WHERE BILL RANSOM LIVES
The gray on gray on gray speck on his screen enlarged to a sprawling community at the northernmost tip of a peninsula on a peninsula. A two-lane road separated cranberry bogs on one side from the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Canadian islands on the other. The Strait, the road, the roofs on the buildings and the sky oozed gray. Sand dunes, gravel driveways, budding alders and willows all framed the blood-red cranberry bogs in that somber, gray veil. A tongue of white fog licked at the red heart of the bog.
From the novel, Brother Blood Sister Death
Bill Ransom: Video Story of the Poet and Novelist
The Lost Tapes and the Moonlit Dig Videos
This video essay is part poetry reading, part biography and interview. Its existence is partly due to the 10-year disappearance of the four-part recording of Ransom's The War Baby prior to its publication by Blue Begonia Press, and in part to a friendship developed over four decades, held together initially through conversations on poetry, writing and teaching.
"You keep us on the run. I keep us alive."
Bill Ransom The Lost Tapes 2008-2018
The Lost Tapes 2008-2018 The Woman and the War Baby Part I
Filmed
reading never seen by anyone. Technological problems combined with computer
difficulties combined with daily life until January 2018. Bill Ransom's final
pre-publication reading and conversation with Jim Bodeen at Blue Begonia Press
in Yakima, Washington. Poems and stories. Visceral at birth and re-birth. Part
1 of 4 Parts.
The Lost Tapes 2008-2018 Part II My Particular Scenery
Never before seen video of Bill Ransom's reading of The Woman and the War Baby, with Jim Bodeen at Blue Begonia Press, in Yakima, WA during summer, 2008. Surfaced recording restored in January, 2018, Ransom, poet and novelist in his visceral prime. This video includes a partial reading of Trillium.
"Don't consider the source. Consider the advice."
The Lost Tapes 2008-2018 Visceral Conversation Part III
Trillium is a critical piece in
understanding the work of Bill Ransom. Conversation with Jim Bodeen in the
Bodeen home during 2008. This video has been lost from the date of the
recording until its first-birth in 2018. Trillium is included in Ransom's The
Woman and the War Baby from Blue Begonia Press.
Walking the Same Beach The Lost Tapes 2008-2018 Part IV
Ransom concludes his final pre-publication reading of The Woman and the War
Baby, from 2008. This reading disappeared the day it was made, and has been
restored and re-created in 2018. Walking the same beach is the one that travels
up the Americas from the late 1980s until today and beyond. Bill Ransom is a
poet of witness and remembering.
Ransom takes Immigrant
Rights Workers from Central Washington State on a moonlit clam dig at Grayland
Beach, Grayland, Washington. Storytelling and breakfast included. This video
includes an apple pie poem by Jim Bodeen along with an empty pie plate.
"Survival, not satisfaction."
Passages in quotations from the novel Brother Blood Sister Death
*
DIGGING RAZOR CLAMS IN MOONLIGHT
For Bill Ransom, Magaly Solis,
Laura Armstrong & Karen Bodeen
After a wedding, this walk on the beach,
But not before a tutorial. Bill says, This
Is a clam gun, the one that looks like a shovel.
This is an aluminum tube, and this, same thing, plastic—
And this is the Pacific Ocean. Stop
At Grayland Hardware, pick up three-day permits
And text Bill we’re bringing two abrecaminos,
Pathbreakers, from La Casa Hogar,
Immigrant rights and citizenship programers,
To the clam dig. Can he help.
Never turn your back on the ocean, Bill says.
Face the ocean when you dig.
Fifteen clams is the limit. You must
Take everything, large, small, or broken.
If you hit a shell, pull back, and slurry
The shovel. Magaly is from Guerrero,
South of Oaxaca. Laura’s east coast.
Boots, lantern, head lamps.
Rain lets up. Bill shows us
How to walk the beach, look for
Sand indentions locating the clams.
We each limit. Bill talks Bolt decision,
Indian Treaty Rights, 1856. Sustainability
And give and take. He shows us how
To clean clams, links to Fish and Wildlife
And recipes for cooking. Over breakfast
He talks about jobs a novelist takes
To apprentice for the world. Short order
Cook who must eat what he poorly prepares.
Fifty pounds of hash browns, too?
Jack Benny and Bob Harrah.
El Salvador, FMLN, peace treaties.
Bill talks noun and verb. I’ve known
His poems as long as I’ve known Bill—
40+ years. His way of engagement
And retreat. His witness and his way
In the wild. Since the water pump gave out
In the Toyota going through Yakima.
His cats—Number One and Number Two,
Brothers. At breakfast, Bill has brought
Signed books for Magaly and Laura,
Including Learning the Ropes,
Fires and medicine. Colonial terrorism.
Bill recognizes these two young women.
Their work, liberation, is the same work as his.
They’ve taken identical vows.
This is service work, guerilla training.
Low tide at night, under cover,
Not 24 hours. Retreat. Renewal.
Wild west coast. Survival training
Not for the resume. Cleaning clams.
Ancestral nurturing, beginnings in sand.
Jim Bodeen
21-28 September 2020
Writing with Ransom
After Razor Clam Moon Dig
Dark Clarity Stamp
Scissors, knife, water
Sand rinse, clip gills for two cats
Birds eat guts on beach
Jim
5 October 2020
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