Collected Poems: 2000–2018

By Richard Denner

No available information at this time. Author will provide once available.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984546883

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Copyright © 2018 by Richard Denner.

ISBN:              Softcover              978-1-9845-4626-5

                 eBook                   978-1-9845-4688-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Quotation from The Boy by Luis Garcia, Mister Menu, Kayak Press, Berkeley, 1968.

Front cover painting by Claude Smith, Wisdom Dakini (2008)

www.claude-smith.com

Back cover photo of the author by Deborah Howe.

Special thanks to Sid Wilson, Grey Edwards, Cathy Nicholson, Arnold Ramas, and the design team at Xlibris.

Kapala Press (www.kapalapress.net) is a subsidiary of D Press

(www.dpress.net) that is presently located in Ellensburg, Washington.

Rev. date: 11/06/2018

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

780067

FOR GINA, THEO, LU

AND IN MEMORY OF KIRSTEN

Morning opens

like a fan;

pressure of sunlight,

intricate silences.

—Luis Garcia

CONTENTS

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDMENTS

THE EVERYDAY POEMS OF RICHARD DENNER

SANTA ROSA & SEBASTOPOL

DARK MUSIC

LOVE POEM

SELF-PORTRAIT

ENERGY FOLLOWS CONSCIOUSNESS

TERROR WITHIN, TERROR WITHOUT

SAM SORRY

GET DOWN, RINPOCHE

IT’S DARK OUT THERE

IN THE GOMPA

PORTRAITS

DECISIONS, DECISIONS

BIG MAP

A SIGN

PROTECTOR OF THE BENT

1-800-BUDDHAS

TARA-PEACH TRANSMISSION

GOOD QUESTION

CARRYING MY BONES

IF I WHISTLED, WOULD SHE STOP?

DEUS LOCUS

IF I AM, I AM

HARMONY

PICNIC NEXT TO THE PIER

AUTO BIOGRAPHY

VIEW

HOMAGE TO NO. 45 RUE BLOMET

HANDOFF IN A MINDFIELD

ONE WAY

SEXY LOVERS

A WELCOME AWAITS HIM IN PARADISE

A SHIFT OCCURS

WITHOUT GOGGLES

FACELESS PRESENT

FALLING

FREEDOM AHEAD

FOR EVERYONE

PROMETHEUS SINGS

ALREADY EXTINCT

CIRCLE

CRETAN LYRE

HARD

SKIMMING

IN

CONTACT

MIMIC IN THE MIST

I WAIT

MY WORDS

FOR PALOMA

THEY’VE GOT ME ON GUILT INJECTIONS

AFTER THE INVISIBLE

A CHICKEN LEG IS A RARE MEAL

NEXUS OF ENTITIES

AND HERE I AM

THE CALL

LE PETIT SOLDIER DU JEAN LUC GODDARD

RED HEARTS, WHITE ROCK

AT CLUB FAB

ON STAGE

YOU, ME & A SOUND TECH

TOWARDS THE LIGHT

TEST

BAD BALLERINA

CACOPHONY

SURFACES

MADE OF CLAY

LOST LENORE

THINKING WITH FEELINGS

ONE SPIRIT, MANY FAITHS

THIS MORNING

WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS

WHEEL OF TIME MANTRA BLADE

GLITTER

MY DENTIST’S NIGHTMARE

AT THE EDGE OF BEYOND

DR. JENKEL & MR. BROWN

AS THOUGH I WAS A DOG

WORSHIP DOG

WAVETWISTERS Y2K

POET 2 POET

DEVILDOC’S ROOM

CREATE A CHAT

ANOTHER ROOM

DEAD POET SOCIETY

ABANDONED IN THE FIREY LAVA THE SISTERS DANCE TO A PAGAN SONG

WE WILL LIVE FOREVER IN BOLD LETTERS

AND A GRECIAN RUG TO LAY BEFORE THE FIRE

PEBBLE

UNCERTAIN, CHAINED

POIPU BLUES

INSTALLATION

HISTORY TEACHES

NOT REAL DEEP OR ANYTHING

DUAL IN THE SUN

WHAT ZEN WISDOM

I DOUBT THIS

DAWN

RACIAL DRIFT

JANITOR

OMAN IN A BURQA

HAND IN EMPTY HAND

DA DA DA

RED WHEELBARROW

PICTURE FROM WILLIAMS

BOUVARD PÉCUCHET’S ALL-TIME FAVORITES

PETRARCIAN TWEETS

FRANCESCO IN HIS GARDEN

A SUNDAY OUTING NEAR BAKER BEACH

FAR FROM THE SERAGLIO

MY EYES WEEP TEARS

PLEASURE DONE

WHAT COMES NEXT?

