Three Prose Poems by David Shumate

Passing Through a Small Town

Here the highways cross. One heads north. One heads east and west. On the corner of the square adjacent to the courthouse a bronze plaque marks the place where two Civil War generals faced one another and the weaker surrendered. A few pedestrians pass. A beauty parlor sign blinks. As I turn to head west, I become the schoolteacher living above the  barber shop. Polishing my shoes each evening. Gazing at the square below. In time I befriend the waitress at the cafe and she winks as she pours my coffee. Soon people begin to talk. And for good reason. I become so distracted I teach my students that Cleopatra lost her head during the French Revolution and that Leonardo perfected the railroad at the height of the Rennaissance. One day her former lover returns from the army and creates a scene at the school. That evening she confesses she cannot decide between us. But still we spend  one last night together. By the time I pass the grain elevators on the edge of town I am myself again. The deep scars of love already beginning to heal.

The Long Road

It’s one of those highways you come across late at night. No signs. No arrows. Just a road running north and south. You pause. You look one  way. Then the other. Nothing. Only the hum of the engine, the chirping of crickets confirm you are here. You can’t remember where you’ve been. Where you are going. If it weren’t for the lines drawn through the middle, you’d think you were drifting down a river. Or stumbling upon a path through the sky. Remember, it is a moonless night. You are tired.  Hungry. No one to talk to. Afraid that what you were thinking might have come true. You look to your left again. Perhaps you see a mountain. An ocean. A lover you wish you hadn’t lost. Spirits that seem so familiar, drifting in from the dark. You wait in that silence. It may be years before it is safe to proceed.

Trains

I am seduced by trains. When one moans in the night like some dragon gone lame, I rise and put on my grandfather's suit. I pack a small bag, step out onto the porch, and wait in the darkness. I rest my broad-brimmed hat on my knee. To a passerby I'm a curious sight—a solitary man sitting in the night. There's something unsettling about a traveler who doesn't know where he's headed. You can't predict his next move. In a week you may receive a postcard from Haiti. Madagascar. You might turn on your answering machine and hear his voice amid the tumult of a Bangkok avenue. All afternoon you feel the weight of the things you've never done. Don't think about it too much. Everything starts to sound like a train. 

David Shumate is the author of High Water Mark (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), winner of the 2003 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize and the 2004 Best Books of Indiana, poetry category. His second collection of prose poems, The Floating Bridge, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2008. His poetry has appeared widely in literary journals and has been anthologized in The Writer's Almanac, Good Poems for Hard Times, and The Best American Poetry 2007. He teaches at Marian College in Indianapolis and lives in Zionsville, Indiana.

Jim Harrison & Ted Kooser-Braided Creek

How one old tire leans up against
another, the breath gone out of both.

Old friend,
perhaps we work too hard
at being remembered.

Which way will the creek
run when time ends?
Don’t ask me until
this wine bottle is empty.

While my bowl is still half full,
you can eat out of it too,
and when it is empty,
just bury it out in the flowers.

All those years
I had in my pocket.
I spent them,
nickel-and-dime.

Each clock tick falls
like a raindrop,
right through the floor
as if it were nothing.

In the morning light,
the doorknob, cold with dew.

The Pilot razor-point pen is my
compass, watch, and soul chaser.
Thousands of miles of black squiggles.

Under the storyteller’s hat

are many heads, all troubled.

At dawn, a rabbit stretches tall

to eat the red asparagus berries.

The big fat garter snake

emerged from the gas-stove burner

where she had coiled around the pilot light

for warmth on a cold night.

Straining on the toilet

we learn how

the lightning bug feels.

For sixty-three years I’ve ground myself

within this karmic mortar. Yesterday I washed

it out and put it high on the pantry shelf.

All I want to be

is a thousand blackberries

bursting from a tree,

seeding the sky.

Republicans think that all over the world

darker-skinned people are having more fun

than they are. It’s largely true.

Faucet dripping into a pan,

dog lapping water,

the same sweet music.

The nuthatch is in business

on the tree trunk,

fortunes up and down.

Oh what dew

these mortals be.

