Chapter 12
Bliss's Foreword to The Rye Is The Sea
Eighth Book of Poems
"The Rye Is The Sea," the author's eighth book of poems, attempts to catch and record some of the riches found out-of-doors this year in several sections of the United States.
Knowing how often nature poets are charged (and rightly) with being mere effusive sentimentalists, the author has written of nothing that he has not personally seen, nothing that he has not personally felt. Recently he was taken to task by a New York newspaper for insisting that one who writes of clouds must know clouds, that he who writes of trees must know trees, that he who writes of weather must have been in a weather bureau and studied "highs" and "lows," isobars and isotherms.
"Which bars out," said the commentator, "Mr. Shelley and his 'Ode to the West Wind.'"
Not at all: while there may not have been weather bureaus in Shelley's time, that rare genius could not have written the ode without having seen, felt, tasted, heard and smelled the winds: in short, without knowing them.
As a means of emphasizing the reality of these poem-pictures, the author has continued his method of attaching places and dates as footnotes to each poem. Another reason is that similar notes in former books have brought comments from persons who had often seen the things he saw—but without observing them. They have begun to look not only for the things described, but for other beauties, in the places mentioned.
Attention is invited to the physical appearance of this book. It has been created as an experiment in handcraft. It is in some sharp contrast with, for example, "Cirrus From The West," a genuinely excellent example of the best in machine-made bookcraft. "The Rye Is The Sea" could be produced in a farm village. The burlap binding is the gunny-sack of agriculture. The bag of which this binding is a part has held in its time wheat and corn. The paper used is ordinary wrapping paper. The binding was done by persons who have had their training in Works Progress Administration library-book repair projects. The press is an old style Chandler and Price jobber.
The author's purpose in utilizing this method in book production is the stimulation of home arts—an attempt to regain from the highly efficient machine some of the handicraft joys that are in danger of being lost. Any poet, really seeking publication, need not sigh in vain. He can now find competent book binders in every community—and if he be genuinely in earnest he can do the work himself.
The author wishes to extend his felicitations to his collaborator, Mr. Harold J. Matthews of Houston, Texas, whose decorations, cut from rubber blocks, appear in this book. This is the sixth volume in which the author and he have thus worked together. Thanks are also due the staff of the State Library Commission, Bismarck, North Dakota, for advice and encouragement in the use of handcraft in book publication.
P.S.B.
Selected Poems from The Rye Is The Sea, 1936
April Twilight
from The Rye Is The Sea, 1936
A fleece
Of fish-scale cloud
Hangs
At mid-sky,
And the molten sun
Melts
Into the west
Like a pat of butter
On a skillet.
The color-echelons
Change
From rose
To scarlet,
Then
Deepen
Into maroon.
Dusk
Manicuring
Her slender hands,
Flicks
A bright nail-paring
Against
The web of night:
It is
The
Crescent moon.
An airway beacon,
Alternatively
White and red,
Spatters
Its light
On the pearl-blue
Of
The
Southwest.
April 22, 1936
En route, Fargo to Bismarck, N.D., at 7:30 P.M.
Cannonball
from The Rye Is The Sea, 1936
Black
At the ford,
The Cannonball
Flows
Through gate-like
Cottonwoods.
The automobile
Churns the water
In the sudden darkness.
Suddenly
The roaring gears
Explore the car
Up,
Onto the prairie——
To a spent moon,
Its points
Rakishly aslant,
That lies
Like a sucked orange
In the copper-purple
Of the east.
Sept. 7, 1936
Taking the river road, half through error, half through design, we campfired a late steak supper on the flats north of Fort Yates, then pushed on to a midnight fording of the Cannonball——as an ochre moon at third quarter in Taurus, came up over the Missouri River.
Slippers
from The Rye Is The Sea, 1936
The earth
Has shouldered off
The sun,
And has come home
For the quiet
Of
Evening.
It dons
Soft slippers,
Sinks back
Into an easy chair
And cons
The Stellar Gazette
By the light
Of
That comfortable lamp,
The moon.
June 30, 1936
Capitol View, a high point on highway No. 10, one-half mile west of Sterling, N.D. From this point the capitol building can be seen, 23.4 miles distant.
Selected Poems from Poems of Places, 1937
February Sunset
from Poems Of Places, 1937
Washington, D.C.
The grass-green city
Shivers;
A granite shaft
Tapers coolly
To the sky.
Lincoln answers Lee
Across the Potomac.
