Clams, Fish, Domestic Bliss

Field Guide by Robert Hass.

This week I read Field Guide by Robert Hass, which I picked up a few weeks back at my mecca of all meccas, Housing Works. A slim little volume. I had intuited from the fact that Field Guide won The Yale Series of Younger Poets competition that it was Hass’s debut collection, though I didn’t confirm that intuition until after I blew through it.  Though by no means strictly necessary, it is always nice to start at the beginning.

I am not remotely under the impression that I discovered Robert Hass that day in Housing Works. The foreword is written by Stanley Kunitz, which is one dead giveaway that other people might already know who Hass is. Also after reading, I learned that he was Poet Laureate of the United States in the 90’s (Hass, not Kunitz, though Kunitz also held the title (twice)). So, I’m not exactly unearthing unknown poets here. BUT, in another way, I did discover Robert Hass, unearth him. For me, I did.

With this notion in mind, I thought to myself,  Eve! This is a perfect opportunity to tie back to your brand new, incredibly well-received podcast, Something We Read in your less new but still equally well-received newsletter, Something Eve Read. In the first full episode of the podcast, you answered a fake listener question about how to get into reading more poetry.¹ Your experience with Robert Hass is a great example of how you ‘discover’ new poets and go about reading their poetry with a light heart, good humor and twinkle in your eye. Write about that!

I know—I’m extremely loquacious, even in my inner monologue. It’s undeniable though, the ideas are good once you cut through all the extra verbiage. Without further ado…

~The Discovery~

How, when staring at the poetry shelves in a bookstore (Housing Works or otherwise), do you pick something out that’s not by someone you already know? For me, there are a few things I look for. First, slimness of spine. If I’m reading someone’s poetry for the first time, I find it helpful to start with a smaller collection (vs. a larger collection or collected poems situation). Second, vaguely familiar names. I like things that kind of ring a bell. Third, and probably most important, title. I generally judge all books by their covers, but I absolutely judge a collection of poetry by its title. If you’re a poet and you can’t come up with a delighting turn of phrase or string of words for the title of your collection…well…

Field Guide piqued my interest in all three outlined categories, though as far as titles go, Field Guide is pretty simple. Simple isn’t bad! The next step is to flip through and look for a poem on the shorter side (relatively at least). In this case, I found, “Basho: A Departure,” and I was so unbelievably sold. More on that down below. I bought Field Guide and another collection by Hass, presumably donated by the same person. Score!

~The Requisite Holding Period~

Wait a few weeks. I almost never ever read a book right after buying it. I buy too many books for that.

~The Siren Song~

Carry the book around with you for a bit. You want to read it. Take it on a few trips. Let your sister read it on a flight when she has no other book to read. How was it? Good. Good.

~The Reading~

May I recommend, going in order from start to finish? Perhaps obvious, but perhaps not. With novels, I sometimes avoid forewords or introductions until after I’ve read the novel (spoilers!), but with poetry, one need not worry. The introductory material can be helpful in knowing what to expect from a poet, or rather what to look for.

After reading Kunitz’s foreword, I was prepared for “stepping into the ocean when the temperature of the water is not much different from that of the air.” What a sentence! I knew to look for simple and unsentimental language with an acknowledgment of what Kunitz calls the “creature self”—a tie to the natural order of the world (within and without of mankind). On top of that, a fondness for the domestic and a heartstring tugged for the collective.

Interestingly this is some of what drew me to Hass when I read “Basho: A Departure,” which after my earlier tease, I will now include here in its entirety, because I love it so much:

   Summer is over and
we part, like eyelids,
like clams opening.

The melancholy, the romance, the wetness of an eyelid and a clam. Who is we in this poem? What is Hass communicating by his choice of eyelids and clamshells—two things that even in an open position are undeniably connected—to represent the parting of two individuals. Whoever the we is, it would not be a leap to say they’re not individuals at all.

What of the fact that one must part their eyelids (a funny way to describe opening one’s eyes) in order to see. That a clam must open its shell to eat, that we must open a clam to eat it. It is almost as if the parting of the we, of the eyelids, of the clams is not so very lamentable. There is the we, individual or inextricably joined. The eyelid, inextricable from the human. The clam outside of the human, but linked through a shared natural world, possibly even linked through ingestion, consumption. In three lines alone, all of this!

Basho, I suppose I should mention, is a Japanese poet. I did not know that when reading the first time or even the second time, so this is an argument for not worrying about knowing everything.

It was, unsurprisingly for loyal readers, the clam image that really hit home for me during my perusal at Housing Works. I love clams. I was, therefore pleasantly surprised by the amount of fish and mollusk related imagery running through the entire collection. Sometimes grounded in the natural world, sometimes framed by the lens of food preparation, often both, like in “San Pedro Road.”

In this poem, longer by comparison, Hass describes fishing a salt creek on a hot day. The natural world is preeminent. There’s “The fragrance of ferny anise, crackle of field grass,” and in the corner of his sun-blurred vision, little crabs “scuttle” in the rock shadows. Hass is after a bass—determined, perhaps inexplicably so. He says, “I dream, / half in anger, of the great white bass”

On a different day, he’d be satisfied with the mussels on the shore, “thick-clustered in the black mud,” abundant, not elusive like the bass, but today is not that day. Not even the “quick formal image” of mussels “with butter, tarragon, a cool white Napa Valley wine,” is enough to dissuade him from the bass. Something about the simplicity of the way he describes those mussels, picturing the kitchen, the smell of it, the mussels. My mouth waters.

And then, “A carcass washes by, white meat, / spidery translucent bones” and Hass is shaken out of his half-angry bass hunt. He says, “I think I understand, finally dumb animal I understand, kick off boots, / pants, socks, / and swim…” And I can just feel it sitting here rereading it, the cool water on the hot day, the surrender, the abandonment. Hass thrashes, ruining his chance at a catch, “done with casting, reeling in slowly, casting…”

With Hass, there is the clam, the fish, the mussel outside of the human, existing on its own, in its own order. And then the clam, the fish, the mussel in relation to us, existing in our own order, to be eaten with rosemary and olive oil or tarragon and white wine. The fish is marinating in oranges and peppers. And then there is the clam, the fish the mussel and us, all existing in a larger order, beyond and united.

It should be noted that much of Hass’s poetry, including San Pedro Road, is California-centric.  He was born there, but I was not. Another argument for not worrying about not knowing.

I’ve gone on far too long and saved my favorite poem from the collection for last, which I should know better than to do. It touches on the idea of naming things, particularly the naming of nature. The inadequacy of words, what happens when we name things and what doesn’t happen when we do. It is also a love poem. I will include it here, so that you can read it. It skips and flits a little and I worried I had lost the thread at a moment here or there when reading, but then I got to the final line, and knew exactly what the whole thing meant: “you’re the names of things.” If there has ever been a more romantic line…

~The Thinking~

Okay, I’ve found it and read it, now what? Hopefully, this part doesn’t really demand external guidance. For me: I want to write poetry. I want to notice the world. Those are the same thing. I am reminded why I read poetry, and why I should always be reading poetry. The world is different than you think. You’ve forgotten how the world is. Read again and know (know that you do not know).

That is all that’s asked of you. Xx.

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1. Send real listener questions to somethingweread@gmail.com! Our second episode comes out May 7th (the first Tuesday of the month, which will be when our episodes always come out at least for now, until they start coming out more often).