.
Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World/A Congress of American Indians: circus poster, artist unknown, c. 1899 (Library of Congress)
Buffalo Bill with his Wild West Show on tour in Italy, after receiving the special blessing of Pope Leo XIII, with teepees, show tents and American flags flying in the breeze: photo by Royale Photographie, Rome, 1890 (image by Scewing, 2010)
Edward Estlin Cummings: Buffalo Bill's/defunct, from Seven Poems in The Dial, January 1920
Tom,
ReplyDeleteThe Wild West still lives on, in the Denver Public Library at least (I'm going there on Wednesday, "to see what he could see"). . . .
1.10
pink cloud in pale blue sky above still
shadowed ridge, motionless green leaves
in foreground, sound of wave in channel
lights still up on tree, as
pattern of reflection
in window beside it, bright
Dog Star, frogs still
silver of sunlight reflected in channel,
shadowed green canyon of ridge above it
go to Cody, Whyyoming!
ReplyDeletein 1959 I pulled into a space in the square and
slept in the back seat of my Chevy with
"what's her name'
they got a Cody Cowboy Museum there ... or did.
we never went in as
this cop woke us up at down and gave us 10 mins to
"get outta town"
we did it in 3!
Love these new beautifully luminous midsections, Steve -- the wing walker walking on water?
ReplyDeleteEd, three is pretty quick, but then... can't blame you, I've been to Cody.
By the way, maybe it's just that I'm feeling a bit giddy (too much enforced invalidism, and currently "coming down with something" -- i.e. something unwanted) -- but is it just me who's wondering exactly what it was about Buffalo Bill that Leo XII considered worthy of a papal blessing??
ReplyDeleteLeo must have "had the hots" for Annie Oakley
ReplyDeleteand
re: Rudd Fleming
I for some reason checked your index in Allegory of a
Poet's Life and THERE
on page 116 is "Rudd Fleming" !
Of course RF was a significant figure in the little "Pound circle" in D.C.... I know this goes back in your own history, too, Ed.
ReplyDeleteInteresting zone to consider.
When I was working on Olson, the one person from that orbit who proved quite helpful in painting the local scene was Frank Moore -- "the Librarian" of Olson's poem so-titled ("Who is/Frank Moore...").
But that as they say is another story.
the name "Frank Moore"
ReplyDeletesure sounds familiar...
almost
"rings a belle"
anyway long about 1975 I got bored with The Poetry Scene
and dropped out..
now that I am "back"
Poetry is STILL boring....
just more of it!
MOORE? MOORE?
am I confusing YOUR Moore
w Clayton Moore?
more-or-less
I liked & yet so do
Howard Nemrov's "stuff"
and Howard Nemrov.
The Cummings may be one of the first poems of his I ran into and it ran me over. Probably a school book anthology, but this poem is very possibly where it all started for me, his complete poems being the first poetry book I bought (and devoured) for myself.
ReplyDeleteI was always struck by Dylan's seeming allusion to the poem in Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall ... "my blue-eyed son," which I was probably listening to at the same time.
Between "We Use Summer Oils" and the blessing by Pope Leo, it seems commercialism has always been with us ... Bill Cody knew all about that, of course.
I remember Joseph Campbell talking about museum exhibits and traveling shows like Buffalo Bill's were the start for him on his anthropological / mythological quest as a young boy.
Ed, every time I hear this out of you --
ReplyDeleteanyway long about 1975 I got bored with The Poetry Scene
and dropped out..
now that I am "back"
Poetry is STILL boring....
just more of it!
-- I just have to laugh and credit you with having had the good sense, for all those years, to absent yourself from... well, virtually Nothing.
___
Don,
Well, I guess we are left to construct our mythologies as we find them. Six guns probably were never going to provide much a foundation. Except for the cemetery.
I too got my start with Cummings, as I bet many did.
The first examples of a "modern poem", available to everybody -- this one and others like it, by the same poet.
(Who's been "outgrown" prematurely, alas, like so much that still holds value.)
Tom
ReplyDeletethis is "write-on!"
"Ed, every time I hear this out of you --"
hell,
for nigh-on-toseventyyears
I've been writing the SAME phriching poem!
one of these days I'll get "it" reight...
you wanna know what I've found
upon this re:turn?
I'll tell you. MOST of my friend-poets are DEAD!
so I re-connected with one of them in 1998.
He said "your name rings-a-bell" &
"what the hell are you & what are you doing ...anyway?"
so I shot him back this "shortie" :
searching the stars
for intelligent life
so little of it here
well
anyway
now to sink into/with JM's 'a lamp'
before my morning nap.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteThanks for noting the new "midsections" -- and yes, that wingwalker is really something (wait till Johnny sees THAT!). . . .