More Adventures in Explication: Ed Dorn's "Obituary"

I wish I learned as much in my early life from poet Ed Dorn as I have in later life. Dorn resonates with me in a way no other poet does. His is a tragic and bitter poetry; a poetry of loss and negation that affirms only through its unflinching implacability. In a way, Dorn is America's greatest naturalist poet. And by naturalist I mean gritty realism, no romance. In another time and place, not all that far from his own, he might have written "McTeague" or "An American Tragedy." He is the child of Norris and Dreiser, coming to us by way of Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and Charles Olson. His bleakness is beautiful--to me, at least.

The poem I want to share is called "Obituary" and it was written around 1960 when Dorn was a one-man golden age, a few years out of Black Mountain College, and investing his narrative poems with new-found compass and compassion. I read the poem, hoping it might provide a bouquet for my acupuncturist friend, Eva Zeller, whose father died of some high-speed, sudden deterioration last Friday. But any relevance that it might have will have to wait for a later time.

In this poem, Ed Dorn remembers his grandfather, a pipe-fitter who works for the railroad dead of throat cancer. From the outset, we see this poem is not going to be a eulogy. "Obituary" is a cold newspaper word, more a recitation of facts than a remembrance. Dorn starts his poem by picturing the man, named Metz, who had long coveted and then took his grandfather's job. The memory of his grandfather begins with and cannot survive the fate of his job. The poem begins:

Metz
dark, east, another place
a greasy plumber's cap
bent shoulders
fixed grin
was my grnadfather's
antagonist, had
the nerve to live near

and waited for
my frenchcanadian man--

When we think of elegies, we think of continuance--summarizing a person's life so what will be remembered endures as a proud legacy. But Dorn will turn that tradition inside out. Just like him to think of the one thing a man keeps all his life--a job--but cannot usually give to anyone of his choosing. So the poem begins with a lost, rather than last, will and testament--a job inherited by ruthless dint of seniority, rank, pluck and promimity. The first thing we learn about Dorn's grandfather that is utterly himself, and not to be forfeited or ransacked, is that he "fitted pipes from techumseh / to momence" and "smoked a pipe"--the last a kindly particular that does double duty as a clue to what killed his grandfather.

Dorn fixes his gaze on the man he intends to honor. It is heartbreaking what he remembers next in the scant summary of his grandfather's character:

. . . no intellectual he
graduated from
my grandmother
[who] used to feed
on the back steps pie
to tramps

The poem turns with grim irony on the word "graduated." For who would want to 'graduate' from the kindness and charity that is what he remembers most about his grandmother? And then, in another grim irony, and the only recall of direct interaction with htis grandfather, Dorn writes

but he
gave me a penny once
with a slick smile, big teeth

From pie plates to pennies. Oh the inverse ratio between the smallness of the gift and the grimacing big-toothed smile of the man who gave it. Gave what? Not a gift certainly, since the penny is meant as message to the boy, but a sense of a work-hardened life whose only extractable meanings are lessons of working class survival:

face to the wind in a motor car
down miles of track
grinning

This is happiness as his grandather knew it: miles of track, endless jobs to keep him busy and be paid for, no end of maintenance that keeps bread on the table. Not much of a life really, a surmise Dorn seems to anticipate on the reader's part by saying next

my grandfather did die
for that ambitious pipe fitter
next in line
a mailpouch cancer in his whispering throat

Metz returns to haunt the poem: a grim-visaged grimacing man who represent an iron legacy that is all of Dorn's grandfather that lives on:

So Metz stepped
from behind the motorcar shed
in the cold January sun
to piss
everywhere,
his dark jaw set
in pleasant anticipatory greed
the survey of
such small domain
as
one runt dispatcher skips across

