. .	About Will Inman: Born William Archibald McGirt, Jr, in Wilmington, North Carolina on May 4, 1923, Will Inman graduated from Duke University in 1943, worked in a shipyard during World War II, and became an activist in 1947 after summers of work in the Blue Ridge mountains. A trade union member, he was called before the Un-American Activities Committee in 1956, then moved to New York to begin life anew, working in libraries while focusing on writing in free time. In 1967 he was appointed Poet-inResidence at American University, teaching there and at Montgomery College. Though a member of the War Resisters League and the Communist Party, Will found that organizations let ideology overtake humanitarian goals. He quit the Party but never lost his revolutionary convictions and passion for social change. He developed a vision of a living universe infinitely at work in every part, including every human psyche. Some of his poems reflect encounters with others whose messages were powerful whether expressed eloquently or not. For example, he visited with the mother of Thomas Wolfe in Asheville, North Carolina and went with her to visit her gargantuan son's grave. For Will any meeting with another was a spiritual experience. Everyone to him is Thou and he has said always that he is only another "I" in a world where giving voice to insights and celebrations puts a writer always at risk. Before retiring in the 1980s Will Inman worked with the disabled, work reflected in his writing. His poems have appeared in innumerable publications, and he has read his work widely and led writing workshops in prisons and in shelters for the homeless. For many years, beginning in the 1970s, he directed a workshop at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson. His letters, manuscripts, and publications are collected at Duke University and at University of North Carolina-Wilmington, with links to holdings at the University of Chicago, The Poetry Center at the University of Arizona and in the hearts of his friends. The poet's latest honor is the establishment of the annual Will Inman Award for Poetry sponsored by The Tucson Poetry Festival. from 108 Verges Unto Now * Out of the surf I came crawling screaming spume                               my mother turned me back toward the ocean the last wave broke salt in my face my feet touched light my head in darkness swam was blue the sky was my face, the sun brought me to laughing I never liked the forced dark and only lately have preferred silence. * Was it Beethoven who limbered my river back to its coils? Was it Whitman who remembered me that oceans can't be straightened? First I dreamt I stood surfedge stared cold on iridescent still blue green water, tepid waves curled slow and low and hardly in under hot lowhung Sun centered down two long rows of dead tree-trunks, branch-nubs lifted up like scorched hands; I awakened full of dread. ocean and ocean and ocean and sea and the sun fell like rotten rind in me fermenting? (wonder why I was let live?) * With the psychoanalyst it was the same thing all over again. He reached in my camera skull and drew out the battered film: skin of my soul he nailed to the door to dry before me hairless and raw but I kept coming out with other perspectives, kept growing new films, thin enough and not very illuminating but always me or flavored mine. * Down in the harbor, beyond three bridgespans and judas years, a Woman raises a light stabbing my rib darkness with seminal fire. Traffic runs both ways on the Bridges, tide flows ebb and surge. Man too has his seasons. Was freedom only a Fad? Was God? * In our time eternity crawls sidewise hermit crab in a borrowed shell scavenging fresh hours from between the teeth of broken skulls. * I would steal if I could your eyes from their sockets, but, if you ever sucked them back to focus, they would see better for you both ways, out and in. * When did I suddenly know (my hands to the armpits in new books, shelving for the nuclear fissionists) all the old gods live! Something in me nurtures them, singly and together they goad my glands and shake in my shoulders and ankles my stumps of wings. I do not know all their names but I who am son of prometheus cannot deny those who gat me still probe their vulture beaks in my gut while in the coil of my brain a minotaur gores my eyes. * When I learned that Yevtushenko dares truth, I wrote him a bridge of songs. His answer was already in my reach. I don't need to cup my ears when my heart is the receiver of good news. * The great fugue groaned under a spiked tree. Sparks sulfured its edges. When I embraced Beethoven after hearing his music, he wiped his hands on my shirt-tail, and I saw the bloody holes. 'How could you play?' I gaped the question. He glared at me, then laughed and kissed my ears. 