Chicken Shack, or The Coop

bookmark: murre, from basho's road

photo: sharon auberle

Some of you will remember Norbert Blei.  My friend, my mentor, my publisher.  One of the people most influential in my writing life.  Wrote a bunch of books, published a lot of other people's books, stayed in touch with the wide world of literature and literati,and raised as much hell as he could to save the environment and a disappearing way of life; all from a not-too-reconstructed chicken coop in the Wisconsin woods.

Since Norb's death, his property has been sold, but thanks to his children, The Coop has been donated to Write On! Door County, and relocated to those grounds where it will serve as sanctuary and inspiration to other writers, young and old.

I attended a fine dedication ceremony last Saturday along with about 150 other folks, many of whom paid tribute with their words, their art, their music, and at least one original dance, choreographed just for the day.  Here's the poem I wrote for the occasion:

The Cock o’ the Coop

(On the studio of Norbert Blei)

Beyond Ellison Bay, in may-apple May

and blue-sky July gone by,

or in the gray of dim December,

south windows searching for sun,

there would have been Leghorns

I suppose, utilitarian,

clucking and cackling

in this chicken house.

Good layers, Leghorns.

Might have been White Rocks and Barred Rocks,

brooding.  Rhode Island Reds.  Perhaps even

Sunday-dinner Wyandotte, Orpington, or Jersey Giant.

For certain --

one Bantam rooster, crowing

doing his damnedest

to wake the neighbors

~ Ralph Murre

Islands

Islands

No man, you tell me, but everyman, I tell you,

and woman and boat, every Wisconsin farmhouse

and apartment in the Bronx; an island.

That blue circle of horizon, the dangerous passage,

those days the ferry cannot cross from my shores

to the quiet cove of yours.  The sea between.

~ Ralph Murre

That's the little tug Neverwas in my sketch above, departing Rock Island, Wisconsin, in the early afternoon of long ago, and getting a friendly wave from an unidentified guest at the Thordarson Boathouse, where Sharon Auberle and I were recently privileged to read to a sizable and receptive audience from our book Wind Where Music Was.  Headliner on the program was ferryman Richard Purinton, who was introducing his Thordarson and Rock Island, an absolute "must read" for anyone interested in the history of the region and the biography of the man.  I predict that this wonderfully researched volume will be the standard text on the topic for a long time to come.     ~ RM  

More Crude Red Boats in The Harbor

Scout’s Honor

Merit badges for tying knots -

the bowline, the sheepshank, the clove hitch.

Merit badges for whittling the likenesses

of dead presidents and woodland animals, and

of course, for assistance given to the feeble

in their never-ending quest to cross the road.

Maybe they should keep handing them out.

The badge for showing up every day

right down to the day they tell you

not to show up tomorrow.

A merit badge for the day

your infant son needs major surgery.

Another for that day he’s grown

and buys his first motorcycle.

Badges for each of your daughter’s tattoos

and piercings. Diamond insets

if you can’t really mention what’s been pierced.

A merit badge, or, at least, a colorful neckerchief

as your party loses another one.

( But it could be taken back if you move to Canada.)

Bronze medals for burying parents.

Silver for friends.

You’d rather die than win the gold.

A merit badge and letter of commendation

the day you actually give up your abuse

of anything, or anyone.

And a little badge of semi-precious material

for every day that you get out of bed

and wear a brave costume.

One for that confident smile on your face

as your knees tremble beneath the table.

                                                               ~ Ralph Murre

Good news. That's just a sample poem from my first book, Crude Red Boat, which has been out of print for a while and pretty hard to find.  But.  I've just been able to purchase some archived copies from the estate of Norbert Blei.  His Cross + Roads Press was the publisher.   He'd probably be disappointed to know that I was letting any of them go for the cover price, but that's just what I'm doing.  I'll send out a few of them for $10 plus $3 for shipping and handling, and when I feel my own supplies have become dangerously low, once again, the price will escalate sharply.  Interested?  Drop me a line at littleeaglepress@gmail.com (put Crude Red Boat in the subject line).  Any of my later books also still available at that address.     ~ RM

Another Sad Truth

File this under the heading, "What Am I Doing With My Life?", a favorite topic of some who have known me well. I just squished together my three volumes of poetry and found that they will consume almost exactly 1/2 inch of your shelf space in their entirety, and that includes their glossy paper covers, their handsome fly leaves, and their various end papers. This is the sum total of most of what I've given a damn about in the last 10 years?!?!?! Yes, I know; one good poem makes it all worthwhile, etc. . . Well, let me say right here that the jury is still out debating the truth of that one, and they're sure as hell having a lively argument trying to decide if I've written that one good poem!

~ R.M.

Want to see for yourself? Ordering info available at littleeaglepress@gmail.com

Ta - Da !

My new book, The Price of Gravity, from Auk Ward Editions, is just in from the printers and though this is my third, I am as excited about this one as a bear about salmon, a baron about mousse, a mouse about brie. I was lucky to have editor Charles Nevsimal to save me from myself. A real wheat-from-chaff man, Charles, though I sneaked in a few things when he wasn't looking.

Poems in this book run the gamut of subject matter (perhaps something to offend everyone, as the tag-line for the film, The Loved One, put it) and the writing ranges from about seven weeks to seven years old, many of the pieces having been published individually in a variety of print and on-line journals and anthologies.

At 92 pages and 81 poems, by my count, I'm happy that we were able to hold the price to $10. per copy (plus $3. S & H) from Little Eagle Press, P.O. Box 684, Baileys Harbor, WI, USA, 54202. Checks only, please. (Auk Ward Editions is the unruly minor child of Little Eagle, and has not shown the maturity to manage a checking account.)

Also Note: Lou Roach, writing for the excellent poetry journal, "Verse Wisconsin", has reviewed The Price of Gravity. You can see what she had to say at http://versewisconsin.org/Issue105/reviews105/murre.html

For Better or Worse

On a recent archeological dig in one of the literary areas of our attic, I came across a number of old hard-bound friends, and decided to see how they'd handled their interment. Not all faired well.

Next time you feel certain that the world is just now going to hell, remind yourself of the things we used to read.

Case in point: I re-read Joyce Cary's The Horse's Mouth, which I still consider to be one of the great classics of beat writing, although it predates the beat "movement". Cary's hero, Gulley Jimson, is a grimy modern artist-outlaw-ne'er-do-well-Robin Hood-thief-philosopher-jailbird and, as such, is pretty easy to love. He also beats women. Yeah, just kinda matter-of-fact like; he beats women. One dies. Did this book model the misogyny that was an integral part of the beat movement? I can't remember being so repulsed by that aspect of the book (published in 1944, the year of my birth) when I first read it, in the early 60's. Maybe the world's changed, maybe I have.

I looked at a few other old books from my collection -- an anthology, Poetry Out of Wisconsin, another book which is mostly quite good, and edited by August Derleth, contains a few pieces that refer to African-Americans in such hateful terms that you can't imagine they could have been printed in Poetry Out of Alabama !

Even Mary Mapes Dodge's Hans Brinker has some pretty hideous references to the Jewish communities in the Netherlands. Of course, disrespect of Native Americans was so widespread that I'm hard-pressed to single out an example.

So, just when I think things couldn't be worse, I look back and see that they were. At least the sound of most modern writing makes me think that things have, indeed, gotten better. I hope that our attitudes have changed, as well as our words.