At this point in the poem, I wanted memory to stretch so much farther than the personage of Metz. I wanted to see someone other than the man who took his grandfather's job. I wanted the job--his legacy--to be something that transcended any theft by mere succession and survival. I wanted Dorn's grandather to feed pie to tramps (remember this poem takes place during the Depression) like his grandmother, and, as such a person, to be part of a brotherhood united in her goodness rather than his grimness. But that is not to be. Dorn recites a litany of railroad repair jobs performed by his grandfather that stand as strange monuments against the cancer that killed him but are also, by dint of this hard, merciless heritage, Metz's, too.

his eye {Metz's}set
the glint of knowing
no cancer could cancel
his scaling career with dirty pipes
cancel no trips to Segal
to Effinghma
ambitious for troubling leaks
in Ficklin
trouble in Assumption, Illinois
in Teutopolis
and Altamont, those towns,
Joppa
where my grandather
in the leaky waters of winter
wasted like a job . . .

If we do not stand for much else than the tasks we performed, a rugged but dispirited competence, the remembrance is simply of hard labor. Consequently, every friend we ever had becomes part of a quilting of rote, menial tasks that forms the fabric of our lives. Suddenly, Dorn is writing a bitter but compassionate elegy to the meanness of American working life and the slow dying of its working class. His grandfather survives as symptom of all that Dorn laments in American life.

The poem ends, like a movie, in a smalltown cafe just after his grandfather's death. Presumably, this is a symbolic working class wake, a ceremony marking life's resumption. Presumably also the people seated in the cafe are 'friends' of the deceased, including Metz. The camera pans. We see the following people:

Shumway cars, St. Elmo
Elmer Chrissman, checking lackawanna cars
Metz, the happy witness of
his death
with pleasure eating mincemeat pie
at Dubois cafe
while black joe dernal in the coal pit
long black stripes on the sandwich he
held by black fingers
lunched on flat zebra
a mid-west african
kying in the spilled guts of a coalhopper
above the light halftoned sun
caught in the swinging steel vents

Somehow this section reminded me of "The Deer Hunter," only these guys are bereft of anything other than hard labor. Finally, Dorn returns to the present, and the poem ends as it began, only Dorn is no longer detached. He gives one last cry from his heart:

. . . oh
that was the time my grandfather died
and his helper hooked his job and death
hooked the master fitter's throat and now
the railraod too is dead

--Edward Dorn, The Collected Poems, Four Seasons Foundation, Bolinas, CA, 1975, pages 47-9

A Sufi's Stutter: Going, Going, Gone (into God, that is)

GOING

There is nothing
to turn from,
or to, no

way other
than forward, such
place as I mark

time. Let me
leave here a
mark, a

way through
my mind.

--Robert Creeley, "Words," Scribner's, New York, 1967, page 90

Early Sunday morning I finally found an emblem for the human condition as I have known it from my earliest memory of a self. It's the short poem above, "Gone," by Robert Creeley written in the mid-1960s when the poet was approaching 40, a time when shrill, chronic existential bifurcation singing like a tea kettle begins to be intolerable predicament.

Back then, the poem embodied enclosure in what Alan Watts called "the skin-encapsulated ego." Today, however, it serves as the starting point for my every dream and foreshadowing of non-duality. It is, from an ontological standpoint, autobiographical for anyone like me who reads it. A Cartesian well into which I once fell but from which I now drink. Hence Creeley's deep kinship with those of his regular readers who love him so because he speaks to our main frame of reference, our sense of a human condition conditioned by subject-object, I-Thou, awareness.

Having studied with a Sufi master, Bawa Muyhaiyaddeen, who posited an awareness in which solipsism is a trained, deeply impacted misreading of reality, the poem no longer speaks of entrapment but is part of reduction and refinement that increasingly seems transcendant. If I got no farther and further than positing this sense of an unstable, isolate self, I would now consider this lifetime a success.

To me, this past sweet Sunday morning, God became the deeper ingrained, ninja-nimble practise of the all-containing self whose only reason for existence--as well as highest efflorescence--is consciousness. It took me years to see/feel 'God' as the within without a without. It took me years to see where this stubborn exitistential sense of self was leading. Creeley pointed 'beyond' to the sense that my teacher embodied: God conjured to consciousness in the praise and prayer that is his highest and best use and sweetest exemplification. From liar to lyre, so to speak (in all senses of that phrase). Gnostic fire running backward and forward to what Kenneth Rexroth calls a "tinder of knowing."

