Friday 26 February 2010

Edward Dorn: In My Youth I Was a Tireless Dancer


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File:Phenakistoscope 3g07690b.gif





But now I pass
graveyards in a car.
The dead lie,
unsuperstitiously,
with their feet toward me --
please forgive me for
saying the tombstones would not
fancy their faces turned from the highway.

Oh perish the thought
I was thinking in that moment
Newman Illinois
the Saturday night dance --
what a life? Would I like it again?
No. Once I returned late summer
from California thin from journeying
and the girls were not the same.
You'll say that's natural
they had been dancing all the time.





File:Zootsuit2.jpg






In My Youth I Was a Tireless Dancer: Edward Dorn, from Hands Up! (1964)

(The poet's friend Lucia Berlin recalled Ed's account of returning home to Villa Grove from an early trip to Southern California and attempting to make a minor splash at one of those summertime Newman, Illinois Saturday night dances: "He was about sixteen. That was when the pachuco kids out in L.A. were wearing zoot-suit pants. Ed, with his great sense of style, had brought back home the most beautiful pair of pants. He loved to talk about those pants, they were brown-and-white-striped gabardine, they had those big wide pleats, he went on and on describing the weave and the fabric of those pants. They were so fine. Well, he brought them back to Illinois, wore them to the dance -- and nobody had ever seen such a thing!")

Phenakistoscope: A Couple Waltzing: Eadweard Muybridge, c. 1893 (Library of Congress)
Soldier inspecting men wearing Zoot Suits at Woody Herman concert, Washington, D.C.: photo by John Ferrell, 1942 (Library of Congress)

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10 comments:

  1. STEPHEN RATCLIFFE26 February 2010 at 07:59

    Thanks for this Tom, and to think that (coincidence) yesterday after that long 'note' to you I ran into Joanne when I was coming out of the water, who mentioned (in passing) Ed Dorn, who shows up here. . . . Meanwhile, south wind kicking up, more rain soon ---

    2.26

    first grey light in cloud above shadowed
    ridge, red-tailed hawk calling on branch
    in foreground, waves sounding in channel

    perspective, adjusted sight
    lines in this version

    i.e., the shadow of a cloud
    passing, being itself

    silver of sunlight reflected in channel,
    white clouds in blue of sky above ridge

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  2. TC26 February 2010 at 08:46

    Thank you Stephen, lovely.


    ______

    Poem for the Day: Joanne


    the shadow of a cloud
    passing, being itself


    ______


    Wish I were there, as always.

    Yes, the wind swirling and building out of the south now. For us it's that Oh no, here it comes again feeling. (All fall apart & c.)

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  3. Pierre Joris26 February 2010 at 09:00

    A pleasure to read that poem on a snowy morning in Brooklyn — Ed's elegance was indeed part of his sharpness — Lucia's description & the photo are excellent context — thanks, Tom —

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  4. TC26 February 2010 at 09:45

    Thank you Pierre, and you are so very right about the elegance informing the sharpness.

    (I have Ur-memories of those zoot suit pants.)

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  5. Anonymous26 February 2010 at 17:48

    Not Heavily
    Wish I had been there too
    Just like that vaoporous
    bunch of sky water...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Joe Safdie26 February 2010 at 20:12

    The first time I saw Ed walk into a room at the University of Colorado, I knew he had "style" (and this was before I had really read his work) . . . but isn't that finally what attracts us to the poems we respond to?

    Style is mysterious, but it includes elegance and sharpness, a simple "rightness" . . . no extraneous words . . . (which would partly explain the period between Hello La Jolla and Abhorrences ) . . .

    I remember especially a Halloween party at Boulder when he and Jenny came as, well, denizens of the 1920s, and the hat he was wearing, and the Jack Daniels that was being passed around, and the uproarious laughter when he said that Wallace Stevens was the Christine Jorgensen of poetry . . . (well, maybe it was only me who laughed) . . .

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  7. ~otto~27 February 2010 at 16:10

    Wow, you are opening me up to some wonderful stuff, Tom. I love love love wanting to read something again right after I'm done and this is that.

    "he tombstones would not
    "fancy their faces turned from the highway."

    "thin from journeying"

    "they had been dancing all the time."

    Wow.

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  8. TC28 February 2010 at 04:49

    Thanks Otto, you've put your finger on it. I feel exactly the same way: no matter how many times I read this poem (and I've read it many, many times, over many, many years), when I've finished it I always want to read it again.

    Sometimes many, many times.

    I don't think I'll ever be done with it.

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  9. Susan Kay Anderson3 March 2010 at 10:05

    The Burdens For Edward Dorn
    They are infant sized
    versions of worry beads
    from out of Fall River
    weighing about one hundred pounds.

    They are blank clown faces
    their bodies
    are Fall River, Big Thompson.
    They float in the meadows
    as proof of some sort
    shine almost obsidian.

    The watershed is a watery muscle.
    The fish its electric impulses
    sending messages from the surface
    to the pools of deep sand.
    The burdens are all brow
    from eyelid
    to forehead
    and back round again.

    When they are hot—water sizzles
    and drops onto the grasses
    pleased to meet you
    why don’t you stay—no I can’t.

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  10. TC4 March 2010 at 01:44

    Susan,

    Thanks for the terrific poem. I think E.D. would have loved it.

    ReplyDelete