At Work on the Garments of Refuge: Poems by Daniel Marlin and Ralph Dranow

By Ralph Dranow and Daniel Marlin

In 1978, Ralph Dranow and Daniel Marlin met while working at the Oakland (CA) main post office. They hit it off immediately, finding a common passion for writing and concern for social justice. Their nascent friendship took root on the level of deep mutual caring as well as support for each other's writing. And in time, they formed a writing gro

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rose Press
• Release date: Sep 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9780981627823

Ralph Dranow

Ralph Dranow is an editor, ghostwriter, and writing coach as well as a poet specializing in people's stories. He has published eight poetry books including A New Life, one short-story collection, and numerous poems and articles in magazines and newspapers. He lives in Oakland, California with his artist/writer/musician wife, Naomi Rose; stepson, Gabriel; and cat Lucinda, embodiment of love. Ralph's website is: www.ralphdranow.net

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At Work on the Garments of Refuge

Poems

Daniel Marlin and Ralph Dranow

Edited and with an Introduction by Ralph Dranow

Rose Press

Oakland, CA

At Work on the Garments of Refuge: Poems by Daniel Marlin and Ralph Dranow. Copyright © 2020 by Ralph Dranow. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at:

Rose Press

www.rosepress.com

[e-mail]

Some of Daniel Marlin’s poems that appear in this book have been previously published in: Living in the Land of the Dead; Counterpunch; Tomcat; Through the Mill; and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Some of Ralph Dranow’s poems that appear in this book have been previously published in Living in the Land of the Dead and Poetry Motel.

All art by Daniel Marlin.

Typesetting and Design: Margaret Copeland, Terragrafix / www.terragrafix.com

Publisher / Publishing Consultant: Naomi Rose / www.naomirose.net

ISBN # 978-0-9816278-2-3

Contents

Introduction

Poems by Daniel Marlin

After

River Riffs

In the Pocket

Empathy Was Light-Years Away

For What Has Been Given

Alfredo’s Debt

Dusk, Mukogawa River

OK for Thoreau 2014

Of My Peritoneal Dialysis Machine

Home Movies

Profile

My Mother Forbade Me

When the Time Came

A Last Visit

Now

Thursday Ritual 1959

Back Where You Came From

Of My Chopping Board

Okinawa

Procession

On This Planet

West MacArthur Guard

Chase

Uranium’s Song

Cold Beauty

Opossum Before Dawn

I Was Columbus

Under Suspicion, Berkeley

Home Depot Parking Lot, Richmond, California

How to Tell Grandma You Love Her

Statue of Endurance

Dream of a Haircut

Fox

Sleeping with the Enemy

The Death of a Field

What It Feels Like

The High Court in Jerusalem

To Be Human

Pantoum

Norman

Work Gloves, Post Office Issue, Extra Large

If You Are, If You Ain’t

You Look Like Jesus

Lord Wild

Gospel Silence

He Glides without Offense

Sana in Oakland

Operation Crass Led

Rules of Conduct at Adult Movies

The Trial of Abraham

Pilgrim of Frost

Aria

Children Share the Hollow Arms of Stone

For Wild Boar Stew

Chapel of Green

River Love

POEMS BY RALPH DRANOW

A Sly Sense of Mirth

At Work on the Garments of Refuge

Angel’s Promenade

Grief

Birds of the Hulo Night

The Poet as a Young Man

Why?

Martha

A Voter Registration Conversation—2016

The New Neighborhood

Every Writer’s Dream

Autumn Gifts

Super Cool

The Dance

An Unheralded Artist

What Would the Dalai Lama Do?

The Year I Discovered John Steinbeck

Paramedic

Linda

Next-door Neighbor

Beyond Us and Them

Cocoon

Going Outside

Playing Catch

A Humble Guy

A Chinatown Encounter

A Non-Literary Conversation

Mother and Child

Jack

Sheila

The Unnecessary Death of Scott Beigel

Much Love

Lake Merritt Collage

Kibbitzing as a Fine Art

Elvis (Concert in Hawaii, 1973)

Combing Lucinda

Snapshots of Sophie

Innocence

Voyeurs of Misery

The Gringa Feeds Stray Dogs in San Cristobal de las Casas

Glisten like the Stars

Me Too

Some Ground Rules for the Pandemic

Shopping during the Pandemic

Pitching to Hitler

My Mother Speaks of Her Early Years

Baby Carriage War

Collecting the Rents

After the Election, 2016

Postal Clerk

Trees

Crippled Wings

Don’t Blink

The Gallery

Following Your Bliss

A New Life

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Also by Ralph Dranow

For Dan Marlin

Introduction

I first met Dan Marlin in the fall of 1978, when we were both working as casual (temporary) mailhandlers at the Oakland Main Post Office. We hit it off right away, as middle-class dropouts who shared left-wing sensibilities and a passion for writing. This was the beginning of a close friendship that lasted 39 years, until Dan’s death in 2017.

When I first knew him, his abundant poetic talent hadn’t fully matured. Some of his early writing was imitative, whimsical and surreal, like that of his literary hero, Kenneth Patchen. Dan’s early writing tended toward lush imagery; it had a wild, self-indulgent quality, like an overgrown garden, and was not always accessible. But within the next decade or so, his writing began to cohere, becoming more succinct and accessible. His 1982 chapbook, Jerusalem on the Boardwalk, and his 1993 post office manuscript, Seventy Snow-Bound Pigs, revealed his development as a poet, with many humorous, insightful, and poignant poems.

And over the years, Dan just kept getting better and better, creating a prolific body of work with tremendous power. His poems combined free-flowing lyricism, precise description (which he displayed in his beautiful artwork as well), and moral passion. He also had the gift of a wry sense of humor that frequently was self-deprecating. His poems spanned a wide range: political, nature, portraits of people, fantasy, love poems, autobiographical, philosophical, poems written in Yiddish, etc.

It has been my good fortune to have had Dan as a close friend for so many years. Along with Mitch Zeftel, we started a writing group in 1979, which is still going on, with a bunch of new faces. I was writing prose then, but when I started writing poetry in 1990, Dan became my poetry mentor. His comments on my rough early poems were encouraging and insightful. He helped me make my poems more succinct, with fresher, less prosy language. His feedback was usually detailed and exacting, but also gently supportive. Dan was extremely helpful to the other members of the group as well. We helped him refine his poems too, I think, so it wasn’t just one-sided. I owe him a great debt for his generous poetic guidance.

So it is with much satisfaction, and also humility, that I am able to repay some of that debt now by including a substantial number of his poems—and some of his artwork—in this book, along with my own poems. Our writing styles are different—his more expansive, mine more spare—but I think they will complement each other.

About my own poetry:

I’m a storyteller, and I like to write about ordinary people and the poetry and beauty of everyday life in spite of all the suffering in the world. Like a portrait photographer, I aim to capture something essential about a person in a brief moment. And to do this with compassion—and perhaps a bit of humor—because to have a human life is a glorious but also a vulnerable thing.

Dan created a large number of powerful poems in his later years—many of which have never been published before—and they deserve to be made available to his friends and fans, as well as to a larger readership. I hope these poems of his move and delight you as much as they’ve done for me.

—Ralph Dranow

Oakland, California

Poems by Daniel Marlin

After

After I lay me down to die,

do me no honor, name nothing and

no one after me.

No elementary school,

no syndrome