The Wreck of the Deutschland: Familial Echoes

 

I recently discovered (reading in a poetry anthology), that the poem, The Wreck of the Deutschland, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, contained an indirect reference to my ancestor, Adalbert Falk. The mention was not in a favorable sense. In the piece I assembled above, I selected the extract from Hopkins' poem from: Poetry Foundation. -JF, 2-11-2024

The Lace-Maker

 The Lace-Maker 

June 30, 1987. Beverly Beach, Ore.

 The leather of the sole must be half-an-inch thick when in glass cupboards for leprous dolls which lace-like stumps probe.

"Right now!" Triangular lenses look belligerent 'neath black-belt eyebrows. He waves his hand: Five stub-ends. 

The very inner circle of each stump has never healed, & was wont to discharge clear fluids, especially when his limbs mimed karate motions, kind of iridescent & glowing like stupid monkey heads strung on tree- leaves. This was ever so far away from a "do not drink the water" warning, on the 20th floor of a worn city building, a bit like a beacon against poor posture & conterminous with the museum. Dull mahogany cabinets, I bet you fellows haven't seen anything like that before. And just as his cataract-laden eyes winked with victory, a wax-plastic figure (based on that of a wooden dummy) showed a glittering smile. 

J. Falk, R. Scott

A collaborative poem I wrote with Roman Scott, after a visit to the now-defunct Lacey's Doll Museum in Lincoln City, Oregon (we then traveled to the Newport area, where we created these works). My family also dropped by the place a number of times, stretching back to the early 70s. 

A drawing by R.Scott and me; from the same day as the poem. 

Plain's End (prose poem)

Plain's End, a prose poem/freewrite of mine, based on impressions of Japan, and South Korea (and contents/cover) of Sunflower: A Literary Journal for Freewrites, 1st quarter, 1994, Berkeley, CA. Art/editing:Myeongsuk Jeong. A few web searches found almost no traces of the magazine (or the editor); which had its run right around the first glimmers of widespread internet availability (although one of the queries found this previous post of mine, from 2013).

 

Dreamland Brings Memories of You

A collage, including some poetry, I made; 1980s.

 

Meeting with Allen Ginsberg, April 12, 1985, Boulder, Colorado

 A (lightly edited) journal entry of mine, covering a meeting with Allen Ginsberg, at the Boulder Bookstore in Boulder, Colorado, on April 12, 1985. 

Written on April 15, 1985 (Boulder, Colorado). Monday. Saturday (April 12), R. arrived. We stayed in the Trident Coffee House for a while, then sat out on the courthouse lawn and snapped pictures of each other. At 5:30, we went to the Boulder Bookstore and met (Allen) Ginsberg; talked to him around ten or 15 minutes, interrupted only by people who wanted their books signed. We told him a little about Oddities, our philosophies (?) and so on. In the books which he signed he stamped two Tibetan symbols, of which he explained the meanings. One, I believe, indicated a Boddhisatva. Ginsberg asked Roman what kind of camera he had; R. explained it was an 'idiot' camera. Upon which we saw that Allen had a similar one himself! He asked us to buy film for him; we agreed, but were unsure of a near location. Another guy bought the film in the end. 

G. snapped a picture of me, also one of a man holding a Blake/Dante book. I was grinning idiotically. We finally left through nervousness and because larger crowds were gathering about the poet. He seemed friendly and courteous as well as cryptic. Also I saw a reading he gave at the Naropa Institute on Wednesday. Quite an exuberant reader. Yesterday we saw The Wicker Man... 
-- JF 

Pyrrhic Alembic (Poem)

Pyrrhic Alembic

 

The decades plangent, winter’s night, ancient youth; I watched occultation as the sun’s corona snapped; the initial eclipse, revelation by the blackboard, fell during Jimmy Carter’s reality.

Valkyries whirred through marmoreal heights, the aurochs of Christiania, scooped orbs of febrile rocks.

Totems hermitic, thunder eggs of stumbling youth, reincarnations argent.

Past mages’ mouths sealed now with wixtax, sires driving their pickups into the bardo, in the alder woods a hinged homunculus burrowed.

 

JF – 5/11/19

  A drawing, based on Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, I made when I was eight, nine or so.

Wind Per East (poem)

Wind per East

The obsidian wind with the nostrils of carved rock
roamed and ruffled deep afield, decades in vain.
The house on the road where the trees lined
These totems, marmoreal pruned branches, blue jay spoke,

 The scent of petroglyphs patrol in dreams,
brows saurian and wiggling, that was carbon steel,
that was a volcano up there, it didn't try but rain,

Interstellar harmonies, unexamined flames.

JF 1-17-19

Photo by JF, Oregon, March, 1986.

Second Growth & Aggregation (two poems)

Photo: Columbia River Gorge, 1984. The two poems are by me, from the early 1990s. They appeared in the Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review (Hampden-Sydney, Virginia), in the Winter, 1993 issue.

Domicile

Published in Block's Poetry Collection, Beloit, Wisconsin, Issue 1, Winter 1993. The cover art is by Nancy E. Doyle. This was not long before the World Wide Web started to become more accessible.