EOU FACULTY SCHOLARS PROGRAM
Partial Summer Stipend Final Report
October 2009
What’s Close to Me
Professor of English
College of Arts and Sciences
During the summer of 2009, the author completed three quarters of his second booklength poetry manuscript, What’s Close to Me. The manuscript should be completed and ready for submission to publishers by early spring 2010. The new manuscript continues to explore the author’s themes—the overlay of memory and experience, the entangling of personal and social history, and the dialogue between art and life.
Several poems have already been or soon will be published, three in important books: “Along the Snake” and “Ladd Marsh in Poor Weather” will appear in Writing Home: An Eastern Oregon Anthology, published by the Libraries of Eastern Oregon. Out of over 400 submissions by eastern Oregon’s major and minor poets, 100 poems were selected for publication, including two of this author’s. “In the Way of the World” will appear in Aspects of Robinson: Homage to Weldon Kees, forthcoming from Backwaters Press in 2010. Wolff will appear with the nation’s leading poets as they provide poems and brief reflections on the life and influence of the 1950s San Francisco poet Weldon Kees. The generation of Wolff’s poem will be the subject of a faculty colloquium at Eastern in April 2010, entitled “The Mysteries of Poetic Inquiry: The Recondite Processes of Poetry Composition Finally Uncovered!” Here is how the poet describes his forthcoming presentation:
Prof. Wolff will review the generation of one of his poems from What’s Close to Me, his new manuscript. He will analyze the composition of “In the Way of the World,” an open letter to the deceased 50s San Francisco poet Weldon Kees. To examine the production of the poem, Wolff will employ Eastern’s lenses of inquiry—the central, self-generated question leading to deeper understanding, the poetic method with close attention to form and tradition, the technology of poem writing as represented in the processes of composing, and the use of relevant research to enhance the project. This examination of poetic method promises to uncover many of the mysteries of poetry writing. However, it would be wise to keep in mind Plato’s maxim that poets are not to be trusted—plenty of questions about poetry writing are likely to remain, if the audience does not pursue them vigorously in an attempt to pin down this poet—any poet—once and for all.
The Golden Gate Bridge in Black & White
Five poems from the new manuscript are currently under consideration at the Cloudbank Contest, with winners announced in November 2009. Five prose poems are under consideration at Sentence. The author has been asked to do a reading and poetry workshop in John Day for the Juniper Arts Council, November 3-4, 2009. The workshop will focus on Two Forms: The Prose Poem and The Short-Line Poem.
The Author Reads at Stayton
The poet started the new manuscript the summer of 2008 with a month-long residency at the Whiteley Center, the artists’ retreat attached to the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories. Completed there was the following poem commemorating the stay:
The Author's Whitely Desk
San Juan Island Respite
In a long car-line for the ferry to Friday Harbor, I saw a blue heron
riding the moist current, its neck tucked in, legs floating behind.
Well before docking, I caught a glimpse of a minke whale, the short
gray dorsal speeding away from us and the noisy churning of the diesels.
Coming slowly into the dock, a motorized dingy with three girls sped by,
the brunette holding onto the outboard, thrusting her hips gracelessly
side to side. They came back for another run, the blonde mooning us
as they skimmed into the usual irreverence of the young who don’t yet know
what’s at stake or what to look for in a world not watching us. Over Dream Lake
a bald eagle was hunting a hawk, the two trading arcs over the dark blue
water. The eagle sought purchase, but the hawk flew upward in tight circles,
tiring the larger raptor, which gave up and wheeled out to the west to hunt
for easier prey. At Lime Kiln State Park observation point while I searched
the horizon for the promised orcas, directly below me a Harbor seal floated
on its belly, head angled comfortably just above the waterline, mottled torso
arched downward, the rear flippers folded deftly backwards together in prayer.
Donald Wolff White Clouds Press © 2009
Also completed at the Whiteley Center was an elegy for the wildland firefighters who died the summer of 2008 fighting The Panther Fire on the California/Oregon border:
Wildland Trees Ablaze
The Panther Fire
—near Happy Camp, CA 2008
August fifth at the Iron Complex fire nine died when their copter suddenly
lost power, blades hitting nearby trees bringing down the Sikorsky,
which flipped over, catching fire as the hotshots waiting to be airlifted
back to camp had then to watch helplessly, the elements in reverse alchemy,
earth, fire, wind charring their hopes into our memory. One of those who
survived reported a burning body landing on him that he had to climb out
from under and then kick out a window to escape before the chopper slipped
down a ravine to burst into irredeemable flame.
We see how little there is
to count on but we are still a little unclear about what luck is and what will
can do for us. Three who died wanted to become firefighters, already captive
to the majesty of the air lit from inside, ground to sky, but for one newlywed
it was to be his last summer on a hand crew, wishing to change to lowland
business far from the danger of ever-burning trees. Three were from the nearby
university, communications majors, our words all that’s left for them now.
The oldest to die just retired from CAL Fire days before, then signed up
with the Forest Service as inspector only there that day to ensure run, pilot,
and mission followed the prescribed guidelines. The wife of the pilot believes
he was already half way to heaven whenever he flew and said she expects
she will see him there. One of the survivors recalls little except chanting
as he scrambled out—I’m not dying. I’m not dying. . . .
