Pritchardia hillebrandii, a palm endemic to Moloka’i, Hawai’i - photograph taken at the Merwin Conservancy in Maui. — *Pritchardia hillebrandii, a palm endemic to Moloka’i, Hawai’i* - photograph taken at the Merwin Conservancy in Maui.

RIP W.S. MERWIN

March 20, 2019 by Dave Landsberger in poets I like, poems not by me, cool people cool things

On the day that W.S. Merwin died I did not plant a tree.

I watered the palm in my living room. While I was at it, I watered all the other plants in the house.

When peaceful people die they leave the less peaceful ones behind to process their absence. This is where I’m at.

I remember being in The Merwin Conservancy in Maui, September 2017: a chaotic return of palms swinging over my head. When you visit one of your favorite poet’s gardens, which happens to be in Hawai’i, and the trip also is your honeymoon, you have a 100% chance of desperately falling for the moment and the confluences that buoy you spiritually.

That visit has stayed with me, nearly 1.5 years afterwards. When I emailed Sara Tekula at the Merwin Conservancy to beg them to host a tour during my 7 day timeframe in Maui, I couldn’t know then that not only would she accommodate a desperate poet like me, but that the visit would stay with me and my writing for some time afterward.

If you’re interested in the photographs I took at The Merwin Conservancy (like the one above) you can view them here.

If you read the obituaries you will generally hear that The Carrier of Ladders (1970) is Merwin’s greatest work. It did win a Pulitzer in 1971. It also is representative of a moment in time in Vietnam-era America. But I remind you that prizes are meaningless and usually awarded after the fact, or in other words, rewarded for one work of art too late. The Lice (1967) is Merwin’s greatest book of poetry and you deserve to read it. For less explicable reasons, I am also partial to The Vixen (1996). But Merwin’s greatest work, along with the help of his wife Paula, is The Merwin Conservancy. Merwin’s best and most singular individual poems - the ones most frequently posted on the Internet - were generally written later in his career, scattershot in books here and there.

Merwin’s death comes at a strange time for me personally. I wrote an essay about visiting The Merwin Conservancy that is currently being made into a zine. The essay was written after Paula Merwin had passed, but before William (WS) had.

Since writing this essay, I’ve been thinking about time periods between spouses passing, like what my grandfather is living through now, widowed five years ago. I think it’s important to not weigh these inevitable moments with additional sadness. I think we need to discuss them more as a culture. I think the essay, when illustrated by my collaborator Ben Marcus, will help make the essay itself a garden.

A good way of life is to turn everything you love into a garden.

Since he died, I’ve been asked by others what my favorite poem is by Merwin. I don’t have a good answer for that question. The reason why is that Merwin’s life speaks more to me than his poems do. The way in which he chose to exist in the world is what has always stuck out to me.

Instead of leaving you with a poem, I’ll leave you with W.S. Merwin’s rules for living and writing, which were taught to me by his head gardener, Olin Erikson, when I visited The Merwin Conservancy:

~ Pay attention

~ Seek balance and harmony

~ Put care and love into all that you do

~ Repeat

You will be missed, William.

Joshua Beckman Workshop

November 20, 2018 by Dave Landsberger in poems not by me, poetry workshops

Last month I was grateful to attend a workshop hosted by Joshua Beckman at The Poetry Foundation. He’s been a foundational poet for me in my understanding of modern haiku in the English language. I remember Campbell McGrath describing him to me as “a guy who eats pancakes and wears an undershirt” and since that was all I knew about the man I had decided long ago that he would be worth studying.

Signed copy of my favorite book of his, Your Time Has Come. When he signed it, he seemed to be taken back to the time when he wrote it, which was the summer in NYC immediately following 9/11. He really went on a journey in his mind right in front of… — Signed copy of my favorite book of his, Your Time Has Come. When he signed it, he seemed to be taken back to the time when he wrote it, which was the summer in NYC immediately following 9/11. He really went on a journey in his mind right in front of me. I almost felt bad about it. It also made me jealous, that he had a project that could transport him to a 3-month period of time, in the same moment that it demonstrated its own danger.

We were asked to make a poetic diary of the events of the weather for the week preceding the workshop. Here’s a sample of what I typed.

