twin peaks “there is a sadness in this world” / richard jackson “sometimes I don’t know how to live in the world. why is there always this scent of sorrow?” / hayden carruth “I had always been aware that the universe is sad; everything in it, animate or inanimate, the wild creatures, the stones, the stars, was enveloped in the great sadness, pervaded by it” / padraig o tuama “not all sadness comes from you, but sometimes you are just wearing the world’s sadness for a while and trying to figure out what to do with that” / ada limón “there is a solitude in this world I cannot pierce” / rainer maria rilke “don’t be afraid to suffer—take your heaviness and give it back to the earth’s own weight; the mountains are heavy, the oceans are heavy”
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Winter ending in the last days of March. How many times has the season come and gone, with this soft inexorability? Bare patches in the meadow,snowmelt tricking down the hill in hundreds of little channels, steam rising from the sugarhouse across the valley. Someone is busy over there.
Hayden Carruth, "End of Winter" from Doctor Jazz
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.. senza parole o tocco o sguardo
furtivo, io mi stringo a te, e so
di essere accettato senza parole o tocco o sguardo
furtivo.
Hayden Carruth, da Poesia di Aurbun
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Hayden Carruth:
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silence by Hayden Carruth
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o.canada :: [thanks Paul Corby]
* * * *
The Curtain
BY HAYDEN CARRUTH
Just over the horizon a great machine of death is roaring and rearing.
We can hear it always. Earthquake, starvation, the ever-renewing sump of corpse-flesh.
But in this valley the snow falls silently all day, and out our window
We see the curtain of it shifting and folding, hiding us away in our little house,
We see earth smoothened and beautified, made like a fantasy, the snow-clad trees
So graceful. In our new bed, which is big enough to seem like the north pasture almost
With our two cats, Cooker and Smudgins, lying undisturbed in the southeastern and southwestern corners,
We lie loving and warm, looking out from time to time. “Snowbound,” we say. We speak of the poet
Who lived with his young housekeeper long ago in the mountains of the western province, the kingdom
Of cruelty, where heads fell like wilted flowers and snow fell for many months
Across the pass and drifted deep in the vale. In our kitchen the maple-fire murmurs
In our stove. We eat cheese and new-made bread and jumbo Spanish olives
Which have been steeped in our special brine of jalapeños and garlic and dill and thyme.
We have a nip or two from the small inexpensive cognac that makes us smile and sigh.
For a while we close the immense index of images that is our lives—for instance,
The child on the Mescalero reservation in New Mexico sitting naked in 1966 outside his family’s hut,
Covered with sores, unable to speak. But of course we see the child every day,
We hold out our hands, we touch him shyly, we make offerings to his implacability.
No, the index cannot close. And how shall we survive? We don’t and cannot and will never
Know. Beyond the horizon a great unceasing noise is undeniable. The machine,
Like an immense clanking vibrating shuddering unnameable contraption as big as a house, as big as the whole town,
May break through and lurch into our valley at any moment, at any moment.
Cheers, baby. Here’s to us. See how the curtain of snow wavers and then falls back.
Hayden Carruth, “The Curtain” from Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey: Poems, 1991-1995. Copyright © 1996 by Hayden Carruth. Reprinted with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P. O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
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Letter to Denise // Hayden Carruth
Remember when you put on that wig
From the grab bag and then looked at yourself
In the mirror and laughed, and we laughed together?
It was a transformation, glamorous flowing tresses.
Who knows if you might not have liked to wear
That wig permanently, but of course you
Wouldn’t. Remember when you told me how
You meditated, looking at a stone until
You knew the soul of the stone? Inwardly I
Scoffed, being the backwoods pragmatic Yankee
That I was, yet I knew what you meant. I
Called it love. No magic was needed. And we
Loved each other too, not in the way of
Romance but in the way of two poets loving
A stone, and the world that the stone signified.
Remember when we had that argument over
Pee and piss in your poem about the bear?
“Bears don’t pee, they piss,” I said. But you were
Adamant. “My bears pee.” And that was that.
Then you moved away, across the continent,
And sometimes for a year I didn’t see you.
We phoned and wrote, we kept in touch. And then
You moved again, much farther away, I don’t
Know where. No word from you now at all. But
I am faithful, my dear Denise. And I still
Love the stone, and, yes, I know its soul.
