Walt Gets His Freak On

"Feb. 20.—A solitary and pleasant sundown hour at the pond, exercising arms, chest, my whole body, by a tough oak sapling thick as my wrist, twelve feet high—pulling and pushing, inspiring the good air. After I wrestle with the tree awhile, I can feel its young sap and virtue welling up out of the ground and tingling through me from crown to toe, like health's wine. Then for addition and variety I launch forth in my vocalism; shout declamatory pieces, sentiments, sorrow, anger, &c., from the stock poets or plays—or inflate my lungs and sing the wild tunes and refrains I heard of the blacks down south, or patriotic songs I learn'd in the army. I make the echoes ring, I tell you! As the twilight fell, in a pause of these ebullitions, an owl somewhere the other side of the creek sounded too-oo-oo-oo-oo, soft and pensive (and I fancied a little sarcastic) repeated four or five times. Either to applaud the negro songs—or perhaps an ironical comment on the sorrow, anger, or style of the stock poets."

Specimen Days. Whitman, ill, convalescing, a decade or so after nursing the war wounded & dying . . .

° ° °

(A hundred years later, Michael McClure declaims a beast poem while standing in front of the lions at the San Francisco Zoo, the lions answering.)

David Park

"My birthday is in April, and that year a flat, brown-paper-wrapped package arrived in the mail, addressed by David. Immediately I knew the package was a painting. I ripped away the paper and held up the framed canvas. It had browns and blues and gold and red. I turned it around, trying to 'read' it. It wasn't signed, and for a long moment I didn't know top from bottom. I thought it was an abstract that hadn't made it to the dump. I turned the painting one way and then the other."

"An image popped into view, just like that. One moment I couldn't tell if the painting had subject matter, and the next moment there was a profile of Deedie gazing out a window, with light shining on her face. Her dark wavy hair bounded down the back of her head. In the image, as in life, she had seriousness and depth. It was a beautiful painting, a fine likeness. And in years since, I have pondered the fact that my father painted this portrait of my mother and sent it to me on my nineteenth birthday, when I was far away and unhappy, though I hadn't said a word." —Helen Park Bigelow

rebus haiku

Photos by Kate Dollarhyde via Flickr

Personae

My railroad personages—Commodore, Mouse, Disco Bob, Dead Man Walking, the Champ, Honest Jack, Mr. Ed, Snuffy, The Corkettes, Iron Head—seen 150 years prior on the streets of NYC by the Good Gray Poet Walt Whitman:

"Yes, I knew all the drivers then, Broadway Jack, Dressmaker, Balky Bill, George Storms, Old Elephant, his brother Young Elephant (who came afterward,) Tippy, Pop Rice, Big Frank, Yellow Joe, Pete Callahan, Patsy Dee, and dozens more; for there were hundreds. They had immense qualities, largely animal—eating, drinking, women . . . "

Terry St. John

woman reflecting • 2002

self portrait

china camp • 2002

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Bruce receives wisdom

"Pappy . . .  always said, some folks learn by listening, others learn by reading, and us boys would just have to learn by pissing on the electric fence ourselves."

What Norm Sees

Photos by Norm Bearrentine