Dawn to dark.

One long breath.

The wit of the corpse

is lost on the lid of the coffin.

A book on the arm of my chair

and the morning before me.

from "Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry", published in 2003 by Copper Canyon Press

Friends and fellow poets Harrison and Kooser decided to have a correspondence entirely in short poems after Kooser was diagnosed with cancer and, Harrison says, "Ted's poetry became overwhelmingly vivid." The results of that decision are gathered in this book, and none of the two- to five-line writings is individually signed. Telling whose poem is whose is virtually impossible, and, not to gainsay Harrison, vividness, visual or tactile, takes second place to wit and wisdom in their colloquy.

Report from the West by Tom Hennen

Snow is falling west of here. The mountains have more than a foot of it. I see the early morning sky dark as night. I won't listen to the weather report. I'll let the question of snow hang. Answers only dull the senses. Even answers that are right often make what they explain uninteresting. In nature the answers are always changing. Rain to snow, for instance. Nature can let the mysterious things alone—wet leaves plastered to tree trunks, the intricate design of fish guts. The way we don't fall off the earth at night when we look up at the North Star. The way we know this may not always be so. The way our dizziness makes us grab the long grass, hanging by our fingertips on the edge of infinity.

 from Darkness Sticks to Everything. © Copper Canyon Press, 2013

Richard Hugo On Writing

It can be argued that all writing is creative writing, since if one is writing the way one should, one does not know what will be on the page until it is there. Discovery remains the ideal.

A poem can be said to have two subjects, the initiating or triggering subject, which starts the poem or “causes” the poem to be written, and the real or generated subject, which the poem comes to say or mean, and which is generated or discovered in the poem during the writing. That’s not quite right because it suggests that the poet recognizes the real subject. The poet may not be aware of what the real subject is but only [has] some instinctive feeling that the poem is done.

When you start to write, you carry to the page one of two attitudes, though you may not be aware of it. One is that all music must conform to truth. The other, that all truth must conform to music.

One mark of the beginner is his impulse to push language around to make it accommodate what he has already conceived to be the truth....

It is impossible to write meaningless sequences. In a sense, the next thing always belongs. In the world of imagination, all things belong. If you take that on faith, you may be foolish, but foolish like a trout.

Never worry about the reader, what the reader can understand. When you are writing, glance over your shoulder, and you’ll find there is no reader. Just you and the page. Feel lonely? Good. Assuming you can write clear English sentences, give up all worry about communication. If you want to communicate, use the telephone

Once you have the information, the words seem unimportant.

The poet’s relation to the triggering subject should never be as strong as (must be weaker than) his relation to his words. The words should not serve the subject. The subject should serve the words.

You are trying to find and develop a way of writing that will be yours and will, as Stafford puts it, generate things to say. Your triggering subjects are those that ignite your need for words.

When I read some academic writing I marvel that as common and everyday as language is, it would have the effrontery to get in the way of all that thinking. I’ve seen sentences that defy comprehension written by people with doctorates in English from our best universities. So have you. And I doubt that academic writing will improve until academics believe Valéry, who said he couldn’t think of anything worse than being right. In much academic writing, clarity runs a poor second to invulnerability.

We creative writers are privileged because we can write declarative sentences, and we can write declarative sentences because we are less interested in being irrefutably right than we are in the dignity of language itself.

Scholars seem to assume that if you can read you can write. It’s sad to see someone with a fresh PhD coast for a few years, understandably after such a grueling period of work, then embark on a book. It is a struggle because the scholar doesn’t realize one simple thing about writing: it is like shooting a basketball. You’ve got to stay in shape and practice to do it well. It is not a natural reward of study, and having an education does not mean you can write well whenever you want.

Once a spectator said, after Jack Nicklaus had chipped a shot in from the sand trap, “That’s pretty lucky.” Nicklaus is [supposed] to have replied, “Right. But I notice the more I practice, the luckier I get.” If you write often, perhaps every day, you will stay in shape and will be better able to receive those good poems, which are finally a matter of luck, and get them down. Lucky accidents seldom happen to writers who don’t work. You will find that you may rewrite and rewrite a poem and it never seems quite right, Then a much better poem may come rather fast and you wonder why you bothered with all that work in the earlier poem. Actually, the hard work you do on one poem is put in on all poems. The hard work on the first poem is responsible for the sudden ease of the second. If you just sit around waiting for the easy ones, nothing will come. Get to work.

