A VISIT WITH KENT JOHNSON ~

  

Dear Michael Boughn,

I’m not sure what has happened — you invited me into the fold to send a piece about Kent Johnson for your proposed anthology I ONCE MET KENT JOHNSON. The title, of course, drawn from the two titles Susan and I edited, designed and published from Longhouse of Kent’s delicately mountaineering written portraits I ONCE MET. It sounded like a terrific idea and you sent me the almost finished manuscript of all those already involved. I wrote a little piece for the anthology, sent it along, and the rest is history, which I believe I will share in all our correspondence shown below — and why not — also with the general public. Kent would understand. I’ll also show my tribute to Kent at the closing, since all went quiet (never a good sign in publishing) after you accepted my tribute, revealed you wept reading it, and then months later published the anthology for Kent without my tribute. Why not tell me why there has been no explanation to my tribute being erased, nor any word here to the book's release.  I had to ask an old friend of Kent's and mine who let me know about the book's publication. My copy arrived a week after his, which I thank you, but not for this treatment. 

[BA]   

Begin forwarded message:

From: Michael Boughn 
Subject: Kent
Date: March 13, 2023 at 2:09:36 PM EDT
To: longhousepoetry@gmail.com

Hi Bob and Susan--

We are putting together a collection of tributes to Kent called I Once Met Kent Johnson. I attached some below so you can get a sense of what people have written. We'd very much like it if you could contribute something, especially since you published Kent's book. I'm hoping to get something together in next couple of weeks. Let me know if you'd like to add to it.

Best,
Mike

-- 
Michael Boughn

 

____________________

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Kent
Date: March 13, 2023 at 10:01:56 PM EDT
To: Michael Boughn 

Mike,

What a cherry idea!

What’s you latest deadline?

We have too much snow and too much mud to deal with.

Plus Susan just got out of the ER.

Time, at the moment, is funny.

Let me know.

stay warm & well,

Bob

____________________

Begin forwarded message:

From: Michael Boughn

Subject: Re: Kent

Date: March 14, 2023 at 7:15:45 AM EDT

To: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>

Hi Bob — sorry to hear of your various travails.  There’s no tight deadline, but I’m hoping to be able to put something together in 2-3 weeks.

m

Michael Boughn

____________________

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>

Subject: Re: Kent

Date: March 18, 2023 at 10:19:53 PM EDT

To: Michael Boughn 

Hi Mike,

Nor’easter here gave us over three feet of snow. No power, phone, water, road for days. I’m writing now but no way to send it because the Internet is out. It may be out for a week or weeks. The power is back after five days. We’ve been moving snow everyday. One day this note will go out and get to you. With luck, I’d like to have a piece for Kent in your hand by the end of the month.

See you when I do.

Bob

____________________

Begin forwarded message:

From: Michael Boughn 

Subject: Re: Kent

Date: March 19, 2023 at 2:06:41 PM EDT

To: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>

Terrific, Bob.

m

Michael Boughn

____________________

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>

Subject: Kent Johnson

Date: March 27, 2023 at 7:18:14 AM EDT

To: Michael Boughn 

Hi Mike,

After the Nor’easter here (42 inches of snow in 24 hours) we had no power for a week and no phone or internet for almost two weeks, plus there is no wi fi reception in this valley, period, except by the phone line — finally some restoration at the end of March — getting this piece for Kent off to you. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Will this gathering be both on-line and book form?

all’s well, Bob

Bob Arnold
P.O. Box 2454
West Brattleboro
Vermont
05303

____________________

Begin forwarded message:

From: Michael Boughn 
Subject: Re: Kent Johnson
Date: March 27, 2023 at 3:18:23 PM EDT
To: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>

That’s terrific, Bob. Had me in tears. I really miss him, too.

I’d explain why you got drawn in later than some others, but it’s complicated. Suffice to say, the whole process was ad hoc and anarchic. And it was all on me, and I am grossly ignorant and isolated when it comes to the poetry world. Not mention usually stoned.

Thanks for this. If Susan is sending something, I will wait.

m


Michael Boughn

____________________

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Kent Johnson
Date: March 27, 2023 at 4:41:30 PM EDT
To: Michael Boughn 

You’re a good sport, Mike, appreciate it.

Susan is quite happy with what I wrote. 

She likes Kent in there, voice man and all.

