Patrick James Dunagan, City Bird and Other Poems

 

FOR JOAN BROWN

Artists of California
arrogant and young, destitute in work searching
to have something to say
painting your way out the same situation for years
you guys mock each other what fluffy puppies
the struggle is not to age your age
just maintain number as symbol or sign
age you refuse represent or embody simple
isn’t it art to walk away
doesn’t speak out against struggles you don’t get
the job isn’t to make it but to make things make it
and that job is years in coming
if then you find me riding in a Cadillac
understand it ain’t mine at all but possibly
and then typically so unlikely the driver may very well be
slipping between sedimentary levels for sentiment
give such grapple to hold the night through
a cartwheel to drive the draydel
big cats on furry lounges to tempt us
harmony in the background just like that
lettme hearya now!

Patrick James Dunagan’s latest collection City Bird and Other Poems (San Francisco CA: City Lights Books, 2024), reveals him as the most San Francisco of contemporary poets, riffing off a rich history of current and historic San Francisco poets, artists and landmarks including Bill Berkson, Lew Welch, Joanne Kyger, Sunnylyn Thibodeaux, Joan Brown, Jay DeFeo, O’Farrell Street and St. Anne of the Sunset. “One whispering tales of woe to another / cow as heavenly gargoyle / spring dazzler in mystic’s ear,” he writes, to open the poem “ST. ANNE OF THE SUNSET,” a poem for the century-plus rosy-red Catholic Church in San Francisco’s Sunset District (an area originally known as the “Outside Lands”), near Golden Gate Park. There is such a sense of wonder through Dunagan’s lyrics, offering first-person laid-back declarations on and around history, awareness and magic, articulating the ordinary dailyness of existing within such a space and place, and the layerings of contemporary and historic movement that accompany. “There is // territory and then / there is territory.” he writes, deep into the title poem. “Map is our / territory in one / case but may // not be hung // dependably upon in / the next. Whenever / you are mappable / you are immigrant. / The world hostile. // Tread with care.” Across his shorter lyrics, one particular highlight is the sequence “TWENTY-FIVE FOR LEW WELCH,” providing conversation with the work and the figure of the late American poet Lew Welch (1928-1971), stepfather to musician Huey Lewis (who picked his stage name in memoriam); the Beat Generation poet who wandered into the woods of Nevada County and was never seen again. As Dunagan writes:

As a young man Welch was among the earliest, as well as by far the most readable and enlightening, of Gertrude Stein scholars.

*          *          *

There was a riot down off Market St. in San Francisco. Welch went to check it out with Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley. Outside a bar they nearly tripped over Philip Whelan who was drying out his feet, resting them on the unusually sun-warmed pavement. “Hi, Phil,” said Notley stooping down as Welch & Berrigan went inside the bar each for a piss and beer.

*          *          *

In his interview with David Meltzer, Welch identifies Charles Parker and Jack Spicer as the two men most hellbent on self-destruction he’d ever witnessed.

*          *          *

Following his prior collections There Are People Who Say That Painters Shouldn’t Talk:A Gustonbook (Post-Apollo Press, 2011), Das Gedichtete (Ugly Duckling Presse, 20130, from Book of Kings (Bird and Beckett, 2015), Drops of Rain / Drops of Wine (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016), Sketch of the Artist (FMSBW, 2018) and After the Banished (Empty Bowl, 2022), as well as a volume of criticism, The Duncan Era (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016), the first half of City Bird and Other Poems holds the title poem, the extended lyric “City Bird,” a swirling invocation and a casual, carved patter of complex layerings. “Sounding off on / any or every / possible hushed,” he writes, as part of the first page, “occluded / effort. Channeling his / thoughts, advancing upon // the world passing // round in her / song.” It would be impossible to not get caught up in the lyric sweep, and sway, of pendulous rhythm. If there are poems that swing with swagger, Dunagan’s poems provide the exact opposite, leaning his purposeful, thoughtful meandering down the scope of each page. “Every // ounce of material // asserts if factual.” he writes, as part of the title poem. “Like a cop / exploring spaced out / hippie shit, folds / of time prove // intricate.”

