Sam Hamill reads from his new chapbook, Border Songs, Saturday, November 10 at 7:30 at Spring Street Center, 15th & Spring in Seattle, a block south of Union. Details here. His friend and collaborator Ian Boyden will display one of the most remarkable books ever created, Habitations, which features several pages that are original paintings with Sam’s poetry laser-etched on the pages. The reading is made possible in part through a grant from SICA, the Subud International Cultural Association.
To My Muse
I admit it. I’ve grown
less fond of poetry
as I’ve grown old.
What once seemed bold
is commonplace, a howl,
a whisper, a groan.
I’m no longer dazzled
by philologists
arguing the subtleties
of antiquities. I’m baffled
by poets who succeed.
What’s more, I never
really trusted
the trusty metaphor,
the smiling simile
grinning back at me
from the work-shopped page
of tomorrow’s star.
I like my language
to be clear
as any summer day,
no affects to get in the way
when you, My Dear,
come calling.
Meanwhile,
I am here, waiting
in the twilit regions
of the lizard brain, listening
like a bride for that
first breathy whisper,
uncertain of whether you
are an angel or a demon.
About Splabman
Poet & interviewer Paul E Nelson founded SPLAB (Seattle Poetics LAB) & the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Since 1993, SPLAB has produced hundreds of poetry events & 600 hours of interview programming with legendary poets & whole systems activists including Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Joanne Kyger, Robin Blaser, Diane di Prima, Daphne Marlatt, Nate Mackey, George Bowering, Barry McKinnon, José Kozer, Brenda Hillman & many others. Paul’s books include American Prophets (interviews 1994-2012) (2018) American Sentences (2015) A Time Before Slaughter (2009) and Organic in Cascadia: A Sequence of Energies (2013). Co-Editor of Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia (2015), 56 Days of August: Poetry Postcards (2017) and Samthology: A Tribute to Sam Hamill (2019) Make it True meets Medusario (2019), he’s presented poetry/poetics in London, Brussels, Nanaimo, Qinghai & Beijing, China, has had work translated into Spanish, Chinese & Portuguese & writes an American Sentence every day. Awarded a residency at The Lake, from the Morris Graves Foundation in Loleta, CA, he’s published work in Golden Handcuffs Review, Zen Monster, Hambone, and elsewhere. Winner of the 2014 Robin Blaser Award from The Capilano Review, he is engaged in a 20 year bioregional cultural investigation of Cascadia and lives in Rainier Beach, in the Cascadia bioregion’s Cedar River watershed.
