Paul Zarzyski -- Musings from Planet UniPoet:

1. A belated follow-up to the August Pack trip into the Bob Marshall. What’s that old saw? “One picture is worth a thousand words?” As a writer, I’m obligated to proclaim “NO WAY! It’s vice versa!” However, as an extremely busy/lazy writer, I’m more than willing, momentarily during this time of weakness, to defer to the adage. Thus, take a gander at these snaps, and their wordful captions (touché!).

After the fire, life--the greenest of greens

“Trout. It’s What’s For Supper,” thanks to Rick

The UniPoet shares his “barley soup” with The Dude, who drinks way more than his share

Nature’s sculpting

5-point bull poet

Zeke’s antler-bone

After a long, but not hard, day on the trail

Moving a rock off the trail

2. So, we were fortunate to find a quartet of elk antlers only because we were willing, and somewhat able, to climb afoot into the steep aspen groves, into country the April-May hordes of horseback horn hunters could not fine-tooth-comb. My partner, Rick, who happens to be one of those who’ll risk the snowdrifts and cold of spring storms in order to pack out hundreds of pounds of sheds, graciously gave me our entire “take,” which I’ve arranged into a mini-sculpture in the living room until the spirit--yes, Matt Hansen’s spirit--moves me to weave them into the antler tree. Zeke, our Aussie dog, sniffs and licks them no less than a dozen times daily--fond memories of HIS big Bob adventure.

3. As is my grand, grand friend and mentor and hero, Wally McRae, I’m a football fan. In no small part because it’s a SPORT (unlike golf, checkers, poker, croquet, bass fishing, etc., which are--according to The Book of CZARzsyki--activities) that punctuates my favorite season of the year, autumn. By the way, do you know the marvelous James Wright poem “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio”? If you too are an aficionado of football/poetry/fall/equine imagery of the highest caliber, check it out in Wright‘s collected poems. While you’re at it, read “The Horse,” “A Blessing,” “Two Horses Playing In The Orchard,” “Gambling In Stateline, Nevada,” and, hell, you might just want to spend a week or so with the entire collection. If you’re an aspiring poet, the work of James Wright can likely teach you far more than you’ll learn in my Elko Workshop, come January. But more on that later, because, as I started to say before I was so fortuitously interrupted, I love a football game on TV as a backdrop to cooking autumn fare, especially on a cold rainy/snowy Sunday afternoon or, better yet, on a Monday night. Nope, I can’t just sit and watch--too much blue-collar blood in my veins; I have to be doing something productive, and cooking fits the bill. But not just any fodder will do. It has to be what I consider autumnal chuck. I’m talkin’ venison or beef stew with no less than 22 components. Or perhaps a creamy polenta with a complex marinara sauce or salamini gravy. Most definitely a medley of, say, yellow zucchini, scallions and/or Walla Walla sweet onions, garlic cloves (make that “heads”), wild mushrooms, bell peppers--green, orange, red, every color they come in. I think “Fall,” I think “color” (remember, I grew up in northern Wisconsin); I think “Fall,” I think “football, regalia, the NBC peacock’s hues--simmering in a cast iron pot!”

4. Pack trip. Wilderness. Wildlife (saw a griz in the middle of the north fork of the Sun River, a pair of wolves, herds of elk, coyotes, mule deer fawns, fool hens, ruffed grouse, waterfowl, toadstool-chomping squirrels, you name it). Two-pound cutthroat trout. Antler sheds, football, Montana autumn, Kodachrome cuisine, top-shelf poetry…it all sounds so romantic, so idyllic. Until, that is, you factor-in that I’m a Green Bay Packer fan (humiliated in their opener, 26-zip, at home last Sunday--on the venerable Lambeau Field). I KNOW what you’re thinking--“serves me right for not pulling for a cowboy team, for the Broncos, the Colts, or for the Cowboys themselves.” Fact is, I spent my entire Wisconsin youth as a Dallas fan, Walt Garrison, not Bart Starr, my idea of a gladiator-to-the-man’s-man-max--running back for the Cowboys 6 months of the year and bulldogger the other half. Thanks to Walt, I learned how to fight my way outta Cheesehead watering holes and, therefore, became a rodeo cowboy, a roughstock rider. Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” had nothin’ on growing up a Cowboys’ fan in the heart of Packerland, I tell you. And then came Brett Favre, from which you should be able to piece together “the rest of the story,” as my fellow Paul, Paul Havre-y would say. To boot, I could make a strong case for the Packers being THEE cowboy poet team: Packers? As in MEAT packing? I’ve BEEN to the tailgate parties at Lambeau--who the hell do you think’s keeping the Beef Industry thriving in this country?! AND the Beer Industry. Beef. Beer. It all makes perfect sense, no?

5. Words. Connections. Drawing that kid-in-the-’50s thick lead pencil line between dots in a Roy Rogers coloring book. We’ll be talking long and hard about ‘er all at the 2007 Elko Cowboy Poetry Gathering writing workshop. In the coming months, I’ll likely speak in fine philosophical detail to my participation as coach- ‘n’-cheerleader--you bet, go ahead and picture me sporting green-‘n’-gold mini-skirt, letter sweater, and knee-highs. “My name is Paul--I’ll be your pompom-waver and “GO! POEMS! GO!” rooter-of-words this workshop.” Will those of you joining me learn to become better maestros of the poetic line? Only if you’re willing to do most of the work, while I do the bulk of the shopping. Not merely during the session, but long, long afterwards. I have permission from Susan Parker to share the testimonial with which she honored and humbled me in her letter of June 28, 2006--purt-near 7 months AFTER I cheered-on her poems in a Marriott Motel conference room during last year‘s Monterey Cowboy Poetry & Music Festival:

Howdy, Paul,

Thank you! Thank you! Thank You!

