Playing in the Field of Robert Duncan

"The light foot hears you and the brightness begins”

                                                                                    -- Pindar

Correspondence: Helen Adam and Jess

Baker: Civility Beyond His Ken

His Persian tongue

Makes promises to

The beloved, but

He will cut you cold.

Not Tolkein's Fat Cat

Fabulous snowy

Not so innocent

Tom.

Embarkation for Kythera

When a kitten swims

Across a paste-up

Art patron summons

Blake's Tiger burning.

Christmas Eve, New York

Meowing jewels

Moved to a high shelf

Sat side by side, still

As stone, stared at guests.

At dawn I went up

To the roof and looked

Down a long vista

Of yards in East Village.

In the heart of each

Sat a curled up cat.

One cat to each yard

As far as one looked,

Each like a little

Witch meditating.

Cover of a Prospectus

Cut out cat holds

Cut out rabbit

By its long ears.

Is that magic

In the hare's eyes?

Helen thinks so.

All the Sphinxes

Black and white and stone,

Flesh and stripped down bone

A place to perch or pose.

One black sphinx broken

By the quaking earth,

Other left to stand

Alone.

Replacements served

As a place to pose,

Robert or Jess shared

Guard duty with Sekhmet,

The lion, before one

Temple of fine art

While Helen shot film.

Condolences from

New York, from Helen

To Jess and Robert.

Black Orlando dead.

Vermin

Paper collage is a forgiving medium, allowing me to temporarily

arrange pieces of the artwork until the desired composition is clear.

Greg Bee, "Him, Myself"

                               From Object Stories, Portland Art Museum

Could there be so many shots

Of cats in black and white and gray

All over? So much yawning and stretching

Before a camera. Me, I'm unsettled

By all their claws and teeth,

Find they inspire as much fear as venomous

Snakes and arachnids, whose

Intimate poses don't intimidate

Women in ball gowns pasted up against them,

Never mind the mouse with his human face

Clinging to the bride's veil, next to her ear.

Some say he's black

But I say he's bonnie

                                                                                    --Collage by Helen Adam

And scissor carefully around

Each bat ear and tuft of fur

Then glue him, bared incisors and all

Over the mouth and under plucked eyebrows

That declare the mouth to be luscious

Revlon Cherries in the Snow, 1953

Suffocation: a fashion photo in tints of gray,

Elegance in an evening gown.

Photo of Jess Collins, 1958

In dreams I am a sea-mew

                                                Flying, flying, flying, 

                                                To where my heart is

                                                In my own lost land.

                                                                        --Traditional

There is the wind, only the wind,

To force its direction on the ocean.

There is the ocean, only the ocean,

To turn its fury to the sand.

There is the sand, only the sand,

To wear out its tantrums on the rocks.

There are the rocks, only the rocks,

To echo the shape of the man who gazes to sea.

There is a man gazing to sea, only a man,

Too wide awake to take to the sky.

Double Exposed Photo of Jess

The white cat loves one

Of him, the one in

Shadow. He will not

Deign to share Jess' sun.

Does Jess shade his eyes

To seek the cat or

The path of evening

Sunlight on the sea?

Laird Duncan

Among tribes of cats

Only one at a time

Will fit all four paws

On his chest, at rest

While he reads poems,

Purrs to lions' roars,

An enamoured mage

Among tribes of poets.

Sorceries of Desire

Duncan waves his wand and they gather.

He speaks his spell and they change.

Waters begin to shimmer

Waters begin to part.

They wait to be entered.

The lover gazes away to sea at high tide

Seeking the art of a sea mew's flight.

The woman reaches out of black water

Grasping for a tree branch fallen in her loch.

Her sister peeks from afternoon shadows,

A stand of goat willows wearing catkins.

Fields begin to quake.

Fields begin to fold.

They want to be entered.

The lover kneels to gather seeds

To scatter for next year's meadows.

The woman walks among the bees

Intent on learning to make honey.

Her sister sits in a flowered dress

Hoping to draw butterflies and dragons.

The world begins to crack.

The world begins to open.

It waits to be entered.

The lover listens to the calls

Of caves as cold as the sea.

The woman seeks the source of magma

Streaming over her bare feet.

The sister fills a lantern with oil

And laces up her sturdy shoes.

Then they all focus on the night sky

Choosing the same star to guide them.

