Gleaning some words from old masters
I make my own poems.
Ryokan
Poetry is not about language.
It's about something.
Joel Oppenheimer
Who says my poems are poems?
My poems are not poems.
Once you know my poems are not poems
Then we can talk poetry.
Ryokan
Each of these quotes appears on one of
the opening pages of While We've Still Got Feet,
a 2005 collection of poems by David Budbill.
I make my own poems.
Ryokan
Poetry is not about language.
It's about something.
Joel Oppenheimer
Who says my poems are poems?
My poems are not poems.
Once you know my poems are not poems
Then we can talk poetry.
Ryokan
Each of these quotes appears on one of
the opening pages of While We've Still Got Feet,
a 2005 collection of poems by David Budbill.
In the past few days, I've been reading some of the work of poet David Budbill. Inspired by the hermit-poets of ancient China, Budbill left the cities more than four decades ago and moved to a remote hermitage on the top of Judevine Mountain in Vermont. For the next thirty-five years, he spent most of his time there, reading poetry, writing poetry, playing his flute, and tending to his land. Having read some of his poetry, it's clear that he was also seeking to live a simple, uncomplicated life that was in harmony with the ancient wisdom of his Asian mentors.
In the collection of poems referenced above — While We've Still Got Feet — Budbill mentions the work of more than a dozen Asian poets or philosophers, including Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Ryokan, and Han Shan. There is also a poem which celebrates the Tao Te Ching:
The Way is Like Language
The Way is like language. The more you use it,
the more it responds, becomes resilient, pliable,
lithe, liquid, smooth, supple, available, eager.
Go ahead, do anything you want to it. You can't
hurt it. It is far more powerful than you are.
It's there to serve and dominate you all at once.
Surrender to it and it will be your servant.
It is your tool, your toy, your master.
I find the Tao or "The Way" running through many of Budbill's poems. He is clearly a poet who has given most of his life to learning how to live simply and mindfully, how to live beyond the win-lose conventions of American culture, and how to live more in the body and less in the chatterbox arena of the mind. On this latter point — body versus mind — I especially like this poem:
This Shining Moment in the Now
When I work outdoors all day, every day, as I do now, in the fall
getting ready for winter, tearing up the garden, digging potatoes,
gathering the squash, cutting firewood, making kindling, repairing
bridges over the brook, clearing trails in the woods, doing the last of
the fall mowing, pruning apple trees, taking down the screens,
putting up the storm windows, banking the house — all these things,
as preparation for the coming cold . . .
when I am every day all day all body and no mind, when I am
physically , wholly and completely in this world with the birds,
the deer, the sky, the wind, the trees . . .
when day after day I think of nothing but what the next chore is,
when I go from clearing woods roads, to sharpening a chain saw,
to changing the oil in a mower, to stacking wood, when I am
all body and no mind . . .
when I am only here and now and nowhere else — then, and only
then, do I see the crippling power of mind, the curse of thought,
and I pause and wonder why I so seldom find
this shining moment in the now.
From While We've Still Got Feet, Copper Canyon Press, 2023.
Here's to the shining moment of the now. To quote a line which lends itself to the title of this Budbill collection, "let's go dancing/while we've still/got feet."