WORKSHOP MANIFESTO
Dear Blogski Readers,
Although my original intention was to beam the following solely to this year’s Elko Writing Workshop participants, I’ve decided this morning to blogcast it because A.) I’m a week or two past due with this and, thus, it’s too late to snail-mail it to said participants, and B.) I JUST was informed that email coordinates might NOT be available for said “said participants.” Most of whom probably (unlike the UniPoet) DO computers, and, long as the odds likely are, maybe they’ll catch wind of this pre-workshop preview out there in The Blogosphere. Make sense? GOOD! I knew it purt-near might. In any case, the following 10 pages of palaver should result in one or more of the following responses:
1. “Am I EVER glad I’m signed up for Paul’s workshop!”
2. “Am I EVER glad I’m NOT signed up for Paul’s workshop!”
3. “Self-Interview?!? As in, he’s not only talking to himself, he’s answering himself, to boot? And they’re letting him on the plane??!
4. “I’ll be go-to-hell! I DID NOT KNOW there was a difference between writing poetry and writing rhymes.”
5. “Here’s one Rodeo Poet who got his brainpan pile-drived into the hardpan two too many times!”
6. "I had a hunch The Western Folklife Center was hard up, but…well…this most definitely is The Mother of ALL Hardupednesses.”
7. “Why didn’t they get Billy Collins to teach the workshop?”
8. “I’ve heard Paul's two new CDs and he’s without-a-doubt in violation of The Cowboy Code, if not The Patriot Act!”
(If you ARE in the workshop and if you HAVE miraculously tuned this in, please leave a brief blog-o-comment . Thanks. Paul.)
January 23, 2007
Manchester, MT
Fellow Poets,
After being asked last week to submit preliminary commentary, or a mission statement, or whatever the heck, concerning our workshop, I’ve spent the past five days searching here at the archeological dig, formerly referred to as my writing niche, for the page of palaver I’M CERTAIN I hunted-’n’-pecked prior to the Elko workshop I coached a few years back. Alas, after all my paper shuffling, all my UN-mothballing of files and folders, no cigar for The Polish-Mafioso-Rodeo-Poet-not a single papyrus/cellulose graphite/ink shard of evidence that I ever wrote the booger. Which, of course, I clearly recall as being absolutely stellar. What can I say?: I’m perplexed; I’m disappointed; I’m old. I’m also both lazy and over-burdened right now, and, therefore, rather than starting from scratchski, I’ve decided to regale you with the third “Round” from a SELF-interview, as in who better to pose the most precise questions about how I feel and think and work--about where I’ve already traipsed creative and where I’m hoping to poetically go from here--who better THAN ME!? (or is it I?) Actually, I filched this tactic or technique from my mentor, Richard Hugo--his collection of essays, THE REAL WEST MARGINAL WAY. Dick might’ve borrowed the format from James Dickey. In any case, I’d been itching to engage the concept ever since reading Hugo-to-Hugo exchanges such as the following:
Q. Can you teach creative writing?
A. You damn right I can.
Q. So the classes have value?
A. The best justification for writing classes is not the writing itself, though that’s important, but that people can come together to share fundamental human concerns. What the humanities, literature, art are all about is discussed in other classes. In creative writing classes it operates. We need writing classes the way we once needed churches, because, simplistic as it sounds, that’s where we can reveal our feelings and admit they are important to us…. Whatever that nameless thing is that makes us human, that is the thing that is kept alive in writing courses, some recognition that our lives, no matter how drab, wretched and frustrating they (may) have been, are all we have and in nearly all cases are preferable to death. Simple as this is, it ought never be forgotten, least of all by people who call themselves educated.
I read this passage at least 25 years ago--long before it appeared in Hugo’s essay collection--have kept it front-row-center in that colossal orchestra of cells we call the brain and, as conductor, I point to it with my baton often--whenever I need to remind myself WHY, first and foremost, I write, and WHY I encourage others to do the same.