In the 5 hours spent with you in Monterey, I learned more about crafting poetry than I had in the last 6 years in other workshops. For me, the light finally went on. I began to see words on pages from a different perspective, noticing those that looked or sounded interesting. I also began to see the world around me with an “artist’s eye,” finding inspiration for poetry where least expected. In your workshop, I learned to really listen to the sounds of words, to look for the music. I read Richard Hugo’s book, Triggering Town. I studied your line breaks in Wolf Tracks on the Welcome Mat to attempt to grasp what had been elusive for me--the rationale behind the line breaks. And I finally got it! To let the lines stand alone and make them interesting. I now approach every poem as if it were a jigsaw puzzle, searching for the perfect word-fit. My dictionary and thesaurus are tattered from flipping fingers through their pages.

I just completed an 8-week online workshop put on by Diane Frank, editor of Blue Light Press, as well as a published author and poet. I took a similar workshop from her 2 years ago. While she enjoyed my writing then, this time around she said my writing “has stepped up to a new level of power,” “is very skillful,” “the images are powerful,” and “every line delivers.” She is considering 3 of the 8 poems for an anthology she is publishing. I could not have done this without your workshop.

So, my journey continues; the desire to be as good a writer and poet as possible. I already had the spark, the embers smoldering inside me, but your poetry and the workshop fueled the fire. Thank you for taking the time to share with us all and for the colorful crafting of your poetry that you share with the world.
…

Your friend in poetry,
Sue Parker

6. Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! AND Thank You!, too, Susan, for trusting me to engage your words with utmost honesty.

7. Just back from a fourth, over the past 10 months, very intense recording session at Open Path Music studio in San Jose. As I may have mentioned on my personal website, my good friends Gordon Stevens, Tim (fellow paisano) Volpicella, Scott Sorkin and Lee Ray are investing hundreds of hours of time and mountains of talent into creating and producing 2 CDs of finely woven poetry with music. The two choreographies, although they offer a fairly substantial parcel of common ground in format and sensibility, differ considerably in tone and mood. “Collisions Of Reckless Love” offers 14 cuts, most of them solemn/serious, and only 3 or 4 that hard-core cowboy audiences might deem “cowboy.” To be honest, the hardest of that “hard-core” might ruthlessly cut ‘em all from the C.P. herd, as there’s only a single rhymed-‘n’-metered cut, “Black Upon Tan,” a song lyric actually, which does NOT include mention of anything western, aside from “Billings, Montana,” where the story is set. The second CD, ROCK-‘N’-ROWEL, in contrast, lives up to its title, and then some. We’re finished with 90% of the recording. Next the mixing, and then orchestrating the graphics, etc. Hoping to have both discs packaged by late November. I’ll be talking more about this remarkable creative collaboration, this artistic journey with kindred spirits, in future blogs/logs/clogs/frogs or whatever the hell this thing I’m hammering out is called. Isn’t “blog” an ugly word? A sound I might employ in an elegy or dirge, maybe, but definitely not in a joyous verse. GROG! Now THERE’S what these sumbitches ought to be called. Because both Liz and I need stiff drinks after the torment and turmoil we endure trying to transcribe verbatim (DO NOT SCREW WITH THE UNIPOET’S WORDS!!!) my writing to the W.F.C.’s website format. Yup, “grog.”

8. Eight being this rodeo roughie’s favorite number, I’ll close by offering a poem from my 1984 book, long out of print, THE MAKE-UP OF ICE. I doubt many of you know the collection and, thus, may this piece, written in the ‘70s, ring fresh to most of your middle-ear stirrup bones. I experienced “Instant Replay” in 1964, 42 years an one month ago, almost to the day. I trust it will bring this “grog,” metaphorically, full-circle:

Instant Replay

There’s no scrimmage below
this threshold of pain -- the dentist
rushing to keep the hole open
with quick spurts of water, cold
air and steel, penetrating
beyond Novocain’s reach
to the deepest territory of nerve
centers. I’m trapped and double-
teamed on a cross-block sweep,
stampeded by the entire backfield -- fifty,
maybe sixty, single spikes in all,
but just that one bare screw
(the plastic cleat stripped away)
puncturing the lip as a leather
punch pokes a hole in pad strap.

I stumble up, groggy, spitting
practice field sand, bitter
blood and something solid
snatched clean from mid air --
that blind swat on impulse
toward the annoying buzz.
And opening the tight fist
slowly, shadows of fingers
lifting above the palm, I see
this tooth -- surprise of natural pearl --
raw and lustering, long-
rooted in the pulp of my hand.

Imagine the wintry loss of antlers,
those rosettes, tender and flecked red
where pin-prick vessels severed, the raw
pockets in skulls of bull elk
open to the blizzard wind
at night. Imagine these hands
right before your eyes, magician’s
hands, whiter than cuffs
they reach from out of nowhere,
fingers coaxing the tooth
to rejoin with mandible -- the pearl
with oyster -- the constant force
and weight of a thousand hands -- antlers
pressed back in the skull. Imagine growing
stronger, feeling less with more pain,
like lovers or broken bones
together the second time around.

-- for Doc Odorizzi