Palo Alto: The Marshes, by Robert Hass

For Mariana Richardson (1830-1891)

1
She dreamed along the beaches of this coast.
Here where the tide rides in to desolate
the sluggish margins of the bay,
sea grass sheens copper into distances.
Walking, I recite the hard
explosive names of birds:
egret, killdeer, bittern, tern.
Dull in the wind and early morning light,
the striped shadows of the cattails
twitch like nerves.

2
Mud, roots, old cartridges, and blood.
High overhead, the long silence of geese.

3
"We take no prisoners," John Fremont said
and took California for President Polk.
That was the Bear Flag War.
She watched it from the Mission San Rafael,
named for the archangel (the terrible one)
who gently laid a fish across the eyes
of saintly, miserable Tobias
that he might see.
The eyes of fish. The land
shimmers fearfully.
No archangels here, no ghosts,
and terns rise like seafoam
from the breaking surf.

4
Kit Carson's antique .45 blue,
new as grease. The roar
flings up echoes
row on row of shrieking avocets.
The blood of Francisco de Haro,
Ramon de Haro, Jose de los Reyes Berryessa
runs darkly to the old ooze.

5
The star thistles; erect, surprised,

6
and blooming
violet caterpillar hairs. One
of the de Haros was her lover,
the books don't say which.
They were twins.

7
In California in the early spring
there are pale yellow mornings
when the mist burns slowly into day.
The air stings
like autumn, clarifies
like pain.

8
Well I have dreamed of this coast myself.
Dreamed Mariana, since her father owned the land
where I grew up. I saw her picture once:
a wraith encased in a high-necked black silk
dress so taut about the bones there were hardly ripples
for the light to play in. I knew her eyes
had watched the hills seep blue with lupine after rain,
seen the young peppers, heavy and intent
first rosy drupes and then the acrid fruit,
the ache of spring. Black as her hair
the unreflecting venom of those eyes
is an aftermath I know, like these brackish,
russet pools a strange life feeds in
or the old fury of land grants, maps,
and deeds of trust. A furious dun-
colored mallard knows my kind
and skims across the edges of the marsh
where the dead bass surface
and their flaccis bellies bob.

9
A chill tightens the skin
around my bones. The other California
and its bitter absent ghosts
dance to a stillness in the air:
the Klamath tribe was routed and they disappeared.
Even the dust seemed stunned,
tools on the ground, fishnets.
Fires crackled, smouldering.
No movement but the slow turning
of the smoke, no sound but jays
shrill in the distance and flying further off.
The flicker of lizards, dragonflies.
And beyond the dry flag-woven lodges
a faint persistent slapping.
Carson found ten wagonloads
of fresh-caught salmon, silver
in the sun. The flat eyes stared.
Gills sucked the thin annulling air.
They flopped and shivered,
ten wagonloads. Kit Carson
burned the village to the ground.
They rode some twenty miles that day
and still they saw black smoke
smear the sky above the pines.

10
Here everything seems clear,
firmly etched agaist the pale
smoky sky: sedge, flag, owl's clover,
rotting wharves. A tanker lugs silver
bomb-shaped napalm tins toward
port at Redwood City. Again
my eye performs
the lobotomy of description.
Again, almost with yearning,
I see the malice of her ancient eyes.
The mud flats hiss as the tide turns.
They say she died in Redwood City,
cursing, "the goddamned Anglo-Yankee yoke."

11
The otters are gone from the bay
and I have seen five horses
easy in the grassy marsh
beside three snowy egrets.

Birds cries and the unembittered sun,
wings and the white bodies of birds,
it is morning. Citizens are rising
to murder in their moral dreams.

Final Proposal

(a) For my final project I am going to perform a close interpretation of Robert Hass' poem "Palo Alto: The Marshes". The piece touches on several themes we have discussed in class, including California's history and geography.

(b) I will use Brechin as a main source in my interpretation, along with historical documents that Hass had access to as well.

