Readers: Welcome to the April 2019 Issue #92 of Plume

April: and for once no memories of childhood, with its various miscreancies and inexplicable kindnesses, to report: rather, a simple statement, as befits its anything but simple subject.
Our “secret poem” this issue comes from the late Tony Hoagland, a frequent presence in Plume and one of my favorite poets; his masterful “Entangle” is lovingly introduced by another Plume regular, Elizabeth Jacobson. The courage, the honesty, the impeccable craft: all bow to his playful, profound, authentic humanity.

Elizabeth Jacobson on Tony Hoagland’s “Entangle” 

The second time I met Tony Hoagland was at his house for a poetry group. He emailed to say that the place had no unusual or particularly identifiable features, and that he would put something pink or orange out front so I would know I was in the right spot. The house was not difficult to find, a typical Santa Fe frame and stucco adobe-style with a xeriscaped yard planted generously with chamisa and yucca.  I pulled up to the curb by the driveway, and immediately saw an extra-large orange tee shirt carefully tacked to the front door.

When Tony sent me a draft of Entangle, the first poem in his last collection Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God, one of my initial impressions was how colorful it was, how like the person I knew, not only in the complexity of its images and construction, but also in the clarity of its thought.  It seemed like a self-portrait.

Sometimes I prefer not to untangle it.
I prefer it to remain disorganized,

because it is richer that way
like a certain shrubbery I pass each day on Reba Street

in an unimpressive yard, in front of a house that seems unoccupied:
a chest-high, spreading shrub with large white waxy blossoms—

whose stalks are climbed and woven through simultaneously
by a different kind of vine with small magenta flowers

that appear and disappear inside the maze of leaves
like tiny purple stitches.

The white and purple combination of these species,
one seeming to possibly strangle the other,

one possibly lifting the other up — 

What a brilliant metaphor for the conflictual dynamics of the psyche! Hoagland shows us the speaker’s inner life as an entanglement of blooming vines, the separate but inseparable strands ambiguously supporting and strangling each other.

Tony read this poem at Op.Cit. Books in Santa Fe in December, 2017, at what was to be his second to last reading, and said about it: This is a poem I wrote, and it’s about coming to the happy stage at some moment when you just say, I’m going to stop trying so hard and I’m just going to look and not try to organize it into some kind of battle plan for conquering the world.

The last time I saw Tony was in the coffee shop, Dulce, about two weeks before he died.  We sat by a front window in bright plastic yellow seats, his fingers drumming the orange tabletop, and talked for over three hours about poetry— his, mine, anyone else’s we thought of. I didn’t think this would be the last time, but I’d been thinking this now for the three years of his illness and we kept on seeing each other. His face looked good, he had a rosy glow and his eyes, as usual, that piercing blue, seeing into me.  Sometimes during that last year we would email poems between us without the author’s name to see if the other could guess who it was. He was really into Franz Wright.  They were the same age, and Wright was already dead. I had stumped him with Wright’s poem, The Soul Complains: “I was never born and I will never die.” Tony lifted my hands from the table and squeezed them. You know E, this is nothing special, what’s happening to me. 

I walked with Tony through the parking lot to his car.  He had a few books of mine to return. Years ago, the first time I rode in Tony’s car with him, I was hesitant to get in.  The bumpers back and front were covered with hot pink masking tape— securing the fenders to the body? I didn’t want to ask. He recognized my concern and assured me it was taped only so he could find his compact silver Toyota in a sea of other compact silver cars in a parking lot. Now I noticed some of the pink tape had faded and was peeling away.  On the front seat there was a tangled ball of tape scraps he had pulled off tossed next to a new roll.  He lifted the brim of his Donkey Gospel hat, which had fallen over his eyes.

Don’t be sad, E, he said, considering my expression. It’s only life.

ENTANGLE    

Sometimes I prefer not to untangle it.
I prefer it to remain disorganized,

because it is richer that way
like a certain shrubbery I pass each day on Reba Street

in an unimpressive yard, in front of a house that seems unoccupied:
a chest-high, spreading shrub with large white waxy blossoms—

whose stalks are climbed and woven through simultaneously
by a different kind of vine with small magenta flowers

that appear and disappear inside the maze of leaves
like tiny purple stitches.

The white and purple combination of these species,
one seeming to possibly strangle the other,

one possibly lifting the other up — it would take both
a botanist and a psychologist to figure it all out,

—but I prefer not to disentangle it,
because it is more accurate.

