California Poetry from the Gold Rush to the Present
Eds. Dana Gioia, Chryss Yost & Jack Hicks (Heyday Books)

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)

....."John Robinson Jeffers, the great poet of the American
..... West Coast, was born in the suburbs of Pittsburgh....
.....What saves Jeffers' poetry from unrelieved bitterness
.....and nihilism is its joyful awe and indeed religious devotion
.....to the natural world."

Fire on the Hills

The deer were bounding like blown leaves
Under the smoke in front of the roaring wave of the brush-fire;
I thought of the smaller lives that were caught.
Beauty is not always lovely; the fire was beautiful, the terror
Of the deer was beautiful; and when I returned
Down the black slopes after the fire had gone by, an eagle
Was perched on the jag of a burnt pine,
Insolent and gorged, cloaked in the folded storms of his shoulders.
He had come from far off for the good hunting
With fire for his beater to drive the game; the sky was merciless
Blue, and the hills merciless black,
The sombre-feathered great bird sleepily merciless between them.
I thought, painfully, but the whole mind,
The destruction that brings an eagle from heaven is better than mercy.

Nora May French (1881- 1907)

....."Nora May French is one of the neglected treasures of
.....California poetry. A tragic and romantic figure, she
.....committed suicide at twenty-nine while a guest at the
.....Carmel home of the poet George Sterling."

The Mourner

Because my love has wave and foam for speech,
..... And never words, and yearns as water grieves,
With white arms curving on a listless beach,
.....And murmurs inarticulate as leaves --

I am become beloved of the night --
.....Her huge sea-lands ineffable and far
Hold crouched and splendid Sorrow, eyed with light,
.....And Pain who bends his forehead with a star.


Lucille Lang Day ((1947 - )

....."Scientist, poet and publisher, Lucille Lang Day was born
.....in Oakland, the only child of Richard, a bookkeeper and
.....loan officer, and Evelyn, a homemaker. "

Reject Jell-O

The man I married twice --
at fourteen in Reno, again in Oakland
the month before I turned eighteen --
had a night maintenance job at General Foods.
He mopped the tiled floors and scrubbed
the wheels and teeth of the Jell-O machines.
I see him bending in green light,
a rag in one hand,
a pail of foamy solution at his feet.
He would come home at seven a.m.
with a box of damaged Jell-O packages,
including the day's first run,
routinely rejected, and go to sleep.
I made salad with that reject Jell-O --
lemon, lime, strawberry, orange, peach --
in a kitchen where I could almost touch
opposing walls at the same time
and kept a pie pan under the leaking sink.
We ate hamburgers and Jell-O
almost every night
and when the baby went to sleep,
we loved, snug in the darkness pierced
by passing headlights and a streetlamp's gleam,
listening to the Drifters and the Platters.
Their songs wrapped around me
like coats of fur I hummed in the long shadows,
while the man I married twice
dressed and left for work.

Poets of the Non-Existent City:
Los Angeles in the McCarthy Era
Edited by Estelle Gershgoren Novak
(University of New Mexico Press)

Thomas McGrath ((1916-1990)

"Thirdly, as a poet I must refuse to cooperate with the committee
on what I can only call esthetic grounds. The view of life which we
receive through the great works of art is a privileged one -- it is a
view of life according to probability or necessity, not subject
to the chance and accident of our real world and therefore in a
sense truer than the life we see lived all around us...Then, too,
poets have been notorious non-cooperators where committees
of this sort are concerned. As a traditionalist, I would prefer to take
my stand with Marvell, Blake, Shelley and Garcia Lorca rather than
with innovators like Mr. Jackson. I do not wish to bring dishonor
upon my tribe.

- From Thomas McGrath's Statement to the House Un-American
Activities Committee, 1953 (Reprinted in (North Dakota Quarterly
Fall 1982)

From McGrath's epic poem Letter to an Imaginary Friend

2.