12 or 20 (second series) questions for Danielle Devereaux

Danielle Devereaux's [photo credit: Leona Rockwood] poetry collection The Chrome Chair was published in April 2024 by Riddlefence Debuts. Her chapbook, Cardiogram, was published by Baseline Press (2011). Quelle Affaire, a poem in the chapbook, has been turned into a short film by filmmaker Ruth Lawrence. Danielle's poetry has appeared in Riddle Fence, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Fiddlehead, Newfoundland Quarterly and The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2011. She lives in St. John's NL, with her partner, two cats, and two kids, the eldest of which is currently petitioning hard for a blue-tongued skink; as of July 2024 no skink has been added to the household.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Cardiogram, my first chapbook, was published by Baseline Press in 2011 as part of Baseline's inaugural press run. The Chrome Chair, my first full-length collection, was published with Riddlefence as part of its inaugural run as a book publishing imprint, which is kind of a funny coincidence. How did the first publication change my life? I guess it put me out in the world as a poet in a way that I'd not been very public about prior to that. In some ways it feels like publishing The Chrome Chair will have a similar effect. With Cardiogram there were a couple of launches in Ontario, where Baseline Press is based, and I was invited to read at a couple of festivals in Newfoundland and all of that was quite fun and exciting, and then I got very quiet with my writing again. 2011 was quite a while ago (!) so it feels like publishing The Chrome Chair will put me out in the world as a poet again, and perhaps more so since it's a full-length collection this time. Hopefully, it will be well-received and I'll have the opportunity to do some readings with the full collection in hand.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I did a creative writing poetry course as part of my BA in English (a million years ago), just to try something different. It was the first time I participated in a workshop style class and honestly, it was just a lot of fun. The course was taught by Marilyn Bowering; I'm pretty sure she was at Memorial University as writer-in-residence at the time. The difference between the poems I submitted to get into the course and the poems that I was writing at the end of it was pretty big -- a very steep learning curve! With poetry, as with all writing I guess, but particularly with poetry, it's a bit like playing with building blocks, but the blocks are words. Maybe that feels more apparent in poetry because the physical form of the poem is also a part of it (e.g. 4 stanzas of 4 lines or whatever) and I guess I like that piece of it. There's something kind of tidy about setting down words in the form of a poem, even if the words in the poem might take you all over the place. Not that I'm a tidy person, quite the opposite, unfortunately, but there's something satisfying about applying order to a mess of words. Also, the first book of poetry I remember reading is Roald Dahls' Dirty Beasts, which is quite funny and dark and kind of wacky, as is a lot of his work. I know Dahl is a problematic figure for a variety of reasons, but I think reading that particular book of his as a kid gave me the freedom to see poetry as a way to have fun with words, even when you're trying to get at or understand something serious or dark. Short answer: writing poems is fun.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
It takes a while for me to start any particular project (writing projects and other types of projects too). I procrastinate. Usually too much. As for the drafts, there have been times when a poem has arrived quickly, percolating in my head for a day or two and arriving on the page quite close to its final shape, and times when the first draft is such a mess I feel like I can't string two words together, let alone write a poem.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
This particular manuscript started as a pile of poems, and I don't think I spent too much time wondering what was going to become of them in the end. The second half of The Chrome Chair does have a theme -- the life and work of Rachel Carson -- so I was thinking of that as a series of poems. I began the Rachel Carson poems in a creative writing poetry class that I did with Mary Dalton (I was hooked on Memorial University's creative writing classes for a time). In that class Mary had us write and craft our own chapbooks, which was a really lovely, hands-on creative process. I'm not sure if everyone's chapbook had a theme, but I wanted a theme for my chapbook and I had written a couple of Rachel Carson poems, so I decided to try to write more.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love going to readings. Hearing other people read often makes me want to go home and write. As for doing readings myself, I enjoy it, but it also makes me extremely nervous. Like I can't eat properly for a couple of days before the reading and then when I get to the venue my stomach feels like it might fall out on the floor kind of nervous. I have to prepare and practice what I'm going to say or else I'll either babble on forever or draw a complete blank. But at the same time, it is fun to read my work out loud and witness people's reactions to it, and if the reading goes well and people connect with the work, that connection feels great. It's too bad about my nerves being shot and my wreck of a gut though.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I guess it depends on the project. I don't think I necessarily start out with any theoretical concerns or questions, or not any that I can identify from the get-go. For this particular book I think there are some questions but I'm not sure if I'm answering or asking them, maybe a bit of both. I guess some of these questions would be: what role does gender play in the ways we experience the world? Who gets to become a pop culture icon and who does not? What difference does place, gender, time make? Something about cultural identity narratives...But I don't think I really sat down with the intention of asking or answering any of those questions in the poems, they just happen to be questions that interest me and so they show up in my writing. The current questions? I'm not sure I can even go there. So much about our current world is sad and horrible, maybe it always has been, but these days we can see all that horror and sadness on all our screens in real time every second of the day... I don't know -- how to still see the beauty (because there is still much beauty too), celebrate the beauty without denying the sadness and horror? How to hang on to hope?  

