A hundred degrees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I sit in the shade<\/p>\n\n\n\n
of the ginkgo tree<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and drink a glass of red wine<\/p>\n\n\n\n
while reading Hart Crane’s poetry<\/p>\n\n\n\n
for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I picked up a copy for $1.57<\/p>\n\n\n\n
at the Portland Goodwill Bins,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
a bizarre, teeming place where people purchase items by the pound,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
of all the unsold in Goodwill stores across the Western United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is their last stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If unsold here, they will find their way into the fire<\/p>\n\n\n\n
to cushion the fall on the playgrounds<\/p>\n\n\n\n
because bark chips doesn’t cut it anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some of the shoppers at the Bins look like super models,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
others look homeless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
High school kids on dates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An old Mexican men with a shopping cart full of cleats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Vietnamese woman with a basket full of purses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inmates doing community service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bibliophiles searching for a first edition<\/p>\n\n\n\n
of US Grant’s memoir,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
the one he wrote on cocaine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can’t understand a single line of Hart Crane’s poetry,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
even the one about Melville’s grave,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and I’ve been there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wait! Here’s a line I understand!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Preferring laxatives to wine<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n all america is saying<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201chow are my bowels today?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n What interests me more in poetry<\/p>\n\n\n\n would be a poem about the Goodwill Bins,<\/p>\n\n\n\n but the poet would have to<\/p>\n\n\n\n get the smell right,<\/p>\n\n\n\n the frenzy,<\/p>\n\n\n\n the Walt Whitman democracy,<\/p>\n\n\n\n and no living poet in the nation can do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What also interests me in poetry at the moment<\/p>\n\n\n\n is the husky,<\/p>\n\n\n\n he’s chasing bees in the<\/p>\n\n\n\n clover<\/p>\n\n\n\n oregano<\/p>\n\n\n\n lavender<\/p>\n\n\n\n he’s throwing up a green apple that just fell to the ground,<\/p>\n\n\n\n he’s mangling the wading pool filled with water,<\/p>\n\n\n\n he’s carrying a football in his teeth like Barry Sanders<\/p>\n\n\n\n used to run between the tackles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, the Bins and the husky are way more interesting as poetry than Hart Crane’s poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What really interests me about Hart Crane<\/p>\n\n\n\n is that he got bad reviews for a book of poetry,<\/p>\n\n\n\n and on a spring day in 1932,<\/p>\n\n\n\n took off his coat at noon,<\/p>\n\n\n\n and jumped off a ship bound to New York from Havana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Body never found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If only he could have written a poem about that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A hundred degrees. I sit in the shade of the ginkgo tree and drink a glass of red wine while reading Hart Crane’s poetry for the first time. I picked up a copy for $1.57 at the Portland Goodwill Bins, a bizarre, teeming place where people purchase items by the pound, of all the unsold […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8994,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-poetry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8993"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8997,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8993\/revisions\/8997"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}