David Budbill’s harmonizations

BOOK REVIEW

By MARCIA NEHEMIAH

After reading about poet David Budbill in a March 2004 article in The Sun magazine, I met the man behind the words at a poetry reading at the Stella Adler Studios in New York City this past April. Budbill punctuated his poetry by playing the Japanese flute and the singing bowls. Although his subject was often the body’s deterioration and its inevitable death, laughter frequently filled the room.

Budbill has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and art history and a master’s in theology. Raised in Cleveland as a Methodist, he embraced Buddhism and Taoism in his twenties, and those traditions infuse his writing. One of the four epigraphs that introduces his new book, “While We’ve Still Got Feet” (Copper Canyon Press), quotes the ancient Japanese poet Ryokan: “Gleaning some words from old masters/I make my own poems.” He explains in an addendum to the book: “Many of these poems are inspired by reading other poets’ poems. The ancient Chinese poets called this ‘harmonization’.”

Budbill’s “greatest influence,” he says, was Han Shan, a hermit-poet living in the 8th or 9th century (the dates are in dispute) who called himself “Cold Mountain” after the place he lived. Budbill calls both himself and the place he resides “Judevine Mountain” in Han Shan’s tradition.

Another epigraph says, “Poetry in not about language. It’s about something.” Buddbill eschews the obscurity trendy in some circles and at the academy, opting instead for clarity of language and simplicity of form. Rather than poetic conventions like metaphors, similes, symbolism or allusions, he favors colloquial diction to grapple with essential, existential questions about ambition, action and accomplishment in the face of death. His is an intensely personal and humble voice posing universal questions about human existence. In the poem “The Beautiful People,” for example, he writes, “He is young/and handsome./She is young/and beautiful./They are wealthy/and intelligent./Everything they turn/their hands to/becomes/a great success./Maybe they will figure out/ how not to die.”

The simple lines depict a man and a woman, but the last line, like many of Budbill’s last lines, turns the whole poem into a koan, a problem that asks the reader for an answer. This short poem demands that the reader think about the philosophical questions it raises. Many of the poems in the volume ultimately throw one’s own ambitions and values into question and demand introspection on the reader’s part.

The title poem of the book centers on the same question of meaning but with a humorous twist in the last line characteristic of many of Budbill’s poems. “Tomorrow/we are/bones and ash,/the roots of weeds/poking through/our skulls.” But today, Budbill says, our stomachs are full, music is playing and we are “alive, aware,/right here,/right now. Come on,/Sweetheart,/let’s go dancing/while we’ve still/got feet.” Budbill often celebrates the joy of life, of indulging the senses in uncomplicated rewards like food, sex, love and nature.

Many poems will resonate with people who split their time between the city and the country. Budbill, who has lived in Vermont with his wife, painter Lois Eby, for the past 35 years, frequently comes to New York City. In “Going Home,” he laments the luxuries he will leave behind when he returns to his country home, among them the “Lights of lower Manhattan glittering in the night” and a “blazing hot, take-the-top-of-your-head-off pork dish.” But on the next page he writes in the poem, “Judevine Mountain’s Siren Song: Upon Returning Home from the City:” “How can I turn away from her open arms?/How can I resist her welcoming bower?” The “her” is the country life that he celebrates in this and other poems: the joy of physical labor, solitude and the companionship of nature.

“While We’ve Still Got Feet” is a continuation of the Judevine Mountain poems begun with “Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse” (Copper Canyon Press), which was chosen by Booklist as one of the ten best books of poetry for 1999.

To learn more about David Budbill, his poetry and his life please read the interview with him included in this week’s supplement, The Literary Gazette, whose theme is joy.