James DenBoer
James
DenBoer can be reached at
jamesdb@paperwrk.com or
www.paperwork.com. His publishing credits include the
following:
BOOKS OF POETRY
Learning The Way, University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1969.
Trying to Come Apart, University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1971.
Nine Poems, Christopher’s Books, Santa Barbara, 1972.
Lost in Blue Canyon, Christopher’s Books, Santa Barbara,
1981.
Dreaming of the Chinese Army, Blue Thunder Press, Grand
Rapids, MI, 1999.
Back Until Then, Verdant Press, Berkeley, CA, 2005.
Black Dog: An Unfinished Segue Between Two Seasons,
Rattlesnake Press, Fair Oaks,
CA, 2005.
Stonework: Selected Poems, Swan Scythe Press, Davis, CA,
2007.
LIMITED EDITION ARTISTS’ BOOKS/BROADSIDES/MISCELLANY
Rock & Sea, White Rabbit Press, San Francisco, CA,
1968 (Broadside).
We Might Change, Offield & Brower, Los Gatos, CA, 1986
(Broadside).
Poems: James DenBoer, Verdant Press, Pasadena, CA, 2002.
Poems: James DenBoer/Painting: Mel Smothers, The Press of
the Black Dog,
Sacramento,
CA, 2002 (l copy of handmade book with original paintings).
Poems: James DenBoer, Magpie Press Books, Sacramento, CA,
2002.
We Might Change, Jason Davis/Verdant Press, Berkeley, CA,
2002.
Black Dog, Tom Weidman/Magpie Press, Sacramento, CA, 2002
(Broadside).
Four Directions, Verdant Press, Berkeley, 2003 (Poetry
cards with handmade
envelopes).
The Knife, Occasional Works, Woodside, CA, 2003
(Broadside).
NON-FICTION
Olson/DenBoer: A Letter, Christopher’s Books, Santa
Barbara, CA, 1979.
Toward Wellness: Conversations about Health in Our Society,
rapporteur/editor;
National Center for Health Education, San Francisco, 1984.
Planning for Health Education in Our Communities, editor;
National Center for Health
Education, San Francisco, 1985.
A Bibliography of the Published Work of Douglas Blazek,
Glass Eye Books, Florence,
MA, 2003.
ANTHOLOGY APPEARANCES
Brandi & Brandts & DenBoer & Durand & Peters & Turner,
Melissa Mytinger, editor,
Christopher’s Books,
Santa Barbara, 1973.
Messages: A Thematic Anthology of Poetry, X. J. Kennedy,
editor, Little Brown & Co.,
Boston, MA, 1973.
Traveling America with Today’s Poets, David Kherdian,
editor, Macmillan,
New York, 1977.
Working Classics: Poems on Industrial Life, Peter Oresick
& Nicholas Coles, editors,
University of Illinois Press, Urbana & Chicago, 1990.
The Sacramento Anthology: One Hundred Poems, edited by
Dennis Schmitz & Viola
Weinberg, The Sacramento
Poet Laureate Program, 2001.
We Beg to Differ: An Anthology for Peace, edited by Luke
Breit & Traci L. Gourdine,
Sacramento Poets Against the War, 2003.
James DenBoer poems from Black
Dog
BLACK DOG
Nothing goes on in his head.
it all goes on in his glands,
his muscles, his nose. He chases every squirrel
every time he sees one,
barks and lunges at every cat;
he’d eat every bit of garbage
on the road if I didn’t snap his lead hard.
He doesn’t care in a way I can’t.
He doesn’t confuse past with present;
his only language is what’s now
and under his black pads.
He’s the perfect one, in fact,
to talk with, in the rain and wind
of January, when winter needs talking to
and writing down to bone-cold.
As with the many names of God,
I repeat his name often—he doesn’t know
my name, he doesn’t know this
is winter, he doesn’t know
he could kill me with those teeth.
He listens to my chatter, my hum,
my chikk-chikk like a squirrel;
my noises keep him interested
and unworried. He scribbles
along the scent to air, his nails click
on wet black stones, he pulls his way
toward red lights on Fair Oaks Avenue,
he leads me back to start.
THINKING
Herons flock to a line of eucalyptus
west along road to the levee
at sunset they come back from wherever
they’ve been all day eating rice
along the causeway frogs in the rice
land as clumsily as trees
shed raggedy bark and nuts underfoot
twist your ankle the pivot
of your thoughts as you want or not
Who can think when all the world
conspires to be as good as it can be
& is irrelevant
when one heron
slows its drop with flap back
of two wide wings simply accepts
its long-toed feet landing right
takes off immediately
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James DenBoer poems from Day
Moon
January 2007
Rising Moon
Great yellow moon in a scrim of mist
heavy on the crossbar of a power pole
straining against threads of black wire.
Her dogs lead me, leashed
to the urgency of their emptying
of bladder and bowels,
a need despite anything, anything
and everything. Love is an instrument
of catastrophe, no consolation now.
Forty degrees, cold and getting colder.
We are wondering: Where is she?
Now she is a moon in mist, a moon
going smaller as she rises,
gilt by sun fallen behind the sea.
Orange Moon
The moon is as round as an orange.
The orange is in a blue bowl
on an oak table. The table is a mass
of energy, a whirl of atoms,
moving so fast that a knock of knuckles
won’t make them bleed.
The table is on a Mexican rug
woven of threads that reach out
to the fingers of women and children
knotting atoms into a village scene.
The moon is as orange as an orange
but it is much farther away.
Day Moon
No more moons, please, no more
night talk, already too many Night Thoughts
& Nocturnes & Nightwoods & Nightflights
& Nightlights & Nightmares;
annoying fictions of darkness, us awake
late in our beds, laden with psychic errands & chores,
false memories;
enough! –
Here: now: day thoughts;
common & ordinary word/things enter in plain view,
arise in daylight; on the day shift.
We’ve heard too much in 20th century
about dreams & free-floating
unconsciousness, untrammeled by reason,
surreal & irreal, about metaphysical
grammars, vague philosophies of night. |
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