My ferocious love, and how it repeatedly is trapped
inside my fear of being sentimental;

my need to control even the kindness of the world,
rejecting gifts for which I am not prepared;

my apparently inextinguishable notion
that I am moving toward a destination

—I could probably untangle it
yet I prefer to walk down Reba Street instead

in the sunlight and the wind, with no mastery
of my feelings or my thoughts,

purple and ivory and green, not understanding what I am
and yet in certain moments remembering, and bursting into tears,

somewhat confused as the vines run through me
and flower unexpectedly.

Tony Hoagland’s newest collections of poems are Recent Changes in the Vernacular (Tres Chicas Press, 2017) and Priest Turned Therapist.  He died in October.

Elizabeth Jacobson’s second book, Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air, won the New Measure Poetry Prize, selected by Marianne Boruch, and is just out from Parlor Press.  Are the Children Make Believe?, a chapbook, was recently published by Dancing Girl Press.  She lives in Santa Fe, NM and directs the WingSpan Poetry Project which conducts ongoing poetry classes in shelter faculties. In the spring, she will be teaching a weekly community poetry class in conjunction with the Santa Fe Railyard Art ProjectFinally, we have archived all of the Plume Newsletters, with their “secret poems” introduced, in the early days, by a Mr. Lawless, who eventually, thankfully, handed this appointment off to others far more qualified. You’ll find the link under Archives in the nav bar of each Plume issue. Many thanks to Sandy Solomon and Shannon Yan for all of their hard work!

To repeat: If you enjoyed this poem and  Ms. Jacobson’s commentary on it, all of the Plume newsletters are  now archived under, well, Archives, on our homepage.
And to re-repeat: Plume Poetry 7 is in hand! A beautiful cover, marvelous poems. Many thanks to all who had a hand in producing it — Kristen Weber, all the wonderful folks at Bookmobile, Mary Bisbee-Beek, and, of course the poets and translators.  Contributors will receive their copies in due course, along with a special discount offer for additional copies. Here’s a look at Kris Weber’s cover:

I should take a moment here to thank Annie Finch Alice Friman, Terese Svoboda, Patricia Clark, Scott Withiam, David Baker, Dennis Nurkse, Bruce Bond, Daniel Tobin, Lloyd Schwartz, Mark Irwin, and Clare Rossini, who read to a rapt audience at Cargo, at AWP.  Special gratitude to Mary Bisbee-Beek who found this marvelous venue and rounded up the mic, seating, etc. As I expected, the after-reading conversations were a delight.
As previously noted, the East Coast launch of the anthology is just a few weeks away, also sporting a splendid roster: Jo-Ann Mort, Frances Richey, Judy Katz, Sally Bluimis-Dunn, Tom Sleigh, and T. R. Hummer.

Many thanks to Jo-Ann Mort, Stephanie Valdez, and Sally Bliumis-Dunn for putting this together.

Plume Poetry 7 Launch
April 16, 7:00 PM
Community Bookstore
718. 783. 3075
143 7th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11215
www.communitybookstore.net
@communitybkstr

Here is the flyer (thanks, Kris Weber!):

Penultimately, again a request. As you will note, I try to highlight recent of soon to be published books by Plume contributors at the conclusion of this newsletter. My method for gathering these materials is haphazard, to say the least. Now, I want to rectify that to whatever degree that is possible. So – if you have a new book — or have won some award or grant or other, perhaps send me a quick email – I want to highlight your many wonderful achievements here. And a little PR never hurts, right?

Our cover art this month comes from Chu Việt Hà, a Vietnamese street photographer. Here are his comments about his life and work, from The Street Collective.
My name is Hà and I was born in 1987. I’m a designer and street photographer based in Hanoi/Vietnam. To me street photography is a big passion, which gives me the possibility to communicate with the world around me and to understand my position and role in society. My work has been published in several international magazines and exhibited in Vietnam and abroad. One of my exhibitions is named “Like a life”. The show was accompanied by a book with the same title, which has been released in Hanoi in August 2016. Every now and then I teach workshops on street photography in Vietnam.
You can find more here and here. 

And finally, per usual, a few new or forthcoming releases from Plume contributors:

Emily Fragos                     Poems of Paris  
Rachel Zucker                   The Pedestrians
Dorianne Laux                   Only As The Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems
Marc Vincenz                     Here Comes The Nightdust
Carol  Muske-Dukes          Blue Rose
Jana Prikryl                        The After-Party: Poems 

That’s it, for now.
I do hope you enjoy the issue!

Daniel Lawless
Editor, PLUME