Notes on the Possibilities and Attractions of Existence

by Anselm Hollo, Robert Creeley (Introduction)

Overview

Table of Contents

Part One
Excerpts from a June Journal
Beans
June 1, 1991: Sleeping Late
June 16, 1991: Final Foal
Journal Entry, PoBiz, Texas
Notes from My Journal, Kyoto, December 1984

Part Two
Interstices
Swimming and Writing
Motherhood and Poetics
October 4, 1995
For Anne at Passover
Recitations
First Loves

Part Three
An Appreciation of Marianne Moore's Selected Letters
This Curious Silent Unrepresented Life
Josephine Jacobsen
Back to the Fairground: Mona Van Duyn
A Postcard from the Volcano
Essay on Robert Frost

Part Four
Trochee, Trimeter, and the MRI: On A Shropshire Lad
Gymnastics: The Villanelle
A Way of Staying Sane
Word for Word: "Poem for My Son"
Scrubbed Up and Sent to School

Part Five
Keynote Address, PEN-New England, April 11, 1999
Premonitory Shiver
Two Junes

Part Six
Interview

from an interview with Enid Shomer

ES: I know that there are many poets whose work you admire, but who has exerted the most influence on you?

MK: Auden, unquestionably. Almost everything I know how to do with the line, I learned from absorbing Auden.

ES: You never met him?

MK: No. I probably attended a dozen readings he gave, in and around Boston, in his carpet slippers. I worshipped him from afar. Today, it must seem a strange influence, and Anglo-American male. You'd expect I would say—I don't know—but some woman role model. There really was no one at the time.

ES: Marianne Moore?

MK: Hardly. She was inimitable, in the firest sense of that word. And Elizabeth Bishop was just too distant and too classical. But when I was sixteen, I adored Edna St. Vincent Millay; I could say lots of her sonnets by heart, and that was all to the good. Auden exerted an intellectual and visceral influence on me, though, metrically, in terms of rhyme and scansion, and his ability to compress those gifts into images, to make a metaphor of a thought: "In the nightmare of the dark / All the dogs of Europe bark."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781566891134
Publisher:	Coffee House Press
Publication date:	06/01/2001
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Anselm Hollo is the author of more than forty books and an award-winning translator. Born in Helsinki, Finland, Hollo has lived in the United States for thirty-seven years and now teaches at Naropa Universityin Boulder, Colorado. His most recent collection of poems, Notes on the Possibilities and Attractions of Existence, received the San Francisco Poetry Center Award.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

    FROM

    & It Is a Song

    1965

    Air, to Dream in

    Leave it, leave it

  behind the dark
  window the owls
  calling out to each other
  my voice to you
                   only heard
there in the dark
treetops of the sea

red the moon rose
cooled off shrunk
to a coin in the blue

alone it is if it is
a poem for you

    The Red Piano

      A red piano
he says
      a red piano.
I never saw one.
I knew a man who had a red typewriter,
he hardly ever used it.
      A red piano.
Would it be lighter to carry upstairs
than a black one?
      A red piano, a red piano.
Let us think more musical thoughts.

    FROM

    Faces & Forms

    1966

    La Noche

the wind let loose in the dark
and the lights of the city moving

the city is a great dragon it is a procession
          it is on the move

but the curtains are drawn
the music unheard

see men and women preparing themselves
for the long journey across a room

The Low Black Square
            for Josephine Clare

is a table
once upon a time
its legs were longer
but I sawed them off
I sawed and sawed
one of them always shorter
than the other three and so
it got a little too low
in the end

kind visitors breathed
"ah, Japanese"

and on the black square
the tile-red cylinder
in a pitcher we found in Venice
there are flowers
they are flowers

they're just some flowers

    FROM

    The Coherences

    1968

    Introduction

the poet Vallejo invented new ways of walking
sitting lightly on wooden Metro benches
not to wear out his trousers
not to wear out his shoes

in the secret code of his poems
he describes those inventions

    The Empress Hotel Poems

I
Just get up
and sit down again. Then
    you can watch the dust
        settle.
Or wait for the Irishman to come round
knock on your door again. Twice
    he's asked me
first, the time, and then
"would you know of anyplehs I could get a job sirr—
        lehborin', that is."
They won't take him, he looks too
purgatorial. Poor soul
8 days over from Eire
        where they have strikes.

