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Underground Singing: Poems by Harry Humes

Winner of the inaugural Keystone Chapbook Award, selected by Jeff Mann.

Publication date: December 21, 2007.

Now accepting preorders: please e-mail me to order your copy for $8 postpaid.

Excerpt

Answer Me This

How do you like this caved-in bedroom,
plaster all over the floor, wall paper hanging loose,
the onyx cuff links in their velvet box,
and how do you like the attic, Mickey Spillane novels,
shoe boxes of photos and Boy Scout knives,
and the view from the attic window
toward the torn-up railroad tracks,
and how do you like the beautiful Irish girl next door
grown old and screeching, and what was the name
of the family with the ugly pony,
how do you like the old sofa,
the hand-painted tea cups from Nova Scotia,
the dirt cellar with its spiders and rats,
always winter there, broken ax and shovel handles,
rusty nails, the bucket of pigeon bones,
how do you like this moaning and tears,
doors clicking shut, someone always leaving?

: Harry Humes, Underground Singing (2007)

Gladding

The first seed catalogue has already arrived: Totally Tomatoes' 2008 listings are already tempting me to order a few peppers and maybe one or two tomato varieties. We really don't have room to grow good tomatoes; we're low on space, and the garden area we might devote to veggies doesn't receive enough sun. It's not hard, though, to imagine building a few trellises (there's more sun the higher the plants climb, and at least one of the indeterminate tomatoes is reported to grow several feet tall) (it's actually billed as a "tree tomato") or hanging a few more hooks for the mini "tumbler" varieties. . . I always get this way after the first couple of hard freezes: it's like not being able to take a good deep breath--give me GREEN!--but fortunately, I don't (usually) give in to the catalogs' zazzy colorful pics and hyped-up descriptions ("produces in all kinds of weather conditions!") ("delicious TRUE TOMATO flavor!"). Just once, I'd like to see an entry that said yeah, these pretty much taste like wet cardboard, but they're a nice shade of pearlescent pink, and your neighbors will oooh and ahhh over the five measley fruits that finally ripen in mid-September.

In homage to the other garden--those early lettuces and greens that never fail to grow like they're supposed to (am I the only one who dreams of pizza smothered with arugula?), here's a poem from Jody Gladding's out-of-print chapbook, Artichoke, one of the truly beautiful chaps put out by Chapiteu Press:

Greens

Thinnings from young lettuces
So bitter, to make up for their tenderness.

Sorrel
Don’t say green like apples, and the stems
aren’t hollow as quills.

Kale
All summer the deer wait for the night
to grow dark, for the morning fog to grow
thick in their leaves.

Tatsoi and mizuna
Spoon and fork.

Ornamental kale
Nothing is ornamental.

Basil
Crushed lightly. What it’s like
lying down with a man.

Tree sweeping

While idly thumbing through a stack of chapbooks on my desk tonight, I ran across this poem by Carl Lindner, from his chapbook Eat & Remember, reminding me of course of last Sunday's snow and our concern for the Japanese maple--which has since de-leafed. The garden is shuttered down for December's arrival. I need to bring the bay tree in, but I wanted to give it a few cold nights first. (And to figure out where to put it.) But here's the poem:

The Tree Sweeper

Bent by snow still
falling, the young
pine called him out.

He took a broom
to sweep away
the white. Minutes

drifted down.
He went on
to the spruce. All

that morning saw him
brush the needles,
dusting off the crowns,

giving the slender
trunks a shake.
As he worked, only

he could tell how,
over and over, he
lifted like a branch.

With every pass
of the broom, he kept
singing “evergreen”

to himself, low,
the way a snowflake
hums as it falls.
* * *
I printed a test copy of Undergound Singing today. Found five or six layout errors, went back & corrected those, printed fresh pages, cut the whole thing to size, stapled it together so I could hold it, turn the pages, get the sense of the thing as a book. Sent it off to the author, after e-mailing him a PDF of (my design for) the cover.