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I think writing, or perhaps more specifically the written word, whether that be poetry or fiction or nonfiction, does have the ability to spark connections. When you read a work and it makes you feel something, makes the gears in your brain spin or your heart jump, that's a connection, an "ah yes, I am more than a cog in the wheel of the capitalist patriarchy" kind of moment. I do think these types of connections are important. And pretty wild when you think about the fact that they can take place across time, culture, race, gender, etc. I don't think it's only writing that does that, lots of art forms do, but maybe that's the role of the writer -- to spark connections, or one of the roles anyway.  

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I love working with an editor! Having another set of eyes on work that my eyes can hardly bear to look at anymore is definitely essential.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
You know how people say if something is worth doing, it's worth doing right? Well, I found the following rebuttal helpful in the face of trying to actually finish and let go of this manuscript: if something is worth doing, it's worth doing to the best of your ability at this particular juncture, in the time you have available to you right now. It's never going to be perfect -- the conditions under which you're writing, nor the manuscript, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Maybe if I'd done more courses, if I'd read more books, if I'd waited for a variety of circumstances to be different, this book would be better, but that could've gone on forever, and none of us get forever.

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I don't have a writing routine, which I tend to see as one of my personal flaws. I've never been very good at prioritizing my writing and now that I have two little kids it's pretty easy to let their care and happiness (and my bill-paying day job) take priority. I've been lucky enough to do a couple of stints at the Banff Writing Studio (pre-kiddos), which was amazing and super productive. But my life isn't really set up to spend the majority of my days writing in a hotel room while someone else does all the cooking and makes my bed while I'm out hiking! At present I don't actually have a room of my own to write in, I'm hoping some simple home renos will fix that sooner rather than later and then maybe I'll sort out some semblance of a routine? A gal can dream anyway.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
If I'm not writing at all, binge-reading, like just reading and reading and reading, usually makes me want to write. Sometimes I re-read books that I know I love, sometimes I go looking for something new. If I am writing, but the writing is stuck and just feels bad, going for a long walk alone often helps.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Blasty boughs, lilacs, wild roses and toast (but not all at once).

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Conversations, or more specifically the turns of phrase people use in conversation, pop culture and the news (when I can stomach it) have all had an influence on my work up to this point.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Mary Dalton has been very important to my work as a mentor, friend and poet. I love Karen Solie's poetry and Sue Goyette's work; there are so many poets in Canada to admire! I like reading Irish writers too -- Anne Enright, Elaine Feeney, Louise Kennedy. In terms of The Chrome Chair, Stephanie Bolster's collection White Stone: The Alice Poems, which is about Alice Liddle of Alice in Wonderland fame, was definitely part of my inspiration to write Rachel Carson poems. Originally I thought I'd do a whole book of Rachel Carson poems; Bolster's collection is a whole book of Alice poems, but that's not what happened. The Chrome Chair is divided into two sections and the second second section focuses on Carson. Figuring out how to combine the Rachel Carson poems with the non-Rachel Carson poems was a challenge, but my editor, Sandra Ridley was really helpful with that (Sandra is awesome).

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I'd love to go to Iceland. Iceland is sometimes spoken about here as the kind of country Newfoundland could've been if we'd become independent instead of joining Canada. I'm not sure if that's true, but I'd still love to see it for myself.

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I sometimes wish I'd done something more practical and/or helpful, like medicine or nursing: "Here, let me reset that bone/stitch up that wound for you!" Those would be good skills to have. But I don't know if I'd have been good at any of that. I thought I wanted to be an academic for a while, I started but did not complete a PhD in communication studies. Quitting the PhD was a difficult decision, but I don't regret it. Narrating audio books seems like it'd be a good gig. It'd be fun to give that a try.  

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I don't think I ever really set out to be a writer, or anything else in particular. I've never been very good at long term planning or goal-setting, it's been more of a "let's try this and see what happens" approach to things, so I'm lucky and I feel grateful that it's worked out that I get to do this, to publish a book of poems.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I'll give you two books because I mostly watch kids movies these days and I'm not sure Paddington 2 is really what you're looking for (though I honestly cannot wait for Paddington 3 to come out). The End of the World is a Cul-de-Sac -- isn't that an awesome title? -- a short story collection by the Irish writer Louise Kennedy. It's one of those books that's so good it hurts. And I just finished Vigil, a collection of linked short stories by local writer Susie Taylor, which I read all in one gulp. Also heart-breakingly good and set in contemporary outport Newfoundland.