-- And at the age of five ran away from home.
(I have never been back. Never left.) I was going perhaps
Toward the woods, toward a sound of water -- called by what bird? --

Leaving the ark-tight farm in its blue and mortgaged weather
To sail the want-all seas of my five dead summers
Past the barn's ammonia-and-horse-piss-smelling dark
And the barnyard dust, adrift in the turkey wind
Or pocked with the guinea-print and staggering script
Of the drunken-sailor ducks, a secret language: leaving
Also my skippering Irish father, land-locked Sinbad,
With his singing head in a private cloud and his feet stuck solid
On the quack-grass-roofed and rusting poop-deck of the north forty
In the alien corn: the feathery, bearded, and all-fathering wheat.

Leaving my mother too, with her kindness and cookies,
The whispering, ginghamy, prayers -- impossible pigeons --
Whickering into the camphor-and-cookie-crumb dark toward God.

.....In the clothes closet.
Damp comforts. Tears harder than nails.
Summery. Loving. Laughter.

How could I leave them?
I took them with me, though I went alone
Into the christmas dark of the woods and down
The whistling slope of the coulee, past the Indian graves
Alive and flickering with the gopher light...


William Pillin (1910-1985)

....."We want to point to tangible evidence that poems are being written in
the southern part of this State.
.....Actually the number of poets in Los Angeles area is as great or greater
than in the northern city.
.....The poets of Los Angeles are moved by the same psychic motivations
as the poets of San Francisco, but perhaps in a manner less calculated to
provide a journalistic sensation. We all experience the tensions and anxieties
of our uncertain era; the alienation of man from the main sources of his being;
of man from man, of man from Nature, of man from the very means of his
livelihood. And these motivations are as likely to prevail in Berlin and Rome
as in Los Angeles and San Francisco."

William Pillin's "Statement" for Epos: Poetry Los Angeles: A Special Issue (1958)

Ocean Park

I confront the star-spell of the esplanade!
I walk as jaunty as a sailor
among fortune-tellers, dancers, gymnasts,
among girls that stroll like swaying flowers,
among gamblers, among all sorts of gypsies.

Necromantic presences mingle among us:
this cute whore is Phryne, sister of moonlights,
that old Jew under a streetlight is Merlin;
Shahrazad serves coffee and pancakes
and Sinbad lures the unwary with trinkets.

I have an illusion of freedom
and it well may be a prelude to trouble.
Who cares? This is a magical evening!
All things assume a novel succulence; clusters
of black grapes, sausages, pastries. I am hungry!
And avid too, like a cat in the jungle
seduced by scent of musk or civet.

In blue-bright air flares are falling
to dissolve on restaurants, wineshops,
dance-halls and dimly lighted interiors
from one of which (an obscure shrine of Pan?)
we hear a bacchic wail of clarinets.
Here is a cafe where Lesbians gather
and here is a place where, they tell me,
anything can happen. The unpredictable
lures like an unwritten poem. All else failing
one could shoot down a bomber or witness
a piquant disrobing in a penny arcade.

I turn sadly back to my curfewed suburb
of discreet doorways and subdued lamplights.
What is lacking there, what tang, what tonic?
Nocturnal laughters and musical whispers
have been exiled to this sea-edge
by the police and the jeering merchants.
Held by a dangerous moonlight
between cold stone and colder waters
life's subtle djinns clamor for release.

Poems of the American West
Edited by Robert Mezey (Everyman's Library Series, Knoph)

Chippewa: "Sometimes I go about"

Sometimes I go about pitying myself
and all the time
I am being carried by great winds across the sky,

Trans. Robert Bly/Frances Densmore

Larry Levis
The Poet at Seventeen

My Youth? I hear it mostly in the long, volleying
Echoes of billiards in the pool halls where
I spent it all, extravagantly, believing
My delicate touch on a cue would last for years.

Outside the vineyards vanished under rain,
And the trees held still or seemed to hold their breath
When the men I worked with, pruning orchards, sang
Their lost songs: Amapola; La Paloma;

Jalisco, No Te Rajes -- the corny tunes
Their sons would just as soon forget, at recess,
Where they lounged apart in small groups of their own.
Still, even when they laughed, they laughed in Spanish.

