SELF-INTERVIEW IN OCTOBER, 1994, AFTER RECEIVING THE STEWART HOLBROOK AWARD
You're quite a ways out here. And what was your prize for?
Five rainbirds spin their water circles round and round
sweet water rises from four hundred feet down
pushed upward by impellers in the stainless steel pump
this deep aquifer comes upward into light.
Why would a writer want such a position?
Old Columbia and Old Snake are falling through the spinning
turbines at some river dam—Hells Canyon, John Day, McNary, Bonneville, Lower Monument, Chief Joseph, Priest Rapids.
Voltage cracks over the steel backs of the pylon slaves.
So where were you born?
Centuries of jetstream, the warm Pacific wind
bear me inland from the coast, rising, cooling, lifted by the Cascades and Blues into snow, sleet, hail, fog, ice, glacier, thunder, drought, flashflood, mist, rain, sun, rain....
And where did you go to school?
Five hundred Chinese juniper there to break the wind.
I planted them by lantern one April night when naked, poor,
bareroot transplants, they came here from Montana—shipped in
by direct freight through Idaho. The seed is Asia.
What exactly do you teach now?
Oregon was part of China once. Fossils dreaming in these mountains
are dreaming in Hunan mountains too. Ancient seabeds from
Asia are local, so these juniper may be native. Their taproots
are the legends of eternity, filagree reaching down for the river.
So what do you write about?
You have to go down to understand this place—top soil, shallow nurturing mantle, alluvial fan 400 feet deep, faultblock basalt, the deepest heat of earth. Juniper are drought-hearty, elemental deep taproot stock, lasting shelterbelt against chaotic wind.
What can be the attraction here?
In snow, deer browse their winterhouse for any buds they find,
but juniper is too prickly, tough, bitter. My wife wanted blue-green trees for color against white weather. Juniper will survive the deer and please her. My father planted nothing I remember.
Why do you stay here? I mean this is so far from anywhere.
Water and soil. Cold spring. Sudden summer. Long slow fall.
Wind, always. Winter days, the sun is open, nights full of visiting shadow. Spring silence, the bloodgold moon riding the wilderness rim, valley flooded in blue Nez Perce light, gray owl hunting.
That garden must be a lot of work.
What are you doing for the world? Eating it up and stuffing your dumpster? What are you refusing to degrade with your decadence? What are you caring for? Planting? Protecting? Growing? Harvesting? Keeping? How far did you walk this year?
No deductions there.
Why should your work matter to readers?
Last week, I sowed cover crops to hold and enrich the soil.
This is HEL—as the Soil Conservation Service tells me on their maps—Highly-Erodible Land. Annual ryegrass and Austrian peas
will go under singing with integrity--green manure in the spring.
Well, what else? How long have you lived here?
Every organic kitchen scrap has gone into the soil—20 years.
Apple trees are ninety nine this year—I keep them pruned, sprayed with dormant oil and one botanical—a thousand pounds of apples stored away, cider jugs ready for their emptiness to fill again.
What about travel and the rest of it?
There's 200 pounds of Indian potatoes dug and stored in the dark cellar with 80 pounds of Spanish onions—the sweet winter keepers, and the Hungarian wax peppers, Mexican jalapeno peppers, green sweet peppers, green pimiento peppers all drying.
Do you have any copies of your work?
On the solar porch. My wife has parsley, oregano, and sage and tarragon dried and stored, and the great Swiss chard row green there—see it—verdant tough against the frost and the deer tracks filling the garden soil now like hail stones.
Well, quiet frankly, I've never heard of you.
And the strawberry leaves gone blood red, the last everbearing sweet fruit come to the doubting tongue—here, taste one—and duende makes the apple pies begin to roll around the kitchen
with the soups and stews--ripeness everywhere and ripeness all
Is this the first prize you've received?
Any time after September one, there will be a night when frost
spreads itself around again. Plants die into suddenly black vines.
We pushcart the tomatoes in to can or store, zuchinni keep a while, the Oregon sunflower forest where finches feast goes under now.
A writer won't make any money here.
The finches leave and the fat catspiders weave their wealthy webs outside the door and one dowager decides to move in upstairs again. Oh, the spendy architecture she invents—this gossamer network—ove, design, energy, routine. Mudwasps circle in the cooling air.
And who has reviewed your work?
The winter birds come down again—juncos, chickadees, jays
the starling horde disappears and the red-shafted flickers
move back into their winter box on the western wall
and these black locust and Chinese elm and rows of lilac--
So you have no national reputation? You're just a regional--
and highbush cranberry, spirea, rosehips--everything deciduous deciding now to sleep and how easily they let their leaves go gold again into this forever wind and let show at last the nesting of their lives, the secret circle they concealed that gave--
Wait—wait a minute--
their children flight, gave them passionate purpose and singing
and now—everything is left rich, whole. I give you the full horn, the given, the plentitudous abundance that requires keeping—just as you or I require immense care, structure, rhythm, routine--
I think you've answered my questions.
Repetition is required to get this far into the sacred blur.
Here's a box of apples for you, a jug of cider, and if you want
to stay for dinner, the stir fry is delicious in October.
