I was recently reading some of my father’s poems that were published in a collection called Putty. And today I found a video on YouTube of Keith reading from this book in 1975.
I happen to own the copy that he dedicated to his parents-in-law, Hannah and Lloyd Hansen, in 1971, the year we were living in Bellingham, Washington not far from Tacoma.
Keith Recollections from his Daughter I am unable to remember when I met my father. He told me he recalled the moment even though The nurse thrust a substance upon his person To keep him (well mustached at 23 years of age) from fainting And falling on the hospital floor in a heap. He admitted he liked both: The baby and the intervention. It was a good day. I remember my father busy in the mornings writing something important. Then he’d come out of his lair for coffee. He was adored and admired for his charm and wit but he also drank coffee. He ground the beans first. It’s not a secret to making good coffee. When I was a young girl, my father sometimes invited me To go with him to the municipal dump. I thought it was very exciting and I always said yes. I also hung around him and his buddy Richard, who bought me Steamed clams in Chinatown, but only occasionally so I Didn’t miss too much school. But I Tended not to go to school before lunchtime anyway. My father and I enjoyed Amtrak together. Multiple times. My father taught me the best way to collect money at a golf club. He’d never taken a short iron rod in a brown paper bag to a golf course, But he thought I should know about golfers’ kneecaps As part of my education. When I was fourteen my father bought me a piano, And, circumventing the school system, he found me private French lessons. Following up on these two notions later: I moved to Paris and studied music. Simple as that. I once asked him what he thought about reincarnation. He stared at me and did not utter a single word. I believe he had a point. The last thing he wrote me was a postcard of a stone frog. It said: “Persephone I’ve got a place in the CHOIR!” “I can’t wait!!” he added along with a large splat of ink at the end. Then he croaked. Tears ran into my coffee Feeling salty, I took the dog to the park. She likes the park and I do too. She’s slow, selective of hearing, bow legged, Benefits from poor eyesight and just like my premonition I watched her slide from behind a favored tree down the slope Enacting the part of a slow motion replay Plonk into the canal, panic registering in her cloudy eyes. It figures, I thought, that I end up jumping into an Amsterdam canal The day my father is cremated, Separate elements, each of us chasing a dog.
We’ve been missing you The pews weren’t even half full – “My mother,” HR said to me her youthful words dancing forth from between her painted lips, “Finally saw the light.” I had been on the job one week and listened carefully about a series of step-fathers next to the office aquarium HR again, this time about an interviewee “It’s not that she is too old,” she explained as we stood in front of the dishwasher also seriously in need of an update It reminded me - the congregation trying their hardest to sing the tune, mouths stumbling across the words in the hymn book Here I am Lord My new boss strolled casually behind my chair “We’ve been missing you,” she murmured low “Really?” I thought, considering the summing-up that had begun the exit count down on day one uncomfortable in my best gray suit I watched a single sheet of paper passed to-hand, from-hand along the row of desks as specified by the boss: this one's for her a letter of termination to be scanned and dispatched so get ready Ms. A
Cobalt Twenty kilometers south They closed the factory In 1898 Cobalt I knew it was the farm As soon as I saw it On my left Even though the place didn’t Look like the photographs From 1904 A switch flipped in my mind I turned into the driveway On automatic pilot Cobalt I don’t suppose my great-uncle Would have ever worked In the cobalt factory or the saw mill or the grain mill Even if the mines and the factories hadn’t closed Even if he, at age fifteen, Hadn’t left for america Along with a lot of other Local teenagers holding Tickets to board the Celtic. He wasn’t the type to work in a mine. Yet I still can’t find what he did For work between the ages Of fifteen and twenty-six But eventually he did leave Us a rather extensive library. Cobalt When I drove out of the driveway I knew I couldn’t look back Too much traffic and a haunting feeling My great great grandmother’s parting To join her son and never return to her Norwegian home.
This poem was written during a trip to Norway when I visited the farm where my great great grandparents lived before they immigrated to America. I rented a car and just as I arrived at the nearest town to the farm, the navigation stopped working. I consulted my phone and drove in the direction that was most logical. After my visit with the current owner of the property, I went off to an old cobalt factory that wasn’t too far away. The cobalt factory was by a waterfall which had equally powered a saw mill and a grain mill. The process of producing the beautiful color of cobalt from mined ore/rocks for color pigmentation was lengthly and hazardous. This poem explores the unknown, the known and the things that happened and didn’t happen, things that haunt the family members who did or did not immigrate to America.