The bronze wheel
Crushes down
Through the trees,
And sinks soggily
Into
The Virginia Hills.
February 2, 1937 — Washington, D.C.
The view across the Potomac with the sun's lower limb below the tree-top level, is something to look upon. It is winter-spring and the grass is strangely green.
Piece of the Earth
from Poems Of Places, 1937
I own
A piece of the earth,
Four-thousand miles deep—
And a half acre
Showin' to the sky.
It's mine …
Each time the walkin' beam
Goes up and down
I am richer—poorer.
Up comes the black oil …
Cloyd (he works for Continental)
He just sits there
And listens,
Listens—that's all,
Listenin' for somethin' goin' wrong—
For $147.50 a month;
If the engine stops
Or the rod breaks
Then he has to get up.
One, two
One, two
One, two
One, two
The rod is long—
6,547 feet!
It's a needle
Lancin' the rich black
Pus of the earth . . .
Some day
The wound will heal
The walkin' beam will stop,
And I won't git
My $11 a day,
For just lettin' em
Stick that needle,
A mile long,
Down into my earth . . .
'Til it goes dry . . .
Let 'em all go dry . . . .
Then, maybe it'll be like it was . . .
Like it was,
When there weren't no derricks
And no stink of oil,
And no earth black with sludge,
I used to sit
On the bank of the Canadian—
That's where it flowed,
Right there—
The bank was green,
And the flowers grew
And you could fish in bright water . . .
And now
There's a forest of derricks
And the walkin' beams
A-goin'
All day and all night—
And the smell of oil—
And they turned the stream away . . .
It don't run here any more.
I hope the walkin' beam stops—
I hope they all stop—
Then maybe,
After a while
It'll be like it was . . .
When the Canadian
Ran clear,
By this same little shack,
And I didn't get $11 a day—
That I don't know what to
Do with . . .
$11 a day
God Almighty . . .
It won't bring back
The green bank
And the flowers
And the clear water . . .
June 20, 1937
The oil wells at Oklahoma City rise out of the town yards, some of them near the State Capitol Buildings, others in the poorer section along the former bank of the Canadian River.
Old Man Bratcher
from Poems Of Places, 1937
Sun on the corn bottoms
Sun on the red loess,
Sun on the Johnson grass and
kinghead,
Sun on the cottonwoods,
Sun on the river chutes,
Sun on Old Man Bratcher
Old Man Bratcher
Looks out on 100 acres
Of corn,
Shoulder-high on Independence Day—
Old Man Bratcher
And his six boys,
Batchin' it
On the corn bottoms.
"It's good corn land,"
Says Old Man Bratcher;
"Never had a failure . . .
I've planted corn
Late as mid-July
And still got a crop—
Plant just as soon
As the water dreens off . . .
Water was high in '27:
Highest of all in '37.
House was awfully wet,
But it dried out . . .
Its good corn land.
"My grandfather raised corn
Before Gen'l Grant
Fought here in '61.
It was good corn land then,
It's good corn land now . . .
It'll be good corn land
Long as the Mississippi
Keeps overflowin'.
"In '15 we had the ice gorge—
The river cut a new chute . . .
One man drove over with a team
A few days before—
Water was knee-deep . . .
When he came back two days later,
They all went down out of sight—
They was drowned,
Horses and all.
"Time was
Belmont had
Five saloons
And three hotels . . .
That old cottonwood,
Eight feet through . . .
Top was shot out
By the guns on the bluff,
Firin' at Gen'l Grant,
Here on the corn bottoms . . .
River came up to the tree then:
Now it's filled in a half mile.
"Corn!
We ain't never had a failure . . .
Insurance company owns this land . . .
They won't sell it . . .
They get a third of my corn . . .
Great corn land . . .
Never had a failure . . .
We've got to move out
Every spring,
Till the water goes down."
Sun on the corn bottoms,
Sun on the red loess,
Sun on the Johnson grass and
Kinghead,
Sun on the cottonwoods,
Sun on the river chutes,
Sun on Old Man Bratcher.
July 5, 1937 — Columbus-Belmont Battlefield
Belmont, Mo., across the Mississippi River from Columbus, Ky., is the scene of General U.S. Grant's first battle of consequence. He and General Leonidas Pope lost 1,100 men, killed, wounded and missing on the corn bottoms, Nov. 7, 1861. The once prosperous town of Belmont has now been abandoned and Columbus has been moved back on the east bluff, out of reach of the river.
Saguaro
from Poems Of Places, 1937
Stout desert warden,
Armed against the world,
Product of 200 years
Of sunshine and hot sand….