RENEWED DESTRUCTION

THE UNIVERSE

SCATTERED PRAYER ANCHOR

SPRING GRASS

ON IRWIN ROAD AND ABROAD

HOW WE GOT HERE

EXPLORE

THE GATES

REVEALED CORRESPONDENCES

THE SOLDIER’S PROLOGUE

THE POET’S PROLOGUE

THE WIFE’S PROLOGUE

THE REAL ESTATE LADY’S PROLOGUE

THE DOCTOR’S PROLOGUE

THE PROFESSOR’S PROLOGUE

THE DENTIST’S PROLOGUE

THE NUN’S PROLOGUE

THE PHYSICIST’S PROLOGUE

PINWHEELS

LANDSCAPES

SAMADHI SLAP DOWN ON MOUNT BAKER

MANDALA OF 3 KAYAS

CHI OF LOVE & HATE

FORCE OF THE SOURCE

ON VULTURE PEAK

LU & I

LINE AGE

FU BIRD MOTTO

TELLING THE SEXUAL TRUTH

KEEPING UP WITH TINY ALICE

THE BOOK AS MEASURE

AS THE EARTH FLATTENS

TRINITY OF THE BRIDE

A BIT OF DANTE IN EVERY MOTHER’S SON

MANTRA CHAIN

ME, MYSELF & I

INTERSUBJECTIVE PATRAMORPHIS

WHAT THE ^%^%&*$@ DO I KNOW?

SIT AND BE

ADZOM ON SKYPE

WHERE ARE YOU COMING FROM?

LICENSE PLATE: O FAITH

SHRINKING

HANG ONTO THE LION THRONE

TANTRIC TV: THE MATRIX

IF I MAY BE SO BOLD

A PRIORI POEMS

HA! GOOD LUCK

THREE APPROACHES TO A THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

ENCODED POETRY MACHINE

CHARLES LAUGHTON KNOWS ABOUT A HORSE

NO ONE IDEA

IDES OF MARCH

ETHNOS

ACHILLES HAD ALL THE MOVES

DAKINIS ON THE PATH

PLATO’S ATOMS

HEAR MYSELF THINK

DHARMA IS A CALLIOPE

SAD BUT SAFE

SELF-POWER

SWIMMING IN SAMSARA

TIGLE & SOUL

HERE OUR DAYS ARE NUMBERLESS

LUCK, DETERMINATION, WILL

TALL DHARMA TALES

YESHE TSOGYEL & HER TREASURES

DAKINI HYPERTEXT

CODED IN MY DNA

MIDDLE WAY IN AMERICA

DOG READS MAN IS NEWS

YESHE, I GET IT

PHAEDRA’S FRUSTRATION

IN EVERYTHING IS EVERYTHING

TUMMO

THE FIVE EXISTS

NEED NOT WANT

DEATH PENALTY

3-D OF TORTURE

IS THE THREAT OF TORTURE TORTURE?