Anyone want to help cut and tie some books? I'm hoping to get all the copies mailed out before the holiday. I've been raiding the recycling bins on campus for good sturdy envelopes to re-use.
* * *
Miriam has been writing some wonderful poems. I just read a batch of them today, and I'm impressed! Best of luck with your applications, M.
* * *
Ack, I'm up too late again.

Last minute last call--

--for chapbook manuscripts to be entered in the Center for Book Arts' annual competition. The deadline is December 1, and this year's judges are Sharon Dolin and Tomaz Salamun. The winning manuscript will be chosen in April 2008 and will be awarded with the publication of a beautifully designed, letterpress-printed, limited-edition chapbook printed and bound by artists at the Center for Book Arts. The edition is limited to one-hundred signed and numbered copies, ten of which are reserved for the author and the remainder of which will be offered for sale through the Center. The winning poet will also receive a cash award of $500, and a $500 honorarium for a reading, to be held at the Center in the fall of 2008. Visit the Center's web page for full details.
* * *
It's my dad's birthday. Coincidentally, tonight the tree at Rockefeller Center is illuminated. That tradition started the year he was born. Neat coincidence.
* * *
I had student conferences all day and finally headed home a bit before 7. One meeting had me nearly banging my head on my desk. An excerpt went something like this:

Student: So I paraphrased a lot of the last two pages, do I have to cite that or can I just reference it in the bib?
Me (scanning the paragraphs in question): You say here that the Church rose in power at this time. What do you think caused that?
Student: I don't know, I couldn't really understand that sentence. Should I just cut that? Do you think I need to keep that?
Me: If you don't understand what it means, then why is it the focus of your paragraph?
Student: I don't know if I really want to write about all the Crusades. Do I have to mention all of them? Should I put that here?
Me: Maybe we should look at--
Student: Where should this question go, the one where I say "But how did all of this really get started?" Should I put that here? Or here?
Me: If you--
Student: I know that my conclusion has to repeat everything in my introduction, but does that mean I have to ask it there?
Me: You don't--
Student: Do you think I should mention the Holocaust? I can't think of any other conflicts that involve religious intolerance. Where would I put the Holocaust?

And around and around we went, to the merciless beat of an agitated artery in my left temple. . .
* * *
I'm off to bed.

Kyle Dargan

Kyle Dargan's back in Lewisburg for a reading (tonight) and Q&A (tomorrow). Kyle was a June Poet back in 2002 (has it been five years?), part of an awesome group that included Meg Shevenock, Miriam Greenberg, Matthew Ladd, and some guy named Kevin Gonzalez (love you, Kevin).

Kyle's here to give the annual Drew Darrow Memorial Reading, sponsored by the Writing Center and several other folks. He'll be reading tonight in Bucknell Hall at 7:00, and giving his Q&A tomorrow at noon in the WC (I'm sorry to miss it, but I'll be at Lyco).

Kyle's first book, The Listening (Georgia 2004), won the Cave Canem Prize; the University of Georgia Press has just released his second book, Bouquet of Hungers. Here's a wee poem with a Lewisburg connection:

Letter Home I

The town’s trademarks are its streetlamps, two
Of the three orbs droop towards the earth—

Dead insects inside settle at the bottom,
Tragic pupils.

In my ambling I saw the remains
Of a barn—a gentler stop along underground rail

(So reads the sign). I always stumble
Upon these things, like the slave graves

Suffocated by dorms below Mr. Jefferson’s
University. As then, I didn’t know how to be present.

Of course I crossed Tubman, but kept on—
Anxious of what I’d see if I stared too long. Right now

There’s rain, sky left ajar, and the wind slipping
Jabs of lightning splayed within the clouds.

I miss the lanky apartment buildings,
the black-lunged streets,
my sight—through which no one images me twice.

"perfectly listening"

The way geodes can be cracked to reveal ears
perfectly listening to crystal, you could crack
open this picture and find anything.