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A poem by Hayden Carruth
Essay
So many poems about the deaths of animals.
Wilbur’s toad, Kinnell’s porcupine, Eberhart’s squirrel,
and that poem by someone–Hecht? Merrill?–
about cremating a woodchuck. But mostly
I remember the outrageous number of them,
as if every poet, I too, had written at least
one animal elegy; with the result that today
when I came to a good enough poem by Edwin Brock
about finding a dead fox at the edge of the sea
I could not respond; as if permanent shock
had deadened me. And then after a moment
I began to give way to sorrow (watching myself
sorrowlessly the while), not merely because
part of my being had been violated and annulled,
but because all these many poems over the years
have been necessary–suitable and correct. This
has been the time of the finishing off of the animals.
They are going away–their fur and their wild eyes,
their voices. Deer leap and leap in front
of the screaming snowmobiles until they leap
out of existence. Hawks circle once or twice
around their shattered nests and then they climb
to the stars. I have lived with them fifty years,
we have lived with them fifty million years,
and now they are going, almost gone. I don’t know
if the animals are capable of reproach.
But clearly they do not bother to say good-bye.
Hayden Carruth
(1921-2008)
Listen to Hayden Carruth read his poem (29:44).
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Hayden Carruth – Ensaio
(...) Esta / tem sido a era de acabar com os animais. / Eles estão partindo – seus pelos e seus olhos selvagens, / suas vozes. Cervos saltam e saltam na frente / de estridentes snowmobiles até pularem para / fora da existência. (...)
Tantos poemas sobre mortes de animais.O sapo de Wilbur, o ouriço de Kinnell, o esquilo de Eberhart,e aquele poema de alguém – Hecht? Merrill? –sobre cremar uma marmota. Mas sobretudoeu me lembro do número ultrajante deles,como se todo poeta, inclusive eu, tivesse escrito ao menosuma elegia animal; como resultado, hoje, quando cheguei a um poema suficientemente bom de Edwin Brocksobre encontrar…
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From Snow and Rock, from Chaos by Hayden Carruth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A gathering of Carruth's poems written between 1965 and 1973. Carruth is always a pleasure to read and he is fine form here as he examines his life, the people and the landscape of the Green Mountains of Vermont where he lived at the time.
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Hayden Carruth - Bears at Raspberry Time
Fear. Three bears
are not fear, mother
and cubs come berrying
in our neighborhood
like any other family.
I want to see them, or any
distraction. Flashlight
poking across the brook
into briary darkness,
but they have gone,
noisily. I go to bed.
Fear. Unwritten books
already titled. Some
idiot will shoot the bears
soon, it always happens,
they’ll be strung up by the paws
in someone’s frontyard
maple to be admired and
measured, and I'll be paid
for work yet to be done—
with a broken imagination.
At last I dream. Our
plum tree, little, black,
twisted, gaunt in the
orchard: how for a moment
last spring it flowered
serenely, translucently
before yielding its usual
summer crop of withered
leaves. I waken, late,
go to the window, look
down to the orchard.
Is middle age what makes
even dreams factual?
The plum is serene and
bright in new moonlight,
dressed in silver leaves,
and nearby, in the waste
of rough grass strewn
in moonlight like diamond dust,
what is it?—a dark shape
moves, and then another.
Are they ... I can’t
be sure. The dark house
nuzzles my knee mutely,
pleading for meaty dollars.
Fear. Wouldn’t it be great
to write nothing at all
except poems about bears?
- Bears at Raspberry Time by Hayden Carruth
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Perché parlare dell’uso della poesia? È la poesia che ci usa.
Hayden Carruth
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So the version I shared on instagram was different, but some digging yielded the original published version.
Under the Long Wind (Part III-EXCERPT)
BY HAYDEN CARRUTH
To dull the ache of love,
To turn away from want,
To take the limits of
One’s means, and not to flaunt
One’s pity, is what’s meant
By being self-content
I dreamt I lived by the sea
And made my poems there
And sea-birds came to me
And stood about my chair
And in that parliament
Silent, I was content
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scrambled eggs and whiskey by Hayden Carruth
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