Jim Dodge - Rain on the River: Selected Poems and Short Prose

Rain on the River

Also by Jim Dodge

Fup
Not Fade Away
Stone Junction

Jim Dodge

Selected Poems and Short Prose

Copyright 2002 by Jim Dodge

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dodge, Jim.

Rain on the River: selected poems and short prose/

Jim Dodge, p. cm.

ISBN 0-8021-3896-9
1. Northwest, Pacific-Literary collections. I. Title.

PS3554.O335 R35 2002

2001058483

813.54-cc21

Grove Press
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

02 03 04 05 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

for

Victoria Stockley Dodge

covivant for over thirty years, the last seven as wife;
nerve of my soul, love of my life

With few exceptions, the selected work in this volume appeared in limited edition letterpress broadsides, cards, and chapbooks published by Jerry Reddans Tangram Press in Berkeley, California, who also designed this volume. Ive worked almost exclusively with Jerry for two decades, always with a sense of privilege, delight, and gratitude.

The first group of poems in this book, from Learning to Talk through Bathing Joe, constitutes annual Winter Solstice cards mailed to friends and colleagues, and also includes a few broadsides and occasional verse.

The poems from Mahogany China through A Firmer Grasp of the Obvious are selected from Palms to the Moon, a loose group of love poems published in 1987 in an edition limited to 100 copies and given away to friends and fellow practitioners.

Bait & Ice, a small gathering of poems on fishing, philosophy, and nature, was released in 1991 in an edition of 175, and includes the poems from The Work of Art through Fishing Devils Hole at the Peak of Spring.

The final chapbook from which work for this volume was drawn (Getting After It through Death and Dying) is Piss-Fir Willie Poems, a suite of persona poems offered as an homage to the vernacular of Pacific northcoast working people, particularly loggers, restoration workers, commercial fishers, ranchers, and those, like my father, in the building trades. I tried to capture the idiom-the diction, cadence, phrasing-as well as that combination of aesthetics, attitude, and turn-of-mind that constitutes cultural style. To my sense of it, I was successful enough that I cant honestly claim the poems as my own. Whatever virtues of language, wit, or wisdom the reader might find, praise should accrue to the speakers from whom I borrowed; any liabilities, alas, are likely mine. Piss-Fir Willie Poems was published by Tangram in 1998 in an edition of 200 copies.

Before 1980, I also published two other chapbooks-da Vaca in a Vanishing Geography and (with Robert Funt) Sollla Sollew-but because these Mad River Press productions were published anonymously and pointedly anti-copyright, I havent included that work.

New poems, written or substantially revised in the past decade, make up roughly the second half of this volume.

A few of the new and selected works have appeared in other books and journals:

A version of Green Side Up was first published in Dalmoma VI: Working the Woods, Working the Sea (Empty Bowl, 1986) under the title Treeplanting in the Rain. The poem, under the latter title, was also published in Paperwork (Harbour 1991) and Propriety and Possibilities (Harrish Press, 1996).

Aweigh appeared in From the Islands Edge: A Sitka Reader (Graywolf Press, 1995) and Northcoast View.

Unnatural Selections: A Meditation upon Witnessing a Bullfrog Fucking a Rock, The Banker, and Mahogany China were published in Terra Nova (Volume 3, Number 4, Fall 1998).

Hard Work appeared in Forest News (Winter 1999)

Learning to Talk and Bathing Joe appeared in Wild Duck Review, Casey Walkers excellent journal of literature, necessary mischief, and news.

All books are more than the writers words, and in that spirit Id like to acknowledge Jerry Reddan for his design of this volume; Pete Stoelzl for his impeccable typesetting; Christopher Stinehours calligraphic designs; and Shannon Dixon at Proof Positive for his work in helping create the cover. The cover art is the second panel of a triptych from my mentor and friend Morris Graves The Great Blue Heron and the Great Rainbow Trout Yogi in Phenomenal Space, Mental Space and the Space of Consciousness (tempera on paper, 1979), used with the kind permissions of Morris archive executor Robert Yarber and the Humboldt Arts Council. I also wish to thank the production directors at Grove/Atlantic and Canongate Books, Muriel Jorgensen and Caroline Gorham respectively, as well as the copy editors and art directors involved.

Three bows to Gary Snyder for his usual tough reading of the manuscript and his suggestion for the title.

I also offer special thanks to my editors, Morgan Entrekin at Grove/Atlantic and Jamie Byng of Canongate for their steadfast support of my literary work.

Melanie Jackson, my agent, deserves particular mention for her unstinting efforts and merciful acumen on my behalf.

Finally, my deepest gratitude to family and friends for their unflagging faith, encouragement, and forbearance.

Whenever Jason said beeber for beaver
or skirl for squirrel
I secretly loved it.
Theyre better words:
The busy beeber beebing around;
the grey squirrels tail
like a skirl of smoke along a maple branch.
I never told him he was saying
their names wrong,
though I did pronounce them conventionally.
One time he noticed, and explained,
Beeber is how I say it.
Great, I told him, whatever
moves you.
But within a week
he was pronouncing both properly.
I did my duty
and Im sorry.
Farewell Beeber and Skirl.
So much beauty lost to understanding.

Coddington Mall was clogged with Christmas shoppers as I waited in line at the Cookie Jar, a bakery devoted to my favorite confection.

It was just after noon-lunch break-and a single clerk was left to work the counter, a young woman with a strained, scattered smile. She was working as fast as she could, but the line moved slowly. I was passing the time with the sports page, idly considering whether the 49ers were worth $100 and three points against the Rams, when my attention was drawn to the elderly woman in front of me in line. By her stoop and wrinkles I figured she was in her early 70s, or a hard 65 at least. She was wearing a grey dress, but it was nearly obscured by a heavy black sweater that hung almost to the hemline. She was leaning forward, weight on her cane, her nose to the display case, examining the cookies with the calm, fierce attention of a hawk. Taken by the force of her concentration, I folded the sports page and said pleasantly, Its always tough to decide.