That praise teaches love; that praise teaches us to always be ready to set another place at the table. One is more than two; two is half of One, or as my friend Lou Buetler points out, the one coin with two sides to it. I always thought that coin became one in the act of spinning. But it is one whether still or spinning--one just by fact of being itself, just by dint of being created, just by belonging to the assemblage. I want to thank Robert Creeley for providing early evidence of God. I thought I'd share the poem above as first anthem sung in my college days on the road to praise. 'I am' leading with i-am-bics of breath to "I am that I am." So words are like sparrows and their fate is the same within this breathtaking expanse called by, and met with, All-ah!

A Kindlier Dover Beach

The following poem by Kenneth Rexroth, written in 1968, just so happens to be one of the most beautiful I have ever encountered. Thanks to a dear, dear friend, I lived long enough to discover it this morning, to savor and share it. Like seeing one's children playing, there is no greater joy than the existence of this poem--or them.

As always, Rexroth instinctively sees all as part of a great clustered chain of being, each thing taking light from and giving life to the other, and forming a repose that calms oceans and clears skies. The "deus in machina," as a mentor called it years ago.

I have spent years studying and loving the poems of Rexroth's children--Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen and Lew Welch, among fervent others. So much of their 'Americanization' of time and space was taught them by him--long Pacific draughts of salty, humming air and the boom of surf. Everywhere he went--including, as here, England--Rexroth practised the soft, simple, unrelenting state of wonderment. The psalmist called it "praise," and described being as a banquet.

This morning, and many others recently, Rexroth has taught me the loving, lingering embrace that is perception. To live is to behold and stand beholden in, and to, that moment. Poetry is central act of exchange, its words currency of the realm called human being. The title says it all, about how we are combustible with the gnostic glow of being, lit within by love. It doesn't get any more joyous than this. No one will be able to keep his seat during the last four lines. Enjoy.

Let Poetry call this Meeting to order. Alhamdulillah!

THE SPARK IN THE TINDER OF KNOWING
for James Laughlin

Profound stillness in the greystone
Romanesque chapel, the rush
Of wheels beyond the door only
Underlines the silence. The wheels
Of life turn ceaselessly.
Their hiss and clank is
The noiseless turning of the Wheel
Of the Law, that turns without
Moving, from zenith to nadir,
From plus to minus, from black to white.
Love turns the uncountable,
Interlocking wheels of the stars.
The earth turns. The sun sets.
A bolt of iron all on fire
Falls into the turning city.
Love turns the heart to an unknown
Substance, fire of its fire.
Not by flesh, but by love, man
Comes into the world, lost in
The illimitable ocean
Of which there is no shore.
The sea of circumstance where
The heart drowns in the sea of love.
The heart drinks it and it drinks
The heart--transubstantiation
In which the One drinks the Other
the Other drinks the One.
The sea of fire that lights all being
Becomes the human heart.
No place. No place.
Moon. Sun. Stars. Planets.
Water. Rivers. Lakes. Ocean.
Fish in them. The swimming air.
Birds and their flying.
All turn to jewels of fire,
And then to one burning jewel.
The feathered heart flies upward
Out of this universe.
The broken heart loses its plumes
And hides in the earth until
It can learn to swim in the sea.
Empty the heart and peace will fill it.
Peace will raise it until floats
Into the empryean.
It is love that produces
Peace amongst men and calm
On the sea. The winds stop. Repose.
And sleep come even in pain.
Peace and windlessness and great
Silence arise in the midheaven.
That which appears as extant
Does not really exist,
So high above is that which truly is--
Reality enclosed in the heart,
I and not I, the One
In the Other, the Other
In the One, the Holy Wedding.
Innumerable are the arrows
In love's quiver and their flight
Defines my being, the ballistics
Of my person in time.

