PINYON REVIEW #16

This is the first Pinyon Review without Gary Entsminger, former editor and publisher, at the helm, but Susan Entsminger, his wife who is co-editor and publisher of this journal, hasn’t missed a beat in her “troubadour’s” (as she calls Gary) song, launching the new edition with excerpts from Gary’s poems that appear in Two Miles West. Susan Entsminger poses rhetorical questions about her talented husband who died in early fall, then answers them in “The Troubadour Sings A Love Song”; e.g., “Was it the parents’ country guitars that first vibrated at a frequency which awakened in Gary that silver thread of Jungian collective memory, the Castanedaian glimmering energy with that which frees us from ourselves so that we might glimpse the source of Plato’s shadows on the cave wall and hear the songs of our ancestors?…”  She also acknowledges writers and artists who have appeared in the pages of his brainchild, The Pinyon Review: “…Gary’s imagination and quest for truth are alive in his sculpted prose, his guitar improvisations, and the exceptional family of artists we call Pinyon. The Troubadour sings love songs.”

Readers are also given a glimpse of Gary and Susan’s work in progress, Egypt ’78, in which the characters Rosalina and Robinson have decided to embrace fiction and non-fiction simultaneously. “They had invented characters, who themselves had ideas about their lives, and she would meet and talk to them here in the cottage or garden, on the hillside, by the ocean, at Robinson’s tower…” I don’t know how much copy of this co-authored work Gary and Susan had achieved, but I feel sure Susan will honor her talented husband by completing the manuscript. At one point following Gary’s death, she told me that his spirit still lives in the canyon near their cabin in Colorado. “I asked Gary the other night:/Do you miss talking?… I think he said:/What does it look like where you are?” she writes in this issue of Pinyon Review.

Toni Ortner, a newcomer to Pinyon, writes about grief in a brief poem entitled “How to think about grief": “It is futile to ask when it will subside…Grief is water running down a mountainside. The rivulet twists/ and turns through every nook around every rock and crevice. It/cuts like a knife into the dirt and washes away the leaves plants/and pebbles. It becomes a stream. Season after season it slices/and chops the dirt to silt. Then it is a river./Dream whatever you want it will make no difference.” Although this poem has an “inevitable” quality, the transcendent tone of nature somehow provides soothe to readers.

When readers turn the page, they will discover new life in “Baby Lucy’s Quilt,” a display of quilts that Laurel Brody, A Chinese Medicine practitioner, co-created for the arrival of a friend’s baby. Along with friends of the parents, she embroidered, and others machine quilted the vibrant quilt with purple edgings that inspired the parents to paint the infant’s room a matching shade of purple. Brody writes: “The process nourishes. The outcome is tangible and lasts through the years. There’s a reason women have been doing this for generations.” 

Diane Vreuls returns to Pinyon with three works, including a poem entitled “Fifth Grade.” I could readily identify with this bit of nostalgia as I’ve often said that life, for me, began in the third grade. Vreuls takes readers back fifty years, bringing alive amusing and comforting memories: “…Carol got to do the shamrock because she was Catholic./We watched it sun out the windows. Watched it cloud,/rain, snow. It was always warm in the room. Nothing bad/ever happened. No one was sick for long, or moved away./It’s been over 50 years now. I close my eyes: there’s my desk,/the children reading aloud, the rocking chair,/Mrs. Fern…” Vreuls treats readers to a profound recollection using evocative concrete detail. A former professor at Oberlin College in Ohio, she has also published short stories, children’s literature, and poetry. 

The photographs of Fabrice Poussin, arresting scenes in Oregon and Utah, showcase the work of an artist whose work has gained recognition in over 200 art and literature magazines in the U.S. and abroad. In his “A Gentle Dream,” the photograph captures a dusty road that curves around a rock formation and perhaps suggested to Gary “the turn beyond” when he was reviewing work for this issue that was initiated while he was still alive. Gary was always mystically inclined, sought harmony in nature, and engaged in philosophical searches. Poussin’s work centers on western landscapes in both black and white and color, taking readers “beyond the gate,” the title for his art contribution.

