Avocations: On Poetry and Poets

Title Page, Copyright, Dedication, Epigraph

Avocations This page intentionally left blank. Avocations On Poets and Poetry O Sam Hamill RED HEN PRESS | Los Angeles, California Avocations: On Poets and Poetry Copyright © 2007 by Sam Hamill All rights reserved No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner. Book design by Mark E. Cull Cover picture: Strong Enough, artwork by Rom LAMMAR from Luxembourg. ISBN 978-1-59709-086-5 (tradepaper) ISBN 978-1-59709-245-6 (hardcover) Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006936790 Earlier versions of these essays and reviews appeared in Academy of American Poets, American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, MidAmerican Review, Onthebus, Poetry East, Seneca Review, Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), Haiku: This Other World (Arcade Publishing, 1998), Narrow Road to the Interior & Other Writings (Shambala, 2000), Spring of My Life & Selected Haiku (Shambala, 1997), Toward the Distant Islands: New & Selected Poems of Hayden Carruth (Copper Canyon Press, 2006) The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts partially support Red Hen Press. Published by Red Hen Press First Edition To Gray Foster & Eron Hamill And to Esteban Moore, Paul Nelson and Courtney Hudak “Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men—go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers or families—re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.” —Walt Whitman, Preface to 1855 edition, Leaves of Grass “out of key with his time He strove to resuscitate the dead art Of poetry; to maintain ‘the sublime’ In the old sense.” —Ezra Pound, Hugh Selwyn Mauberly ...