Beckman’s workshop was based upon us generating seven days of poetic diary related to the weather. We then traded these diaries with other poets in the workshop, and we generated poems from the work that we had received. It was interesting that some participants refused to share their work with one another. I received a wonderful poem in return that had so much emotion inside what I had thought were fairly objective poetic observations.

Here’s the poem that was generated out of my diary. Notice the line taken from the typewritten image above this one. The poet admitted to me she had received a call from a former lover the night before, and it had influenced her reading of my object… — Here’s the poem that was generated out of my diary. Notice the line taken from the typewritten image above this one. The poet admitted to me she had received a call from a former lover the night before, and it had influenced her reading of my objective diary, which was really fascinating.

Joshua Beckman gave us three ideas for generating poems:

The poetic diary of weather (described above)
Transcribe voicemails from your phone - thinking of other people’s messages can help you write towards your own thoughts.
Think of the last photgraph you took or was taken of you and describe it.

I particularly like the first and third idea. Perhaps the second idea is too raw and emotional for me to kick into another gear. But the idea is beautiful: to be held in captivity by a solitary voice and to write in response.

In advance of the workshop we read Beckman’s latest projects, two books of poetic essays.

“Three Talks” and “The Lives of the Poems” were also required reading for the workshop. Reading these books left we with a lot of ideas that I’m still turning around. I find myself captivated by the poetic diary, and reading this book reminded me of the art book AKIRA CLUB. The images in AKIRA CLUB celebrate the titular manga, collecting covers, pin-ups, and promotional images. But what ties the experience together is the inclusion of small diaries for each image. So as you are looking at 3 covers of AKIRA, you are also reading about Katsuhiro Otomo’s headcold for three consecutive days. The juxtaposition of these amazing images and menial life is profound in that it recognizes the staggering difference between the mind and the body’s reality.

Beckman could certainly be called an imagist, and I find his desire to be held in a singular moment with a monastic like dedication to the present to be a really admirable poetic way of life. One image he related it to is like reeling a kite in on a fishing pole - there’s nothing else to look at.

Near Death Experience

March 05, 2017 by Dave Landsberger in cool people cool things, poems not by me

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February 21, 2017 - CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - Poems While You Wait's finest, Eric Plattner and Logan Breitbart, have warrants issued for their arrest after causing a civil disturbance during a poetry reading this past Thursday at the sharply partitioned Poetry Foundation.

"It was like nothing I've ever seen," an unsuspecting viewer reported to davelandsberger.com, "And I've seen a man eat the length of his limbs in Subway sandwiches."

Viewers of the poetry reading are irate and filled with vengeance, steadily calling attorneys with easily memorized phone numbers.

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The dynamic duo released a collaborative renegade pamphlet of poems titled "NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE" which tallied the crowd's marrow count with an Enkidu-channeling heavy metal sweetness.

The reading concluded with an impromptu civil disturbance wherein contraband was distributed on the steps of a nearby church.

Security guards found evidence of counterfeit Oreos and are in the process of testing fun size Twix and Kit-Kat's to determine the scale of the unlisenced candy distribution operation.

"I won't tolerate this contraband on my watch. I'm calling my boss" The security guard said before calling his boss.

davelandsberger.com will keep you updated on this developing story.

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I Just Watched XXX and it was Awesome

January 23, 2017 by Dave Landsberger in poems not by me

I Just Watched XXX and it was Awesome

he jumped barns

he jumped avalanches

he jumped jumps

I kept throwing up and crying at the same time because it was so awesome

too awesome

I feel empty now

I feel like dying

I can't ride dirtbikes like him

I can't do that cool sideways thing over a gully

he is an asshole

I am an asshole

there is no reason here

only illusions

- Derek Keisgen

This poem is important to me. Here's why:

It is written clearly and plainly
It allows for the simultaneous existence of beauty and vulgarity towards media
It is reverential and critical in respectful ways

This past Friday I went to see XXX: The Return of Xander Cage. When the movie ended, people stood up and clapped.

Those are the people who I write poems for.

Thank you, Derek Keisgen.

Derek Keisgen's band, Bear vs. Shark (Michigan's finest) is below.