POETS Day! John O’Brien
I took several POETS Days off from the regular world recently, but rather than declaring “Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday” to reclaim a deserved – and I could go on, but those hours are ours by right – Friday afternoon, I tagged along with friends and family for a couple of weeks of nature. That meant going to Wyoming to hear the kids make “Teton” jokes, Montana to eat elk burgers and stay in a hotel within driving range of Yellowstone and snobby Bison that walk right up your car, cogitate, and pass without so much as a nod of acknowledgement, and then on to the second-most-fantastic state in the U.S. for white water rafting down the Salmon River, from which we returned despite the nickname. Again. It was all glorious. I got to wear SPF river pants that were almost identical to the parachute pants I wore in 1984, zippered pockets and all.
Idaho. I meant Idaho when I wrote “second-most…”
Hemingway killed himself in Blaine County, Idaho, where Ezra Pound was born. I’m not throwing that in to satisfy my POETS Day Ezra Pound mention quota, though it does do that. For whatever reason, that patch of land was an alpha or an omega to two remarkable literary careers. They were sparring partners and Pound considered Hemingway, who once said that he learned through Pound more “about how to write and how not to write than anywhere else,” one of his most intimate friends. Hemingway later helped secure Pound’s release from St. Elizabeth’s mental hospital.
Pound’s connection to Blaine County is of his parent’s doing. He doesn’t mention his origins much directly in his writings – I should say, “In his writings that I’ve thus far read.” – except to present himself as a Philadelphian of the world. He does adopt a yokel written affectation in some of his letters: Robert Frost is “VURRY Amur’k’n,” and of Ulysses, in a letter to Joyce, he writes “An’ I reckon’ this here work o’ yourn is some concarn’d letershure.” The affectation is almost always used in association with something he admires or at least approves of. Pound was an awful snob so maybe I’m reading too much into it, but the yokel affectation grasps the heart of the matter. Was there a wistful bit of rural Idaho in him that came up in conversation between the two? It would make sense in response when (not if) Hemingway spoke of his Michigan woods. I have no evidence, but I assume Hemingway found Blaine via Pound and if I ever find some tale or exchange detailing the hows and wherefores, you’ll hear about it. It’ll be a POETS Day seven-parter.
Before any Idahoans take umbrage, I’m from a yokel state myself and know what’s behind the drawls.
Twenty-six of us, nineteen punters and seven guides, started near Salmon and rode the river’s Pre-Cambrian and Paleozoic cut westward for eighty-plus miles over six days and five nights towards Riggins. This was my second trip down this stretch. It bothers me that I’ve spent twelve days on that river now and still haven’t seen a bear. One of the guides said he saw one on the shore one day taking the equipment boat to the next camp site in advance of our flotilla, but I’ve yet to lay eyes on one in the wild. To reiterate, I have seen as much evidence showing bears live in the Frank Church Wilderness of central Idaho as I have showing the same of Bigfoot.
There were chukars hidden but for their clucks in rockslide remnants. Hard-to-discern birds inspired my wife’s favorite rafting game, Rock or Duck.
Fun fact: If you say “Look! Duck!” in a boat filled with Alabamians, Vermonteers, Coloradans, and Utahns you’ll be gently corrected with “Merganser” followed by a third party questioning whether it’s in fact a loon.
When I was a kid there were heart wrenching proto-Sarah-McLachlin commercials, severe stamps, and nodding politicians wearing their conservationist hats urging us to save the endangered bald eagle.
Damn, that worked.
By day three, day one’s excited “Ooh! Ooh! A bald eagle!” barely elicited a glance around. A bigger challenge would have been to find a burned or dead-but-standing bare pine without one in the upper branches surveying the current for a bite. I’m only exaggerating slightly.
There were improbably-perched pronged goats, canyon wrens singing descending songs, and coquettish river otters too.
None of this seems to have much to do with today’s poet, but I’m getting there.
John O’Brien, a pen name for Monsignor Patrick Jospeh Hartigan, was an Australian poet who tended to the needs of Catholics in New South Wales in the early twentieth century. A popular poet, he’s best known for “Said Hanrahan,” [LINK] a pessimist’s warning of drought til it rains, of flood til the rains pass, and then of bush fire from the resulting plant growth. “Said Hanrahan” gave the phrase “We’ll all be rooned,” as a colloquial Australian counterpart to the much more formal “The sky is falling!”
On our last night on the river, an intensely reserved kayaker from Vermont stood in front of the other twenty-five of us and recited O’Brien’s “Around the Boree Log.”
Unexpected recitations of poetry miles from television, streaming music, and interrupting phone calls are enjoyable. I can’t judge the poem on its merits because I heard this song about unfamiliar people coming together around a communal fire finding fellowship when I was by a fire with people enjoying unfamiliar company and the spirit embiggened me.
Popular poetry should be spoken aloud. Popular poets such as O’Brien, Longfellow, and Service are better with an audience. That’s not a terribly original observation, but experience puts an explanation point on the lesson and I should press the point freshly saturated. Thanks, John the Kayaker. Good on ya.
Around the Boree Log
John O’Brien (1878-1952)Oh, stick me in the old caboose this night of wind and rain,
And let the doves of fancy loose to bill and coo again.
I want to feel the pulse of love that warmed the blood like wine;
I want to see the smile above this kind old land of mine.So come you by your parted ways that wind the wide world through,
And make a ring around the blaze the way we used to do;
The “fountain” on the sooted crane will sing the old, old song
Of common joys in homely vein forgotten, ah, too long.The years have turned the rusted key, and time is on the jog,
Yet spend another night with me around the boree log.Now someone driving through the rain will happen in, I bet;
So fill the fountain up again, and leave the table set.
For this was ours with pride to say—and all the world defy—
No stranger ever turned away, no neighbour passed us by.Bedad, he’ll have to stay the night; the rain is going to pour—
So make the rattling windows tight, and close the kitchen door,
And bring the old lopsided chair, the tattered cushion, too—
We’ll make the stranger happy there, the way we used to do.The years have turned the rusted key, and time is on the jog,
Yet spend another night with me around the boree log.He’ll fill his pipe, and good and well, and all aglow within
We’ll hear the news he has to tell, the yarns he has to spin;
Yarns—yes, and super-yarns, forsooth, to set the eyes agog,
And freeze the blood of trusting youth around the boree log.Then stir it up and make it burn; the poker’s next to you;
Come, let us poke it all in turn, the way we used to do.
There’s many a memory bright and fair will tingle at a name—
But leave unstirred the embers there we cannot fan to flame.For years have turned the rusted key, and time is on the jog;
Still, spend this fleeting night with me around the boree log.