SEEING TORTURE W/MY INNER EYE

PROJECT: MAKE A BOX

WHILE YOU SLEEP YOUR HYPOTHALAMUS RESTS AND YOU DREAM

EMPTINESS 1+1=1

LIBERATION OLYMPICS

CHRIST AS GURU RINPOCHE

TRIKAYA

PAINTING THE SISTINE CHAPEL

YOU ARE THE MOVIE

OLD MAN MCLINTOCK

THREE I’S OF SPY

MINCING

NANCY’S MORNING

SANE DEATH

A PITH INSTRUCTION

MAYPOLE

SPARKS

SPECIAL RELATIVITY

BUMBERSHOOT

SUMMER AND ALL

ANCIENT EYES

DIALOGUE WITH N

FAKES & CHEAP TRICKS

LU’S POEM

WHAT IF A WORLD

IF BE

IF XO

IF I’M

IF SYCNRONICITY

IF A NOTE

IF A DEAD MAN

IF ONLY

IF ASSURANCES

IF I TAKE ACTION

IF A JINGLE, A JANGLE

IF TOMORROW

IF FLOW

IF I

IF STATISTICS

THE DOT

LE SANG D’UN POÈTE REDUX

TARA MANDALA, SANTA FE & ELLENSBURG

NATURALLY ARISING SELF

LETTER TO MICHAEL ROTHENBERG

SINGING TO THE HEART IN LUMINOUS PEAK

LIGHT ON THE HORIZON

THE RAT IS BACK

NO POETRY HERE

APPROACHING N+1

THE TULKU HAS GOPHERS

I AWAKE TO A SNAKE

SUCH IS SUCHNESS AS IT IS

RADICAL DZOGCHEN IN BERKELEY

THE MERE SELF

REVISIONIST FAIRYTALE

TEN POEMS AFTER SAIGYO

AGE

SAMBHOGAKAYA BUCKAROO

KEEPING IT SIMPLE

APRIL FOOLS DAY

AFTER SHABKAR’S BEE SONG

THROUGH ANGER TOWARD LOVE

THE OLD POET ADDRESSES THE ISSUE OF SOUL

A PLATE OF FRUIT

WILD TURKEY PECKING

STRIPPING TIME

A THRUSH

THE LAMA FINDS AN UNUSUAL ROCK

SITTING ATOP A BLADE OF GRASS

TRUTHSEEKER

DHARMA IN THE ANIMAL REALM

YOGI RENT CONTROL

A REPLY TO YESHE

ARTAUD’S TAKE

NAMING

IN STEP WITH AN ANT

NO REFERENCE POINT EXCEPT

TURNING THE DARKNESS DOWN

BEWARE

INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES

JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR EMPTINESS

IN HOMAGE

PEACE, CLARITY, JOY ARE GOOD SIGNS

ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE

PINK FOX GOES ALL THE WAY

TIMES HAVE CHANGED

IN THE GREAT ROUND

SINGLE TIME, SIMPLE SOLUTION

LETTER TO BETH IN THE YEAR OF THE HARE

LUMINOUS AND CLEAR

THAT’S HIROSHIMA ON THE WINDOW SILL

SPACE AND MOTION

CITY MARKET POEMS

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

This compilation covers nearly two decades of my poetic energy. In 1998, I moved from Pagosa Springs, Colorado, where I had been practicing Tibetan Buddhism and managing a dharma store, to live with my elderly parents in Santa Rosa, California. Settling in as a care giver, I bought my first computer and input all my writings from 1961 onward. I had time to work on my poetry between cooking meals, running errands, and maintaining the property, which consisted of a mid-century suburban ranch-style home and lawns covering a double lot near a golf course. Santa Rosa is in wine country and is an old bohemian stomping ground. I took a part-time job at Sprint Copy Shop, in Sebastopol, which gave me a base for running off my D Press chapbooks. I fit right in. It was a fruitful time—publishing chapbooks for myself and my friends, giving readings, practicing meditation—and between projects, I worked on editing the Comrades Press edition of my Collected Poems:1961-2000.

My parents died peacefully in their beds, my father, Samuel, in 1999, at the age of 98, and my mother, Helen, in 2007, also at the age of 98. In 2008, having sold their property, with its country club-like atmosphere, I returned to Colorado where, instead of a house on the edge of a golf course and the society of family and fellow poets, I entered a stringent, traditional three-year retreat under the guidance of Lama Tsultrim Allione and Tulku Sang-ngag Rinpoche. My dwelling was a small cabin without electricity or running water, called Luminous Peak, located at 8,000 feet in the San Juan Mountains. I limited my writing activity to a two-hour period each day, so as not to interfere with my formal meditation practices. I promised Vajrasattva, my tutelary deity, I would not waste precious time on every inspiration that arose but to hold off until that part of the day designated my art session. A page per day becomes many pages at the end of the year, times three. Again, it was a fruitful time.

My life experiences have been diverse; my influences have been many; and my poetry, reflecting this, is a mixed bag. This bag is the magic knapsack I carry on my journey, offering me a map, a mirror, a candle, a whip, whatever I need.

Thanks to Joseph Powell, Xavier Cavazos, Katharine Whitcomb, Larry Kerschner, and Gail Chiarello who gave my manuscript a good read and offered valuable feedback. Belle Randall went the extra mile to find kind and insightful words for her introduction. I am blessed by their considerations.