Cowley Fathers, Cambridge, 1968

from "The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth," Copper Canyon Press, 2004, pages 684-5

The Beatitudes of Despair

I know what's missing from my life. I glimpsed it last night on the repeat of "Desperate Housewives," where most of the main characters were trapped in a hostage situatiion inside a supermarket. What's missing is the unifying compassion born of helplessly shared suffering. What's missing are the beatitudes of despair--no matter how temporary--that lift all who feel it into a circle of embrace where each person's love forms the perimeter of interaction.

Moon over mayhem
"There's a bad moon rising tonight," sang John Fogarty. I always heard it as, "There's a bad moon rising on the right." Of course, it was usually a bad moon for just one night, or just one song.

Over in Beit Hanoun, Gaza, however, it hangs every night and its grim light suffuses every song. Our American moon has phases where there's alternating honey and frost and blood on its face. Our American moon turns from harvest orange to Freddy Krueger red and back because it's more scenic than symbolic.

The Palestinian moon, on the other hand, is always red, even when no larger than a cuticle and a simple reminder of Islam's crescent. The Palestinians live in a 24/7 365-days-a-year hostage situation. Only the poor of America know something comparable. And except for one jetliner crash at the Pentagon in 2001, our leaders live with no such palpable fear, just the luxury of galloping empire paranoia.

The new anti-semitism
If I had my way, I'd order every Israeli and every American Jew to read Jean-Paul Sartre's "Anti-Semite and Jew" and think how it applies to the new wave of anti-Semitism practised daily on Arabs by Jews. As long as just one Palestinian fears gratuitous slaughter, no Jew is safe. Nor is any American. Safe from themselves, that is. Morally speaking, which is hardly speaking at all nowadays.

Plebiscite on dying--not killing
On Tuesday, we held a plebiscite on dying (in Iraq but not Palestine or Lebanon)--and dying lost. But we need a plebiscite on killing because there's far more blood on our hands than in the streets. We need a plebiscite on war because the two most active military mights in the world--America and its black sheep younger brother Israel--are on the loose. My ceaseless prayer of the moment is that America, Israel's big sister and older brother, will sicken of war as it did in 1919 and that we will have a generation of pacificists. And it will impose a peace--no matter how fractious--on the Israelis.

America may have sickened of the situation in Iraq and said so resoundingly on Tuesday. But it must sicken of the killing it has caused and commits in the name of an illusory threat to its status quo. The real threat is the status quo itself. I note Israelis interviewed after Tuesday's elections expressed fear of weakened solidarity with their country. Will the Democrats go to greater lengths to prove their loyality and play the role of an even greater enabler. I fear American co-dependency with Israel may grow worse.

Photographs of the hanging
As a gesture of solidarity with all the supermarket nations of the world currently under siege with the occupiers roaming the aisles and shooting at will, I bring you daily eyewitness news of the carnage in Palestine which only America now has the power to stop. Younger bad sheep brother Israel needs intervention. I urge all of you to empathize with the hostages and feel what it is like to be victims of entrapment that is physical and unrelenting.

I know some of you will say I'm being one-sided and do not have as much compassion for the Israeli victims of random rockets and suicide bombings. But I'll take my chances on the streets of Tel Aviv rather than Beit Hanoun. The Democrat's victory Tuesday is still too limited. Only when Palestinians and Lebanese can rejoice in the triumph of sanity here will I be willing to say, 'Mission accomplished.'

Tuesday was a local anesthetic applied to our battered body politic. Unlike Gaza, where nearly all medical and economic relief is stopped, the ambulances must be allowed to get through and take our wounded citizenry to care and comfort.

Some eye-witness reporting from Electronic Intifada:

Beit Hanoun death toll reaches 12 in second day of offensiveReport, PCHR, 2 November 2006

IOF Continue their Offensive on Beit Hanoun for the Second Consecutive Day: 12 Palestinians Killed, at Least 50 Others Wounded and Civilian Facilities DestroyedIsraeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have continued killings and destruction in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun.

