Robert Gibbons

The First Sentence- New Poetry by Robert Gibbons

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Stoffa (2)

The Old Fish Shack           Michael Stoffa (1923-2001)

 

The First Sentence

 

It’s not often

a poet allows

him or herself

to do nothing, but

I just accomplished

this rare occurrence out

here in the newly renovated

shed, an effort of two weeks

scrubbing, sanding, painting,

repairing hole in ceiling, not to

mention chasing years’ worth of

insects back to nature.

 

It’s based on Scandinavian

disconnects I read about called

Hermit Huts, everything’s unplugged.

There was one photo in the article, an interior

so simple it made me think of van Gogh’s room,

& fondly recalled a similar space in Mexico, when

Manuel Avila Camacho compared our $40-month shack

to Vincent’s in Arles.

 

Although I’m the least handy of men

other than a certain propensity

toward bricolage in language,

I thought while looking at

the photo & its caption,

cozy 84-square-foot hut,

“I can do that!!”

 

The woods of Gotland Island, Sweden’s

got nothing on our backyard here in Portland.

I’m not losing sight of this accomplishment mentioned

earlier, what, poet doing nothing for a change? Lasted ten

minutes, after nailing latest curtain on windows facing West,

making shade against lowering August afternoon sun. Stan Getz

came on Jazz Radio out of San Francisco with Dreams from his album

Voyage, which I pulled in unplugged, battery only on indispensable computer,

doing nothing other than staring listening dreaming traveling readying to jot down

the first sentence come to mind.

 

-Robert Gibbons

 

 

 

 

Robert Gibbons

Robert Gibbons, a former Gloucester resident, is the author of nine books of poetry. In 2013, in addition to completing a Trilogy of prose poems with Nine Point Publishing,  he published Olson/Still: Crossroad, a brief study concerning the similarities in approach to art by Olson in words, and Clyfford Still in paint.

 

 

 

 

Poem by Robert Gibbons

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beatrix-potter1903

The Tailor of Gloucester by the Fire. Beatrix Potter (1866-1943)

 

 

 

The Fireplace Tongs

 

 

On occasion, the fact that something gets lost

forces one to value it all the more. Tongs I found

in ashes of fireplace in ruins of the cottage,

grandfather’s birthplace, in Ballyhaunis. Asked

his last remaining sister, Margaret Lyons, & two

daughters, Bridie & Noreen, if I could take the tool

back home. Made of iron, simple, ancient contraption

with single hinge at top to open & close, while end tips

flattened to better grasp the log. Put them to good use in Salem,

Gloucester, even Winchester & Scituate, where I lose track of them,

when moving to Portland, down-sizing to three-room apartment, what

with no fireplace. Yet, until lost never once imagined heat & ingenuity

of the forge & clever blacksmith combining to form such a fine implement,

better etched in mind, here & now, than back then held in hand.

 

Robert Gibbons

 

 

 

Robert Gibbons

Robert Gibbons, a former Gloucester resident, is the author of nine books of poetry. In 2013, in addition to completing a Trilogy of prose poems with Nine Point Publishing,  he published Olson/Still: Crossroad, a brief study concerning the similarities in approach to art by Olson in words, and Clyfford Still in paint.

 

 

Poetry by Robert Gibbons

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Without the Twin

 

roger martin pebble beach

Pebble Beach ~ woodcut, 1973. Roger Martin (1925 – 2015)

 

I’m camped out around the Paleo fire.

All my irons in it, when one half-second

after I want to ask her if she’s seen the gold-

finch yet this spring, it darts out of the sumac.

 

It’s a Jungian shudder flows through my bones,

as soon after I think of Charles Olson, that Titan,

who downright stole fire from the gods, & paid an

awful price with voracious eagle gnawing at his side.

 

Damn, jazz & poetry, painting, I told her

I thought immediately of Francis Bacon, let

alone Bob Rauschenberg, damned, to have such

insights require light from the fire of the gods, but

 

who’d trade it in for any normalcy I see all around,

some poor excuse for life barely lived, some life

without the twin, as Olson wrote, of life itself:

Art.

Robert Gibbons

 

 

Robert Gibbons

Robert Gibbons, a former Gloucester resident, is the author of nine books of poetry. In 2013, in addition to completing a Trilogy of prose poems with Nine Point Publishing,  he published Olson/Still: Crossroad, a brief study concerning the similarities in approach to art by Olson in words, and Clyfford Still in paint.

 

 

New Poem by Robert Gibbons

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image

FOLLY COVE, GLOUCESTER. Sharon Casavant

 

On the Afternoon in the Aftermath of the Root Canal up in Lewiston

The root of the matter is crucial.

Even in as simple thing as a tooth.