I hated high school then, & on weekends drove
A tractor through the widowed fields. It was so boring
I memorized poems above the engine's monotone.
Sometimes whole days slipped past without my noticing,

And birds of all kinds flew in front of me then.
I learned to tell them apart by their empty squabblings,
The slightest change in plumage, or the inflection Of a call.
And why not admit it? I was happy

Then. I believed in no one. I had the kind
Of solitude the world usually allows
Only to kings & criminals who are extinct,
Who disdain this world, & who rot, corrupt & shallow

As fields I disked: I turned up the same gray
Earth for years. Still, the land made a glum raisin
Each autumn, & made that little hell of days --
The vines must have seemed like cages to the Mexicans

Who were paid seven cents a tray for the grapes
They picked. Inside the vines it was hot, & spiders
Strummed their emptiness. Black Widow, Daddy Longlegs.
The vine canes whipped our faces. None of us cared.

And the girls I tried to talk to after class
Sailed by, then each night lay enthroned in my bed,
With nothing on but the jewels of their embarrassment.
Eyes, lips creams. No one. The sky & the road.

A life like that? It seemed to go on forever --
Reading poems in school, then driving a stuttering tractor
Warm afternoon, then billiards on blue October
Nights. The thick stars. But mostly now I remember

The trees, wearing their mysterious yellow sullenness
Like party dresses. And parties I didn't attend.
And then the first ice hung like spider lattices
Or the embroideries of Great Aunt No One,

And then the first dark entering the trees --
And inside, the adults with their cocktails before dinner,
The way they always seemed afraid of something,
And sat so rigidly, although the land was theirs.

Dick Barnes
On a Painting by David Hockney

Why doesn't she object to him
revealing her that pitilessly, her
swimming pool living room
the exact slump of her shoulder
the expensive droop of her sundress
her worn anxious elegant face?
Her stuffed antelope head that looks just like her?
And he such a famous painter
all her friends would see it and
know it. "Exactly. There it is
exactly, my cunt of a life."
In case you thought it was so easy being
a Beverly Hills housewife.

Place as Purpose: Poetry from the Western States
Eds. Martha Ronk, Paul Vangelisti
(The Autry Museum of Western Heritage/ Sun & Moon Press)

Dennis Phillips
Four Things Imagined (with Maps)

Imagine a language carried by volition.

Imagine idea as desire.
For example, she may only tantalize
but then meetings and appointments
serve another purpose.

Imagine being jealous of the food someone likes.

They will touch a tender arm
and the lights will go on.

Maps will turn yellow and red: routes observed,
rhythms, syntax, denotations observed.

"The grip of the theoretical won't work
against a struggling imagination.

"Won't somebody help them?

Imagine being jealous of the terraced road to get there.

Martha Ronk
A Photo of a Track House #2

Ruin and ruinous light and one's eyes.
Nothing between. Nothing shadows. Nothing supposed.
Less likely than superficial, less qualified than aluminum.
One window in the side of. One stucco. One all-over light.
Too many skins out for no mercy no shadowy abrupt
just flat forever and another.
Intervenes another skin in blue in the window where the
.....woman next door
is watching nobody out the rear window is herself turned
cc on for hours.
One rectangle of fluorescence no interruption no
slsl speaking back
only the monotone in one skin that blinds our eyes
our coupling in the light of day pouring over everything not like
anything distinct nor any figures of speech we can recall.

Misread City, eds. Dana Gioia and (Red Hen Press)

Chryss Yost
Escaping from Autopia

but even leaving, long to be back,
to do again what I did yesterday --
I, Miss Highway, I couldn't drive off track

or crash. I joined the candy-coated pack
to follow yellow lines and concrete, gray
but even. Leaving. Longing to be back

beyond those lines, in other lines. Like smack
these flashback rides, E-ticket crack: You pay
you have to stay. I couldn't drive off track,

or spin to face my enemies' attack.
The road signs told me "NOW LEAVING L.A."
but even leaving, longing to be back

to go again. I knew I had a knack
for getting there and going. child's play,
And anyway, I couldn't drive off track,

once safety-strapped onto that strip of black.
I couldn't lose or get lost on the way,
but even leaving, longing to be back
and be okay. I couldn't drive off track.