Just one more Hugoism before I get to Zzarzzyski quizzezz Zzarzzyski, this one from a piece written by Larry Levinger, who I crossed trails with back in ‘74, a fellow workshopee. We’ve stayed in touch and occasionally exchanged our writings with each other for over 30 years, no small feat. The Lev, as I affectionately refer to him, wrote “Poet Richard Hugo: The Open Field Beyond” for a 1992 anthology published by PLOUGHSHARES (Emerson College--Vol. 18, No. 1). The following Hugo passage quoted by Levinger speaks directly and succinctly to our/your mission for the Elko workshop, Jan. 30th and 31st, 2007:
And there he’d stand, looking like a Pier 39 cargo supervisor, saying: “Now you all know how this kind of thing works. You bring in your poems and read them and during the criticism you don’t talk or defend your work. I’ll be saying a lot about your poem and about poetry and I want you to remember I’m wrong. I’m only right for me. I don’t want you to write like me. Write like somebody else. If you end up good at it, it will be the right somebody else. If you end up very good at it, you’ll write like you.”
Okay. Here it finally is--from 51--5 Rounds with 1 Paul Zarzyski: A Self-Interview (only a handful of folks from this planet have seen this rough-draft writing).
ROUND 3
Q. It’s high time we talk about your approach to the page, the process, the rendering of the poem.
A. You’ve sure had me fooled--I thought that’s exactly what we’ve been doing the past 8-9 hours?
Q. No, I beg to differ with you. I believe what we’ve been discussing thus far is how your upbringing, your emigration to the cowboy west, and your artistic philosophies have driven, and continue to drive, your poetic passions. Now, with your permission and cooperation, I’d like to “talk shop,” as they say?
A. Fall back and fire away.
Q. Where do they come from?
A. I wish it was as simple as aiming a forefingered-noseconed right arm toward heaven, the way major leaguers do after launching one out of the yard. It ain’t. Because they don’t all come from above. “Where do they come from?” Out of the light, out of the darkness, out of the gloaming, out of the gloom; out of the wide-open, out of the shadows, out of the deep, out of the shallows, out of the magma, out of the past, present, and future I guess; out of the blood--both artery and vein (there I go again)--out of the xylem and phloem, out of the mighty river, out of the meandering brook, out of the trickling spring, out of the purl of anything and everything liquid, out of the mass of all that is solid, out of the vapors of gas, out of the tangible, the invisible, the inconceivable, the impossible, the incomprehensible, the concrete, the abstract, the real and surreal, reasoning and miracle, out of the eye of the hurricane, the heart of darkness, that “somewhere over the rainbow,” out of the land of Oz, out of left field; out of the artificial and natural, organic and synthetic, steel, iron, plastic, glass, bone, skin, branch, bark, cell, atom, molecule, proton, neutron, brain, gut, marrow of the soul, out of the make-up of all time, out of noise out of silence, out of the finite, the infinite, and on and on and eternally on…, but, at its very best, always out of and into THE GLORIOUS COMMOTION OF IT ALL, to echo the title of my spoken-word CD.
Q. As well as to echo your opening poem in WOLF TRACKS ON THE WELCOME MAT--please recite it?
A. Face-To-Face
Out of nowhere, you find yourself
placed daily before the fortress,
rustic logs throbbing
something from within
you vaguely recognize
as music--so primal,
so otherworldly in its purpose,
you are at once drawn closer,
cautioned back. Succumb
to ugly logic, to mean-spirited
reason, or religion,
and you, believing you shun
merely the unknown, will flee
unwittingly from beauty. Trust the blood,
however, waltzing to four-part harmony
within the heart, and you will be moved
to witness, through the chinking’s
thin fissures, the shadows
of the enchanted. Then, and only then,
might you choose to follow
a force you’ll lovingly call your soul
through huge swinging doors
thrown open to the glorious
commotion of it all.
Q. Well, I guess that purt-near covers it, ‘ey? The whole ball of wax, of yarn, the whole enchilada, the mother of bardic smorgasbords, the pappa of poetic free-for-alls?
A. You’ve been here too long--you’re starting to sound like a lousy copy of me.
(Laughter and long pause.)