When is it all appearing?

all’s well, Bob

____________________

Begin forwarded message:

From: Michael Boughn 
Subject: Re: Kent Johnson
Date: March 27, 2023 at 6:09:16 PM EDT
To: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>

It shouldn't be too long, at least in PublishingTime. Billie Chernicoff and I started collecting these when Kent told us he was terminal. There's a small  group of us, most of whom were on the Dispatches editors list. It was half social and half Dispatches sounding board. We kept up a conversation after Dispatches closed up shop. When he broke the news to us, we all wrote something to give him cheer and let him know how much he was loved and respected. He sometimes had a hard time recognizing that, and according to Deb, his wife, while he was sick he was frequently despondent about the universal enmity he felt. So we decided to ask a few others to join in. No one was in charge. Everyone reached out, but mostly it was me. I knew the names of a lot of the people he had close relations with because I witnessed it during Dispatches. So I reached out to them. The manuscripts collected in Billie's computer because there was just too much else going on to make a book, too. I was out of the country for a while, then had a cardiac issue. Anyway, you know how it goes with time at our age. Poof. When we got back to it last week, I decided to reach out to people I had missed the first time around. And you and Susan came up. And now you have the whole sordid story I said I wasn't going to bother you with.

I think it will be available in a couple of months -- say June. Or July. I definitely want to make a book and I have some very reasonable ideas how to do that. As well as get it online.

All the best,

Mike

____________________

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: IOMKJohnson
Date: August 7, 2023 at 10:37:53 PM EDT
To: Michael Boughn 

RE: I Once Met Kent Johnson

Hello Mike,

Deb has sent the lovely memorial booklet of and for Kent which includes a brief passage or two from IOMKJ.
Has the book now been published?
Please let me know.

all’s well, Bob 

________________

Begin forwarded message:

From: Michael Boughn
Subject: Re: IOMKJohnson
Date: August 7, 2023 at 11:16:19 PM EDT
To: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>

Hey Bob --

It's on hold. I am waiting for one last important contribution that's been held up because of health issues. I've been led to believe that I should get it soon.

Deb took that from the old pdf. 

Glad to hear all's well. Here, too. I have been up on Georgian Bay a lot at our cabin. With my dog. It's good.

m

______________________

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: IOMKJohnson
Date: August 7, 2023 at 11:18:12 PM EDT
To: Michael Boughn 

Thank you, Mike — we’re all looking forward.

stay well, Bob

______________________

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>

Subject: Re: Kent

Date: November 19, 2023 at 3:07:33 PM EST

To: John Bradley 

Dear John,

Between letters, a question — have you ever received the anthology Mike B and others were planning for Kent Johnson?
I thought I had heard from Mike they planned to have the book out this year.
Please let me know whatever you know.

all’s well, Bob

______________________

Begin forwarded message:

From: John Bradley 
Subject: Re: Kent
Date: November 19, 2023 at 3:23:36 PM EST
To: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>

Dear Bob,

I just received a copy of the book this week.

I don't see your essay in the book, though, Bob.

John

__________________________

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>

Subject: Re: Kent

Date: November 20, 2023 at 9:52:21 AM EST

To: John Bradley 

Dear John,

That is a bit of shameful news to receive on a Thanksgiving week, but thank you, John, I thought those involved in this project might be capable of such a cowardly move. 

Glad the book is out for Kent. Glad those contributing are there for Kent. More than glad Kent and I were together and Susan and I were able to publish I ONCE MET not only once in a hand-sewn gold cover booklet but the expanded and perfect-bound edition that Kent knows we plan to keep in print.

However, to never have Susan and I included in the first place (and I have to ask) and then to be invited, my submission taken (all shown in the spool of this brief correspondence) and then be dropped without any explanation — heavens to betsy!

I believe I’ll show all this correspondence to allow what happened to speak for itself, and then post my piece to Kent, which turns out to have a little wave of foreshadow.

all’s well, Bob

______________

KNOCK KNOCK, A Visit With Kent Johnson

I not only ONCE MET Kent Johnson, I saw Kent the other day — waiting for me up in my woodlot in Vermont, sitting with his legs comfortably crossed on the large ash tree Yuri the Russian and I dropped a few weeks ago. A very big tree, maybe 100 feet tall. The tree has been dying now for some years but still taking its time. Like a cat who finds the softest spot in a room to curl up or a dog who slumps into the warmest spot in the dooryard on a winter day, Kent knew where to find me. He, of course, asked about the tree. Pointed to all I had bucked up and hand-split. It’s nearly two cords of prime firewood. Kent wanted to know all the juicy details — like, who was Yuri? 