From “The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing”

My Golden Rules by Jim Jarmusch

Rule #1: There are no rules. There are as many ways to make a film as there are potential filmmakers. It’s an open form. Anyway, I would personally never presume to tell anyone else what to do or how to do anything. To me that’s like telling someone else what their religious beliefs should be. Fuck that. That’s against my personal philosophy—more of a code than a set of “rules.” Therefore, disregard the “rules” you are presently reading, and instead consider them to be merely notes to myself. One should make one’s own “notes” because there is no one way to do anything. If anyone tells you there is only one way, their way, get as far away from them as possible, both physically and philosophically.

Rule #2: Don’t let the fuckers get ya. They can either help you, or not help you, but they can’t stop you. People who finance films, distribute films, promote films and exhibit films are not filmmakers. They are not interested in letting filmmakers define and dictate the way they do their business, so filmmakers should have no interest in allowing them to dictate the way a film is made. Carry a gun if necessary.
Also, avoid sycophants at all costs. There are always people around who only want to be involved in filmmaking to get rich, get famous, or get laid. Generally, they know as much about filmmaking as George W. Bush knows about hand-to-hand combat.

Rule #3: The production is there to serve the film. The film is not there to serve the production. Unfortunately, in the world of filmmaking this is almost universally backwards. The film is not being made to serve the budget, the schedule, or the resumes of those involved. Filmmakers who don’t understand this should be hung from their ankles and asked why the sky appears to be upside down.

Rule #4: Filmmaking is a collaborative process. You get the chance to work with others whose minds and ideas may be stronger than your own. Make sure they remain focused on their own function and not someone else’s job, or you’ll have a big mess. But treat all collaborators as equals and with respect. A production assistant who is holding back traffic so the crew can get a shot is no less important than the actors in the scene, the director of photography, the production designer or the director. Hierarchy is for those whose egos are inflated or out of control, or for people in the military. Those with whom you choose to collaborate, if you make good choices, can elevate the quality and content of your film to a much higher plane than any one mind could imagine on its own. If you don’t want to work with other people, go paint a painting or write a book. (And if you want to be a fucking dictator, I guess these days you just have to go into politics...).

Rule #5: Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.”

Jim Jarmusch, in MovieMaker Magazine #53 - Winter, January 22, 2004 

Sam Shepard-Peer Gynt

First light

Miracle of morning

Peeling back night

Like a page in a book

Snails peek at the doors of their shells

Gold in their mouth

Shining

Astonishing light

Courage pounding at the cage of ribs

Yet stillness rides

The steaming backs of grazing bulls

Quicksilver lizards

Snapping through

their thoughtless heads

A toad stone still

Peering out through the window

Of what he is

Indelible character

Obeying itself

Innocence

Watching

written for Irina Brook's production of Henrik Ibsen's "Peer Gynt" at the Salzburg Festival

Jack Gilbert-Two Poems

                                Jack Gilbert (February 18, 1925/November 11, 2012)

"Rain"

Suddenly this defeat.
This rain.
The blues gone gray
And the browns gone gray
And yellow
A terrible amber.
In the cold streets
Your warm body.
In whatever room
Your warm body.
Among all the people
Your absence
The people who are always
Not you.

I have been easy with trees
Too long.
Too familiar with mountains.
Joy has been a habit.
Now
Suddenly
This rain.


"South"

In the small towns along the river

nothing happens day after long day.
Summer weeks stalled forever,
and long marriages always the same.
Lives with only emergencies, births,
and fishing for excitement. Then a ship
comes out of the mist. Or comes around
the bend carefully one morning
in the rain, past the pines and shrubs.
Arrives on a hot fragrant night,
grandly, all lit up. Gone two days
later, leaving fury in its wake.