- Lynda Hull, "Invisible Gestures" (from Ghost Money)

[photo: lamp, 8/21/07]

One of a kind

People ask, Why don't you sell your quilts? The answer is that we're usually working on a quilt intended for someone. We plan to sell more of our smaller quilts--the minis (usually less than 20 inches square) and wall quilts (usually around 40 inches square), but right now R is working on a full-sized commissioned quilt and I'm toggling between two projects that I hope to complete before May. Meanwhile, here's this: a "Honeycomb" pattern, completely pieced and quilted by hand, that I finished in mid-October. I've enjoyed seeing it on our project wall, but I always knew I would let it go if presented with the right offer. Enjoy the purty pictures and read on for more information on this unique wall quilt, or check back another day when I'm not screwing up the courage to be so self-promotional and have returned to my general ramblings.

Dimensions are 27.5 inches wide by 31 inches tall. The center medallion is paper-pieced using the English paper-piece method (fabric pieces are individually basted onto small hexagonal papers then sewn together into an overall pattern) (I was actually piecing this at AWP in Atlanta), then hand-appliqued onto the navy border fabric. The red binding is hand-sewn. Most of the medallion fabrics are vintage, and there is some slight variation in tone, especially in the red and yellow. I hand-quilted a scrolling border in the blue frame, and the medallion is hand-quilted in a "row outline" stitch (see backing photo for a clearer idea of this). This quilt is dated and signed by me, and is one of a kind; I don't plan on making another.

This quilt is for sale. The price is $75. E-mail me if you're interested.

Snow Day

It was snowing when we woke up this morning--heavy, wet flakes falling fast--and it's continued throughout the day. We've taken turns going out with a broom to knock the snow from the Japanese maple in the back yard (it still has most of its leaves, and we're afraid some branches might break from the weight). A lovely sight, really, but I hope the roads are navigable in the morning.

Night Ride Home

It's dark before I leave campus to drive home over our little mountains. On my morning commute, I'm usually rushing and don't have time to pull over, aim the camera at the sugar maples flaring into near-levitating masses of butterscotch yellow. The red maples are nearly finished--just a few clutches of leaves burning now--and the thornless honey locusts, such a screaming yellow a few days ago in the rain, are nearly denuded. Fog in the mountains nearly every morning--some days I literally drive through a cloud or two--and a bit of snow yesterday, not enough to stick but just a foretaste of what's to come. On the drive home, I pointed the camera unsteadily at some oncoming headlights and came up with this shot.

* * *

From Gary Soto's poem, "At the All-Night Cafe":

America is at work. There is the splotch of blue neon
Behind the left leg, renegade line in the right eye.

* * *

My copy of Jill Rosser's new book, Foiled Again, arrived yesterday at the office. It's the winner of this year's New Criterion Prize. Looking forward to reading it over the holiday.

* * *

This afternoon we sorted through clothes and cleaned out two bags full (including several jackets) to donate to a campus clothing drive. I can actually find my winter shirts now (and my gloves and scarf)!

* * *

R just came back from the grocery with a surprise for me: a zygocactus, loaded with salmon buds. Very nice! We are doing some attic cleaning tomorrow, and today bought a couple of plant lights for the shelves I use to start seedlings in late winter. This afternoon, in the garden, I saw that one of our hostas had ripe seed pods, so I picked them to bring inside. As the pods dry, they'll split along three seams and open, revealing the black seeds all tucked in neat rows. The hosta's seed apparatus looks a bit like a maple seed (i.e., somewhat winged), but it's much smaller and very thin. I've had good success with planting them, and the seedlings grow to blooming size within two or three years.

* * *

Kooser

Boarding House

The blind man draws his curtains for the night
and goes to bed, leaving a burning light

above the bathroom mirror. Through the wall,
he hears the deaf man walking down the hall

in his squeaky shoes to see if there’s a light
under the blind man’s door, and all is right.

: Ted Kooser, Sure Signs (1980)

* * *

Meeting with poetry students all day. I dashed over to the library for a prepackaged turkey sandwich. Checked my mailbox on the way back and there were my copies of the new West Branch. Great cover art by Jeff Cohen. Four lead-off poems by Rebecca Dunham. This is the issue I edited last spring; I'll undoubtedly brag some more about it over the next couple of weeks.
* * *

I had a very nice breakfast last week with Robin Becker, the day after her reading at Bucknell. We're hatching a plan. More news soon.
* * *

Next week: Thanksgiving break. I'll be putting Harry's chapbook together and catching up on essay grading.
* * *

So nice to hear from Miriam.