19- What are you currently working on?
After I signed off on the absolute final, no more changes could possibly be made, page proofs of The Chrome Chair I felt wrung out, like I'd never write another word. I'd been working on the manuscript that became The Chrome Chair off and on for about 17 years and I thought I'd be nothing but relieved to be done with it, and I am happy with how it turned out, but also it feels a bit weird, lonely even, not to have a bunch of poems hanging over my head, so maybe that means I need to find a new writing project. TBD.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Samuel Ace, I want to start by saying

 

I want to start by saying I hear the filter in the turtle tank like a fountain.

 

I want to start by saying like a fountain in the middle of a field of wildflowers.

 

I want to start by saying that today would have been my father’s 84^th birthday,
            that he died eighteen days before his 79^th.

 

I want to start by saying that he was young and that death took him by surprise.

 

I want to start by saying that my mother died nine months ago, less than four
            and a half years after my father.

 

I want to start by saying the beginning of this sentence.

 

I want to start by saying that a child could have been born in that time.

 

I want to start by saying that a whole year has gone by since my godchild’s birth.

And so begins the accumulative book-length poem by American poet Samuel Ace, the deeply intimate I want to start by saying (Cleveland ON: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2024), a work composed from a central, repeating prompt. The structure is reminiscent of the echoes the late Noah Eli Gordon proffered, composing book-length suites of lyrics, each poem of which shared the same title—specifically Is That the Sound of a Piano Coming from Several Houses Down? (New York NY: Solid Objects, 2018) [see my review of such here] and The Source (New York NY: Futurepoem Books, 2011) [see my review of such here]—or, perhaps a better example, the late Saskatchewan poet John Newlove’s poem “Ride Off Any Horizon,” a poem that returned to that same central, repeated mantra (one he originally composed with the idea of removing, aiming to utilize as prompt-only, but then couldn’t remove once the poem was fleshed out). “I want to start by saying,” Ace writes, line after line after line, allowing that anchor to hold whatever swirling directions or digressions the text might offer, working through the effects that history, prejudice and grief has on the body and the heart. I want to start by saying articulates past racial violence in Cleveland, subdivisions, loss, “trans and queer geographics of family and home,” chronic illness, love and parenting, stretched across one hundred and fifty pages and into the hundreds of accumulated direct statements. Amid a particular poignant cluster, he writes: “I want to start by saying that I accepted the conditions of my father’s love.” There is something of the catch-all to Ace’s subject matter, the perpetually-begun allowing the narratives to move in near-infinite directions. As it is, the poem loops, layers and returns, offering narratives that are complicated, as is often the way of family, writing of love and of fear and of a grief that never truly goes away. Further, on his father: “I want to start by saying I was frightened to upset the balance of our connection.”

            I want to start by saying that I’ve been out of the house twice today.

 

            I want to start by saying that now I am sitting with a friend over coffee.
                        She mourns the loss of friends because she’s in love with someone who is trans.

 

            I want to start by saying the familiarity of so many stories.

 

            I want to start by saying that I mourn the rise of rivers, the smell of creosote,
                        the relief of summer monsoons.

And yet, through Ace’s perpetual sequence of beginnings, one might even compare this book-length poem to the late Alberta poet Robert Kroetsch’s conversations of the delay, delay, delay: his tantric approach to the long poem, always back to that central point; simultaneously moving perpetually outward and back to the beginning. “I want to start by saying the deep orange skies of the monsoon.” he writes, mid-way through the collection. “I want to start by saying we have returned to Tucson.” Set into an ongoingness, the lines and poems of Samuel Ace’s I want to start by saying is structured into clusters, allowing the book-length suite a rhythm that doesn’t overwhelm, but unfolds, one self-contained cluster at a time. His lines and layerings are deeply intimate, setting down a deeply felt moment of grace and contemplation. The book moves through the strands and layers of daily journal, writing of daily activity and thoughts as well as where he emerged; how those moments helped define his choices through the ability to reject small-mindeded prejudices. Through the threads of I want to start by saying, Samuel Ace may be articulating where he emerged, but all that he is not; all he has gained, has garnered, and all he has left behind. As he writes, early on:

I want to start by saying perfect in what world.

I want to start by saying desire.