Or that of the World Tree, roots reaching

deep in the realm of the underground. Heart

of the matter of language with its dirt, & clean

stones. Cistern of language I felt today, when down

by the waterfront the wind in the waves was more like weave

of a text, knowing that underneath ocean life teemed: cormorant,

seal, crab, & fish, right down to the floor of seaweed. Stood a while

taking it all in, reading the vast World, when the tanker, Leopard Moon

out of Singapore cast added daytime light on pages turning stars in the harbor.

 

Robert Gibbons

Robert Gibbons, a former Gloucester resident, is the author of nine books of poetry. In 2013, in addition to completing a Trilogy of prose poems with Nine Point Publishing,  he published Olson/Still: Crossroad, a brief study concerning the similarities in approach to art by Olson in words, and Clyfford Still in paint.

 

Poem by Robert Gibbons

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peters

Cape Ann Shore. Carl Peters (1897-1980)

 

 

When the Gentleness Arrived

 

 

I don’t know when the gentleness arrived.

It could have been that day way out on the peninsula

where the sea, stones, mussel shells greeted me in unison.

It could have been as recent as yesterday,

when the leaf my granddaughter picked up

& blew away, I took Williams’ advice & kissed it.

It surely wasn’t long ago when the war raged

as much inside of me as Nam, Afghanistan,

Iraq, or between father & me, no, not then.

It could have been that first snowfall

I had to call her to look at for herself, or

when I first heard the Bach phrase in a Jarrett

improvisation.

 

Robert GibbonsRobert Gibbons, a former Gloucester resident, is the author of nine books of poetry. In 2013, in addition to completing a Trilogy of prose poems with Nine Point Publishing,   he published Olson/Still: Crossroad, a brief study concerning the similarities in approach to art by Olson in words, and Clyfford Still in paint.

Drawn Together Toward Earth’s Molten Iron Core by Robert Gibbons

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Drawn Together Toward Earth’s Molten Iron Core

Who’s to say we’re not drawn

by the same magnetic force

as any mariner’s compass,

because something drew

me down to the docks

on March 11, 2015,

when the thaw

finally arrived

after one

hundred

& one days

over the longest

winter in recent memory,

temperature of 54 degrees

the highest since December 1st

of the year before: there, just as

suspected, sprawled out for all to see,

the massive double-steel-hulled oil tanker

Atlantic Muse out of Hong Kong, no less!

Yes, I followed the unconscious pull, as if my body

adjusted to the magnetic declination mariners

have long been aware of as their compasses

pointed not at True North, but pulled by

variations in magnetic fields according

to each location. The Muse then drew

me back toward the map I’d

recently discovered, that

finely drawn isogonic

chart of the Atlantic

by Edmond Halley

in 1701 showing

lines of magnetic

variation, the

earliest such

publication.

It’s beautiful,

as most maps are

to any eye, but here

the early science adds

precision, & even the wording

of the cartouche drawn & written

there in the right-hand corner running

west from New England & New York down

to the Carolinas square in the heartland of North

America deserves quoting: The Curved Lines which are

drawn over the Seas in this Chart do shew at one View all

the places where the Variation of the Compass is the same.

The Numbers to them shew how many degrees the Needle declines

either Eastwards or Westwards from the true North  ; and the Double

Line passing Bermudas and the Cape de Virde Isles is that where

the Needle stands true without Variation.

There, almost at that point of no

variation, Halley draws a perfect

compass rose radiating wind

points out from the exact

center of the map.

It didn’t stop there, this Muse,

but drove me hard back

toward Olson’s own

handwritten poem

known as The Compass Rose

just to see his hand there hard at work

on November 20th, 1965, showing us the way

migration leads always to a new center, as if today

with temperatures reaching a new high after a long

one hundred & one days one could reach into the center

of oneself corresponding to the molten iron core

of the Earth, which produces those variations

in magnetic fields according to one’s location.

Such declinations in one’s sailing or daily

peregrination must be adjusted to by

what some might call Mind, but

which I prefer to call Soul.

A month later, it’s no accident that Olson,

cartographer at heart, writes his next poem

in which he designates the coordinates of the island

before his eye, that light & heavy jewel, Ten Pound Island

at 207 degrees from magnetic North, intimating that she, the island,

& he, the man, feminine & masculine are linked at the center, & drawn

together toward earth’s molten iron core.

~ Robert Gibbons

Robert GibbonsRobert Gibbons, a former Gloucester resident, is the author of nine books of poetry. In 2013, in addition to completing a Trilogy of prose poems with Nine Point Publishing,  he published Olson/Still: Crossroad, a brief study concerning the similarities in approach to art by Olson in words, and Clyfford Still in paint.