(c) The poem is dedicated to a woman named Mariana Richardson. I have learned from Brechin that someone named Richardson was a conservationist, but I would like to find our more about this woman and her experiences in California that influenced Hass.

I would also like to say a bit about Robert Hass, his role as our Poet Laureate of the United States and his experience as a California poet.

(d) will come soon

(e) Incorporating everything I want to say into one coherent paper will be challenging. I could write an entire paper on Hass' use of birds in the piece.

Gary Snyder

Without a response to dig out of myself, I am writing more poetry. I am very torn by the idea of leaving the bay area after I graduate to move to Red Bluff up North. I really do think change and great things come from San Francisco and the many intelligent people who dwell in and around the area. I want to be a part of that change, but at the same time I just want to go to the mountains forever and work on my Self. I admire Gary Snyder, who seems to really have the balance between the Self and the world down.

Gary Snyder,
I want to run away
into the Sierras with you,

sit still
and meditate
among the mountains.

I look at the people
of the bay, pushing
a big boulder West

for civilization.
I want to push

but not towards nothing;

there is only ocean there,
I think, and we should not
push things into it anymore.

Gary Snyder, help! I
only want to push my Self
from inside, out.

Titan Dreams

Rob read this aloud in class, but he got a few words wrong (which can totally throw off a poem) so scanned and am reposting it! I never thought about how much the poem ties in with the course until now.

AIM - American Indian Movement

After seeing the documentary in class, I was very interested in finding out if that was the end of the Indian's struggle for equality. So many great movements and ideas seemed to fizzle and fade with the dying glory of the sixties, but the American Indian Movement remained strong throughout the seventies and beyond. I was looking around the PBS website when I came across the AIM intials in a link, and was curious to see who I could contact through instant messenger. Then I realized I need to get off the computer for awhile.

AIM stands for the American Indian Movement, and is composed of many of the people who occupied Alcatraz Island. I don't know if I missed that during the documentary but now I know and am happy about that. After Alcatraz, AIM continued to seize and occupy federal buildings, and even small towns. According to that PBS website, "Its first protest action was on Thanksgiving Day 1970, when AIM members painted Plymouth Rock red and seized the Mayflower II replica in Plymouth, Massachusetts to challenge a celebration of colonial expansion".I think that is hilarious and great. Here is what the AIM is all about:

WHAT IS THE AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT?

Things will never be same again and that is what the American Indian Movement is about ...
They are respected by many, hated by some, but they are never ignored ...
They are the catalyst for Indian Sovereignty ...
They intend to raise questions in the minds of all, questions that have gone to sleep in the minds of Indians and non-Indian alike ...
From the outside, AIM people are tough people, they had to be ...
AIM was born out of the dark violence of police brutality and voiceless despair of Indian people in the courts of Minneapolis, Minnesota ...
AIM was born because a few knew that it was enough, enough to endure for themselves and all others like them who were people without power or rights ...
AIM people have known the insides of jails; the long wait; the no appeal of the courts for Indians, because many of them were there ...
From the inside AIM people are cleansing themselves; many have returned to the old traditional religions of their tribes, away from the confused notions of a society that has made them slaves of their own unguided lives ...
AIM is first, a spiritual movement, a religious re-birth, and then the re-birth of dignity and pride in a people ...
AIM succeeds because they have beliefs to act upon ...
The American Indian Movement is attempting to connect the realities of the past with the promise of tomorrow ...
They are people in a hurry, because they know that the dignity of a person can be snuffed by despair and a belt in a cell of a city jail ...
They know that the deepest hopes of the old people could die with them ...
They know that the Indian way is not tolerated in White America, because it is not acknowledged as a decent way to be ...
Sovereignty, Land, and Culture cannot endure if a people is not left in peace ...
The American Indian Movement is then, the Warriors Class of this century, who are bound to the bond of the Drum, who vote with their bodies instead of their mouths ... THEIR BUSINESS IS HOPE.