II
Typewriter banging
better than radio for company.
Sheets of translation pile up. Too many
    words, too many
other men's words
       bang through my head. Why don't they learn English
in Finland. Why don't they learn Finnish Swedish German
    in England, Old and New.
They're just being kind to you, Anselm.
    They don't learn,
       you earn.

III
The old housekeeper lady downstairs
    likes the stamps. She says could you
let me have them if you're going to throw them away
         anyway. Mr. Burroughs she says
    always did that, he always
         gave me the stamps. He got a lot of
            mail, too.
I give them to her. We are
    Burroughs Hollo Saarikoski Ball
         we are Mrs. Hardy's
    nice writing gentlemen.

IV
White smoke from Battersea Power Station
    rises moon star London city light
beam from the airport
sweeps the sky. I switch the room light
    on and off and on, light dark light dark.
       It occurs to me
    I'm trying to tell you
       what goes on inside me.
          Out there
       they'll suspect
          a Chinese spy.
Ha. Battersea Beast on its back
pushing vapor puffs through the soles of its feet
          for fun.

V
Go through my things
    god knows what you'll find. When I'm not here.
I'm not here, in this poem
I'm in another room, writing praises
         of their loveliness and terror
the ones that dance through my mind
         not endlessly, but to be one, at one
                          with them
                      I want to be.
                  I want to be one,
             I want her to be one
         when the voice begins
     she is, and she dances.
I am the voice. I praise.
There is
no mind.

VI
To return and find
2 men in gray suits who have come to look at me through their eyes
    and say Mr. H. is this yours? You know they're illegal
       in this country. Oh I didn't know.
    Well they are, you better get rid of it. OK.
They go, and I think
    it is a good thing to have more than one room.
What would they say
if they found what I have
in the other poem.