Susan described this issue aptly in her opening summary: “a fifth-grade classroom, the light touch of a friend, mystery deep in hemlock roots, radiator clank echoing clinking rings, an overgrown orchard, mountain meadow, embracing bodies, dusty trail…the liberating spaces of the mind’s eye, perhaps a small tickle of a deeply repressed memory…”

Pinyon #16 is a meet tribute to Gary Entsminger, “the troubadour” whose life mission was to celebrate the arts and sciences and whose wife Susan continues the mission. I also have a poem in this issue and appreciate the recognition as one of Pinyon’s “family.” 

Available at Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, Colorado 81403. 

TO GARY, THE GHOST OF MAXWELL PERKINS

Yesterday afternoon, I received a sad message from Susan Entsminger about Gary Entsminger, my publisher/ editor/ and cherished friend of Pinyon Publishing who published Chant of Death, a mystery I co-wrote with Isabel Anders of Sewanee, TN, as well as many of my poems in Pinyon Review. Although Gary had written to me several weeks ago about the blood clots in his lungs and explained that he planned to recover, I was stunned to learn that he had died. Gary wasn’t just an editor/publisher to me, he had become a close friend, and through email we had developed a relationship that, for lack of a better phrase, made us soul mates. It was and still is a spiritual friendship that covered eleven short years, and he, along with one other male poet, is probably the outstanding mentor in my life. I came to know him through long emails, the books, and collages of photographs he sent me throughout the years, and through his constant endorsement of my work. I never met him in person or heard his voice, but he was among several voices I heard every time I sat down to write. Susan took the photographs in this blog that show him climbing peaks in the Colorado Rocky Mountains near the plateau where he and Susan set up publishing headquarters in a log cabin and lived an intentional life of sustainability.

During the early hours of this morning, I kept trying to write a tribute to Gary in my mind, but I have had a difficult time imagining that he is no longer alive. When I went into the dining room for breakfast, I asked Victoria Sullivan (another writer Gary published. His wife Susan rendered the drawings for Vickie’s Why Water Plants Don’t Drown) to find the photographs of him on my computer. Needless to say, Gary’s spirit has a large place in this household. While we mourn his death, we were comforted last night by a message from Darrell Bourque who said, “I know his eternal energy is working its way to Right Source and I know that some of it is coming to you… as you grieve his passing.” 

Language seems to fail me this morning, so I defer to a prose poem I wrote about Gary in 2012, the title of which is the title of this blog and which appeared in a book of my poetry entitled Everything Is Blue:

Among my papers I find two cards, embellished photographs of a book cover: a yellowed parchment bearing ancient chants bordered by stains of spilled blood; cards that record a happier time, your good intent to make me a ‘brand,’ a recognized author of mysteries.

For nearly three years you have nurtured me, a poet on this stony mountain still searching for metaphor and mood after a lifetime, unrecognized in the mist of once known -- becoming known again, becoming read again…

You stalk my words with good intention, urging me to love the lines I write, assurances to a broken winged writer lying under the hemlock now wrapped in arms of unrelenting trust.

I lie down at night, pondering new blessings: my poems you have published, my “essays” you carefully read. A man who reads everything, you always find the something others fail to notice, raising your glass to say “Cheers” for the poet who fears she is lost, the hungry fox who is a writer.

In the winter, you toast with IPA, in the summer, you sip chardonnay. Language is your red hot salsa, wit and perfection part of your garden, you imagine a parable in each season and what you shall make of this tomato, this berry, brought in from the sun, anthems soon rising from the steaming pot.

You write of hauling barrels of water for Susan’s plateau garden, of hiking 12,000 foot peaks in one morning, send me photographs of a bearded man with ascetic brow, standing on a lonely trail alongside a black Lab facing a meadow leading to the unknown.

Every scene is a fragment of the larger picture: making books that balance readers’ spirits, the lion man who knows that plants will sprout and grow, each seedling harvested, a moment given over to creation, sturdy and useful.

I hold you in my skull as an idea that scorns danger, your will arguing fiercely against the thing we writers most fear… that our words will not matter, that our language will not last.