Words and thoughts by Birgil Kills Straight,
Oglala Lakota Nation.
Author, Richard LaCourse, Director,
American Indian Press Association 1973

Much fighting occurred between AIM and the US government during a lot of the protests of the 1970s. It is always sad and disappointing to find out that some people, mostly Indians, died for causes like these. The PBS website also says the last, and most peaceful major event of AIM was The Longest Walk in 1978. Several hundred Native Americans and supporters walked from SF to Washington D.C. The walk "symbolize[d] the forced removal of American Indians from their homelands and to draw attention to the continuing problems plaguing the Indian community". With some research I found out that recently The Longest Walk 2 happened from February - July 2008. The walk had a north and south path to follow through the country from SF, and mostly promoted "saving Mother Earth". The website is decorated with drawings of Indians, but the mission statement had little to do with AIM and it's cause. HAHA, i remember now reading that General Motors donated 3 hybrid cars to the walk because "GM's General Manager agreed with the Environmental Concerns of The Longest Walk 2", so yeah...weird.

Question:
Is there a Native American club or outlet on campus?

Why do you think the Native American issues were not in the foreground at The Longest Walk 2? (this is the mission statement for 2008, if you are interested) Or, am I just craving a hardcore mission statement from these guys, like the one above?

Statue of Eadweard Muybridge at Letterman Digital Arts

Wow, I can not tell you how pleased I was with what I found. I had no idea this statue existed in San Francisco, nor did I even know who this guy was..until now. At the Letterman Digital Arts center in the Presidio area of SF resides our friend Eadweard Muybridge. I was interested in his statue at first because I am in a photo class right now, and he is most famous for his locomotive studies in photography. The following is a compilation of several photographs arranged and shown in a way to make it seem as if the image is moving in a single photo, probably one of Muybridge's most famous works:



The inspiration for this new genre of photography came from a former governor of California, Leland Stanford. At what would become Stanford University, Muybridge was hired by Stanford to determine whether all four of a horse's hooves left the ground during transit. There is a legend that says Stanford offered up to 25,000 dollars to prove that at least one hoof was on the ground at all times. It is interesting to me that out of Leland Stanford's curiosity eventually arose motion pictures. Even more interesting that crazy artistic evolution (pictures to motion pictures) like that is only possible with lots of funding (photography was not as accessible or affordable in that time). Stanford apparently ended their relationship by publishing drawings of the photos for the public, instead of Muybridge's actual proofs. "The lack of photographs was likely simply due to the printing constraints of the time but Muybridge took it as a slap in the face and filed an unsuccessful law suit against Stanford".

I loved finding out about Leland Stanford, but it was even more bizarre and exciting when I learned that, in the 1860-70s, Muybridge photographed many of the Native American tribes in California, particularly Yosemite. I wish Native Americans still filled up Yosemite instead of tourists!! Although even here, these Indians in 1871 look very modern American:



In conclusion, I am going to visit this statue as soon as I can. I could not find much about how it got there, only that it is a part of the Letterman Digital Arts Center (affiliated with LucasFilms). I am interested to know how Muybridge felt about the American conquest of the Indians. He was originally from England, and was hired to photograph the Native Americans by the US Army and government. Do you think he supported the US' "manifest destiny", or did he sympathize with his native subjects?

check out this site for more pictures Muybridge took of Native Americans in California.

Old Brautigan-Inspired Poem

I was going through old poems for inspiration for a creative writing class, and came across this one. I wrote it during my sophomore year for intro creative writing. I only share it with you now because it has the name Richard Brautigan in it! :)

Richard Brautigan is still drunk
inside San Francisco's tenderloin.
He is sitting in his crooked room, at his
clacking typewriter, eating
candy corn coated
in LSD.

The streets are roller coaster tracks
breeding creativity in
green gutters,
and as music slips down into
the sewer he wonders
how everyone fell
into this somber man hole,

and what they wailed
on the way down,

and did I plunge willingly?

It is early fall and
lonely poets are stuck seasick
in empty apartments,
tossing and turning with the
city's traffic
and choppy waters.