On Bashō / acquiring of new knowledge: Field Notes

Rereading Bashō is always a pleasure / a great reminder of what made me return to a notion of poetry pared down. The flower itself // the moon itself.

Simple things: coffee. A bit of breakfast. remembering to focus on the now. This unfolding moment. Remember for later: Amelia off to daycare in the early morning. Stella as a mother. So odd and so beautiful watching the grand odometer click over /watching the generations urge forward.

Like to stand in back of Stella and Adam's house on this small rectangle of concrete outside the gate to their backyard and watch this tree. I wish I was better at dendrology / the science of tree identifation /. I'm better at home in Kentucky. I think it's a white oak / had to look it up on Google. Asked Stella if she knew what it was / she didn't. 

Told her I just like knowing things / she asked me what I did before Google. I said I found a library / an encyclopedia / someone who knew more than me. She laughed / told me she didn't have time for all that. 

   

Redactions, 1 through 3

1. trucker cap

____preferred ball caps. Some people later referred to them as “trucker caps.” The only other kind of hat ___ ever saw ___ wear was blue wool Greek fisherman’s cap; but __ only wore that one when it was cold outside. Regardless of the hat, __ always wore it the same: placed atop __ head like a crown, the brim bent just enough so it would sit comfortably against that large forehead.  

___ was the only person__ saw who wore hats that way. Not even the old farmers, the few who were left and clinging onto what land they had left until the final crop was planted and their kids sold the acres for housing developments. Their hats were clamped down on their skulls, prepared for the storm. 

__  wore his hat like he carried the storm in a billfold next to a picture of ____ .

2.  there and back again

__ keep circling _____ , back around to meet _____  anew. Keep circling back on these poetic roots: Whitman, Kerouac, Basho, Thoreau, HST… then onto Li Po, onto Tu Fu, and on and onto the mad Zen poets like Ikkyu. ___  keep circling back to the original schism, the original sin that split poetry from itself like Cain split himself from Abel.  ____ knows they are road signs. ___ knows by the signs ___ is going the right way.

3. Word as cartography

_____ , grad student, anonymous preeminent post-modernist, slaughter house scholar, and maybe the 2nd most subversive person ___  ever met once proclaimed that “Kerouac’s open road has been converted into a warehouse.”  25 yrs later, shambling as ___ is , trudging as ___ is , circling back as__  is only to find ____  on the road Kerouac mapped. Mapped, but did not create. 

Thus, ____  must respectfully disagree.