Gary was a poet (Four Ravens and Two Miles West), a publisher, naturalist, computer programmer, has written nine programming books; over 100 scientific and technical articles; and computer software that helps scientists understand patterns of biodiversity and biogeography. With his wife Susan, he wrote Fall of ’33, Ophelia’s Ghost, and Remembering the Parables, books that integrate fiction, philosophy, history, poetry, and art. He was also a musician and music composer (guitar, mandolin, keyboard), writing tunes like "If the Birds Spoke to Us." 

Gary nurtured writers scattered throughout the U.S. and abroad (especially Chinese poets) and was an authentic Renaissance man. Although he called himself a “Luddite,” he remained on the cutting edge of the arts as evidenced in Pinyon Review, a journal celebrating the arts and sciences that he established in 2012. He was featured in many of my past blog posts on “A Words Worth” (revmoore.blogspot.com). Follow the links to purchase his books at Pinyon Publishing (23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403). Several interviews with Gary appear on the Pinyon Publishing website. 

Here is one of my favorites among Gary’s poetry in Four Ravens. It’s entitled “Yew:”

“No one knew

how the yew

survived so long

generating roots

branches strong

some said —mystical

from those places

where poets rhymed

with old magicians

where birds entwine

in branches

singing of immortality”

Rest in peace, Gary Entsminger, let light perpetual shine upon you. 

Love, Diane

FOUR RAVENS

I was reading E. B. White’s One Man’s Meat yesterday when Four Ravens, a book of poetry by my friend and editor Gary Lee Entsminger, arrived. I had just finished reading about White’s wife complaining that she didn’t quite understand poetry, and he told her that a poet’s pleasure is to “withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification, zipping the veil from beauty but not removing it.” Entsminger’s new book of poems certainly bears out White’s assessment of poetry while reminding us of his awe for nature and organisms and, at the same time, embracing metaphysical thoughts in many of his musings.

I particularly liked Entsminger’s poems about his wife, Susan, who is an artist and who drew the raven on the cover of Four Ravens and sketched this bird in simple line drawings throughout the book. In “Second Reality,” Entsminger reveals the force of Susan’s work as an artist in a poem that shows his respect and devotion to his talented wife: “…sky reflects through the window/smudges resemble puddles/bright yellow circles simmer/like sunflowers six feet high./…When did she realize her sketches/said something words cannot explain/as objects came together without touching/the way they once reigned.” 

The Entsmingers live in a rustic cabin on a plateau in Colorado and exemplify the philosophy of a “Thoreau-like” life, doing tasks that the modern world would call drudgery, including the task of cutting wood. For a winter fire that Susan performs in the poem “Oak,” as husband Gary watches: “Paté done he glances out the window/sees the girl still building trail/work not easy but satisfying/attention focusing her energy/as the waning light casts/shadows of unfamiliarity/she picks up her tools/and goes to the woodpile/stacks the oak/looks at him/through the window/already smelling smoke.” Such poems often concentrate on every day, revealing the couple’s devotion to sustainability and uncomplicated dramas that occur in their daily life together.

Another poem that exemplifies Entsminger’s concern for the environment and objection to a chemical that has proven to poison human life on a large scale is one entitled “In Murdoch’s Ranch and Home Supply,” in which the poet speaks out about Roundup, “buckets and thickets/poisoning everyone/around him…long ago people here/knew to grow/sun-loving crops/in a leafy moon/roots herbs berries/learning how to eat.” 

In “Guide,” readers could surmise that Entsminger is inspired to portray his wife at musical play (Susan also composes and plays guitar and other string instruments): “Bare shouldered/mountain maiden/plucks melodious/strings of sunshine/drawing the youth/who listens/to her paintbrush/glistening/in a meadow/he has climbed to/dawn after dawn/Knowing he’s there/she stops playing/sets aside her psaltery.” The imagery in this spare poem is reminiscent of a long haiku, another rich drama in everyday experience.

Gary’s oeuvre is not without wryness in the pithy lyrics entitled “Cowgirl” placed within the opening pages of Four Ravens, when a mysterious woman roams mountain slopes: “misplaced perhaps/or meant to be/alpine chic/and lengthy curves…in this gentle range/no one spends/their lives/on indifferent things/she rises now and sings/as the cows look up/still chewing patiently/ready to follow her/down to the milking/She looks across the meadow/seeing something we don’t see/and tips her hat to me. “

This book is the second collection of poetry Gary Entsminger has published and contains new work as well as older poetry that adds to an abundance of original nature lyrics and existential musings that constitute a profound volume of rewarding reading. 