IOF moved into the town on Wednesday morning, 1 November 2006, and completely seized control over it. They sealed off the town from the rest of the Gaza Strip. IOF have so far killed 12 Palestinians, including four civilians, and have wounded at least 50 others, mostly civilians, including 15 children and three women. Investi gations conducted by PCHR indicate that IOF have used excessive force against Palestinian civilians, and have not respected the principles of proportionality and discrimination in pursuing members of the Palestinian resistance. IOF have also obstructed the work of medical crews, and have prevented ambulances from attending to the wounded.

As a consequence, a number of the wounded have died and the health conditions of others have deteriorated. This latest offensive has come as an implementation of Israeli threats to launch wide scale operations inside the Gaza Strip. PCHR warns that the continuous presence of IOF in Beit Hanoun may cause more casualties among Palestinian civilians and incur destruction to their property.

According to investigations conducted by PCHR, in the early morning of Wednesday, 1 November 2006, at least 70 IOF military vehicles, covered by warplanes, moved into the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun. They raided a number of houses and tran sformed them into military sites. IOF military vehicles and warplanes opened fire at the streets. IOF started to raid houses one by one, moving from one house to another one by destroying walls separating between them. On the first day of this offensive, IOF killed eight Palestinians, including two civilians. One of these civilians was killed by IOF when he was inside his house, whereas the other one died from a heart attack when IOF soldiers raided his house.

Five of the victims were members of the Palestinian resistance who clashed with IOF. The eighth victim was a member of the Palestinian National Security Forces. He was not in a fighting position. On the second day, IOF have killed four Palestinians, including two civilians. One of these civilians is an old man who was killed by an IOF soldier when he was in the balcony of his house. The other civilian was killed when he was near his house.

Ambulances have not been [allowed] to attend him. PCHR's field worker in the northern Gaza S trip reports that ambulances have not been able to attend to the wounded without prior coordination with IOF, which takes more than an hour.

As a result, the health conditions of 12 of the wounded have seriously deteriorated. As a result of the IOF gunfire, 52 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including 15 children and three women, have been wounded. Nine of the wounded are from one family, whose house was hit by an air-to-surface missile.

Those who have been killed in Beit Hanoun town are:
1. Ahmed Yousef Sa'adat, 23, hit by several live bullets throughout the body;
2. Hussam Mohammed Abu Harbid, 25, hit by several live bullets throughout the body;
3. Tariq Mustafa Nasser, 23, hit by shrapnel from a missile throughout the body;
4. Mohammed Saleh al-Masri, 22, hit by a live bullet to the back;
5. Ahmed Zuhair 'Edwan, 20, hit by several live bullets throughout the body;
6. Fayez Mohammed Zwaidi, 18, a member of the Palestinian National Security Forces;
7. Khalil Nasser Hamad, 22, hit by a live bullet to the head when he was inside his house;
8. Mohammed Mahmoud Fayadh, 49, died from a heart attack;
9. Diab Ahmed al-Basiouni, 75, hit by a live bullet to the head when he was in the balcony of his house;
10. Yousef Rawhi 'Aqel, 22, hit by a live bullet to the chest;
11. 'Essam Mohammed Abu 'ouda, 29, hit by several live bullets throughout the body; and
12. Bassem Mohammed al-Jammal, 21, hit by a live bullet to the chest.

PCHR strongly condemns military operations conducted by IOF in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, especially in the Gaza Strip, whose victims are mainly unarmed civilians. PCHR believes that such operations constitute collective penalties and retaliatory actions in violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. PCHR strongly condemns these killings and destruction of civilian property, and:

Expresses utmost concern for the safety of Palestinian civilians in light of the escalation in the use of force by IOF against them.

Reminds of other crimes committed by IOF against Palestinian civilians, and the IOF's failure to distinguish in their attacks between civilians and militants.

Calls upon the international community, particularly the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, to immediately and effectively intervene to provide protection for Palestinian civilians.