THE JOURNAL ASKS ABOUT DEVOTION, A MSS.
THE JOURNAL #1
What to put in and what to leave out
is a conceit of editors. Geologists
know there is always more missing
to the record than rock columns can show.
Your cover will be blown
regardless of your skills.
Sometimes it's best to let people
know who you are before you begin.
Pull the car over and park.
Get out your little hammer
and tap away. You know
how much depends upon luck.
You don't always know
how lucky you are.
Jim Bodeen
12 October 2017
*
IT'S A GOOD THING
Scan paragraphs in three
different New Yorker stories
by writers who take me
into other images--feel
for the first moment
of this week day
released from language.
11 October 2017
*
SHIP'S LOG
Wouldn't you think the Ship's log
for the mothership would be automatic?
If anything is easy, this is easy.
Write where you are
and where you're going.
Write about the weather.
What you see and hear.
Weather influences emotions.
Nobody cares what you've done.
Keep it short. There's not much time.
It took me two years,
18,000 miles to get this going.
12 October 2017
*
POST CARD POEMS
These are terms
I accepted
when I was given the word,
Storypath/Cuentocamino,
approved in multiple voices.
Terms weren't written out
but always followed.
Blindness emerged
over time by feel.
Following best I knew how.
Refusal was not an option.
New term last week, first
in how many years!
After I process the work,
record what I can,
I'm free to write what ever--
but not before.
12 October 2017
*
A NEW DEAL FOR NOSTALGIA
Opening Karen's Hope Chest
this morning, breathing in
the release of aromatic cedar,
even while I see flame
and smoke consuming
oxygen and trees
in Northern California.
I'm searching for post cards
collected by Karen's mother
during World War II.
A teenager with hope,
a woman who created
Karen in an act of love.
Make the post card into this.
13 Oct 2017
*
WALKER EVANS AND THE POST CARD
Walker Evans and the post card.
9000? The size of his collection.
Realism in your hand. His eye
and his style. His own images
formatted. His own post card
book not completed. Send
cards to friends so they
might be retrieved. In 1907,
the post office changes rules
to allow a message on back.
"My eye collects," he said.
He visited towns his cards
led him to, the lovely
black and whites, their
"fidelity and restraint."
Soft tones with patina.
Jim Bodeen
12 Oct 2017
*
HOW IT WORKS WITH THE CAMERA AND NOTEBOOK
Processing images is part. Looking at what I couldn't see
with my eyes. Editing video into short fiction and parables,
next. Intersection. Traffic going both ways. Sometimes
captions of photos lead to poems. Sometimes video comes
out as poem. None of this possible without the notebooks.
Plural. Recording words before I wake. Again at night
over the cab in the mothership. Notebooks. Journals.
Different. Information. Formation. Questions. From this,
then, poems, and posting. The blog has work for me.
Storypath/Cuentocamino gives directions. One doesn't
reach. Always scratching surfaces. Calling it
mining exaggerates. How many ways into September?
And meditation? Then I use the word autumn.
I haven't gotten to us. Doesn't Journal include me?
*
THE DAILY BRUISE
Work brings duende the teacher said
when I asked him about Lorca,
but when the only
work is waiting? Mischief
pulls the stool out from under me
again and again. Walking
into fragments. Ouch.
Shin guards protect baseball players.
This struggle with the duende
is the only thing that matters.
14 October 2017
*
TAILINGS FROM CHILDHOOD
Still in Dakota, a boy,
a Yankee fan, cutting up
my baseball cards
pasting them cut-out,
trophies from cigar boxes
(cards treasured by collectors)
showed itself as dreambody,
leading to five scrapbooks
of Yankee lore (including
ads of each player smoking
Camel cigarettes) during
5 championships in the 50s.
These lead to my only lasting
work, daily discipline in notebooks.
14 September 2017
*
HOW MANY TIMES I SAID NO
to video. I'm a writer
sticking in my throat.
This is the way
to ultimate failure.
I said these things.
Salvador Navarro Navarro,
two times Navarro
knew language no
one else knew, eh.
He traced
revolution
back to agrarian
land reform,
Tata,
Lazaro Cárdenas,
rural schools--ranchos.
He knew
and remembered.
I had to submit
to failure. He dicho,
Jim Bodeen
14 October 2017
*
QUATRAINS
Come as they're given,
complete. Each line
a piece of reality
available to all—not
one more important
than any other,
capable of surprise
or reversal. Pleasure,
pleasing, whether
going forward or back.
Athletes dying young
and evanescent.
Jim Bodeen
18 June 2010
THE SCHOOL THAT NEVER CLOSES
We're in the car, Mom and I,
driving for an ice cream cone,
when the language slides
from her mouth, between her
forgetting disease and daily work
she struggles to bring to the surface,
Jim, you belong to the school
that never closes. Pulling the car
to the curb, I ask her to say again
what she has just said. I say her words
back, nodding at what she bestows
in ceremonial listening.
That's right, Mom. I accept what cannot
be given elsewhere by church or university.
I am free to do, and I belong
to that school that never closes.
Jim Bodeen
12 September 2009 / 5 June 2010
WITH THE YELLOW SCHOOL BUS
AT INDIAN JOHN HILL REST STOP
50 kindergartners on their way
to the city zoo step off the bus
and walk single file with their chaperones
to the bathroom to pee and poop.
Jim Bodeen
3 June 2010
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