Poetry

Independent Day | Maine Street | Maine Sonnets by Edwin Denby

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These poems are from the “Maine Street” section of the book Boulevard Transportation by Rudy Burckhardt and Vincent Katz, published by Tibor de Nagy Editions (New York) in 1996.

The first section of Boulevard Transportation is also called “Boulevard Transportation” and features Burckhardt’s late 1930s photographs of fragments of people walking on New York’s streets. The poems in that section were written in direct response to specific images. The second section, “Europa Euphoria,” contains photographs of Europe, most taken after Burckhardt had been living for over a decade in the States. The poems again follow the photographs, slyly addressing their viewpoints. The book’s third section, “Goodbye, N.Y.,” makes reference to an earlier book by Burckhardt and Katz, New York Hello!, published in 1990 by Ommation Press (Chicago). Where the earlier book combined photographs and poems done around the same time (the 1970s and ‘80s), the later book combined work done when the artists were around the same age (their 20s and 30s). As Burckhardt was born in 1914 and Katz in 1960, these were quite different eras. The final section of the book Boulevard Transportation is entitled “Maine Street,” and it begins with a Burckhardt photograph of a dirt road. The poems and photographs began as meditations on nature and were later combined in the book to form a collaboration. Boulevard Transportation was designed by Vivien Bittencourt.

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i.
I put bare
feet to Terra
swim in the lake
all day long
there is nothing
to do
listen to wind
in the trees

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ii.
ferns
ancient purveyors
of chlorophyll
tasty curls
on the
energy market
their pocked
faces demonstrate
ageless
understanding
they simply
extend fronds
if you were
to kill them
they would
understand

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iii.
trees
givers of life
they arch
over, protecting
us, while
in our idiocy,
we plot
inane destruction
or if not,
distraction
so many
different kinds
of trees
and individuals,
like people,
they each have
a face
in winter,
some shed
their coats
a different
picture
blends in
ice and cold
sometimes
I think
ice is the
only beauty
only in
the ice
am I
truly alone,
to think,
to walk...
but in summer
you hear the
leaves singing
and you
find dimension
in every
sight

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iv.
the cabin
slat pine walls
ribbed ceiling
primary-
colored
windowshade
walls painted
blue
loon
calls at night
with wind
the porch
hammock
you are
in hiding

***

vi.
you swim across
the pond
every day
where a hazy
glaze covers
the water
and trees
in July
the day
seems it
will continue
forever
time slows
you hear
bird calls
dog bark
occasional
squirrel
scolding
hammering

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ix.
I try to
transcribe
the summer,
fix it in
poems or
postcards,
but it flits
past again,
brook water
through
fingers,
and I
sense
each year,
to the old
as to
the young,
is so
important