ECHOES


Step through the mirror,
faint with the old desire.

Want it again,
never mind who's the friend.

Say yes to the wasted
empty places. The guesses

Were as good as any.
No mistakes.

--from Mirrors

I just found out that Robert Creeley died. I'd been working.

At some point in 1997, I began writing to him about questions I had about poetry. I began those letters Dear Mr. Robert Creeley. Then, because of an interview I did with him, and transcribing it, it became Dear Robert Creeley. It stayed that way until I asked him to write a little thing for my first and only book. He did so, happily. Which was thrilling, because I admired his work so much and who he was beyond the work. He did the blurb, a very nice gesture, and then he began signing his name Bob in e-mails. I think I wrote a few e-mails to him as Dear Bob, but I never felt comfortable doing so. During the middle of these name fluctuations, my girlfriend and I named our Great Dane, Creeley. I wrote to tell him, and he was very honored, as he said. He then related stories about his Great Danes when he was younger.

What I mean to say by this, is that he was always--and I mean always--respectful and polite and happy to help me, a person he hardly knew. In fact, just now I am remembering the night he read in Syracuse for the Raymond Carver Series, and some of us went to a room for informal chitchat before we went out to dinner. He was aware that I wanted to do an interview with him for Salt Hill, the literary magazine run by the graduate students in the MFA program at Syracuse University. He knew this, but he didn't know who I was, until I left the room with him and Chris Kennedy, as we were going to a local restaurant, Over the Moon, now defunct. It was raining, as I remember it, and it was dark. Chris and Robert walked ahead of me, as I was entirely quiet and nervous about not making an ass out of myself. As I got near to Chris's car, Creeley turned to me and said, "You must be James Wagner". I said I was. He then did something that sums up my encounters with him. He moved from the side of the front seat passenger door, still standing outside, and came to the rear passenger side door and opened it for me. For me? I thought. (Who the hell am I?) I shyly said, "Thank you". It relaxed me a great deal. We all got into the car, drove away in the rain, while I sat staring, dumbstruck, at the back of Creeley's head.

It's a sad day for American letters, and I'm getting sadder just writing this. He was an important--even crucial--figure for me, and I just want to make that known, make that existent.

Thank you for your life and work, and your example, Bob. Best as ever, and Onward!

56


I would try to stop my students from the easy joke, the quick grin, in their poems, as I feel like those reactions are not entirely geniune. I always wanted to get them past their commonplace impulses, to get onto some new area that the humor may have wanted to hide.



55


Have almost no interest in poetry readings anymore. Have no interest in all that halfhearted schmoozing before and after.



54


Passing a sign for Temperance, Michigan, the next thing I saw was a sign for a Beef Jerky Outlet.



53



As if the world means something.

50


He read some poems by a recognized poet who had somehow never understood that preciousness is not poetry. It's not subtlety at work, but outlandish reaching for sentiment, which then becomes sentimental. Sentimentality is the exaggeration of emotion in a given situation. In other words, too much heather, too much sad wilting, too much milky skin.

49


Off and on over the last few days, I have been meaning to look into whether bears searching for salmon in rivers really do just eat the eggs of the females for the high fat content and then throw all of what people call the meat away. My friend also added that they do not bother with male salmons, tossing them back in if they accidentally catch them.




48


Not so unbelievably, there is a bar in Syracuse that was formerly a funeral home. The drive-through carportish corpse dropoff is still there.

In another part of the city, there is a bar right next door to an AA meeting place.

38


Leaving Oakland, in line at United Airlines, we are waiting along with Little Richard and his entourage. He is supposedly 72 years old. My girlfriend guesses at the number of plastic surgeries he may have had, as his face is wrinkle-free, tightened, dusted with makeup. He sits in a wheelchair, then gets up again to go the counter. He does this at least four times.




37


Somewhere in the Bay area, a company called It's-It Ice-Cream. Wondering, for a few seconds, about the owners.




36


In San Francisco for the first time, confused by the legendary status of City Lights Bookstore. Dejectedly thinking amid, this is it?