Lux aeterna: Paul Stevens

Alas, there is need for a second post today--alas, for it too is about a death. Poet and culture-maker and lovely man Paul Stevens died this morning in Australia, with all his family about him. Thanks to poet Janet Alexa Kenny for letting his many fans and friends know. I'm thinking of the close of his poem about Tasmania: "At last to sail free / Between southern capes / Thick with kelp and wild foam, / With wave awash, surging, / Late sun on the headland,  / And shadow down valley / Past all memory."

The Flea.
Cover image by Mark Bulwinkle.

Born in Yorkshire, Paul Stevens lived in Australia for most of his life. He graduated from the University of Sydney with an Honours degree in Early English Literature and Language, and studied history and archaeology as well. He taught history and literature in New South Wales, where he lived with his wife and family. He was a wide-ranging reader and thinker and generous to many.

Many of us are grateful to his work in founding magazines of formal poetry. The Shit Creek Review. Chimaera. The Flea. I tend to think the marvelous Flea his crowning glory as a magazine founder, as it is so very different from all other poetry magazines and so interesting in its relation to literary history--binding his love of Renaissance and metaphysical poetry to his love for his contemporaries. Artist Makoto Fujimura has talked about "caring for our culture." Paul Stevens was an example, a caretaker of culture.

Pax tecum, Paul Stevens, father and teacher, maker of poems and marvelous 'zines. I wish that I had known you sooner; I am glad that I knew you in the marvelous aether of the internet, where minds brush against one another despite all distance in space. Even now your words and your poetry 'zines touch us, although we are severed from you in time.

The Relics 

Archaeologists in Italy have unearthed two skeletons 
thought to be 5,000 to 6,000 years old, locked in an embrace. 
Their sex has not yet been determined. (BBC)

Mother to daughter, softly touching, is it?
Sister to sister's delicate embrace?
Friend to friend, companions past corruption?
Brother to brother, face to well-loved face?

The wheat crop rippled in the heat, the cattle
Grazed sweet grass, milk splashed in bowls of clay;
All fell to dust; from dust these rise, recovered
As brush and trowel lift slow time away.

Lover to lover, holding all that's dear,
They gaze into each other's eyes, long blind,
Stripped back to bony gesture: stubborn relics,
So much of earth, so much of human kind.

     Originally published in Poemeleon, reprinted in The Hypertexts

Paddling with The Shit Creek Review

ART, GLORY, AND BEAUTY

Thanks to everybody who turned out for "The Breastplate of Moses" talk and reading. I was pleasantly surprised by both attendance and interest. Good questions, too.


* * *

UP SHIT CREEK

I have never submitted to The Shit Creek Review before... Did the name put me off? But I recently learned that it was founded by that marvelous founder of poetry 'zines, Paul Stevens. Naturally, I had to submit, if only out of my great love for The Flea.


Here's what wiki says about the name:  The ezine was originally started by Stevens as a joke based on its name Shit Creek Review, which is a not-so-subtle ironic allusion to the many literary magazines which use the formulaic title "X Creek (or River) Review", as well as incorporating a play on the Australian colloquialism "Up Shit Creek in a barbed wire canoe without a paddle" (meaning to be in serious difficulties), made famous by Australian comedian Barry Humphries...


You may find the current God(s) issue, edited by Rose Kelleher and Angela France with help from guest editors Ann Drysdale and R. Nemo Hill, here.  You may find my poem, "The Fool as Gilgamesh" (yes, it's another The Book of the Red King poem), right here.  Here is a bite from the poem to entice you, even though a taster on Shit Creek does not seem alluring:


When I ran off to the forest, I was
Looking for a favorable message,
I was looking for signs and omens,
I was searching for some news of dreamtime.


They are, it seems, looking for a new editor. Perhaps you are a poet and would-be editor looking for an outrageously-monikered 'zine. That would be a match made in a no doubt curious place. 


"May the creek be with you!"

* * *

POETRY BOOKS

I have a lot of new poetry books on my bedside table. Some are Phoenicia books since I will have a book with Beth Adams' press soon. And I bought copies of books by everybody on the Mezzo Cammin panel at West Chester, and that cleaned me out of book money for a while. Then I have bought several older books that I wanted--the Thomas and a complete or near-complete Causley. It's not as pretty as the Godine collected, but it has more poems. I picked up the Hacker at a local bookshop. And one of these was a gift from the poet, so that was lovely. I want to get some other West Chesterian books when I stumble over a pot of money. Think I might find the end of the rainbow if I keep wandering around day-dreaming. After all, I've already fallen down the stairs...

Luisa Igloria, Juan Luna's Revolver
University of Notre Dame, 2009

Dana Gioia, The Gods of Winter
Graywolf Press, 1991

Julie Kane, Jazz Funeral
Story Line Press and West Chester University
(The Donald Justice Prize of West Chester University), 2009

Kim Bridgford, Instead of Maps
David Robert Books, 2005

Kim Bridgford, Undone
David Robert Books, 2003

Kim Bridgford, In the Extreme
Contemporary Poetry Review Press
West Chester University, 2007

Rhina P. Espaillat, Where Horizons Go
New Odyssey Press, Kirksville, Missouri, 1998
T. S. Eliot Prize

Annabelle Moseley, A Field Guide to the Muses
Finishing Line Press
Georgetown, Kentucky  2009

Leslie Monsour, The Alarming Beauty of the Sky
Red Hen Press, Los Angeles, 2005

R. S. Thomas, Collected Poems 1945-1990
Phoenix Poetry, UK, 1993

Charles Causley, Collected Poetry 1951-2000
Picador, UK, 2000

Marilyn Hacker, Selected Poems 1965-1990
W. W. Norton 1994
National Book Award

Ren Powell, Mercy Island: New and Selected Poems
Phoenicia Publishing, Montreal, 2011

Clayton T. Michaels, Watermark
Phoenicia Publishing, Montreal, 2010

Rachel Barenblat, 70 Faces: Torah Poems
Phoenicia Publishing, Montreal, 2010