.
The Annie. "First Boat Ever Launched on Yellowstone Lake." Reported to first be used on June 29, 1871: U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, Yellowstone Series, 1871, Vol. III (Hayden Survey)
In those stories the hero
is beyond himself into the next
thing, be it those labors
of Hercules, or Aeneas going into death.
I thought the instant of the one humanness
in Virgil's plan of it
was that it was of course human enough to die,
yet to come back, as he said, hoc opus, hic labor est.
That was the Cumaean Sibyl speaking.
This is Robert Creeley, and Virgil
is dead now two thousand years, yet Hercules
and the Aeneid, yet all that industrious wis-
dom lives in the way the mountains
and the desert are waiting
for the heroes, and death also
can still propose the old labors.
Reeds Rock, near Sherman, [Wyoming,] forms an excellent illustration of the style of weathering of the granites, characteristic of this region. These massive piles, like the ruins of old castles, are scattered all over the summits of the Black Hills, and the difference in the texture of the rock is such as to give a most pleasing variety of outline. They were once angular, cube-like masses, and have been worn to their present forms by the process of disintegration by exfoliation. Albany County, Wyoming. 1869
Giants Club, a rock pinnacle near Green River Station. Sweetwater County, Wyoming, 1869
"Grand Canyon of the Colorado." [Possibly view in Lower Granite Gorge, Grand Canyon of the Colorado River.] Men in foreground. Mohave County, Arizona, c. 1883
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. Old Faithful in Upper Geyser Basin in eruption [probably viewed from the side nearest the Firehole River]: U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, 1878 (Hayden Survey)
Pulpit Terraces. Mammoth Hot Springs. Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, c. 1883
The Upper Twin Lake. Lake County, Colorado, 1875
Dale Creek Canyon, a view looking south from near the bridge. A characteristic view of the summit of the Black Hills, showing the castle-like granite boulders and scattered pines, the deep canyon with its pleasant vale, and the sparkling trout stream, glittering in the sunlight. Albany County, Wyoming, 1869
Thanks Tom for another introduction to a tremedous poem, lean but densely packed. Beautifully playing on work as labour, work as opus - Virgil's opus, the work that survives, and Creeley's (he hopes) of course.
ReplyDelete'...death also/can still propose the old labors.' That's very fine and stikes close.
Very happy you like this one, Barry. A neglected classic. (R.C. inexplicably left it out of his 1991 Selected Poems.)
ReplyDeleteNeglected perhaps because it remembers the classics? (Oh well, aren't all the classics neglected anymore?)
But of course written in New Mexico, not in Mantua.
Somehow the diminutive surveyors whose old heroic labors brought them into those American wastelands seem also forever young, if only because frozen in time by Jackson beside or astride these large rocks and bodies of water.
(There some 1600 of his survey photos, each printed from a heavy glass plate negative hauled across the mountains and the deserts -- speaking of labors...)
There is probably not much hope for heroism in the long run, but for death as the oldest labor, odds remain 6-5 in favor.
Hadn't remembered this one either, but sure enough there it is in my copy of For Love.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of old labors, any chance you'd tackle the real Creeley bio? Not that you haven't brought enough light to the world w/O & Jack & Ed et al efforts, but can't we feel just a little greedy, eh?
Otherwise I'll buy as many TC pubs as my labors (and the IRS) will allow.
May I repeat to all: There is nothing else like this anywhere.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteGreat poem, great coupling w/ these heroic photos -- "the old labors". . . .
8.26
light coming into fog against invisible
ridge, black shape of black pine branch
in foreground, wave sounding in channel
standing in field, returned
to a subject that had
what is to be thought, that
which wants to be, is
grey white of fog against top of ridge,
wingspan of gull flapping toward point
Kent,
ReplyDeleteBob justifiably felt ill-served by the Fass bio that came out while he was still alive. (Cruel and unusual punishment.)
I've privately thought through his life many times over, for my own reasons, from that distance of mystery which always keeps us at a respectful arm's length, encloses and protects a real artist like a good-luck charm.
But since those days of my however-earnest endeavors in this area I've come to see biography as a generally intrusive and distorting practice anyway, from which I've latterly sworn off.
Or maybe it's just that I can no longer go the distance, a mop-up role feels like it's rapidly closing in.
Thanks, Steve.
ReplyDeleteAll those tiny heroes... remind me of Bob's interesting (and intricate) self-deprecating sense of humour.
Meanwhile, to the throbbing strains of We Who Are About to Die Salute the Great Masters, salutations from your friends from over here on the other edge of the Marine Layer, where all is once again enclosed in... you guessed it.
Grey whiteness of fog.
TC, no need
ReplyDeleteTo fashion a new knuckleball
Or jump to Japan
With a novel delivery
Only Ted Abernathy would understand.
No, Tom,
The past is preseason.
As our Ernie would sing
The Song of the Turtle
Now sling us your verses
Biblical by this accounting:
Saved by the crafty Veteran.
Kent,
ReplyDeleteI fear that the knuckleball may have died of Tim Wakefield.
But...Nothing better than coming from down so low your knuckles scrape the ground. Ted Abernathy, spiritual son of Ewell Blackwell, spiritual father of Kent Tekulve.
(Once wrote a book with Terry Leach, who blew out his arm and saved his career by adopting an underhanded delivery... though Terry believed his transformation to the lower depths -- armlocationwise that is -- was part of God's plan, I'd have to admit my own descent has probably been more a matter of mundane attrition.