Archipelago: Selected Early Poems

By Geoff Peterson and George Thomas

Archipelago is a vision of the historical past in collision with the future. First glimpsed in a dream over forty years ago, the poet traces the evolution of the underlying myth in poems over the course of one life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781546274247

Geoff Peterson

Born just after World War II, Peterson inherited his mother's nervous system and went on to memorize and perform poetry in a lyric vein for family and card parties. Raised Catholic, the boy learned the value of dreams, visions, and the soothing aspects of prayer in unison. He later earned degrees in Literature and Writing at Eastern Washington University, and served as poetry editor for Willow Springs Magazine. With the publication of his first novel in 1989, Peterson turned his back on mainstream publishing and has not looked back. Since 2007 he has published nearly thirty books of poetry and fiction. He lives in the Southwest and still gets around.

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© 2019 Geoff Peterson. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  01/07/2019

ISBN: 978-1-5462-7425-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-7424-7 (e)

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for James J. McAuley,

poet in the priestly tradition

of black suits & ties

Cargo Manifest

Author’s Note

Prologue: radio traffic

Land’s End

Land’s End

Periscope Depth

Cafeteria

Okinawa

Neptunus Rex

Night Vision

Fishing Off Naha

Black Ships

Ghost Nets

Treasure Island

Treasure Island, 1939

Kuan-Yin

China Girls

Exit Wounds

Destroyer: the complete kit

Ship’s Log: 1942

Ship’s Log: 1944

Ship’s Log: 1945

Kamikaze

Tokyo Rose

Aces

PSYOPS

Flashbacks

Volunteers

On Point

exit wounds

Ghost Opera

North Brother Island

Ghost Opera

Post-war

My Life

Off Course

Yūgen: beyond worlds

Icarus

Natal Chart

Scroll

The Rapture

Hotel Calhoun

Anacortes

Hotel Calhoun

Black Beauty

Homestead

Losses

Birthing

Letter from Wyoming

Sea of Forgetfulness

Another Room

The Big One

After the Divorce

Breakfast at Em’s

Swimming to China

Kabuki: The Heron Maiden

The Pillow Book

Near Gifu

dear Christine

Chinese Menu

Balboa

Frequent Flyers

The Big One

Acknowledgments

Afterword: A Magical Place Where Everybody Recovers a remembrance by George Thomas

About the Author

Author’s Note

Now it’s forty-three years later. I thought there’s a way to bring back the dream-vision behind these poems, but I’m damned if I can find it. And I suppose that’s the subject of Archipelago in its present state: how vision mutates over time, especially at the end.

Many of the poems are the fruits of my student years [1975-80]. They came abundantly after a dream about my father’s war and months separated from a proud woman—one of those dreams recognized as something huge beneath the surface, when everything speaks in code and opens to a rich interior: a primer of longing & wonder, so to speak. Any testament to youth visited late in life must qualify as that.

The initial dream introduced me to the idea that my real life lay elsewhere. The poems are completely without humor. You know how it is. Curious and prone to obsessing, you’re a kid, you think you’re on to something. So much energy directed at one thing, one woman, one break in the case…

So I took a break. Besides, other themes soon began bubbling to the surface: marriage, job, parenthood, divorce, the full catastrophe wrote Kazantzakis, but not to be avoided.

One early influence was my friend’s story of serving a stretch in the brig on Okinawa during the final days of Vietnam, and his ensuing camaraderie with a resident cockroach. After the war we met in college. Later, he married, moved away and started a family. We didn’t stay in touch.

Decades after these poems began to surface in journals, I lay in tall grass on the island of Kauai listening to waves and watching the stars pulse like on no other night of my life. Melville