In the soft loneliness
Of the desert
Stand ever
Still.
I have known trees to dance,
To leap, to sway,
To sigh, to sob,
To laugh or despair,
Change with the seasons,
Gain new life and hope.
Saguaro,
Unmoving,
Silent,
Untouched by friend or foe ….
You are
Deathless—
Yet
Never
Quite
Alive.
December 11, 1937
In the great forest of saguaro cactus near Tucson, Arizona, I was strangely sad. Some saguaro are 35 and 40 feet tall and two feet in diameter. The most venerable are 200 years old.—P.S.B.
Grand Canyon
Unpublished, 1937
Weltering there in the ages,
Chaptered
From Kaibab to Vishnu,
The world's mightiest spectacle—
The
Grand
Canyon
Of the
Colorado…!
The clouds come over the mesas,
The clouds dip into the mile-deep abyss,
The clouds black out
A billion years of recorded time…
Then comes the sun:
It floods on temple and terrace,
On shrine and point,
On pyramid and plateau,
On castle and crest,
On butte and cupola,
On platform and pyre.
It lights Bright Angel Canyon,
And Conquistador Aisle.
It gleams
On the Kaibab cap,
On the gray Coconino,
On the red shales of the Supai,
On the blood-pink Red Wall;
It seeps down
To the hell-deep sandstones
And shales of the Tonto—
Where but a finer-smudge
Marks where Uncar and Chuar ledges
Lay 500,000,000 years—
Then it rests on the granite
And gneiss of the earth-womb,
Gouged by the fierce foetus
Of the Colorado.
I was awed at Hopi and Yavapai,
Dazed at Hermit's Rest and Grand View,
Sick at Moran and Kiva Tower:
I fear this gorge,
I hate it—
Boundless, brutal,
It laughs at mankind.
But, heed the rocks-man:
In the Book of Time,
Only a day shall pass
And the dull god,
EROSION,
Shall level this pile
To
The
Dull
Flatness
Of the ocean-floor
Sunday, Dec. 12, 1937 — Grand Canyon, Arizona (El Tovar Hotel)
On a day of alternating rain, fog, snow and sunshine, I came for the first time to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, in northwestern Arizona. A mile below, the river, seemingly a ribbon, swept by, carrying 1,000,000 tons of dirt, sand and rock daily past a given point.
Tribute to General Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant
from Stars To Steer By, 1941 anthology
Silent,
Above the chaste bushes,
In an acid-bit uniform,
Stands Ulysses S. Grant.
U.S. Grant,
Christened Hiram Ulysses,
Made the mistake of a Congressman,
Nicknamed "Useless"
By his playmates,
Called "'Lyss" by his mother,
"Sam" by West Point cadets,
And—after Fort Donelson—
"Unconditional Surrender" Grant,
By the armies . . .
U.S. Grant,
Small of stature,
Able to ride a horse,
Gentle and retiring,
Fearful of sin,
Disgraced
And made famous
By a gill of whiskey . . .
U.S. Grant,
Out of the army by request,
Down on his luck,
Building Hardscrabble Lodge,
Failing at farming,
Failing at wood selling lots,
Threadbare,
Bent at thirty-seven,
Going back to Galena
To scrape hides
In his father's tannery . . .
U.S. Grant,
Scraping bloody hides
At thirty-seven,
General of the Armies
At forty-two,
President of the United States
At forty-seven—
With fifteen battles fought,
From Belmont cornbottoms,
To Appomattox . . .
U.S. Grant
The soldier who made mistakes,
But wasn't afraid to fight—
"No reserve" at Belmont,
"Unduly divided" at Fort Henry—
"Without a staff" at Donelson,—
"Inadequate defense" at Shiloh,—
"Deserting his supply base" at Vicksburg—
(The mistakes that won five battles
And opened the Mississippi) . . .
U.S. Grant,—
Only great general
Who was never beaten,
Sitting uncomfortably
In the White House
Tricked by his friends,
Tricked by his enemies,
Tricked by Wallstreeters,—
"Ward & Grant Fail for $16,000,000."
Stricken with cancer,
Meeting his debts
On his deathbed,
Writing his "Memoirs" . . .
U.S. Grant,
Gentle as a woman—
Citizen, not soldier,
Despite sword and boots,
Despite uniform and fieldglass;
U.S. Grant
Standing
Among the people,
At Twelfth and Market,
While the chaste bushes
Bloom purple
In the temple way
Of St. Louis.