Four Ravens is available from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403 (www.pinyon-publishing.com).

AFTER EDEN

This rainy morning when the world outside my window is afloat, I was surprised when I opened a new collection of poetry from Pinyon Publishing in Montrose, Colorado (located on a high and dry plateau), and a poem that fit the inundations of the day leaped from the page:

“DO NOT

leave
the
Ark
unless
you
know
a
gull
from
a
dove
in
the
blinding
rain. “

This whimsical piece spoke to my condition as I looked out at the gunmetal sky from which sheets of rain fell. The poem appears in After Eden by Diane Vreuls and is an amusing innovation placed among more serious poems that “curve back again to [their] norm,” as T.S. Eliot once wrote.

Most of the lyrics in this volume express the entirety of the poet’s sensitive life through spiritual musings in which the reader should not fear abstractions or ornamentation. There is clarity and concise perfection in Vreuls’ poetry about her spiritual journey, beginning with her observations about the Annunciation and culminating in “Botanicon,” a poem using plant symbolism to represent the depth of the poet’s feelings about Christ’s resurrection: “Each march/the earth/sends forth/fresh shoots/of bush and tree/not pale/firstlings/of green growth/but wine-/red tendrils/carmine whips/a blush/of buds/burst from/earth’s blood/announcing Resurrection.” Here, the poet takes the mysterious and inscrutable and translates it into one of Nature’s rituals without using elaborate art or superfluous lyrics.

In five sections of poetry that are a mixture of exaltation and truth seeking, Vreuls’ voice is at once prophetic and sympathetic. Her lyrics speak of both imperfect and perfect experiences and are expressed with a true poet’s sensibility. The poems often cast light on what is hidden in the human experience; e.g., the beautiful tribute to Saint Sourise, which is my favorite: “The night she heard the cries of a man being tortured/two countries distant, she prayed for the one/who awakened her, then for the torturer…Reclining after her midday meal she heard the cries/of the infant Jesus and ran to gather him close./In the stall lay a newborn calf nosing the teat of its mother…The cries of a woman in labor/gladden her heart. It is the sound,/she says, of the Earth birthing the day…Come to the altar, she cries,/and you will hear your name whispered/in the pouring wine…She is said to have died of grief—the grief/of others. If you wake in the night, she told us,/you have heard my cry.” There is something deeply Celtic in this poem, particularly in the line “of the Earth birthing day,” and the last line reads like a spiritual invocation. I could envision the Anglican sisters at St. Mary’s in Sewanee, where I worship when I am in Tennessee, chanting this poem at Morning Prayer or Vespers.

Among Vreuls’ brief poems representing her ability to craft a poem that has clarity and concision is a piece entitled “Source.” “Three transfusions,/can’t tell/whose/blood is/in my veins,/but at/Eucharist/I know.” As Yeats says, [This] poem comes right with a click like a closing box.”

The final poem in After Eden, entitled “Anno Animae In Terra 2015,” resonates with all of us who have been involved in the struggle to acknowledge and conform to a higher will. The last stanza records Vreuls’ acquaintance with this struggle: “…In this place all is mystery./ In its hunger you are my bowl./In its pain you measure music./In its primer you read the first word—/the Yes I am trying to learn.” Again, the poet shows her ability to write with clarity and concision reminiscent of the Acmeists who claimed they were dedicated to “beautiful clarity.”

Diane Vreuls is a poet who does not oversimplify the human predicament but is a powerful spokeswoman for the spiritual life and expresses the finer shades of feeling in her visionary work. She represents the growing body of outstanding contemporary poets being published by Pinyon Publishing. A recipient of an NEA Fellowship, she has published a novel, a short story collection, a children’s book, and a book of poems. Her work has appeared in Commonweal, The New Yorker, and the Best American Short Stories. She lives in Oberlin, Ohio.

Pinyon Publishing is an independent press located in Montrose, Colorado and its co-editors/publishers, Gary Entsminger and Susan Elliott, are dedicated to producing some of the best writing and art of our times.

Available at Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403