[photo: boxwood shadow]

Just last week

the sumac was so vivid. Now it's almost gone: rained down.

Giving books: 8

also, not pictured: Howard Moss' Rules of Sleep & Connie Voisine's Cathedral of the North.

Giving books: 7

Giving books: 6

also, not pictured: Dennis Nurkse's Voices Over Water & James Tate's The Lost Pilot.

Trick or treat

The munchkins are at our door tonight, rapping, tapping, kicking and squealing for attention. We were trying to eat a quiet dinner. I suggested offering some steamed broccoli. Randy had a better idea: posting a SEXUAL PREDATOR: BEWARE sign on our front door. (Ha!)

* * *

Listening to EmmyLou Harris, Wrecking Ball. Love that CD. Grading papers until 9, when we watch an hour of television (as we quilt). I'm trying to get to bed by ten. Now that the weather's growing colder, it's SO hard to get out of bed at six.

* * *

Just saw Paul Guest's wonderful news: congratulations, Paul! A well-deserved award.

* * *

We were delighted to watch the Red Sox sweep what's-their-name, that team in Colorado. Now the long wait until spring (training) begins. In honor of the Sox, here's a poem by Joe Wenderoth, from his 1995 book, Disfortune:

Aesthetics Of The Bases Loaded Walk

Four times the pitch is outside the strike zone:
high, low, outside, low—four balls.
The man must be given a base, a base on balls.
But there is no base to be given,
no base unoccupied, the bases are full.
Some cannot understand this.
They believe it must be a shameful thing,
lowly forfeit,
the humiliation of man-made rules and chalk boundaries.
They imagine confrontation itself has failed.
Some, even most, don’t understand the bases loaded walk,
and they proceed to hiss
or to mock their earlier earnest applause.
But I love it.
They’ve got no room to put him on.
They put him on. They put him on
and here comes the lowly run
home. Certain, uncontested,
and incomparably calm.
A home-run would have been unbelievable—
the grand slam, loveliest of moments
to glimpse—
but it leads quickly, inevitably, away from us.
Bases empty.
Rally as good as over.
But a walk! a walk! Bases still loaded!
Rally never at a more urgent or capable point!
This is the beauty of it.
The maintenance of a simple danger by way of a good eye.
The inning, the game itself,
hangs in the indelicate balance
of this subtlest method for staying alive,
in the casual implication of unending loss,
in the terrible patience of an anonymous victory.

* * *

Brent is so much better than I at writing prose poems. I doff my cap.

* * *

Samhain blessings to all.
* * *

[photo: Cloud #3, 10/12/07]

Giving books: 5

also, not pictured: William Corbett's Don't Think: Look & John Haines' At the End of This Summer.

What I'm reading

Tea Bags

Remembering, she agitates hand washables
from which dirt streams; delicate things, her white
regulation underwear still damp when she puts it on.

-Thylias Moss, Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler

Giving books: 4

Blur

Today was pretty much the Hump Day of the Hump Week of the Hump Month: the semester is a downhill road from here. Students who haven't managed to overcome their propensity for oversleeping, spacing out in class or with homework, and the like are probably not going to pull out of their current patterns, and this is the week when I stop overextending myself and trying to haul them back onto the Happy Raft. Sink or swim, y'all. I have my own paddling to do.

* * *

We're trying a different med for the headaches. We'll see how it goes.

* * *

And now, let's play Name That Novel! I copied pages from several books, pulled more-or-less randomly from home, to use for our erasures a while back. A few days later, in one of my comp sections, something made me remember and refer to the following passage. Students swore I was misremembering the scene, and that it was from another of the author's novels, but when I came home and checked, there it was--and here it is:

". . . [X], frightened at the spreading thighs, alone in the house, and horrified at the screaming wretch his wife had become, went mad with apprehension. Using his hands, his strong fingers for forceps, he had pulled and twisted the baby. The midwife, arriving late, had found the baby's head pulled out of shape, its neck stretched, its body warped; and she had pushed the head back and molded the body with her hands. But [X] always remembered, and was ashamed."