Q. Okay. Hell of an answer to “where they come from,” but there’s a secondary or tag-along question, if you will, that begs addressing in the next breath, and that is, “how do you greet or receive them?”
A. That one’s a mite tougher to field. If you’d pose this question to a thousand poets, I suspect you’d get at least 998 diverse responses. For me, therefore, it’s mostly a matter, first-off, of showing up in poetic gear, of being there in poetic mode? My 6-to-8 antennae, after writing for 35 years, are always extended, but in varying degrees of telescopic length. I think most poets would agree that it is not so much a matter of seeking out material or experience or moments or whatever--that it’s the farthest thing from scientific research, from arctic explorations, African safaris, archeological digs. At the opposite extreme end of the spectrum, I’ve never found it very fruitful to effect a disciplined writing schedule, to show up day-in, day-out, and confront the blank page, stare it down like Davy Crockett did “the barr” until the scary hairy booger gives in. Although I do concede that either of the above approaches could very well work wonderfully for some writers--writers far more ambitious than I. My way is simply to leap in, with those 6-to-8 antennas as outstretched and tuned-in as possible, to the daily chaos--not all of it unfortunate chaos, however--of what I refer to as “life’s maintenance.” For me it’s all interwoven, all warp and weft--an intricate birdnest or Persian or Navajo rug, at its best; a casting reel’s tangled backlash, a cosmic cluster-bumfuggle or universal snafu at its worst. I’m talking about a million moments in any given day--how they connect or disconnect and which, if any, call out the loudest whisper (dog-whistle quiet sometimes), rise above the thick cloud of dust roiling above the milling herd, reach out, grab hold of my ear or eye or windpipe, titillate my nape hairs, make my synapses snap and crackle like--to borrow a line from my poem Flamenca Duende--“hot wires flailing wild in a gale.” The thing is, your POETRY WELCOMED or WELCOME POETRY mat better always be out and prominent. Better yet, a fuchsia-’n’-chartreuse cursive neon flashing “Mi Casa Es Su Casa” to Poetry in every window. Add to the above lurings, a marquee above each door sporting in big black block letters those 4 Fs I mentioned earlier: FEARLESSNESS! FREEDOM! FIERCENESS! FUN! (On second thought, maybe a brilliant viper blue would effect far more beckoning strength.) This is what it takes to bring them in, to be ready to receive them graciously, no matter what their needs. Make any sense?
Q. I think so. I’d be a liar to the nth power, however, if I didn’t admit to you that I truly DID expect a more, shall we say, “formulaic” or “tangible” or “concrete” answer?
A. Turn the dials on your A.M.-F.M.-S.M.-M&M bakelite tympanums all to their prospective WORD MUSIC channels, Super-Glue the boogers there for good, and simply let the rhythms and lilts and riffs of the syllables dictate your daily cadences as you move poetically through life. So many musical words and so little time to juxtapose them infinitely?
Q. Okay. That covers the music, but what about the message. Didn’t Hugo say “…in every poem there’s a constant battle going on between the music and the message, and in the very best poems, neither ever wins“?
A. Yes he did--almost verbatim, I believe. But he also suggested that, during the crafting of a poem, the music blazes trail for the message, so to speak. By placing the heaviest concentration on the music, the poet stands the best chance of allowing the poem to say what IT has to say, in opposition to the poet’s encroachment or intrusion. Dick put it clearly for me when he said “Poems are like people--if you listen to them closely enough and long enough, they’ll tell you what it is THEY have to say.” In other words, only a greenhorn tinhorn gunsel amateur would outline a poem or give it a title early-on.
Q. Correct me if I’m wrong on this--you likely know a lot more about training horses than I do, but…
A. I wouldn’t bet on that.
Q. …but isn’t what you’re addressing somewhat akin to what equine maestros…
A. …not great, but I agree with you--“equine maestros” is much better than “horse whisperers”
Q. …what they refer to as “letting the horse think it’s his idea, her choosing?”
A. To be honest, I’m not sure, but it sounds damn good to me right now and, furthermore, reminds me of a poem in ALL THIS WAY FOR THE SHORT RIDE that I dedicated to one of the Cowboy West’s best horsemen, my friend, Randy Rieman. It’s not an easy poem, whatever that means, and I doubt I’ve delivered it from a half-dozen stages. It’s titled The Horseman, The Poet, The Code, The Horse.
