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Editor’s Note: The arts are a significant thread in the fabric of Rockland County. They inspire, enrich, and chronicle our lives. They also play a role in our economic well-being; theater, writing, dance, crafts draw us to spaces. They invite strangers to share in our bounty. They are an indelible contribution. Welcome again, Christine Potter, a poet, to RCBJ.
By Christine Potter
The best way to get through tough times is with poetry and memories of profound silliness. You need both. One long-ago summer day, an old poet/teacher pal attained legend status in my family by announcing that he was really “Mr. Smacky-butt.”
“I’m so happy, I’m going to smack myself in the butt!” he informed us, before cannonballing into our swimming pool. Our goddaughters, in grade school then, squealed. Water flew everywhere. This same old friend sometimes refers to poetry as “The Song.” Usually people who talk about The Song can be—well, a bit full of themselves. Not Mr. Smacky-Butt!
So, it’s February. Our little pool is cloaked in a heavy winter cover, but better days are coming. Silly days. Poetry days. In The County and everywhere. It’s vital to remember that. The Song goes on! And this month, as promised, we’ve got Piermonter William Huhn, author of the recently published collection, Bachelor Holiday.
William Huhn has figured out how to be a dad, a chemist, and a poet. Oh—and also an essayist and biographer—but we’re after the poems today. It sounds simple when he describes it: fall in love with poetry via Yeats and Spencer as a child, choose to support yourself doing something cool and totally unrelated as an adult, come home nights, and write like crazy. Huhn believes that “poets benefit from being in the world.” He’s right, and his fine new book Bachelor Holiday proves the point: heartening sales, and an enviable starred review from Kirkus.
Bachelor Holiday is a rich, musical collection, full of bodies of water to swim or not swim in, imaginative leaps, animals, and antiquity. The poems are delicious to read aloud. There’s an especially sad and beautiful one spoken to someone sheltering with a handful of jewels in a cave at Herculaneum, the city that was buried in the volcanic eruption alongside Pompeii. I loved it for many reasons, among them my childhood ambition to excavate there. (I was a spooky kid.)
I also admired the jazziness of a downright scary poem called “Blue Corn Pancakes” about snow, school closings and school busses. Huhn writes a chameleon kind of verse: sometimes gently metrical, sometimes free. The poems can be dark, but they are never cynical, something else I really like about his work. His imagining of Louis XIV’s doomed first love Marie Mancini is a sorrowful Valentine. The book ends with an old-school envoi, a favorite of Huhn’s mom, to whom this book is dedicated. An envoi is a closing stanza, meant to underscore what the poet is trying to get across. Bachelor Holiday is full of bittersweet poems about mortality and sharply observed natural detail. But quoting the envoi feels like giving away the ending of a movie. So no spoilers! You’ll just have to grab a copy.
Here’s “The Owl,” instead. It’s in Bachelor Holiday, too.
The Owl
Fortune turned up an owl this morn
outside antique panes of sleepy June,
forlorn in the strange wet and winds
and light of stars drowning in fresh blue
uncertainty at daybreak.
Listen for the still night’s favor
perched on a limb
far back from the road
where cars still asleep
don’t yet go to the city
where cages await
the animal spirits
none dare to show
except in a mockery
of strengths unknown,
like billboard photos:
the flashed white owl
frozen in pixels;
the deadliest tiger
a child won’t fear;
earth-bound eagles,
dolphins, seals,
Noah’s dove—
bring your children
to the water zoo;
let them bring
their clubs…
Borne upon gathering winds of madness,
images of life surround us:
our love of living creatures dying.
Before breeze and sun, across the leaves,
turn the grounds to shadow seas,
owl will find his hiding place.
Dear to our soul, owl,
dear to our soul…
Love returns like a child ghost
who won’t leave his parents
alone.
What a gorgeous poem! It slips in and out of meter, and it’s aimed straight at the heart of Rocklanders: lots of owls in this county. I will freely admit I hoot to the ones in the woods near our house. Huhn’s owl sits back from the road in a tree before dawn, an hour the cars and cages of city jobs aren’t yet in charge of people’s lives. So it’s a magical time. I like that. And then there is that haunting close, the persistent child ghost. Owl hoots do sound ghostly. And Love does return that way. It does—and it will.
I have an owl poem, too. It even concerns love. Indulge me?
Owls
I was talking to the owls again tonight.
It was like scrolling on social media—
hoo-HOO, hoo-HOO—and they liked it.
It was warmer today. The air felt like
a friend, and the creek sounded serious
and steady. I’d been inside until dusk.
I spoke with the owls, which my father
said flew off with unruly children–one
specific owl, actually: The Owl. We both
knew that wasn’t true. His mother (tiny,
superstitious, Irish) used it to scare him.
Except he knew I’d be too smart to fool.
I was. I’m still angry at my father, but
not about that. Sometimes winter lets up
just a little and I miss him: hoo-HOO,
hoo-HOO. I talk to the owls. They answer
me back, outside with night just pulling
itself together, a few stars poking through.
(originally published in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily)
On deck for next month: some fabulous up-and-coming poets from Clarkstown North High School, home of Java Jive and the Sticky Notes Poetry Festival. See you then!