'I couldn't hear a note,' Beethoven whispered with a shout. * On the beach I knelt down my eyes to the curve of the small kauri suddenly rose its deep shell around wind blew thru the sunholes a surf-organ prayed and between waves     silence took me all over by the risen hair. * Now I have learned earth flows, always I turn my own face again toward the water. In every fluid body vibrations cross one another individual indivisible. Democracy never demanded anybody be less than all nor that any all be less than one. * I could not know     I could not know I could not doubt     I could not doubt truth crouched still between my eyes and nothing saw and nothing smelled. * In the last retort this wicker chair furnishes my backside with directions manifold, and I don't have to go anywhere to start everywhere. * O bread your bread this bread is all of life this breath your breath o breath breathes me and you this in and out and in this wondrous O!                                 1963, New York City * * * Poem For The Voice Of America 1 'Passage to More than India' (Whitman) Christopher P hitchhiked across America in tennis shoes and carrying a knapsack with two changes of underwear an extra pair of blue jeans and a couple of shirts,                     also a guitar and a book of poems was arrested in a midwest town and thrown in jail several days, memorized W H Auden poems           says them still to me ...           So now for the first time I read Auden caring for the man this brother befriended a brother of mine in jail at sixteen Chris now defends CIA in one breath breathes me Auden with the other well perhaps there was never a pure never a pure affair               he says, if there must be a choosing between slaves and masters, he will choose mastery               but I wonder if this Christ mastering himSelf in jail with Auden and a guitar will not always always be free enough to be a slave with us who choose that thin line between. 2 broken fast I remember when we fasted Poets for Peace fasted some hundred or more of us with hundreds others coming and going like Jacob's Angels fasted in St. Marks in the Bowery and the morning after the fast began Saturday morning grey in the colored glass 14 January 1967 I looked and saw him kneeling in the back pew that face W H Auden, I whispered nodding back towards him, he saw me call attention to him, left quickly, would not wait, I murmured his name like an eureka a luna moth caught in the porchlight my fingers smearing the radiant scales, a triumph, he had come to partake of our unpartaking but I meddled, he left quickly. Another poet, standing out in the portico, under the pigeons, looked at me, thoughtful, waited for my words to beat still beat still wings in the porchlight, waited, finally said,             'He didn't want to be taken special notice of . . . we should've let him be . . . I remember how on November 22, 1963 ... Kennedy ... I walked, walked ... finally came to St. Mark's here ... expecting to see people ... in quiet ... but no one was here ... no one ... I came in ... sat down ... then my eyes got used to the dusk ... I saw far down front ... one person ... one man ... it was Auden ... we should've let him be ...' 3 stolen doorknob First time I saw Auden was at Marion Tanner's house in Greenwich Village. She couldn't pay her rent, was about to be thrown out ... she'd made a home for derelicts ... cast-outs ... addicts ... a hostel for the damned ... Marion Tanner ... Edward Tanner's Aunt ... Auntie Mame ... the original ... he denied it ... beautiful woman ... used to see her on Gansevoort Pier listening to Ed Blair and the rest of us ...                 ... at her house John Hall Wheelock read and Muriel Rukeyser ... and Auden ... that leprous face that Lion soul weathered gethsemanic somebody stole the doorknob off Marion Tanner's front door ... and the list of guests and poets ... scores of us read, and she finally had to move anyway                 but that night Rukeyser made herself stroke-vulnerable again and Auden went down into our Daniel's den armed with God's teeth and hunger and I walked home afterward and cut off all my hair in the hot spring night. 4 The truth is not sixteen any longer Now the Voice of America what in hell IS the voice of America any more Johnson and his napalm? wants me to read to you Russians you who willing or not gave me Zhivago and Yevtushenko who reminded Castro and us 'if Communism is the truth we won't get there by telling lies' O truth is so simple, so complex there is no pure affair any more and we are no longer sixteen or in tennis shoes and this is an orchestra not a guitar but we are still in jail in church St Patrick's the Tombs Cardinal Spellman is our keeper and the Lion in us lies down by the Lamb but the Lamb of God has hydrophobia who takest away the sins of the world have mercy upon us grant us peace o what in hell any more is the voice the voice the true voice of America? 1967 * * * Last Chant for Pablo Neruda Our brother who turns this earth, speak in my living tongue with sperm and maggots and sprouting grain, with heartbeats via angry copper and hornet moons, with twin earthquakes in Washington and Santiago shaking loose those dread-kin juntas' jaws from our common flesh, North and South, O inseminate our song with fresh joy and our anger with refining death and our hunger with waking bread, you whose magic cantos struck jewels to life in throats and ears, O Yes, I laugh, my Brother, for all the junta fires can only scorch your songs into our throats! * * * My Father In Hurried Flashes in spring and summer, he rose early, trousers, shirtless, only filmy BVDs over his pale chest. spoke with chickens and pigeons as he fed them. the breed dog shadowed him, eyes turned up, adoring. the man noticed tomatoes and okra blooming, corn stalking straight and tall, no tassel yet, pole beans curved vines around the stalks. he cocked his ear at a mockingbird in the pear trees. a black and gold garden spider wrote lightning letters down a wide web atop the grape vines, white and purple scuppernongs.                                                      