Q. I’d love to hear it and, while you’re at it , it seems to me that a lot of what you’ve been emphasizing reflects or ricochets off another cowpoke ars poetica piece from WOLF TRACKS…, Putting The Rodeo Try Into Cowboy Poetry. How about firing both barrels--side-by-side or, more apropos of the page’s framework, over-under?
(Zarzyski reads both poems without bobbling a single syllable, the flawlessness he’d kill for--UniPoet Paladin-For-Hire Hitman website, or NO UniPoet Paladin-For-Hire Hitman website--when delivering his work from the stage.)
The Horseman, The Poet, The Code, The Horse
Sizing up each other’s hearts, and caught
off guard by ripples of their own
reflections, the poet reveres the horseman
as high priest, the horseman beholds
the poet as wizard. In the round pen
with a gentle colt, this trinity of hearts
beats most lovingly because, with love,
nobody becomes the broken. They delight in the flying
lead change of fresh blood, fresh words,
circulating within horse, within horseman and poet,
within this circular cowboy universe
where no two boot heels or hooves--like stars,
like snowflakes or meteorites
or the blacksmith’s hammer striking hot iron--
have ever fallen with the same grace,
gravity, fervor, and force
exactly to the same circle. The two men agree that,
for strangers, they agree much
too eagerly. And then, wide-eyed, again
in harmony, they nod to the synchronized wisdom
of their mentors--Hugo, Dorrance--showing them how
it’s you feeling of the horse, the poem,
and the poem, the horse, feeling of you.
The horseman hands the poet an old bridle--worn
Jeremiah Watt bit and braided reins
he cowboyed with in five states. The poet
hands the horseman a thin book of works
he wrote between rodeos he rode in one-dream
three-bar towns. Seldom has either man known
an adios so slow. In unison they turn
toward the round corral, sudden wind
imitating the sound of wings. Angels--some say
ranahan angels, disguised as fresh western air,
will perch the circle of top rails. Hands still
clasped in their long good-bye,
horseman and poet come full-circle
to this message, to A Blessing, to friendship
lit at the withers between earth and sky.
Putting the Rodeo Try Into Cowboy Poetry
Let’s begin with the wildest landscape, space
inhabited by far more of them
than our own kind and, yes, we are talking
other hearts, other stars. Fall in love with all
that is new born--universe, seedling, dawn,
human, foal, calf. Love equally
the seasons, know each sky has meaning,
winter-out the big lonesomes, the endless
horizons our hopes sink beyond
once every minute, sometimes
seeming never to rise
again for air or light,
for life. Fall madly in love
with earth’s fickle ways. Heed
hard the cosmos cues, the most
minuscule pulsings, subtle nods--no heavy-
handed tap or poke, nothing muscular,
no near-death truths revealed, no telephone
or siren screaming us out of sleep
at 3 a.m. Forget revelation.
Forgive religion. Let’s believe instead in song
birds or Pegasus, the only angels
we’ll ever need. Erase for good
inspiration from our Random Bunk-
House Dictionaries, from our petty heads
and pretty ambitions. Poetry is not
the grace or blessing we pray for--Poetry
is the Goddess for whom
we croon. Sing and surely we shall see
how she loves our music in any key--
any color, any creed, any race, any breed. Rhyme
if the muse or mood moves us
to do so. Go slow. Walk
then trot, lope then rock
and roll for even a split second, our souls
in the thundergust middle, the whole
world suddenly getting western,
pitching a tizzy fit, our horses
come uncorked--just as we were
seriously beginning to think
we savvied the salty? To believe we could
ever turn this stampede,
like steers, into a milling
circle? Into a civil gathering of words?
