Rain on the River Selected Poems and Short Prose

by Dodge, Jim

• ISBN13: 9780802138965
• ISBN10: 0802138969
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-04-15
• Publisher: Grove Press

Summary

While Jim Dodge is internationally known for his fiction, his first and abiding passion is poetry. After eighteen years of publishing anonymously and reading only to local crowds in the Pacific Northwest, he began to issue occasional limited-edition letterpress chapbooks with a small press, as well as occasional broadsides and, since 1987, a winter solstice poem or story, most given as gifts to friends. Rain on the River contains work collected here for the first time, as well as three dozen previously unpublished poems. Dodge's poems and short prose offer the same pleasures as his fiction -- a splendid ear for language, great emotional range and subtlety, a sharp eye for the illuminating detail, and a sensibility that encompasses outright hilarity, savage wit, and tender marvel, all made eminently accessible through writing of uncompromising clarity and grace. "Like being at a nonstop party in celebration of everything that matters." -- Thomas Pynchon "A rollicking, frequently surprising adventure-cum-fairy tale. It also has a sweetness about it and an indigenous American optimism." -- The New York Times Book Review "Diverse, savvy, passionate.... Poetry should be a pleasure, and Jim Dodge's work is just that." -- Gary Snyder

Author Biography

Jim Dodge is the author of three novels -- Fup, Not Fade Away, Stone Junction -- five poetry chapbooks, and numerous environmental essays, rants, and screeds. He lives in the Klamath Mountains with his wife and son, and teaches at Humbolt State University

Table of Contents

Notes and Acknowledgments	xi
Selected Poems and Short Prose
Learning to Talk	3	(1)
The Cookie Jar	4	(3)
Things Thought Through	7	(1)
On Balance	8	(1)
Decomposition	9	(1)
Psycho Ecology	10	(1)
Life of the Spirit	11	(1)
Aweigh	12	(4)
Tao-to-Tao	16	(1)
To Be	17	(2)
Practice, Practice, Practice	19	(1)
Wisdom and Happiness	20	(2)
Red Sails	22	(1)
Squall & Commotion	23	(1)
Slow Learner	24	(1)
Bathing Joe	25	(5)
Mahogany China	30	(1)
The First Cut Is the Deepest	31	(1)
Waiting for Houdini to Come Up	32	(1)
The Countessa	33	(2)
Venison Stew	35	(2)
Winter Song	37	(1)
On Humor: On Mating Donkeys and Onions	38	(1)
Watering the Garden on the Hottest Day of the Summer	39	(1)
Palms to the Moon	40	(1)
A Firmer Grasp of the Obvious	41	(1)
The Work of Art	42	(1)
Steelhead Fishing, Smith River, January	43	(2)
The Third Bank of the River	45	(1)
Green Side Up	46	(1)
One Thing After Another	47	(1)
Unnatural Selections: A Meditation upon Witnessing a Bullfrog Fucking a Rock	48	(3)
Fishing Devil's Hole at the Peak of Spring	51	(4)
Getting After It	55	(1)
How to Catch the Biggest Fish	56	(1)
Hard Work	57	(1)
There It Is	58	(1)
Knowing When to Stop	59	(1)
Vacation Expenses	60	(1)
Basic Precepts and Avuncular Advice for Young Men	61	(1)
Killing	62	(1)
Death and Dying	63	(4)
New Poems and Short Prose
The Banker	67	(2)
The Real Last Words of Billy the Kid	69	(2)
The Moving Part of Motion	71	(1)
How About	72	(3)
Necessary Angels	75	(1)
Prayer Bones	76	(2)
Magic and Beauty	78	(2)
Day Moon	80	(1)
Karma Bird	81	(1)
The Tunnel	82	(2)
Hagerty Wrecks Another Company Truck	84	(1)
Obsession	85	(1)
Love Find	86	(1)
Flux	87	(1)
Thanks for the Dance	88	(1)
The Stone	89	(1)
Woman in a Room Full of Rubber Numbers	90	(1)
Reason to Live	91	(1)
Scratch	92	(1)
Salvage	93	(2)
An Epithalamium for Victoria	95	(2)
Falling into Place	97	(1)
Play-By-Play	98	(1)
Job Application	99	(1)
The Mouth of the River	100	(1)
The Prior and Subsequent Heavens	101	(2)
Old Growth	103	(4)
Three Ways to Get the Carrot on the Stick	107	(1)
Eurydice Ascending	108	(2)
The Drought of '76	110	(1)
True Account of the Saucer People	111	(1)
About Time	112	(6)
Smithereens	118	(1)
Jack o'Hearts Shopping Mortmart	119	(1)
Holy Shit	120