Where Heaven and Hell Go Hand in Hand, Helen Adam

We lost our cats when the Harpies came—

Swarming with their birds and bats,

A flurry of wings, and insects that sting

Hidden among the roses.

We lost our prince when the Harpies came—

Swarming around their queen, his bride,

Perfumed with fear, singing songs we couldn't hear

Hidden among the roses.

We lost our youths when the Harpies came—

Swarming through each cottage and tower

To linger over cribs and gnaw on teenage ribs

Hidden among the roses.

We lost our land when the Harpies came—

Swarming like locusts in gardens,

So very lean they ate anything green

Hidden among the roses.

We lost our Lord when the Harpies came—

Swarming behind a comma, we're caught in a tale

That has no end

Hidden among the roses.

Catasters, Broadside by Norma Cole and Jess

Led by the title, I keep looking for cats:

Not mountaineers, disembodied hands,

Soaring scissor tailed swallows,

(Only one nests),

Boys who may be pulled up

By mountaineers or whom mountaineers

May pull down or both (a kind of entropy),

Girls who keep up a martial march,

Two rows of sphinxes stacked,

A shower of stars beneath SILENCE,

One snail,

The word SUN and a hidden flaming face,

A paper boat, beetles, blossoms and a pin wheel,

And one aster.

Last night at a concert at The Patricia Reser Center for the Arts, I encountered a collage of two nearly nude women standing side by side. It took me back to Helen Adam- an artist, poet, and student of Robert Duncan’s.  I first learned about Helen Adam and the Maidens while I was working on my MFA (2000) at the University of San Francisco. Two of my professors, Aaron Shurin and Norma Cole, were part of the charmed circle around Duncan. My interest grew stronger when I found the broadside “Catasters,” published by Morning Star Folio 1995, in the Turtle Island Bookstore in Berkeley. A collaboration between Cole and Jess (Duncan’s partner), I purchased it in 2000 and tucked it away with other items of her work. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6515048-catasters

Helen Adam’s work and life were documented by The Chicago Review in 2016 and the monograph The Collages of Helen Adam, published by Cuneiform Press in 2017. Much of Playing in the Field of Robert Duncan was inspired by text and illustrations in those volumes. I learned about these publications through WOM-PO, an international listserv devoted to the discussion of poetry by women, at the time they were published. 

Her art deeply unsettled me.

The first section came out of found texts in “Helen Adam & Jess Collins: Selected Letters, 1956-1984” (Chicago Review). I found myself at play, breaking quotes down into syllabic verse, focusing on passages about cats.  

“Vermin,” in the category of ekphrasis, addresses a series of collages, found in the Cuneiform book, in which women in fine gowns encounter bats, toads, snakes, and other animals. Most are titled. “Some say he’s black, but I say he’s bonnie” is the title Adam gave one of the pieces in that series. Her era was largely one of black and white images. I wanted to splash some color across this collage, yet when I did, the bat insisted on hiding it.

I wanted to identify with the romantic figure in “Photo of Jess Collins, 1958” (exhibited at Buzz Gallery Poets Show, 1964) and a double exposure of him (Chicago Review.) The epigraph in the first poem accompanied the image in the gallery show. So much of her work draws on Scottish  tradition, dream, and nightmares. These was my attempt to find Jess a place in the real world.

In “Laird Duncan” and “Sorceries of Desire” I turned my attention to the man who seems to have been the charismatic center of the group. The first shows him at rest. The second brings together Jess, Duncan, and the two Adam sisters in a mythic rite.

“Where Heaven and Hell Go Hand in Hand” is one collage from In Harpy Land, a book of rhymed and metered verses with collages. Her narrative describes what happens to the lover of a harpy. He narrates his tale of horror finishing with “still I was blest, who knew her for the loveliest,” Yes, it ends with a comma. My version voices the experience of common folk under the plague of harpies.

The “Catasters” broadside becomes the subject of my final encounter with Duncan and his people. An overwhelming construction of images, years later I can’t believe I tackled it. Far more of the images were left out than were included. If I were to approach this artifact now, the poem would be very different.

A poem or series of poems like this leaves readers with questions: Is writing a poem like this just a game? Is this an endeavor to pour hours of time into? What does it mean? Was the writer looking for her place in the larger scheme of things? It comes down to I keep looking for cats.