9.25.14

This article popped up in my facebook feed lately (and probably yours too, if you are local). It's all about how us Seattle people are partial to our rain, and how comforting it is to have the season come around again. I thought this was particularly beautiful: "It's not simply the arrival of rain, but the transition to a different environment and way of life. The drear has a certain dark beauty; a low-contrast softness. There's no need to squint or close the blinds. Even the sound of rain on the house is music to my ears, a lullaby". 

There's no question that these surrounds deeply influence people who write here. There are a handful of poets who are associated with the Northwest, even if they aren't technically from here. Roethke, Hugo, and Wagoner are some. While I recognized some of the names, I haven't ever studied these writers. Hugo is a big enough name in Seattle, though, with an institution devoted to writers named for him here in town. The Hugo House hosts readings, classes and workshops, teen seminars, and performance events. 
This, from their website, made me smile: "Richard Hugo wrote in The Triggering Town that 'writing is hard, and writers need help.' The hardest part is the solitary slog that’s required to get the right words on the page. Hugo House is the place to find your greatest allies in writing, whether you connect with a kindred spirit in a class, meet someone chatting after an event, or help put on an program that reminds everyone present just why all this literary business matters so much".

Hugo was born in Seattle, and at various points worked at Boeing, the University of Missoula, served in WWII as a bombardier, and studied at the University of Washington (under Roethke). As far as the poetry of place goes, this article describes how Frances McCue followed Hugo's journey around Montana. She says: "Starting in 1980, I came to know a handful of Montana towns under Hugo's influence. There seemed to be something omnipotent and right in his words, as if he'd been granted special access to the truth of places". However, the article is much more attuned to the human atmosphere of the Montana towns than the weather. 

Here is something beautiful by Hugo. It wasn't what I thought I'd share when I started out, but I rather like it when the material leads in different directions. 


Making Certain it goes on

At last the Big Blackfoot river
has risen high enough to again cover the stones
dry too many months. Trout return
from summer harbor deep in the waters
of the power company dam. High on the bank
where he knows the river won’t reach
the drunk fisherman tries to focus on
a possible strike, and tries to ignore
the hymn coming from the white frame church.
The stone he leans against, bleached out dull gray,
underwater looked beautiful and blue.
The young minister had hoped for a better parish,
say one with bells that sound gold
and a congregation that doesn’t stop coming
when the mill shuts down.

We love to imagine
a giant bull trout or a lunker rainbow
will grab the drunk fisherman’s bait
and shock the drunk fisherman out
of his recurrent afternoon dream and into
the world of real sky and real water.
We love to imagine the drought has ended,
the high water will stay, the excess
irrigate crops, the mill reopen, the workers
go back to work, lovers reassume plans
to be married. One lover, also the son
of the drunk fisherman, by now asleep
on the bank for no trout worth imagining
has come, will not invite his father
to the happy occasion though his father
will show up sober and properly dressed,
and the son will no longer be sure of the source
of the shame he has always rehearsed.

Next summer the river will recede,
the stones bleach out to
their dullest possible shade. The fisherman
will slide bleary down the bank
and trade in any chance he has of getting
a strike for some old durable dream,
a dream that will keep out the hymn
coming again from the church. The workers
will be back full shift. The power company
will lower the water in the dam
to make repairs, make repairs and raise rates.
The drunk fisherman will wait for the day
his son returns, divorced and bitter
and swearing revenge on what the old man
has come to believe is only water
rising and falling on climatic schedule.

That summer came and is gone. And everything
we predicted happened, including the death
of the fisherman. We didn’t mention that before,
but we knew and we don’t lie to look good.
We didn’t forsee the son would never return.

This brings us to us, and our set lines
set deep on the bottom. We’re going all out
for the big ones. A new technology
keeps the water level steady year round.
The company dam is self cleaning.
In this dreamy summer air you and I
dreamily plan a statue commemorating
the unknown fisherman. The stone will bear
no inscription and that deliberate anonymity
will start enough rumors to keep
the mill operating, big trout nosing the surface,
the church reforming white frame
into handsome blue stone, and this community
going strong another hundred years.

I love the rhythm in this poem, with the rise and fall of the water levels, the sounds of music (thought not a tune that is desired) on the air, and how the rhythms of the people living there continue even as things stabilize or change. I say I love it, but it is also a very desperate climate to move through. "Son will no long be sure / of the source of the shame he always rehearsed" and the disappointed minister make the atmosphere very harsh, and make me doubt that the fisherman ever caught the fish (even if it isn't one he needs for his survival. Or maybe he does. I haven't decided yet). Something else that I like was how this line tripped me up "but we knew and we don't lie to look good". My typo-conscious brain read this as "we don't like to look good", then blended them together for someone who doesn't dress up their existence and doesn't pretend its anything other than it is. 

So, to bring this back around: let us embrace things that others discard. Or as Hugo said, "Never write a poem about anything that ought to have a poem written about it".