my father hummed to himself in the garden. or whistled. Mrs C, next door, said it was to make folks think he was happy. but Dad had sung tenor in two quartets, one spiritual – they'd sung at five hundred funerals; the other, The Rat Poison Quartet, for laughs.            he married for appearances, i imagine, but his mother held on with barbwire tongue. my mother's soul was scored to marrow by the ancient methodist.                   the man had vision. he laid roads all through swamp country in eastern North Carolina, arched two bridges over islanding rivers.                                                                     he could sell hinges off the gates of hell. he never learned to say Negro. he hated snakes. when i began to bring the creatures home, he knew I was devil possessed. he taught me wild plants, where to look for Venus flytraps, and to keep an eye open skywards for shooting stars.                                                          his God had a fetish for sin and carried threats of fire. we were much alike but believed differently: he died grieving for my sins. i live, mulling his. * * * s t r e t c h i n g s i've known only a few leaves, green or brazen no leaf i haven't known, fallen or fresh small stones and one or two hoofs no stones, no hoofs, i've not leaped and travelled on some faces i've known, many faces, at best a few not a single face i have not looked out from i've never approached a star, never, not a star but i've burned inside none of these have i known, and each i've known as i know myself we are all entirely kin, perfectly apart, our separate mysteries sustain we forever outreach closeness, nurturing our common uniqueness for the grinding down all that is – is forever in each of us our sameness and our difference forever we try to kill we lay down roads and starways to and from ourselves no distance we won't pursue to get here. * * * A Trek of Waking                1 bereft the hummingbird has flown away, her rainbows shrivel down dry mountains writhe edges wasted clouds i stretch my neck, raise my head over the rim of this nest i peer out, i hear no wings down this wind i cannot fly that breakthrust of wind carries no nectar i fill myself on my mother's betrayal i grow fat with distance she feeds me this nest is too small for my aloneness i grow flight on rage, such wings will take me fierce from lostness                 2 dark waves just as i flutter my wings, lift myself to nest-edge, she returns singing full of darkness, black rainbows puncture her eyes from in, she feeds me with hovering, she flies away i frenzy myself, i fatten air with small humming, i fly i have never seen a mountain but i'm swollen with stone i soar over the desert bereft as moon, far away earth rises in great dark waves i lean my beak into a yellow flower i am filled with sun                3 suck fire what dark waves dissolve in me i'm swifter than my mother's betrayal i lean my longest flight down petals of sun i suck that fire mountains in me grow such wings. bees, watching, go back and count their hexagons. i spit sweet lava down the eyes of god. now what i see kneads its beak dark into my breastbone and drinks my glory dry                4 peace with curses i shall build my nest on a stalk of lightning shall lay my eggs in a black cloud i shall teach my wings the ways of whirlwinds my feathers shall stink of sulfur you will know better than to come to me for rainbows any peace i bring to the world will be feathered with curses i wreak all this distance i catch my foot on another space i leap down the abyss of my own throat my dreams root me under                5 roots in mud oh dark and risen waves of earth i surf your sullen soaring rage i drink your molten copper wage i count how much my life is worth i sink my thirst in rushing blood what bitter honey steeps that sun such liberation is begun that reckons lotus roots in mud                6 rainbows i have turned around her distance i have changed her betrayal to reach i have rebuilt rainbows to hold my breathing they're as black as dawn as bloody as noon they root in the bellstone of god they sing in the honeycomb they wake in the eyes of hurt peoples they arch over wasted cities wordless, they cry enough! wordless, they chant joy! wordless, they call my name at the root of every reborn instant wordless, they call divided nations to the councils of one healing fire wordless, they teach us a new dance wordless, they fill our eyes with knowing like a lizard, they start low like a bird they fly high like a human they touch earth again like a mother they grow more out of ourselves forever                7 waking hold, then! let the grab unfold then fold to, fraught with bitter coil that drives the blood and shapes the toil and leaves the broke wave bent and cold o touch that broken sightless half with risen pulse, with secret wing stroke singing back into the thing and love the woken voice of self down steepest arch, round swollen gulf our eyes drink space and fill our range we do not count what we exchange we shake away our grief, and laugh                8 new nest, new sound it's never so simple as this we must grow new skin, new bone, new eyes to see old was never not new, under. our hearts must