Q. Being a fan of James Wright, I caught, of course, the title reference to his great horse poem, A Blessing, in the closing lines to The Horseman, The Poet, …. You’ve never presented these 2 works back-to-back?
A. Not until just now, thanks to you. And I agree--that is, indeed, a fine James Wright poem.
Q. In light of the strong duo you read, I can’t help but wonder if there might be a trio or even a quartet I should prod you toward?
A. Probably not. Oh sure, I have others, the Scars Poetica piece I mentioned. Heck, even Words Growing Wild…, I suppose. But the connections are far less western and far more far-fetched. Let’s quit while we’re ahead. Actually, you may already have your trio, if you couple the two I just read with Face-To-Face.
Q. Let’s place Words Growing Wild In The Woods in the number one slot, followed by The Horseman, The Poet…, Putting The Rodeo Try…, and then Face-To-Face. Sounds to me like a stalwart foursome of Fearlessness! Freedom! Fierceness! and Fun! Next question?
A. Shoot.
Q. How ‘bout an example of one of those “close encounters of the umpteenth poetic kind” you’ve alluded to? You’re moseying or gamboling or traipsing or galloping or speeding at warp 10 or whatever through a day rife with “life’s maintenance,” all your dials Super-Glued into musical place, your antennas extended to varying degrees of telescopic penetration out into the ol’ Cowpoke Cosmos, at least one of them, hopefully, tickling the Muse most anatomically intimately, when “out of left field”--bah-dah-boom, bah-dah-bing--you hear the poem stomping the snow off its galoshes right outside your door on the POETRY WELCOMED mat. Now, you “shoot.”
A. I couldn’t have pitched the question better myself--with more metaphorical, eloquent, enticing acumen. It’ll be difficult to respond with in-kind succinctness, but I’ll try.
Q. “Fall back and fire away.”
A. I’m a thrift store junky--especially on the hunt for cowboy-’n’-Indian kitsch from the ‘40s and ‘50s. And the primary focus of my collections, as you can see, is the hand-painted cowpoke cravat--flashy western neckties of yore. But I’m fond, as well, of most any pictorial or, in some cases, abstract air-brushed classic--the more outrageous/gaudy/weird, the better. A decade or so ago, I’m in St. Vincent de Paul’s in Great Falls, back in the days when they stayed open until 9 at night. It’s late. I notice a shopping cart half-filled with shoes, which I immediately identify as that belonging to John Jasmann (pronounced Jazz man), a severely afflicted Down’s Syndrome employee of St. Vinny’s for, at that time, 25 years, most of those years spent orchestrating the used shoe department. Johnny is a country-western music fan--sported headphones as he worked and would oftentimes sing (caterwaul) along. I, too, love the older C-W tunes. John is also a fellow aficionado of neckties--his signature, a different polyester everyday dangling from his shipping cart. But on THIS night, my eye caught, instead of an uninteresting striped or solid, a wide rayon print sporting a keyboard image from its tip to Johnny’s half-hitched rendition of a Windsor knot. I buy the tie, take it home and, instead of hanging it from one of the two dozen racks on the walls you see here in my writing niche, I lay it alongside my beloved Smith-Corona, where it did everything but get up and dance the zoot-suited Lindy before I finally received its cue to write the piece I believe I was destined to write. Fact is, I think I was doing a few rounds on the heavy bag when it hit me, and we ain’t talking nebulous revelation here--I mean, how much more obvious could it have been that the poem would somehow address music? But the real truth-’n’-beauty nucleus of the story evolved via the journey through numerous drafts over a period of months. Walked into St. Vinny’s one day and, as usual, enjoyed my short exchange with John who, I was surprised to note, was sorting shirts and not shoes. Found out that he’d incurred not so much a demotion but more of a lateral move in his employment status, after he suddenly began to display the shoes and boots in haphazard fashion rather than in matched pairs. I’ll bet I struggled through no less than 40-50 reconstructions of the closing stanza to Montana Second Hand before settling for the phrasings, the syntaxes--the rendering--I’m about to recite for you. Paul Valery said “a poem is never finished, only abandoned;” never before had I experienced the truth of his dictum to this extent. It may have had a little to do with an underlying resistance I felt long before I scratched the first word onto the page--probably right from the very moment I unhitched that keyboard tie from John’s cart. Who in the hell did I think I was intruding into a life of which I couldn’t even begin to comprehend the heights of holiness? After reciting the poem for years to cowboy poetry audiences, I met John’s brother, Mark, a horse-’n’-cowman head-to-foot, hat-to-boots. Johnny, it turns out, was born on a cattle ranch in the Madison River Valley near Ennis, Montana. Don’t ask me how, damnit, but I KNEW all along I was writing a cowboy poem.