But fifty miles south
ten days before at the Panther Fire a veteran chief was scouting the burn
when it turned on him and his partner—the partner chose to sprint
through dense underbrush that the chief may have thought would trap
him so he deployed what was his last resort—his fire shelter—
woven silica laminated to aluminum for an outer shell while
inside he lay down in fiber glass and more aluminum to die
of burns and smoke. The next day an eighteen-year-old rookie
was holding a fire line when a tree collapsed on him crushing his leg.
He died of cardiac arrest on the tarmac between heliport and hospital.
My son’s crew started to work that fire digging out the line
behind the dozer, my boy chopping through with the polaski—
half ax half hoe—with the rest of the crew behind him with shovels
and hoes to clear the brush. That day his friend, our neighbor’s son,
was lookout on a mountaintop nearby—the next night the entire crest
was a single immense flame filling my son’s wide pupils, firing singly
across his retinas, his mind’s eye where it will never fade.
His crew had to hold the fire line standing with their backs
to oncoming flames, maybe keeping an occasional eye on them,
but the real job was watching for embers jumping the line seeking purchase,
then choking them, beating them, getting them out. When he called, my son said
he had heard a tree crest explode right behind him—a shower of glowing cinders
raining down, adrenaline making him jump and set to work where soon more
crew joined him.
Seventeen-hour day but that night they slept deeply
on the mountainside, the ground cool, then rose early with the sun to start
mop up—stumpholing first to find any tree stumps where fire settles in so deep
it can burn for a decade or more as the heat travels through the thick roots to bide
its time in the dark earth until air finds it long after we’ve turned our attention.
When the crew finds a stump they dig it out with axes and shovels coldtrailing
roots to drown the heat with water from the five-gallon bladder bags each man
carries up the mountain on his shoulders above his forty-pound hip pack—water
dead weight the earth keeps calling back to itself.
Donald Wolff White Clouds Press © 2009
Wildland Firefighters
Tangibles
In 2004 the author received an EOU Faculty Scholars Award for what became Soon Enough, a booklength manuscript of poetry published by Wordcraft in December 2007—the award led directly to the publication of a book. A poem from that book was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, a prestigious national award. In 2008, three poems appeared in Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poetry and Poetics from California, where they were housed with many of the nation’s most important contemporary American poets who have California roots, including Dorianne Laux, Philip Levine, Larry Levis, Diane Wakoski, Charles Wright, and Gary Young. Soon Enough expanded a sabbatical project, a poetry chapbook entitled Some Days, published by Brandenburg Press in spring 2004. In 2005 the author received a summer stipend for writing a manuscript of creative nonfiction, entitled Distractions. While that ms. continues to search for its publisher, a number of poems for What’s Close to Me were developed from those creative nonfiction pieces. Below, after the title poem for the new collection, is a record of the author's creative publications and presentations to date.
What’s Close to Me
This morning I found our bird at the bottom of her cage
and immediately wondered what I had done or not done—
when did I become responsible for every living thing?
Our Venezuelan Celestial Parrotlet, Georgie, had been
with us for a decade and should have had another in her—
we had carried her with us all the way from Illinois.
Of course it was to be the children’s pet to take care of
and of course they never did the daily feeding and watering,
discouraged once it had pinched a finger or bit an earlobe—
at birth the hatchlings have to be separated from the father
or it will peck at the bald heads until the chicks are dead.
I would put my finger to the cage and Georgie would nip
at it, trying to do some damage or maybe just saying
hello, but I would be sure to pull it back just in time.
I invited my sister to let the bird nip her finger but didn’t
tell her to be careful of the sharp beak. The bird bit hard
and my sister looked at me as if I had planned it forever.
By now I should know how easily I can lose what’s dear
just from forgetting or from failing to pay enough attention.
Maybe that’s the story of my first marriage where I was
able to live quietly with little to show for eleven fast years.
Whenever I have nothing to say, something near me dies,
certainly that’s what happened in the white hospital room
where my mother lay after the operation and the surgeon
said little could be done when her large intestine fell to
pieces in his hands. My sister and my first wife stayed
for the changing of the bandages on the gaping wound
but I had to leave that room, only to return to kiss her
forehead goodbye and inadvertently lean on the incision
which brought a sharp look of pain and anger to focus
her morphined eyes directly on mine and the shock
of it prevented me from whispering even a sorry for
all the pain I had caused. And I wasn’t there when
my stepfather died from stomach cancer but I thought
just as well. I was a thousand miles away from
the heartache he had caused for three endless decades
of scotch, broken glassware, and flying typewriters.
But I don’t know what I would have said. I never
found the right words for him or my mother or sister.
So now I’ve been cured of hope and just wait for the next
blow, when the sky turns a final gray, the trees flatten,
and I will once again have to kiss the dead goodbye.
Donald Wolff White Clouds Press © 2009
Hell's Canyon
Books
Individual Pieces
Readings, Contests, Residencies
San Juan Island Forrest