First person to correctly identify the title and author wins, oh I don't know, a slightly dogeared copy of Allison Funk's chapbook From the Sketchbooks of Vanessa Bell. (A nice chapbook!)

* * *

Two words: GO, BOSTON!

[photo: driver's side blur, 10/12/07]

Giving books: 3

also, not pictured: Mark Doty's Turtle, Swan & Denise Duhamel's Girl Soldier.

Keystone Chapbook Results

The results of the 2007 Keystone Chapbook Competition are in: from the sixty manuscripts entered, our final judge, Jeff Mann, has selected "Underground Singing" by Harry Humes as the winner. Mann praised the manuscript as "a lyrical yet realistic description of coal-town life" that "displays admirable lucidity and accessibility, a haunting, sharp-eyed nostalgia, and vividly evoked detail."

The first runner-up manuscript was "Still," by Deborah Burnham of Philadelphia. The judge commented that the manuscript "brims with finely phrased appreciation of the romantic and the erotic, as well as displaying remarkably fresh figurative language and sensuous imagery."

The second runner-up manuscript, by Jillian Barnet of Pittsburgh, was "You Don't Need a Nose and Other Things I've Learned." Mann assessed this manuscript as "shocking, painful, blunt" and said "these poems of hospital tragedies, disease, and death remind us of how much can go wrong, how much there is to lose, and thus how much there is to celebrate while circumstances allow."

We are delighted to publish Harry Humes' collection this fall. Copies will be distributed to all contest entrants, and will be available for sale in January 2008. If you would like to review this chapbook, please e-mail me.

Thanks to all who entered this year--the judge remarked on the difficulty of selecting among many truly excellent manuscripts--and thanks, also, to everyone who helped to spread the word.

About the judge: Jeff Mann grew up in Covington, Virginia, and Hinton, West Virginia, receiving degrees in English and forestry from West Virginia University. His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in many publications, including The Spoon River Poetry Review, Wild Sweet Notes: Fifty Years of West Virginia Poetry 1950-1999, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Laurel Review, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, Crab Orchard Review, West Branch, Bloom, and Appalachian Heritage. He has published three award-winning poetry chapbooks, Bliss, Mountain Fireflies, and Flint Shards from Sussex; and two full-length books of poetry, Bones Washed with Wine and On the Tongue. He teaches creative writing at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.

[photo: cornfield, 10/09/04]

Giving books: 2

Giving books

Library poetry

The campus library is small: a few floors occupying one wing of the academic building which I almost never need to leave. I drive to Williamsport in early morning fog--sometimes the mountains and the other side of the river are completely obscured in mist--and, at the end of the day, I take the stairs (or elevator, depending on how late, how tired) and exit the building, breathe the outside air for the first time in ten hours. People do this everywhere, of course, but working in a windowless office has me looking up at the sky more frequently of late: late sky, early sky, sunrise and sunset, but almost never the sky in between. To get out of my office, I've been scoping out the library for comfortable niches, out-of-the-way tables with cozy chairs, hiding places where I can grade papers for an hour or two before my official office hours begin.

Last week, as I was leaving the library, I asked the young girl at the circulation desk where the poetry books were shelved. PS3569? I asked. Which floor? Feeling not a little ashamed that I'd been on campus for well over a month yet hadn't checked out a single book, I went back upstairs in search of poetry.

Many of the volumes in the poetry section are old. Incredibly old. Beautiful old embossed covers with hand-inked numbers on their spines, leaning together like old men dozing on park benches, untouched for decades. I saw few contemporary volumes. Gathered up a William Stafford, a James Wright, a Richard Hugo--Come on, boys, let's get some air--and a slender book, Like Wings by Philip Schultz, a poet I really know nothing about. I took the Schultz because of two lines: the first, from a poem I opened randomly to, "The Elevator":

This elevator lugged Teddy Roosevelt
when they both were new.

The second was a line by Whitman, set as an epigraph to the section of the book titled "Main Streets":

These are the days that must happen to you.