Table of Contents

	from & It Is A Song (1965)
	Air, to Dream In	2
	The Red Piano	3
	from Faces & Forms (1966)
	La Noche	5
	The Low Black Square	6
	from The Coherences (1968)
	Introduction	8
	The Empress Hotel Poems	9
	Instances	12
	For the Sea-Sons and Daughters We All Are	15
	The Coherences	16
	Isadora	19
	Buffalo--Isle of Wight Power Cable	20
	Possible Definitions of 'Beauty' and 'Happiness'	21
	The Charge	22
	Le Jazz Hot	23
	The One	23
	from Haiku (1968)
	5 & 7 & 5	25
	from Tumbleweed (1968)
	Chanson	29
	Tumbleweed	30
	from Maya (1970)
	Man Animal Clock of Blood	32
	That Old Sauna High	33
	In the Octagonal Room	34
	Bits of Soft Anxiety	35
	Your Friend	36
	Sunset with Blame	38
	The New Style Western	39
	Elegy	40
	They	40
	Rain	41
	Any News from Alpha Centauri	42
	He She Because How	44
	Traveler	46
	As It Is	47
	De Amore	48
	from Sensation 27 (1972)
	"it is a well-lit afternoon"	51
	"in love we loaf"	53
	At This Point, the Moon	54
	After Verlaine	55
	Dining Out Alone	55
	Autobiographical Broadcasting Corporation	56
	Double Martini	56
	Zooming	57
	Antioch, Illinois	58
	Strange Encounter	58
	To Be Born Again	59
	"the force of being she released in him being"	60
	"cloud of dust or roses (rose) in the head"	60
	"grew up in Finland"	61
	Elephant Rock	62
	1939	62
	"one of the pines has a bend in it"	63
	"where was it I"	64
	from Some Worlds (1974)
	"it is said the Chinese believe that the human eye"	66
	"Once in Khairouan ..."	66
	"anyone, say, a girl named May"	67
	Things to Do in Salzburg	68
	from Black Book (1974)
	World World World	70
	Marchen (Beginner's Luck)	75
	No Money	75
	Classroom	76
	Tremendous Wind and Rain	76
	The Walden Variations	77
	Indian Summers	78
	from Motes & Paramecia (1976)
	Song 1	80
	Song 7	81
	Bicentennial	82
	Life 2	82
	Message	83
	"the beetle wakes up"	84
	La Cucaracha	84
	from Lingering Tangos (1977)
	You	86
	Info	86
	"nightfall image:"	87
	Saturday	87
	from Heavy Jars (1977)
	"awkward spring"	89
	Helsinki, 1940	90
	"slowly"	91
	In a Tin Can Mirror	92
	"summer nights"	93
	"the language"	94
	"it is the thinking"	95
	Big Dog	97
	Dedication: A Toke for Li Po	98
	from Lunch In Fur (1978)
	"memory rain pride wind"	100
	"kicking Manhattan to pieces every night"	101
	"Po Chu-yi heard them ..."	102
	"animation subsides into terminal slapstick"	102
	"in the Marshall Minnesota Quickstop"	103
	from With Ruth In Mind (1979)
	Or, to Hocus the Animals of the Pursuers ...	105
	from Finite Continued (1980)
	Behaviorally	114
	Southwest Minnesota	115
	The Years	116
	TV (1)	117
	TV (2)	117
	from No Complaints (1983)
	Manifest Destiny	119
	Songs of the Sentence Cubes	120
	Doc Holliday	122
	The Images of Day Recede	123
	Romance	124
	Dirge	126
	Ten Cheremiss (Mari) Songs	127
	No Complaints	130
	from Pick Up The House (1986)
	Valid	133
	Some	133
	Sorpresa	134
	Page	135
	On the Occasion of a Poet's Death	136
	Letter	136
	See You Later	137
	Put in a Quaver, Here and There	139
	Late Night Dream Movies	141
	An Autobiography	144
	De Amor y Otras Cosas	145
	from Outlying Districts (1990)
	Diary	149
	Pocatello, Idaho	150
	Anti-Lullaby	151
	The Ass Waggeth His Ears	152
	The Tenth of May (1988)	153
	In the Land of Art	154
	Tarp	155
	In the "Hip" Little Bookshop	156
	"It Was All About ..."	157
	In the Library of Poets' Recordings	158
	Letter to Uncle O.	159
	Idyll	160
	The Missing Page	161
	Alla Petrarca	162
	No Detachment	163
	La Vida	164
	Brother (D.H.) Lawrence	165
	Glenwood Springs	166
	Arcana Gardens	167
	from Space Baltic (1991)
	End of the Range	182
	Irritable Aliens	182
	Two Parts	183
	Angel Wings	184
	Home on the Shelf	185
	Space Baltic	186
	Cloud Watch	187
	Answering	188
	from Near Miss Haiku (1991)
	The Older Artist	190
	After Ungaretti	191
	Paradiso Terrestre	192
	Les Americains	193
	Near Miss Haiku	194
	from Corvus (1995)
	Born Today	197
	Swing High Swing Woe	199
	A Town Dedicated to the Pursuit of Fitness & Inner Peace	200
	Blue March '91	202
	Note Found on Meditator	203
	Inhabited Eyes	204
	In the Raging Balance	205
	Why There Is a Cat Curfew in Our House	206
	Blue Ceiling	207
	Pterodactyls	212
	Pounces	215
	Reviewing the Tape	217
	Survival Dancing (1995)
	Canto Arastra	222
	In the Music Composed by Nutritious Algae	223
	Kindly Water Other Level	224
	Beginning & Ending with Lines from Christina Rossetti	225
	At This Point in L'Histoire	226
	Fair Poetry Eats Trembling Matter	227
	Was That Really a Sonnet?	228
	Now On to Ghazal Gulch	229
	Gods Walked Animals Talked	230
	The Word Thing	231
	Si, Si, E.E.	232
	As Leaves Sweep Past	233
	& Time Trots By	234
	At Evenfall	235
	Ahoe (And How on Earth) (1997)
	Turn Off the News	237
	O Ponder Bone of Fabled Carp	238
	And Then There Are These Skaldic Throwbacks ...	239
	Head Sky Convoy Pattern	240
	Benign Evening Comedown	241
	Metaphor Mutaphor	242
	Hey, Dr. Who, Let's Dial 1965	243
	Leaves of Blur	244
	Script Mist	245
	An Olive for Satie	246
	The Opening of the File	247
	Emptier Planet	248
	Jungle Finn	249
	Time Rocking On	250
	Sur la terrasse	251
	Temple Noir	252
	Sails of Murmur	253
	The Next Fifty Years	254
	Cat-Gods' Channel	255
	After the Newscast	256
	Halo Blade	257
	Silent Salad	258
	Secret Cohesive Tactics	259
	Voice over Past House	260
	Caught with a Pronoun	261
	Things to Do with Life	262
	Vibrant Ions	263
	The Job	264
	Wings over Maximus	265
	Hop through Intersection	266
	An Or	267
	Apocrypha Hipponactea	268
	Il y a	269
	And What's Your Derivational Profile?	270
	Rundfunk	271
	Earful of River Wind	272
	September Song	273
	Your Turn	274
	Red Cats Revisited	275
	Hang on to Your Spell	278
	After "Irish" by Paul Celan	279
	Scripts	280
	Air	282
	Sunset Caboose	283
	Ahoe 2 (Johnny Cash Writes a Letter to Santa Claus) (1998)
	Passing Vapors	285
	Big Furry Buddha in Back Yard	286
	Lost Original	287
	Still Here & Here Again Then Here & Still	288
	Paint the Vacant Millennia	289
	Much of It Unconscious Work but Work (Said Francis Ponge)	290
	Hanging with Harpocrates	291
	Leave It to the Bonobos	292
	Crystallized Internet	293
	Sorrow Horse Music	294
	Old Cat Somber Moon	295
	Presente or Not	296
	Philosophique	297
	So Fix That Broken Axle	298
	Titled	299
	The Ghostly Screen in Back of Things	300
	Just Another Bit of Scenery	301
	Say Tango	302
	A Hundred Mule Deer in the Back Yard	303
	Ad Quodlibet	304
	We Are Having It Again and Without Sorrow	305
	Life in the Twists	306
	From the Notebooks of Professor Doppelganger	307
	Give Me Big Shoes	308
	Hi, Haunting	309
	Skid Inside	310
	Old Aristippus	311
	Ultraista Oneiric	312
	Attention: Selections Come on Tilted	313
	The World as Fiasco	314
	Now O'clock	315
	"Tempus? Fuggit!"	316
	Johnny Cash Writes a Letter to Santa Claus	317
	Notes	319