Montana Second Hand
Down’s syndrome can’t hinder the Saint
Vincent de Paul thrift store
troubadour of the shoe department,
John Jasmann, singing his pedal steel guitar
love songs into his rhapsodical
job--sorting used footwear
into rows from his shopping cart piled
high with each day’s fresh stock. His photo
album propped open
in the child carrier, Polaroids
showcasing him at work--and his touch
of personal panache, one flashy cravat hanging,
half-hitched, from the cart’s push-bar--
he belts out a line of Louisiana Hayride
classic, ...son of a gun
we’ll have big fun on the bayou.
Hank Williams
lilting hit after hit, John
presses his palms to the Walkman headphones,
as if holding a lover in a long kiss,
and takes wing on the Nashville airwaves
bringing us a little ...how’s about cookin’
somethin’ up with me.
Strange as this may sound,
John stumbled once onto the key of C,
his usual out-of-tune
cacophony turning
suddenly to a melodic
lovely a cappella: I’m so lo-o-nsome
Iiii could cryyy.
Listen--as each shopper,
gawking with awe toward Shoes,
pictures some rockabilly god,
some rhythm-’n’-blues aficionado,
maybe Saint Vinny himself,
rolling a ruby-ringed finger
over the solid gold dial
tuned to Angelic Debut.
May grace taking shape
tangibly in a single line of singing
draw us all one lonesome day
toward the mysterious
display of white shoes
staggered with black boots
across wrought iron racks. There, may each shelf
holding the notes, sharps, flats,
show us how the maestro--excited
by the infinite, cued to the unique
movements we make
arranged together in perfect time--writes
out of all our used lives
one sweet music.
Q. On that poignant musical note, what say we take 10 and hoist a Guinness to The Jazz Man?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
And now, from somewhere in Round 5, I offer this coda, this postscript, this closing note until we meet in Elko:
Q. …where to from here?
A. I want to invoke one of my favorite films, CROSSROADS…. You remember the old blues musician, Willy Brown, played by that virtuoso of an actor, Joe Seneca--what an absolutely beautiful face! He’s partnered-up with the young protégé, played by Ralph Macchio of The Karate Kid fame. They bust Willy Brown out of the rest home and make a pilgrimage to a deep south crossroads, where Willy, in his foolish youth, made a pact, a contract, with the Devil and is hoping to void it. I can’t help but interject a couple of marvelous passages that surface in the film--old Willy saying “blues ain’t nothing but a good man feelin’ bad thinking’ about the woman he was once with;” or “Robert Johnson gave us 29 songs and that’s enough.” Anyways, they cross paths again with old Beelzebub, who pitches them a deal. If Willy’s young guitar ace will “cut heads” with the devil’s ace and outduel him, then Lucifer will rip up the contract. Macchio, trained at Julliard, throws the knockout punch with a riff that includes a myriad of classical notes that the devil’s man cannot respond to. The contract is nullified, and Willy and his boy are beamed back to the gravel crossroads. “I hear Chicago callin’,” Willy delights--“you ready for The Windy City?” But then he announces, to the boy’s chagrin, “after Chicago, you on your own.” When Macchio protests and asks “WHY!?”, Willy replies, “cuz you got to take the music someplace else--take it past where you found it. That’s what we did.” That’s what it HAS to be all about--taking the music, taking the poetry, past where I found it.
The End (purt-near)
Tradition is not devotion to the ashes but passing on of the fire.
Karl Kraus
Austria
