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.”