I have revised a few of the poems, cleared a little haze, but mainly they are as they arrived. Now, they are yours.

Ellensburg, 2018

ACKNOWLEDMENTS

The poems from A Book from Luminous Peak, were originally written in calligraphy and illustrated with drawings and watercolors in the spirit William Blake, Philip Whalen, and the Tibetan song form called dowa. There are examples online at Big Bridge and at my Kapala Press website:

www.bigbridge.org/BB17/editorschoice/poetry/Richard_Denner.

www.kapalapress.net/ See also: www.dpress.net

This volume collects the poems found in the following chapbooks by Richard Denner along with his aliases, Jampa Dorje and Bouvard Pécuchet:

Wavetwisters, D Press, Sebastopol, 2000

Drinking from the Cancer Cup, D Press, Sebastopol, 2002

The Call, D Press, Sebastopol, 2001

Bad Ballerina, D Press, Sebastopol, 2002

Bad Ballerina Dances Against Violence, D Press, Sebastopol, 2002

Images of Staff, D Press, Sebastopol, 2002

Wheel of Time Mantra Blade, D Press, Sebastopol, 2002

Worship Dog, D Press, Sebastopol, 2003

Road to War, D Press, Sebastopol, 2003

Songs of Jampa Dorje, D Press, Sebastopol, 2003

Without Goggles, D Press, Sebastopol, 2003

Denner & Co., D Press, Sebastopol, 2003

What Zen Wisdom, D Press, Sebastopol, 2003

Red Wheelbarrow, D Press, Sebastopol, 2003

Imperfect Understanding, D Press, Sebastopol, 2004

All in the Draw, D Press, Sebastopol, 2005

Bouvard Pécuchet’s Twenty-two All-Time Favorites, Kickass Press, Sebastopol, 2005

The Prologues, D Press, Sebastopol, 2005

Pinwheels, D Press, Sebastopol, 2005

These Proud Lovers, D Press, Sebastopol, 2005

Special Relativity, D Press, Sebastopol, 2005

And a Grecian rug to lay before the fire, Pink Rabbit Press, Sebastopol, 2006

Sparks, D Press, Sebastopol, 2006

If It, D Press, Sebastopol, 2007

The Dot Book, D Press, Sebastopol, 2007

Wild Turkey Pecking, Jampa Dorje, D Press, Pagosa Springs, 2009

Pink Fox Goes All the Way, Jampa Dorje, Kapala Press, Luminous Peak, 2010

A Book from Luminous Peak, Jampa Dorje, Kapala Press, Santa Fe, 2013

Le Sang d’un Poète Redux, Bouvard Pécuchet, Pink Rabbit Press, Ellensburg, 2016

Belle Randall

THE EVERYDAY POEMS OF RICHARD DENNER

Richard Denner and I belong to a small circle of San Francisco bay area poet friends who have often given readings together and appeared in print together in at least one anthology, Berkeley Daze, (thanks to Richard in his publishing mode), and who, because of this, have sometimes wondered what to call ourselves. The answer does not come easily, for, aside from being friends—if it is possible to put aside such a significant thing—our methods as poets are very different. Today, writing this introduction to Richard’s second chunky volume of collected poems, I am calling Richard an everyday poet, and his poems everyday poems. What do I mean by this? First—and most obviously—that, Richard—Buddhist monk and maker of beautiful books, part Berkeley poet and part Ellensburg cowboy, he expresses his love of ordinary things in ordinary language, filling his poems with reflections on everyday experience, talking to the reader in a conversational, sometimes self-deprecating, voice that is more likely to undercut the speaker’s romantic impulse than to embellish it. A poem that begins Worms will devour us, continues:

Everyone is busy, busy

getting and spending,

while the worms get

the job done

            (Love Song)

Without resort to rhetorical effects, with nary a flourish, this poem ends in flat statement: I drink from the cancer cup.

This flatness is no accident. Richard deliberately eradicates—or attempts to eradicate—the lyricism we almost inevitably associate with poetry: I tried to murder the rose creeping/into the tower, but it returned with a vengeance he writes (At the Edge of Beyond).

As a Buddhist Drupla (a lama who accomplished the dharma in a mountain retreat)—a title he has earned over many years of formal study at Tara Mandala, a Buddhist retreat center near Pagosa Springs in Colorado, hours, days and years spent in solitude, meditation,