Gina Valdez
English Con Salsa
 
Welcome ESL 100, English Surely Latinized
ingles con chile y cilantro, English as American
as Benito Juarez. Welcome, muchachos from Xochicalco,
learn the language of dolares and Dolores, of kings
and queens, of Donald Duck and Batman.  Holy Toluca!
In four months you’ll be speaking like George Washington,
in four weeks you can ask, More coffee? In two months
you can say, May I take your order? In one year you
can ask for a raise, cool as the Tuxpan River.
 
Welcome, muchachas from Teocaltiche, in this class
we speak English refrito, English con sal y limon,
English thick as mango juice, English poured from
a clay jug, English tuned like a requinto from Uruapan,
English lighted by Oaxacan dawns, English spiked
with mescal from Mitla, English with a red cactus
flower blooming in its heart.
 
Welcome, welcome, amigos del sur, bring your Zapotec
tongues, your Nahuatl tones, your patience of pyramids,
your red suns and golden moons your guardian angels,
your duendes, your patron saints, Santa Tristeza,
Santa Alegria, Santo Todolopuede. We will sprinkle
holy water on pronouns, make the sign of the cross
on past participles, jump like fish from Lake Patzcuaro
on gerunds, pour tequila from Jalisco on future perfects,
say shoes and shit, grab a cool verb and a pollo loco
and dance on the walls like chapulines.
 
When a teacher from La Jolla or a cowboy from Santee
asks you, Do you speak English? You’ll answer, Si, yes
simon, of course, I love English!
 
                                                       And you’ll hum
 A Mixtec chant that touches la tierra and the heavens.
 

Lynell George
from Native to the Place

Charles Bukowski
the tragedy of the leaves

I awakened to dryness, and the ferns were dead,
the potted plants yellow as corn;
my woman was gone
and the empty bottles like bled corpses
surrounded me with their uselessness;
the sun was still good, though,
and my landlady's note cracked in fine
and undemanding yellowness; what was needed now
was a good comedian, ancient style, a jester
with jokes upon absurd pain; pain is absurd
because it exists, nothing more;
I shaved carefully with an old razor
the man who had once been young and
said to have genius; but
that's the tragedy of the leaves,
the dead ferns, the dead plants;
and I walked into a dark hall
where the landlady stood
execrating and final,
sending me to hell,
waving her fat, sweaty arms
and screaming,
screaming for rent,
because the world had failed us
both.

Jack Myers
Lightweight

The few times I've been knocked out cold
I wasn't interested in coming back. Not that
being a cold black speck in a miasma of stars
was so spectacular, I couldn't take the fullness
of the heart.

For the heart is a stubborn problem
whose silence is described by noise.
It's the roar of an empty stadium
with the face of a boxer's glove,
the two-fisted pout of a child
who pounds I will and I will not.

So I throw a cold shot down like a fist
smashed in my face. The booze hits my brain
like a bell. Everyone rises and drinks to the heart.
I call the bar my heart and drink to that woman
in the corner. Here's to the heart, to that soak
of darkness starred by lust. Here's to all the hopeless
lovers in the world walking around knocked out.

So Luminous the Wildflowers:
An Anthology of California Poets
Edited by Paul Suntup (Tebot Bach)

Barry Spacks
Dim Sum

I know, I know, if Ernest Hemingway
had savored the chicken bits
in piquant sauce
at the great Dim Sum Restaurant
in Monterey Park, California, he
still would have..could have...

or if Richard Brautigan
toward the withered end
had paused for the scallops at the Dim Sum
or ordered the platter of three
huge cream-filled dumplings, still he...
I know, I know, stupid thought,

but if only
John Berryman...Anne Sexton
if Sylvia Plath...Primo Levi...
if Kathryn's father...
Robert Hazel...
if Marilyn Monroe...



