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    Spill
    Spill
    Spill
    Ebook88 pages51 minutes

    Spill

    By Bruce Smith

    ()

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    About this ebook

    “There are two schools: one that sings the sheen and hues, the necessary pigments and frankincense while the world dries and the other voice like water that seeks to saturate, erode, and boil . . . It ruins everything you have ever saved.”
                Spill is a book in contradictions, embodying helplessness in the face of our dual citizenship in the realms of trauma and gratitude, artistic aspiration and political reality. The centerpiece of this collection is a lyrical essay that recalls the poet’s time working at the Federal Penitentiary at Lewisburg in the 1960s. Mentored by the insouciant inmate S, the speaker receives a schooling in race, class, and culture, as well as the beginning of an apprenticeship in poetry. As he and S consult the I Ching, the Book of Changes, the speaker becomes cognizant of other frequencies, other identities; poetry, divination, and a synchronous, alternative reading of life come into focus. On either side of this prose poem are related poems of excess and witness, of the ransacked places and of new territories that emerge from the monstrous. Throughout, these poems inhabit rather than resolve their contradictions, their utterances held in tension “between the hemispheres of songbirds and the hemispheres of men.”
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateFeb 8, 2019
    ISBN9780226570556
    Spill
    Author

    Bruce Smith

    Bruce Smith is a wildlife biologist and science writer. He spent most of his 30-year federal career managing wildlife populations on the Wind River Indian Reservation and the National Elk Refuge in Wyoming. His research has produced over 40 technical and popular papers and book chapters focused primarily on large mammal population ecology, diseases, migratory behavior, and predator-prey relationships.After a combat tour with the US Marines in Vietnam, Bruce earned B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Montana. His Master’s research focused on winter ecology of mountain goats in Montana’s Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area. Half-way through his government career, he investigated population regulation of the Jackson elk herd in Wyoming for his doctorate degree from the University of Wyoming.His first book, Imperfect Pasture (2004), records changes in the ecology of the National Elk Refuge during its 100-year history. Wildlife on the Wind (2010) is based on his four years working with the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Indian tribes. At their request, he catalogued the status of the reservation’s diverse wildlife and helped foster a landmark recovery of elk, deer, moose, bighorn sheep, and pronghorn antelope. Where Elk Roam (2011) chronicles his 22 years studying and managing Jackson Hole’s famous migratory elk herd. Life on the Rocks (2014) portrays in words and photographs the natural history and conservation challenges of the mountain goat throughout its North American range. His latest nonfiction book, Stories from Afield, is a collection of outdoor adventure stories.After leaving the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 2004, Bruce and his wife Diana moved to southwest Montana where he continues his conservation work and writing.

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      Book preview

      Spill - Bruce Smith

      Spill

      Spill

      Bruce Smith

      The University of Chicago Press

      Chicago & London

      The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

      The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

      © 2018 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637.

      Published 2018

      Printed in the United States of America

      27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18    1 2 3 4 5

      ISBN-13: 978-0-226-57041-9 (paper)

      ISBN-13: 978-0-226-57055-6 (e-book)

      DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226570556.001.0001

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Smith, Bruce, 1946– author.

      Title: Spill / Bruce Smith.

      Other titles: Phoenix poets.

      Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2018. | Series: Phoenix poets

      Identifiers: LCCN 2017059452 | ISBN 9780226570419 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226570556 (e-book)

      Subjects: | LCGFT: Poetry.

      Classification: LCC PS3569.M512 S67 2018 | DDC 811/.54—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017059452

      This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

      For my brother Craig

      Somewhere between the soul and soft machine

      Is where I find myself again

      Mr. Mister

      So much rare huge mystery taboo

      Amiri Baraka

      The Moments of Dominion

      That happen on the Soul

      And leave it with a Discontent

      Too exquisite – to tell –

      Emily Dickinson

      We must endure our thoughts all night, until

      The bright obvious stands motionless in cold.

      Wallace Stevens

      When my devotions could not pierce

      Thy silent eares;

      Then was my heart broken, as was my verse

      George Herbert

      Contents

      Acknowledgments

      Beautiful Throat

      Garden

      Summer Rain

      Raccoon

      Goodbye Tuscaloosa

      Ballad and Proposition

      Gaze

      What Are They Doing in the Next Room?

      The Whiteness

      Marvin Gaye Sings the National Anthem, 1983

      Are You Ready to Smash White Things?

      Lewisburg

      Meat

      Run

      Boilermaker

      Bird

      Sister

      Button

      Pollen

      Honey

      True/False

      Ferment

      Index

      Acknowledgments

      The author gratefully acknowledges the editors of the publications where these poems first appeared:

      Agni Online: "Once there was rage and the promise as Concussion Protocol"

      American Poetry Review: "Button, Honey, Pollen, True/False, Goodbye Tuscaloosa"

      Fogged Clarity: "Meat"

      Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche: "Run, Boilermaker, ‘Are You Ready to Smash White Things?’

      Kenyon Review: "Ballad and Proposition, Ferment, Beautiful Throat, Garden"

      Los Angeles Review of Books: "Lewisburg (as 1968")

      Massachusetts Review: "Marvin Gaye Sings the National Anthem, 1983, Summer Rain"

      Ploughshares: "Raccoon"

      Plume: "Bird, The Whiteness (as White Project")

      Poem-a-Day/Academy of American Poets: "What Are They Doing in the Next Room?"

      Poetry Daily: "Garden"

      To my beautiful, formidable, and fierce darlings, Jules and Megan.

      To Bedros, Betsy and Greg and the Mandate of Heaven, Mike, Chard, Amy, Jeff, Claire, and Lane: my rabbis, my imams, my ministering angels.

      To the American Academy in Rome and the Syracuse University Department of English.

      To my mortified: Jack Wheatcroft, Denis Johnson, Pedro Cuperman.

      Thanks to Martha Holland.

      Once there was rage and the promise

      that rage was a god not a corpse

      message nor a melting of the core.

      Once it moved us closer to weather

      and thunder and it made poetry

      as a cure. Then Herodotus broke

      my heart with his history: his rumor

      that begins as living twice and ends

      as recompense for loss. Events bent me.

      I took the arrow of accuracy in my eye.

      The sugary accounts made me votary,

      the biographical acids lashed my back.

      I gave up songs for facts: those green

      squawking parrots, that fire truck,

      that earring, that body bound and gagged.

      Then America broke my other heart

      with its jails and gerrymandering,

      its Emmett Till, its charms

      and concussions, its ringing in my ears.

      Who’s the president? Who’s your mother?

      Who painted the angels? Who bombed

      Homs? Repeat after me: comorbid,

      torpid, transported. Close one eye. Hum.

      Where’s your mother’s nation? Your father’s

      sky? Who’s your other? Close the other eye.

      Spill

      BEAUTIFUL THROAT

      Beheadings, slaughter of the innocents, suffering

      and sorrow say all the stabbed, ecstatic art

      of the museums and more of the same

      says the news, the glowing, after glowing now

      what, but also in the crowded galleries babies held

      by mothers looking at babies being

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