” There were no questions. Afterwards I headed to Starr Hill for some whiskey, and I thought about how Creeley has such a tremendous stake in these words, I thought about a friend of mine in Iraq, I thought about the next poem and I knew what I wasn’t going to do.

Calvin,

Last week I caught a rock bass and let it go. It was missing an eye. So I am settling into this place. An ant becomes a turtle. Cindy is twisting my arm to go hear Robert Creeley read in Charlottesville sometime this month. It would be good for me she says. To get out. I’m also trying to schedule a time with Velvis to record some of these chapbooks I’ve been editing. We’re tucking compact discs inside the back cover, each poet reading their work. . .As if Diane Arbus had taken our family portrait. I’m sending you a gift in the mail. Expect to see it in a week or two.

as ever,

John

March 6, 2005
Appalachia, Virginia

Re/started reading Le Voyage d'hiver Georges Perec; Mock Fandango and Metropoilitan Corridor Ray DiPalma; Lives of Wives Laura Riding Jackson; Tribute to Nervous, The Dolch Stanzas, and Covers Kit Robinson; Les Amours jaunes Tristan Courbière; The Guard, and WRITING IS AN AID TO MEMORY Lyn Hejinian; 42 Merzgedichte in Memoriam Kurt Schwitters Jackson Mac Low; Under the Bridge, Property, The Middle, and Percentage Carla Harryman.

Started The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke