Tag: Bob Hicok

2 Things in absence of composition

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, Traces4 Comments

My maker-wheels or whatever complex machinery sometimes con-fuses to generate documents of creative writing are apparently on the fritz.  In lieu of some relatively originary textual flow (idiosyncratic dip into the semiotic waters of the resource of language) I forward along a poem that stands out to me from this weeks’ readings, and a plea that interest-piqued readers immerse themselves in a particular book regarding our co-creation and involvement with the rest of the world and one another…

First, the poem – from Bob Hicok‘s “Elegy Owed” – a fine collection:

Hicok - Poem

 

and second a plug for a compelling study by Ian Hodder – “Entangled: An Archaeology of the relationships between humans and things”

Hodder - Entangled

 

On Rage, a poem

On By NW FilbertIn Poetry6 Comments

Rage

 

Rage

“            …that dog

barking at nothing

because every time he’s barked at nothing,

nothing’s gone wrong and why not keep it that way?”

– Bob Hicok, “One of those things we say…”

 

Blaze searing eye-corner

fierce rupture

a hazard of blades

 

we two, entangled –

emotion dug deep and flung far –

architectonic

 

like the causes of weather

complexity systems

large beyond measure

 

on any scale

insinuated within

spaces we intimately share

 

archaic wounds – a butterfly’s wing –

tempest stress to tumultuous effect

(deep dug, far flung)

 

we two, engangled

emotive amygdalas in action

safe love, a hazard of blades

 

Found Autobiography

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, Poetry5 Comments

autobiography

 

A country mapped with invisible ink

– Bob Hicok

Like we are the hole that grows in poor, unmendable

nothing: we blind needles: we unmoored threads:

like feeling I’m the enaction of a waterfall by my tongue

.

upon your body, as when a boat is brought to the edge

of exile and a hand extends to a hand or a tree

beseeches with its shadeshawl: however born,

.

there is reaching, we agree the wind smelled of copper

one day, a passport the next: like how to escape

my brain’s slum of words, the ghetto of the said,

.

while adoring there the rocks, the teacups,

if half of me is a Molotov cocktail and half

the inflection of loss and half a genuflection

.

to breath: like wondering if this extra half

is a country mapped with invisible ink:

like how windows ask to come along with the going

.

and preside over the staying, and I look at them

with all the love, all the shatter I can muster:

shards cutting me when I try to put the sky,

.

the distance back together: boredom cutting me

deeper when I don’t: like searching for a man

in a burning house and finding a piano as echo flees:

.

a whetstone still warm from the blade: sheets pressed

with brainfolds of sleep: a whisper from the bathroom

of running water: but no body: and I carry

.

these things to safety that are not the man: the piano

in my arms, running water in my mouth, the vespers

of sleep, the knife, so like a wing, like flight:

.

and say of him, that was me, to the ashes, the char:

and sift the memory of flames for their sorrow,

holding smoke to the mirror interested only

.

in solid dreams: like it will finally see

what isn’t there and give it my face, this presence

of absence I have tried and tried not to be

**********

“almost as if I’m making her and this poem and my past

up as I go, to help me feel nothing

.

goes to waste, not even waste.”

-also Bob Hicok

Nathan Portrait

 

And finally…poems

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, Poetry10 Comments

I recognize that I hunger for poetry – periodically I canvas new poetry books and the old on my shelves to be STRUCK – to be wakened – charged – re-membered – into some leaping alive sensibility awareness delight sorrow grief ecstasy – that the vividness and risk of well-made poems incite…

for me, anyway.

Thus, the Bolano.  A beginning.

Thus, returning to Nooteboom, a certainty.

Thus, the new arrivals shelf – Wichita Public Library.

and then…today…BOOM.

Bob Hicok, tested favorite, “new arrival,” Elegy Owed

the jump-start.

the activation.

something like recognition and instigation at once.

what poetry does.

and having no idea where to begin to share it with you

to recommend

to commend to you

I’ll just offer the opening poem:

Pilgrimage - Bob Hicok

and the closer…

Good-bye

Hicok - Good-bye

and to tell you that everything in between is every bit as good

and some even better….

Good-bye

 

Small white church at the edge of my yard.

A bell will ring in a few hours.

People who believe in eternity will sing.

I’ll hear an emotion resembling the sea from over a hill.

One time I sat with my back to the church to give their singing

to my spine, there’s a brown llama you can watch

while you do this in a field if you’d like to try.

I don’t think even calendars believe in eternity.

Beyond the church is a trail that leads to a bassinet in a tree.

Someone put it there when the oak and sky were young.

I’m afraid to climb the tree.

That I’ll find bones inside.

That they’ll be mine.

I want to be with  my wife forever but not as we are.

She’ll become a bear, I a season: Kodiak, spring.

Part of loving bagpipes haunting the gloaming is knowing

the bloodsinging will stop.

Beyond the church I pulled a hammer from the river.

What were you building, I asked its rust, from water and without nails?

This is where I get self-conscious about language,

words are love affairs or séances or harpoons, there isn’t a sentence

that isn’t a plea.

This is where I don’t care that I’m half wrong when I say everything

is made entirely of light.

This is where my wife and I hold hands.

Over there is where our shadows do a better job.

– Bob Hicok, Elegy Owed