Downstairs again at the circulation desk, I watched a young man sorting oversized art books on a wheeled cart. Though he was facing me, he didn't look up from his task for at least two minutes. I could have cleared my throat. I didn't mind waiting. When he finally noticed me, he rushed over, apologizing profusely. He took my faculty card, scanned the bar code from it and from the inside covers of my books. The Philip Schultz still has a card pocket inside the back cover, and the original check-out card is still in the pocket. The book was published in 1978. The card is stamped only once, DEC 7 '79, and the borrower's name, written in ink in the topmost blue-lined space, is Pam Mazzotta. I like that Pam's signature is still tucked into the book. I thought of writing a small poem on the back of the card (the blank side), and wondered how many years might pass before anyone noticed it. I go to the public library, the boy said.

(? )

They have a lot more poetry than we do, he stammered. It's just over there--he gestured vaguely toward the river--across from, ahh, across--it's just maybe a block that way.

I thanked him, wondering if I'd ever set foot on a Williamsport sidewalk, or whether this one-year gig would consist entirely of time spent commuting to and from this one campus building. * * * * *
Derek Walcott is being paid a large sum of money to give a talk at Bucknell tonight. He should be launching into it right about now.
* * * * *
I met my new physician yesterday morning. Had to change health plans because Williamsport, where I work, is outside the range of my previous health plan. I was fortunate, both last year and this, to get health insurance as part of my contract. For most of our time in Pennsylvania, I've had to go without.

Dr. H seems nice: a good listener, proficient at posing nicely open-ended questions and gleaning (presumably) useful data from my babble. He strikes me as more assertively diagnostic than my previous physician (who I liked well enough): he wants, for instance, to have a good look at my brain, and so I'm scheduled for a cranial MRI on Thursday afternoon. It would be a relief to find the cause of my headaches. Or at least the source of the voices. (Kidding.)
* * * * *
Here's a poem from the Philip Schultz book that reminds me of something I read recently by a young poet (I'll try to find the latter poem):

What I Don’t Want

Die slouched & undecided in a girlie show
watching her lambs eat the wolves.
Sit talking Kafka this Kafka that
(that bugfaced sword-swallower!).
Play deaf & dumb in Chicago.
Chew the fat of the land while looking
up somebody’s left leg for the right word, ever again.
Cross the Golden Gate Bridge on a bus
listening to the guy ahead say: Doesn’t it look
like a G-string all lit up, Fran!
Die in the house where I was born,
a happy man.

I want, Lord, to die with Neruda & Chaplin
naked & sinful
eating cheese so old it sings on my tongue.

* * * * *
Oh. Found it: a poem by Aaron Anstett, from No Accident (2005). No wonder I was reminded of Aaron's poem--look at the similiarities in rhetoric, voice & setting:

Prayer Against Dying on Camera

Lord, not shot in liquor store stick-up,
jugular uncorked and finely misting or

splatter-patterning display case plate glass
and me so many pixels collapsing

at the feet of bikini’d cardboard
cutout models, purchase a puddle,

last words of my kind, “Oh, shit,”
lip-readable. Jesus not suddenly

in latex novelty emporium or slam-
bang stroke on jumbotron in a coliseum

screaming, not tumbling
from the burning building in a series

of photographs, speed increasing,
one frame famous because I look so calm.
* * * * *
In my poetry class this morning, we did erasures of pages I'd copied, as randomly as possible, from my books at home. We had a marvelous time. The undercurrents, the astonishing shifts in tone from the original texts (which each student read a sample of before reading her erasure), the "rescuing" of words that slipped right past our ears in the initial texts but felt so apt in the re-visions that we could hardly believe they'd been right there on the pages--all great fun. I'm enjoying my LC students, but the 8 AM poetry class (say it!) nurtures my soul.

[photo: Laurel, 9/1/07, R B Winter State Park]

I'm still here

I'm still here, just swamped with work. Toss me a bail bucket. Fly me to the moon. Let me play among the stars. Or in the trees, before their leaves leave; that sounds nice. I'm starting to envy the acrobatic squirrels.

[photo: Maples, 5/16/07]