Sunday, August 09, 2015

A Trip to Wolverine

The first time I heard the place name "Wolverine"
(it's a town in Northern Michigan)
it sounded wonderfully exotic and strange to me.
The fellow who was building us a house 
near the woods outside of Alanson,
said he was going on the weekend to help 
someone with a cabin in Wolverine.
I got a chance to go there when my daughter 
invited me to a Goat Packing Seminar
in--wait for it!-- Wolverine!
I only went there the one time, and afterwards, 
I drove around the town and took some pictures
in the bright summer light.
I later used these pictures to test various ways
of modifying photographs, I still use them
that way, once in a while.
This was done in the iPhone app "Waterlogue."
Now I need to go back next summer!
To Wolverine!



Country Roads

A pale morning in June 4 AM
the country roads still graying and moist
tunnelling endlessly through pines
a car had passed by on the dusty road
where an ant was out with his pine needle working
He was wandering around in the huge F of Firestone
that had been pressed into the sandy earth
for a hundred and twenty kilometers.
Fir needles are heavy.
Time after time he slipped back with his badly
       balanced 
       load
and worked it up again
and skidded back again
Traveling over the great and luminous Sahara
       lit by clouds.

Rolf Jacobsen; 
translated from the Norwegian by Robert Bly

Twenty Poems, Seventies Press, 1977, page 13.

This is another of the poets I recently found by reading Morton Marcus' memoir lately. He has quite a long section on Robert Bly and his translations.




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