know their beating deeper than our names we must build a new nest and a new sound * * * requiem 1 in my ears milk is still milk she beckons me to the window down second avenue a jackhammer breaks pavement                        Herr, lehre doch mich                               (make me to know the measure) she's not very good at the piano her hands break resonance                        lengthen and widen, she says                        let your diaphragm support your voice beckons me to the window listen! she says, what do you hear?                       i hear a hackhammer, i tell her her blue eyes break across my face listen! she tells me, listen under the noise                       inside my ears milk is still milk                       nectar is not yet honey in my throat let's sing the Brahms, i beg you which Brahms? from the Requiem: the baritone solo: do you have it? yes. all right. here. are you ready?                       (make me to know the measure of my                       days on earth, to consider my frailty) Jim Agee used to stand right there and sing this                       James Agee loved Brahms? he loved that solo                       he was a baritone? yes                       (to consider my frailty, that I must                       perish) what do you hear, Son?                       i don't hear anything yes .... and what does it sound like?                       inside my ears, nectar is not yet honey 2 matthias alexander in free space                       i'm stretched on a body-long table                       learning use of my self lengthen and widen, says Frank Ottiwell you're no longer on this table – are you ready? you're floating in space – now, rise!                       i'm clumsy, i mutter to myself                       i'm a lump on this table: but Frank                       leads energies through me,                       space inside me is not separate                       from space outside me, we                       flow together, my limbs are currents                       in an ongoing magnetic field what do you hear? Gladys asks me what does nothing sound like?                       i can't hear anything, i insist that's right, she assures me, and what does it sound like? that not anything, that no-hum?                       her eyes break across my blindness                       frozen waves seeing me, cutting                       with birthing pain, teaching me to see,                       to hear (show me the measure of my days on earth to contemplate my weakness that i must die)                       Tom Wolfe and Jim Agee sat right there                       they'd sit for hours on that sofa                       drinking and talking into the night what'd they talk about, Gladys?                      oh, Son, i don't remember....everything!                      they were on fire with what they knew –                      their writing – they both were southerners                      who were more than southerners lengthen and widen, she says, you move free in space, you're taller than you know                       (that i must perish) 3 with perfect sweetness, fury (o then what do i want for?)                       Julia Wolfe does not tell me i'm                       sleeping in Ben's tubercular bed                       in the Old Kentucky Home She shows me her photograph album Tom Wolfe's young face, angry outthrust lower lip and the face following – Beethoven's all those decades sooner, woke fresh inside him Jim Agee's fury! fury! fury! sounding Emerson's sweetness in the midst of the crowd independent in the jackhammer's jaws                       Tom was the only one in our family                       who made a living without working his mother bends to pull grass off his Asheville grave pulls hair off the body of the fallen giant honey working with worms in the heart of the skull                       (for the righteous souls are in the hands of                       pain nor grief shall nigh them come) mothers speak together on the telephone Julia Wolfe and Delia Inman, lengthen and widen, from livingroom Wilmington to pay telephone in the Asheville dark hall, from' North Carolina to New York City listen! what do you hear, Son?                       they sat on this sofa and talked for hours made a living without working                       aumsound in the jackhammer                       down pistonrods of that terrible locomotive                       silence of fury                       (make me to know) (that i must perish)                       yogurt in arms of milk                       her hands on the piano, her fingers                break on the ribs of Brahms                       (my hope is in Thee) (all flesh is as grass Judy Leibowitz lengthen and widen Frank from New York to San Francisco in free space flower thereof decayeth we shall not all)                       Michael McClure et resurrexit!                       