A. Robert Lee - Americas - Selected Verse and Vignette

AMERICAS

SELECTED VERSE AND VIGNETTE

Biblioteca Javier Coy d’estudis nord-americans http://www.uv.es/bibjcoy

Directora

Carme Manuel

AMERICAS

SELECTED VERSE AND VIGNETTE

A. Robert Lee

Biblioteca Javier Coy d’estudis nord-americans

Universitat de València

Americas: Selected Verse and Vignette

© A. Robert Lee

1ª edición de 2015

Reservados todos los derechos

Prohibida su reproducción total o parcial

ISBN: 978-84-9134-167-3

Imagen de la cubierta: Sophia de Vera Höltz

Diseño de la cubierta: Celso Hernández de la Figuera

Publicacions de la Universitat de València

http://puv.uv.es

publicacions@uv.es

For My Fellow Ticket-Holders

Anne WaldmanRex BurnsKim BlaeserJohn G. CaweltiAndrew Hook

Preface

A career as a university Americanist in my native UK, in the US, in Europe, and in Japan, and with a specialization in literature, has long meant academic writing: books, articles, reviews, the journals. Not the least of which is an earlier volume in Biblioteca Javier Coy d’Estudis Nord-Americans, United States: Re-Viewing American Multicultural Literature (2009). But it has also meant venturing into creative tracks. In this case, precisely, verse and vignette. Not only have I had the opportunity of much American travel, to include Canada and Mexico, but also the privilege of frequent writer encounters and friendships. These, for which I will always be grateful, have been an inspiration.

All of the collections (and journals) from which this poetry and prose is taken met with the good fortune to find publishers. I owe a debt of acknowledgement to each, especially Printed Matter Press, 2 Leaf Press, Renaissance Books, Konch Magazine and Phati’tude .

Each different composition, I hope, above all gives recognition to America, the Americas, as personally lived time and space. Site, journey, people, art, film, music, culture, society. They are meant as forms of close encounter. Serious and in some cases antic. Less myself than persona.

This is also the place to thank Carme Manuel as editor of the Javier Coy series. She was good enough to accept Americas: Verse and Vignette as a different kind of American Studies. I owe her greatly. So do the writings at hand.

Contents

ARS GEOGRAPHICA: MAPS AND COMPASSES(2012) ARS GEOGRAPHICA: MAPS AND COMPASSES

Going Galápagos

American Visa

New York Magic Mountain

Yes Philadelphia

Chicago L

Charlottesville Juleps

Mississippi Headwaters

Rocky Flatirons

Five Senses of California

Hawai‘i Delegation

Nominating Vancouver

Mexican Compass

PORTRAIT AND LANDSCAPE (2013)

Double Melville

Correspondence With Himes

Suited Words with Leon Forrest a

Multiplying Ishmael Reed

Duffs up Frank Chin

Fast forward with Anne Waldman

¡ Hola ! Carmen Tafolla

Konnichiwa Karen Yamashita

Zeke Call

George Bartholomew

Harold Goodsky

Ling-chi Wang

New York Cab

Battle of Trenton

Boston Oysters

Louisville Lip

Iowa Skunks

Albuquerque Adobe

Mississippi Catfish

LA Ancient and Modern

Tijuana Vocabulary

Canada Plurals

Costa Rican Coffee

IMAGINARIUM: SIGHTINGS, GALLERIES, SIGHTLINES (2013)

American Photo-Call

Edward Hopper, Nighthawks

Romare Bearsden, Southern Recall

Jackson Pollock, Silver Over Black

Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird

Niagara Mist

South Side

Beale Street Reprise

Minnesota Lake Sight

Black Hills/Páha Sápa

Moab River Wall

Texas Crossings

Sonoma and Napa Wine Tasting

Barrio Vistas

Washingtonia

San Diego Whale Pod

Stage Sight: Three Musics

OFF COURSE: ROUNDABOUTS AND DEVIATIONS (2014)

The Great Rhode Island Worm War

Porcine Love

French Chicago

Chicken Delight

Ice Water Across the Borders

Oranges Are The Only Fruit

Night Shift: A Transatlantic Quartet

The Eel File

WRITTEN EYE: VISUALS, VERSE (2014)

Silent Eruption: Metropolis

Inside Space: Forbidden Planet

Shadow of Life: Touch of Evil

Frontier Score: Once Upon a Time in the West

Civilization and Its Discontents: Queimada

Back to Back: Man Ray and Horst P. Horst

Robert Mapplethorpe: Body Culture

Goddam: Nina Simone’s Montreux

Rufus Over Your Head: Duck Soup

ARS GEOGRAPHICA: MAPS AND COMPASSES

Going Galápagos

i

Three

Quito

sea-lions

stretched

like

Ecuadorean

pashas

along

the

dockside bench.

Equator

gate-keepers

of

Pacific

ease

and

loll.

Whiskered

docents

of

fin, beak, claw and shell

carapace and wing

sea and island

Beagle and Acushnet

sight and word

and

all of them

yawning.

Quito

via

runway Guayaquil.

Quito

of

La Plaza Grande

La Catedral

El Mercado de Otavalo

Quito

of

Hidalgo Gothic

be-hatted mestizaje

a hundred shoeshine boys

Quito

of

thin oxygen

and

Andean volcano hills

Quito

of

Earth’s closeness

to the sun

Quito

of

street pobreza

and

JW Marriott Five-Star Hotel

Avenida Orellana y Avenida Amazonas

ii

Quito to La Mitad del Mundo

actually

250 meters

off centre

Pyramid

of

latitude and longitude

GPS-confirmed Museo Inti-Nan

actually

the centre

of

earth’s

curvature

earth’s

hemispheres

earth’s

lobes

Near, though

iii

Thank you

Incas

everywhere

Thank you

Ecuador’s

mestizos

criollos

quechuas

Chirrera, Jama Coaque, Tolita, Machalilla, Valdivia

Thank you

Lago Titicaca

Manco Capac

Machu Picchu

memory quipus

Merci

Charles Marie de Condamine

rubber, quinine, metrics, circumference

Gracias

Juan Montalvo’s Las Cantilinarias

thoughts, views, language

Gracias

Jorge Icaza Coronel’s Huasipungo

novel, history, memory

iv

Quito zodiac

to cruise ship

isle for isle

turtle-journey

to

Las Galápagos

Islas de Colón

Archipiélago de Colón

Islas de las Galápagos

vertical arrow diving frigates

at home blue-footed boobies

herons on one foot watching

at home huge gulping pelicans

swallow tailed gulls on sentinel duty

Darwin’s finches

(one upon my shoe)

neck coupled albatrosses

un-flighted cormorants among the crabs

sedate breaststroke lagoon turtles

night time spectral prowler sharks

rock-hopping diver penguins

clambering, clod

heroic monument tortoises

iguanas land and marine

in their thermometer bodies

of mottle-leather skin

and

un-dinner table sneezing salt

and amid these origins of species,

across ranger white-marked trails