The best dialogue goes from garden to kitchen—no further.
I better go now. Thanks. I'll miss my plane.
Five rainbirds spin their water circles round and round
sweet water rises from four hundred feet down
pushed upward by impellers in the stainless steel pump
this deep aquifer comes upward into light.
Why would a writer want such a position?
Old Columbia and Old Snake are falling through the spinning
turbines at some river dam—Hells Canyon, John Day, McNary, Bonneville, Lower Monument, Chief Joseph, Priest Rapids.
Voltage cracks over the steel backs of the pylon slaves.
So where were you born?
Centuries of jetstream, the warm Pacific wind
bear me inland from the coast, rising, cooling, lifted by the Cascades and Blues into snow, sleet, hail, fog, ice, glacier, thunder, drought, flashflood, mist, rain, sun, rain....
And where did you go to school?
Five hundred Chinese juniper there to break the wind.
I planted them by lantern one April night when naked, poor,
bareroot transplants, they came here from Montana—shipped in
by direct freight through Idaho. The seed is Asia.
What exactly do you teach now?
Oregon was part of China once. Fossils dreaming in these mountains
are dreaming in Hunan mountains too. Ancient seabeds from
Asia are local, so these juniper may be native. Their taproots
are the legends of eternity, filagree reaching down for the river.
So what do you write about?
You have to go down to understand this place—top soil, shallow nurturing mantle, alluvial fan 400 feet deep, faultblock basalt, the deepest heat of earth. Juniper are drought-hearty, elemental deep taproot stock, lasting shelterbelt against chaotic wind.
What can be the attraction here?
In snow, deer browse their winterhouse for any buds they find,
but juniper is too prickly, tough, bitter. My wife wanted blue-green trees for color against white weather. Juniper will survive the deer and please her. My father planted nothing I remember.
Why do you stay here? I mean this is so far from anywhere.
Water and soil. Cold spring. Sudden summer. Long slow fall.
Wind, always. Winter days, the sun is open, nights full of visiting shadow. Spring silence, the bloodgold moon riding the wilderness rim, valley flooded in blue Nez Perce light, gray owl hunting.
That garden must be a lot of work.
What are you doing for the world? Eating it up and stuffing your dumpster? What are you refusing to degrade with your decadence? What are you caring for? Planting? Protecting? Growing? Harvesting? Keeping? How far did you walk this year?
No deductions there.
Why should your work matter to readers?
Last week, I sowed cover crops to hold and enrich the soil.
This is HEL—as the Soil Conservation Service tells me on their maps—Highly-Erodible Land. Annual ryegrass and Austrian peas
will go under singing with integrity--green manure in the spring.
Well, what else? How long have you lived here?
Every organic kitchen scrap has gone into the soil—20 years.
Apple trees are ninety nine this year—I keep them pruned, sprayed with dormant oil and one botanical—a thousand pounds of apples stored away, cider jugs ready for their emptiness to fill again.
What about travel and the rest of it?
There's 200 pounds of Indian potatoes dug and stored in the dark cellar with 80 pounds of Spanish onions—the sweet winter keepers, and the Hungarian wax peppers, Mexican jalapeno peppers, green sweet peppers, green pimiento peppers all drying.
Do you have any copies of your work?
On the solar porch. My wife has parsley, oregano, and sage and tarragon dried and stored, and the great Swiss chard row green there—see it—verdant tough against the frost and the deer tracks filling the garden soil now like hail stones.
Well, quiet frankly, I've never heard of you.
And the strawberry leaves gone blood red, the last everbearing sweet fruit come to the doubting tongue—here, taste one—and duende makes the apple pies begin to roll around the kitchen
with the soups and stews--ripeness everywhere and ripeness all
Is this the first prize you've received?
Any time after September one, there will be a night when frost
spreads itself around again. Plants die into suddenly black vines.
We pushcart the tomatoes in to can or store, zuchinni keep a while, the Oregon sunflower forest where finches feast goes under now.
A writer won't make any money here.
The finches leave and the fat catspiders weave their wealthy webs outside the door and one dowager decides to move in upstairs again. Oh, the spendy architecture she invents—this gossamer network—ove, design, energy, routine. Mudwasps circle in the cooling air.
And who has reviewed your work?
The winter birds come down again—juncos, chickadees, jays
the starling horde disappears and the red-shafted flickers
move back into their winter box on the western wall
and these black locust and Chinese elm and rows of lilac--
So you have no national reputation? You're just a regional--
and highbush cranberry, spirea, rosehips--everything deciduous deciding now to sleep and how easily they let their leaves go gold again into this forever wind and let show at last the nesting of their lives, the secret circle they concealed that gave--
Wait—wait a minute--
their children flight, gave them passionate purpose and singing
and now—everything is left rich, whole. I give you the full horn, the given, the plentitudous abundance that requires keeping—just as you or I require immense care, structure, rhythm, routine--
I think you've answered my questions.
Repetition is required to get this far into the sacred blur.
Here's a box of apples for you, a jug of cider, and if you want
to stay for dinner, the stir fry is delicious in October.
The best dialogue goes from garden to kitchen—no further.
I better go now. Thanks. I'll miss my plane.