under Frank Ottiwell's alexander hands                       Beethoven's outthrust lip                       in the face of young Tom Wolfe                       (the leaf withereth, but they                       shall come rejoicing) Gladys is dead, Judy calls me her heart went into fibrillation jackhammer down the street nectar in teeth of bees                       aumsound in the jaws of Brahms                       (all flesh withereth like grass shall                       not all sleep) for hours on that sofa, talking                       (trumpet shall sound, and the dead                       shall all be raised) 4 inside my heart milk turns yogurt Brahms storms through German fields eyes turned inward         arms directing that terrible engine those pistons that fierce steam fury fury fury riding those tongues jackhammer in blood he stood right there and sang (shall come rejoicing, o make me to know we shall not all sleep) listen! what do you -- ?                       jackhammer meditates under the banyan tree                       lengthen and widen, direct                       that energy: it does not                       start with your toes nor end                       with your head you                       do not cease with your limits your body                       lights the galaxies of god lengthen (rejoicing)                       your body is free in space you                       widen (the measure of my days                       on earth) (to consider) you                       (must perish) (then what do i wait for?)                       (the trumpet?) jackhammer in the aumsound                       listen! (for we shall all be raised                       incorruptible) let your diaphragm support your voice, Son                       (to consider my frailty, that i                       must come rejoicing!)                       now milk turns yogurt in the tongue                       nectar comes honey                       fury in the face of human pain o who                       shall console? (make me to know) listen! Son, what do you hear? jackhammer in my ribs aumsound in my blood trumpet fury joyous in my tongue (measure of my days on earth) (to consider) * * * perfection the universe grows in chaos, thrives on organic balance.                                  balance surfs on raging currents serene winds are pregnant with hurricanes, no wonder the greeks named god first a tempest every malevolence carries an unborn blessing. spit on god, father a volcano, piss on god, mother a flood curse god, brother an earthquake, thank god, sister a plague stir soil, bring earth green, dance to birdsongs climb a rainbow kneel to an iris, smell bliss, wake a sleeping turtle, rhyme mountain with oceanwave weigh connections by the ounce. eat, never get lost don't forget where you came from, you'll get there soon enough. be careful whom you thank be grateful to scorpions and swans. * * * night manager, marshall home for men he works among bored old men with love in his eyes                                  but when unfairly pushed he can spark anger, his patience runs deep. once, when I fell in the dimly lit hall, he answered the alarm-call someone pressed: he helped me carefully to my feet, my ribs hurt, bruised.                         he calls down each dorm time for meds, ministers to each man with pills with a dollop of water.                                       and he oversees meals when needed, serves coffee w/cream packets, calls each man in med-lines by name, personal greeting for each, he lets us know each one counts, we count on him. he does not treat us as if our days remain few. to him, every day is charged with eternity, he will not waste us.                             we don't want to waste him: our lives cross, legs, ribs and fingers growing older in a season together Will Inman on writing: "I write when I have a stretch of free time and am not too exhausted to feel what I'm writing about. Most often, it is at night but might be any time of day I'm awake. Since I now work from 11 p.m. – 7 a.m. five nights a week, some of my writing is done in the early morning hours. I write to help heal the world and to make survival worth it. I write from none to a dozen poems a week, usually several pages a week, sometimes many more." * "A poem must not just editorialize, it must evoke. It must get inside me with the experience so that the part of me that thinks can say yes! to the flutter between my ribs. Without that flutter, that visceral recognition, to hell with it." * "I don't see poetry as a function of products but as a process of dynamic relationship with Reality, with my own disparate parts, with other people, with god." * "You can talk about having a knack for writing poetry or whether there's a science to it, but I think you have to look at it person by person by person. Everyone is different. I think everybody has something to say, and if you can talk you can write poetry. Now, having said that, I will say that those that are most gifted in poetry have two things. First of all, they have a relationship and a responsibility to the world and to the universe. And secondly they are in touch with their unconscious. And finding a way to put those two together so that you have vision is what makes the difference between greatness and humdrum writing. But everybody writes some humdrum, so don't be afraid, don't put yourself in a category. Keep making discoveries. Find out what you knew you didn't know you knew." Surfings: The Selected Poems of Will Inman the only book of his still in print, is available from Howling Dog Press P.O. Box 853 Berthoud, CO 80513-0853 Presented by Howling Dog Press and Light and Dust Anthology of Poetry Return to Light and Dust Anthology of Poetry	..