Yuri was from Moldova. He’s half my age. I was looking for a young tree-surgeon and one afternoon at the grocer’s Susan got out of the truck and cried, “Oh wow! the top of that pine tree just fell over.” That was Yuri up there. I didn’t know him yet but I was going to. He was working as a favor for friends from the same neighborhood church. Susan went off to shop and from the parking lot I watched awhile Yuri work. Then I walked over for a closer look. I got Yuri’s phone number from one of the ground workers since Yuri was too high up in the tree. Yuri was at our place a week later with his little family snug in a company work truck. Not his truck. We took down the ash tree when it was ten degrees, late February. The money Yuri earned would pad his pockets for a three week trip back to Moldova to visit his young wife’s family since they hadn’t yet seen the baby. Kent loved all the story. Told me again of his own travels to that part of the world, the poets he met. He then put one of his hands deep into the hollow of the big log he sat on. I still had the last twelve feet of the ash tree to buck up. It was three feet thick. The hollow rot would at least give me a leg-up when starting to split the large chunks. Kent asked how long it would take. He kept smiling and shaking his head as I described everything. Taking his hand out of the hollow he then asked was it true it was only after twenty or so others were invited to this anthology of I ONCE MET, I was then invited? 

I beamed and nodded. “Nothing new in club-house poetry America, Kent.” I added that the editor was kind enough to share with me many of of the contributing pieces. “I know, Bob, but you published the book I Once Met. Hell, you encouraged me to write this bigger book of memories from the smaller handmade golden booklet you and Susan published. Don’t you remember how I told you I planned to go to this bar I like and sit there and write? Well, I did! And then you added in all those great photos”. . . “By the way, how is Susan?” I told Kent Susan was back at the house keeping the wood fires up but as the sun gets warmer she’ll follow my snowshoe tracks and see us. Kent asked if I was going to write a piece for the anthology. I said I hoped to. We had a real true blue Nor’easter blow through the week the invitation arrived laying in over three feet of snow in twenty-four hours. We lost power, phone, water and even the dirt road along the river for days. But I read through portions of the anthology that was sent to me and saw mutual friends John Bradley & George Kalamaras in there, plus a sharp, warm remembrance by George Quasha. I never met Quasha but I bet maybe Kent had (he nodded his head). I bet you also felt the same thrill I did when young and finding a copy of his Active Anthology? Kent didn’t say anything, just kept smiling at me. Neither a nod or a head shake; he was a man in love. I waited while Kent came back from wherever he was, thinking or dreaming of poets and books.

He then blinked and looked me dead in the eye and said, “I died too young, Bob. I miss my family. I miss my dog Ben Jonson. I miss you all. Look at me — my hair’s grown back!” We laughed and let that all sink in. The sun had finally reached our spot in the woods. Snow was melting around the big log. “Yeah, you died too young Kent,” I said. “Everyone misses you. But you still lived almost twenty years longer than Basho.” Hello rolled into goodbye.

           

Bob Arnold

_______________                    

27 March 2023

Green River

      All shown is shown as received

CLAUDE STEPHENSON ~

 

a tip of the cap to Mike Luster

"Our dear friend and great musician Claude Stephenson passed away (31 Aug. 2023) at his home in Albuquerque's South Valley. Claude played mandolin and guitar, and was truly one-of-a-kind. If you ever met him, you won't forget. Here is his original instrumental Olive Blossom Hornpipe, recorded with Elliott's Ramblers and Byron Berline. Whenever I saw him, I would request we play this tune. I raise my glass and play a tune for you, my friend."

Jeffrey Forbes

HAN SHAN ~

 

Cold Mountain Poems

1.

These days

    Men who saw Cold Mountain

In person

Thought him crazy.

    

    Unseemly,

        The face apart,

Body in rags & things

    Like you shouldn't notice.

What I said

He didn't hear.

What he said

I won't repeat.

Yet

    Go on, I tell

    Those to come

All ye

Go on

To the Cold Mountain.

2.

Out of clothes? Go find yours.

Don't get a fox to take off his coat.

Wanting food? Pick our own.

Don't trick a goat into providing for you.