Editorial Reviews

Gathering work from 24 mostly small-press collections, Notes is the Finnish-American Hollo's first selected volume in nearly 25 years. Hollo speaks, writes and translates in or from at least four different languages, and has moved gradually over the years from a spare, wit-based lyrical style toward more angular, often slyly political speech and casual humor: "a copacetic evening/ watching the latest military techn / wipe out poverty in the world/ in its most obvious form, the poor." The plethora of poems here, arranged chronologically and containing a quietly expanding sense of uncertainty for the fate of the species, have a range that belie Hollo's relative lack of fame and his predilection for writing in modestly short or serial forms as he does brilliantly in Rue. Dedicated to "The School of Continuation" and written during a five-month stay in a small French town outside of Paris, Rue is a crackling, wickedly lyrical sonnet sequence hurtling 21st-century noun logjams across the bows of cubist poetic structures. Taking tonal cues from several oft-cited contemporaries (Ed Dorn, Ted Berrigan) while speaking directly out of the open-ended sensibilities of present-day poetic transformation, the book extends the arena of poetic eavesdropping out into the world at large: "breeze through the grand accordion of frames/ watch reflections flounce/ prattling selves, quavered ecliptics/ sink into head's reanimated folds." Hollo has been associated with just about every subdivision of and outgrowth from the New American Poetry, but has remained defiantly unclassifiable. These collections will no doubt resonate with longtime Hollo readers, but both have the observational charm and unpretentious wit to win a deservedly larger audience with Rue being the ideal book for first-timers. (June 1) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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