tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post1284673189223031069..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Wyo-Booming, 1979 (II)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-7133167436344335042010-03-29T14:58:52.913-07:002010-03-29T14:58:52.913-07:00Curtis,
Wal I never! (as Jimmy Stewart might have...Curtis,<br /><br />Wal I never! (as Jimmy Stewart might have said).<br /><br />About your Wyoming visit, from my experience I'd probably advise waiting until the weather turns a bit more conducive. There's something about a fifty mile an hour wind caressing a snow fence early in the morning in the Rattlesnake Range that makes one want to dive for cover... and the nearest available cover is nothing more capacious than the inside of a cow skull.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-78798675571936784072010-03-29T12:29:06.741-07:002010-03-29T12:29:06.741-07:00Actually, my friend from Laramie was born a man an...Actually, my friend from Laramie was born a man and now lives as a woman, so the Man From Laramie/Woman From Laramie dynamic is....dynamic. I'm sorry we never were able to visit her in Wyoming. The stories I've heard, the pictures I've seen (and the poems I've read) make me want to go there.Curtis Robertsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-31551484321561372362010-03-29T06:49:23.370-07:002010-03-29T06:49:23.370-07:00Curtis, Leigh, thanks very much.
Yes, this post ...Curtis, Leigh, thanks very much. <br /><br />Yes, this post was intended to project a bit of that "filmic realism" as narrative frame or context for the "essays" or "comments" (as Ed Dorn termed them) that comprise the poetic bits in the post above.<br /><br />Curtis, it's interesting to hear that word of confirmation re. my remarks from your friend. There suddenly drifts before the mind the title of the great Anthony Mann/Jimmy Stewart movie (speaking of filmic realism), 1955 or so, The Man from Laramie. It would always be good to hear from a man from Laramie but to hear from a Woman from Laramie, even better somehow.<br /><br />I think the whole complicated and rather brutal story of the West might well have been a great deal different, had women been acting and directing it, by the way. <br /><br />But then again, in the last week of March, 1979 the only women we encountered in Jeffrey City -- and there were indeed very few of them -- were pretty tough cookies. So perhaps I have spoken too soon.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-29999694570563822392010-03-29T03:44:59.215-07:002010-03-29T03:44:59.215-07:00Tom, I really like how your very last stanza se(a)...Tom, I really like how your very last stanza se(a)ms as a metaphor for Wyoming itself. A filmic realism to this for me..https://www.blogger.com/profile/00532376301529981186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-1535559212221676332010-03-28T15:47:11.062-07:002010-03-28T15:47:11.062-07:00I'm still absorbing all the parts of the poem ...I'm still absorbing all the parts of the poem and will be for a while. I shared it with a friend of mine who lived in Wyoming (near Laramie) for a long time, but a few years after the period you're writing about. Her description of Jeffrey City matched yours exactly. I've never been to a real ghost town, but she assured me that's what it was.Curtis Robertsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-64807994841788386622010-03-28T14:21:15.290-07:002010-03-28T14:21:15.290-07:00Elmo,
Ed and I made this survey of the energy cou...Elmo,<br /><br />Ed and I made this survey of the energy country at just about this time of year -- end of March, '79. It was a real eye opener. No, I should say it was a real earth-opener. You'll recall the price of gas had hiked up and the search for every kind of carbon was on, full force. Wildcatters showing up in hard hats driving pickup trucks, coming in from Florida and Alaska and Virginia and you name it, picking up work in the uranium and coal and coal slurry and every other kind of pit and open face mine and field. <br /><br />A lot of those sites are nothing but empty holes snow. The U-town of Jeffrey City, where we had some interesting times, hanging out with polyurethane salesmen living in their pickup trucks with the backs wrapped in tarpaulins, all their worldly stuff inside -- the place had turned into a ghost town by '82, nobody wanted to dig for uranium any more because there was cheap gas again. So Wyoming was perhaps dug into and gouged-out somewhat less in the years thereafter. <br /><br />But I must say that even during the worst transgressions of extraction, the place seemed to have a disdain for the coarse surgery of the extractors, as if to say, dig me up, pipe me out, stack me with tailings a mile high, go right ahead and in the end I will still be Wyoming and you will still be infinitely small specks of nothing moving around as insects upon my tattered hide, here today, tomorrow gone like tailings dust on the wind.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-46846735245620521892010-03-28T13:46:42.766-07:002010-03-28T13:46:42.766-07:00the west
is still
the best
raw bar
just because
...the west <br />is still<br />the best<br />raw bar<br /><br />just because<br />oil workers<br />make more <br />money than poets<br /><br />doesn't mean<br />that poets<br />shouldn't drive<br />west into <br />the sunset<br />on that cheap<br />gasElmo St. Rosenoreply@blogger.com