Dorothy Barresi
Love Koan
for Phil

Are you my prime meridian,
my arrow, my mend,
my paranoiac in all the right places,
my hardbound book
I won’t put down?
My best, least sin?
Through all my numbskull wanderings
with lambs and pills and a quitter’s luck,
how did I find this chill that sends
sugar to my bones?
Magnum mysterium –
my husband, my room.
In all the worlds this world soon builds
by real estate and rasp and awl
for bitter gods
eating deranged food,
how did you find in me
what I could not find
myself forever,
my birdsong avalanche?
My croon.

David St. John
Saffron

Even the thin tube of Spanish saffron
Sitting on the spice rack above the butcher block
Cooking table seems to glow with the worth
Of at least its weight in gold and today
At the beach a dozen Buddhist monks in golden
Robes stepped out of three limousines
To walk their Holy One out along the dunes

To the water's flayed edge where the sand burned
With a light one could only call in its reddish
Mustard radiance the essence of saffron
And what I remember most of the scene as
The holy One knelt down to touch those waves
Was his sudden laughter and his joy and that
Billowing burnt lemon light opening across the sky

Roberta Spear
The White Dress

I want you to see me in it.
The mirror witches an image
that invents every moment. When I spin
I enter the seven precious stages of flight;
the room is as lively as a dovecote.
Again I turn and stop,
looking into your eyes
where the feathers are drifting down
over my thighs and knees.
The cloth obeys the curves of y body.
It is as simple as this,
a white dress.
Later we will leave the party and walk
the cool sidewalks toward the highway
where junipers nod in the wind.
When my skirt ripples out into darkness
you will move me like a sail
in its first gentle breath
toward the open sea. White
is a mixture of many understandings.
the bare arm,
the angle of fiber on skin,
two thin strings at the neck
undoing the world…
Now turn away.

Luis Omar Salinas
Last Tango in Fresno

Midnoon and I’m between
a pastrami and a dream.
In love with bad love
I put out my cigarette
and count my blessings.
Bad kharma and no lover.
I want to seduce
the nearest woman
and run off to the nearest motel.
But the nearest woman
is thinking of vegetables
and buying a gift
for her lover.
So I waltz down
the avenue,
feeling great
and important
and bump into
a lesbian friend
who is out of
work and needs a job.
I give her five bucks
and feel
that in the next life
I’ll get it all back.

Philip Levine
The Poem of Chalk

On the way to lower Broadway
this morning I faced a tall man
speaking to a piece of chalk
held in his right hand. The left
was open, and it kept the beat,
for his speech had a rhythm,
was a chant or dance, perhaps
even a poem in French, for he
was from Senegal and spoke French
so slowly and precisely that I
could understand as though
hurled back fifty years to my
high school classroom. A slender man,
elegant in his manner, neatly dressed
in the remnants of two blue suits,
his tie fixed squarely, his white shirt
spotless though unironed. He knew
the whole history of chalk, not only
of this particular piece, but also
the chalk with which I wrote
my name the day they welcomed
me back to school after the death
of my father. He knew feldspar.
he knew calcium, oyster shells, he
knew what creatures had given
their spines to become the dust time
pressed into these perfect cones,
he knew the sadness of classrooms
in December when the light fails
early and the words on the blackboard
abandon their grammar and sense
and then even their shapes so that
each letter points in every direction
at once and means nothing at all.
At first I thought his short beard
was frosted with chalk; as we stood
face to face, no more than a foot
apart, I saw the hairs were white,
for though youthful in his gestures
he was, like me, an aging man, though
far nobler in appearance with his high
carved cheekbones, his broad shoulders,
and clear dark eyes. He had the bearing
of a king of lower Broadway, someone
out of the mind of Shakespeare or
Garcia Lorca, someone for whom loss
had sweetened into charity. We stood
for that one long minute, the two
of us sharing the final poem of chalk
while the great city raged around
us, and then the poem ended, as all
poems do, and his left hand dropped
to his side abruptly and he handed
me the piece of chalk. I bowed,
knowing how large a gift this was
and wrote my thanks on the air
where it might be heard forever
below the sea shell’s stiffening cry.

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