Paris and the Worst Quatorze Juillet
at eighteen Peter Pan collar Bastille Day Cite Universite Rooftop BBQ thrilled to learn the hamburger only five francs - such a bargain - until I was informed I had been taken pity upon
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“Rhino Ritz is an American Mystery: The Classic American Authors are immortal and living happily ever after in Paris recently relocated in San Francisco – when Sherwood Anderson disappears. Ernest (Rhino) Hemingway & F. Scott (Ritz) Fitzgerald open RHINO RITZ DETECTIVE AGENCY to find him. The plot heats up when Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas are abducted by Japanese terrorists , who force Ms. Stein to write their communique – which no one can understand. Finally, our heroes stumble onto a sinister conspiracy involving the future of American Literature.”
I went to a masterclass the woman said loudly. Do you know that the singers - beautiful voices - didn’t have a clue what they were singing about? The stranger across the table from me frowned in irritation the pages for the synopsis for Act Two of Rameau's Castor et Pollux open in his hand. The woman repeated what she had already said a little differently this tme but with the same emphasis. Her friends muted friends listened on, holding their drinks and unsure how to change the topic. I stirred sugar into my Concertgebouw cappuccino, a cup small enough to finish in time for the second bell. It’s hard to understand the words the woman said loudly. Just think if a French singer is singing in English or a Dutch singer is singing in German Across the table from me the stranger sighed his mind half grapsing a story about twins and different fates and a libretto in antiquated French. I played the flute and piano the woman said loudly. When I was three I sang a song oh, I liked that song I sang it along to the record player. I still have that record. I finished my coffee and sat waiting for the next assault on my sensibilities But my mind wandered off remembering the man in head to toe black leather trousers, jacket and cap pushing his bike up the bike ramp his silver chain glinting in the sun as I made my way down the steps I noted the fresh green leek sticking out of his bike basket.
Wee a.m. the cat sitting on my right hip bone kneading my side heavy voice outside drunk, in a language I can’t make out woman-shriek pierces the night dull thumping shirt on shirt half asleep I egg on the fight atta, go at ‘em go my organs under the cat’s administration I hear scuffling
Jog my memories: Eight Stops on the Train from Amsterdam Amstel to Gouda
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My first year in Holland: I was told that I’d save money if I got off at Amstel and took the metro to the opera house and I can still remember the round face and blues eyes of the person giving me that advice in the Utrecht Conservatory canteen in between sips of bad coffee.
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My accountant, who chose not to humor me when I insisted I would buy real estate in Amsterdam’s city center, sitting in his office taking in my next new artistic plan and calculating in his head how much of a tax break that might make me and curious as to how much longer I would insist on keeping up this parade of losses.
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The night when Beyoncé nearly blew my eardrums out and I struggled back home, elated to have gone and relieved to be allowed to regain my senses in peace.
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The day, thirty-five euros richer, I climbed out of an econo-vehicle after a performance in the polder.
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Where I always wonder what it would be like to have to go to that… what is it – a village- a suburban hell – a jolly place to be inside on a rainy day with an option to muck out a horse stall always on hand – out on some errand/social call/pretense. What on earth will possibly take me there? Of course, I would never resist the invitation…whenever it comes.
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Gamely pushing my old dog in a red stroller over the loose gravel and mud, getting picked up by an econo-vehicle for a rehearsal out in the polder.
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The birthday party for a singing student who was an official government squatter, occupying a whole floor or hundreds of potential cubbyhole spaces, in a 1970’s building on an industrial terrain. Admittedly a tough home to decorate.
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Yes, look, on the left there’s the house where a friend’s husband physically and emotionally repeatedly attacked her and, on the other side of the tracks, the woods where I took my old dog one day for a treat away from the city and we both ended up peeing in the bushes.
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A place where I hardly recognize who I once was and don’t know what to feel anymore, but it is a nice town and my friends tell me they are never going to make it out of there.