To ask for a loan of the pelt

& flesh as well

Is to hold with their sadness & misery,

regrets all around.

The force for good is gone

From the world.

Food & clothing not where they should be.

3.

The poor donkey is short one measure

Of fodder,

The rich dog has three inches of bed straw to spare.

If poverty is not evenly distributed

Wealth and hardship will not meet in the middle.

Just when you begin to provide for the donkey

You make the dogs feel deprived.

Think on this, will you —

It even makes me feel depressed.

4.

Heaven is high, endless.

The earth thick

    Thick without end.

Living in between

At the mercy of these powers,

Creatures

    Butting heads

For food & warmth,

Eyeing each other's morsels

Would scheme to kill

        Heedless

        The while.

Why should

A blind child

Wonder about the color of milk?

5.

I saw dogs, by the hundreds

A wild bunch,

                        Scruffy curs,

The reclining ones happy to lie low

The ones up & about are happy too,

Throw a bone in their midst

& all changes

Everyone begins to growl,

Baring their teeth at each other

Alas, not that there were too few bones

But there were so many dogs

How to share it out?

6.

Pity the mortals

Their feeling habit

Eating at every meal

    Never tire

Steamed pork, stir in the garlic paste

Broiled duck

Dip in peppered salt

For a delicate fish broth

Pull out the backbone of a fish

                For tenderness

                Serve the cheek warm

    Its skin on

    The bitterness of other things

    Others can keep

We get on with

What is sweet

7.

Children, I tell you,

Leave the burning house now

Three carts are at the door,

        One to flee the self,

                One to save another,

        & one more for the way.

Come away,

Children, everyone.

Homeless you shall not be

Abiding by your vehicle.

& if perchance carried alive to

                The marketplace

There left to sit empty,

Before

            The big sky

You will learn

The ten directions

Have no ups

Nor downs,

Coming or going,

East

Or west, neither

Should prevent you.

8.

People ask the way

To Cold Mountain.

No

Road goes there.

In summer

The ice

Will not shift.

In daylight

Mist

Is all one sees

& how did you

Get there?

How did I?

But your heart is hardly

Like mine,

When it is

There is here.

_________________________

In the Same Light

200 Poems for Our Century

translated by Wong May

The Song Cave, 2022

    

  

HENRI COLE ~

 

Land of Never-Ending Holes

I don't want you to leave.

I don't want you to leave this place I so love, where

    underbrush, jackrabbits,

        and the desert press in on us.

Waiting under a date palm, with a suitcase and cell phone,

        listening for the train whistle—this is how I picture you.

Don't strut or you will stumble.

Make your mess into a message.

Make your roof tight and your cothing sufficient,

        and you shall never be wanting if you value "the best

            property of all —

        friends" (Emerson)

Remember the Zen axiom: Nothing lasts, nothing is finished,

    and nothing is perfect.

Out there is a land of never-ending holes, where brown is the

    new green.

Out there are omnivorous, dazzling human voices—coarse

    cries, air falsettos, heady

        blues, soul, and solemn low rumbles—speaking and

            teaching.

It is never useless to say something or teach someone.

The obscure human soul—it is sad and happy at once.

Men sweep and stir up the dust, but women sprinkle water and

    settle it,

        sweetening the air.

Out there, it is swarming, venal, frivolous, vexing, crude, and

    hypocritical,

        but you must never cease to listen, look, and feel.

If you love a zebra, do not settle for a tapir.

Think of all you have so far as a shelter made of tarp and rope,

    and build

            something marvelous.

Uplift, transformation, radiance—when you turn the old horse

    toward them,

        he will always pick up his step.

See those bulbous clouds forming over the small San Gabriel

    Mountains?

They are greater than any tanks or armored vehicles.

See out there beyond the ash, avocado, lemon, and peppertrees,

        a little trail ends at a highway leading to spin rooms and

            war rooms,

        but also there are bee spawn, motion dazzle, and

                maple syrup.

I don't want you to leave.

Out there, in the land of never-ending holes,    

        may those who love you love you, as in the proverb,

        but may God turn the hearts of those who cannot love you,

        and if he cannot turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles,

        so you will know them by their limping.

_________________

Henri Cole

Blizzard

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

2021

    The finest poem in this fine book,

first published as a Claremont McKenna College

commencement poem. I would have liked to

been in the audience. 

[ BA ]