Ghost Buffalo

A review by Greg Hobbs of Belle Turnbulle's book, (Unsung Masters Series, Pleiades Press) appears in the current issue of High Country News. This is a book that my friend, David Rothman, fought hard to put into print.  A small bevy of us blurbed, reviewed, and sat on panels in order to bring Belle out of obscurity in the state and beyond.  Big thanks to Brian Calvert of High Country News for publishing it.  From Hobbs' review:  I like best the gems Turnbull sets within that narrow band of wetland seeps, wildflowers and pygym forest located just above timberline.  This is where 'ancient mysteries' govern above and beyond homesteaders, timber-cutters, and forest regulators.  In her world,  Magistrate and forester  Exist forlorn in those rude airs  Where dwell the ancient liberties. Greg Hobbs, High Country News San Miguel politician, poet, and old friend Art Goodtimes, shown here with Placerville's Rosemerry Wahtol...

The howl of the coyote is America's original national anthem.   - Dan Flores Coyote Call Love Calls Us to the Things of This World                            - Richard Wilbur The eyes open to a cry of pulleys, And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul    Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple    As false dawn.                      Outside the open window    The morning air is all awash with angels.     Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,    Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.    Now they are rising together in calm swells    Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear    With the deep joy of their impersonal breat...

The second volume of the Robert Frost Letters is out, and I've busted my budget to get my hands on a copy.  The first volume was lengthy and rich, and clearly only the tip of the trail.  A couple of fragments, from WH Pritchard's review (from the Fall, 2016 issue -- am catching up on my reading), Hopkins Review: I was determined to have it out with my youngers and betters as to what thinking really was. We reached an agreement that most of what they had regarded as thinking, their own and other people's, was nothing but voting -- taking sides on an issue they had nothing to do with laying down. Frost sets himself against "clash" in the classroom; debating and disagreeing was well enough for coming lawyers, politicians and theologians, ...but I should think there must be a whole realm or plane above that -- all sight and insight, perception, intuition, rapture ...Having ideas that are neither pro nor con.  The differences that make controversy become only t...

A horse made of driftwood walked into my dreams the other night. Soon after, an old poet appeared, riding the back of a turkey buzzard.  The elk in the road turned into a moose.  Italy paused, having lost her boot.  There were no words, but there was some sort of curtain, and some sort of curtain parting.   I woke feeling a little like Brando.  I coulda been a Krishna.   Meanwhile, after long thought, (and suddenly off the cuff), one comes to realize the lyric poem is not enough.   One has to wonder if language itself aches to escape itself.  I suspect it does.  In the wake of the boat, the row.  In the throes of the boat, the rumor of autumn.  Floods, fires, and refugees, sun, moon, and Weldon Kees.   It's when  going upstairs, not down, I tend to trip, or stumble.  Up, down, back and forth. Mumble, mumble, mumble.  My kingdom for a (deep, dark, and absolutely clear) truffle.   ...

by Peter Anderson Succubus from the tobacco leaf, sometimes I wish you would turn me loose, but you have your ways and you know where to find me, usually at night on some mountain-town sidewalk after a few beers.  You know how to get my attention, like the older but attractive woman stealing a french fry from my plate at the bar and girl.  You love to flaunt yourself.  And I am all too willing to entertain your flauntings.  Oh, Nico.  You are like the Harley-leathered bartender in that downtown Montrose tavern, one of the few places where they still let you in.  Like her, you are both attractive and dangerous, and maybe that's the appeal.  Or maybe it's how you leave me with my thoughts as I breathe you in.  How you dance your night-sky tango when I let you go.  It's true, I love to undo your slinky belt and slide off your see-through negligee.  And you smell so good when you are naked and ready to burn.  And I love the anticipati...

A poem of mine entitled "Deconstruction" in Best American Poetry, edited by Natasha Tretheway, due out in September.   Also due out in September: Nasty Women, and Unapologetic Anthology of Irreverent Verse, Lost Horse Press Aug 10: I'll be doing a reading in Edwards for the good folks at the Rocky Mountain Land Library Aug 26: I'll be co-teaching with Jodie Hollander at the Solarium for the Western Colorado Forum, 10-1, and doing a reading that evening at 8 pm at Lithic Books in Fruita, during the Jack Mueller Festival. Sept 15-16: I'll be teaching a day-long workshop in Salida, and reading at Book Haven, I believe the night before. It appears I've emerged from my hermitage.