The American poet Kenneth Rexroth wrote a book which he called an autobiographical novel. Its a great read, especially if you’re interested in progressive history during the first half of the twentieth century. Rexroth was everywhere from the logging camps of the far west to bohemian Greenwich Village and he seems to have had a talent for conversation with almost anyone. He’s at home with anthroposophists, wobbleys, and rare book dealers.

I especially love the book’s opening where he claims that he shot a moose at the age of four.

I suspect he really did it. My mother was taught to shoot first and ask questions later when she was a child and was often left alone in the country.

I’m not sentimental and I don’t think children left alone in the woods with guns (or anywhere else) is a great parenting tactic. Thank you for letting me get that out of the way. I should also say Rexroth‘s moose was probably blameless.

The adult poet, the author of the book, was an environmental writer and human rights activist. Rexroth hid Japanese-Americans from the internment camps during the Second World War.

He never shot a second moose.

He was a pacifist.

**

When I was four I ran away from my parents and got happily lost in Helsinki.

I lived on a constantly turning electrostatic wheel of inventions.

I loved Kaivopuisto Park and chased leaves even though I couldn’t see them.

I was high above the Baltic among leaves and gulls.

While at Oxford Oscar Wilde remarked that he wished he could be worthy of his blue china, a remark that earned him nearly instant celebrity. One may argue Wilde was the first meme generator. He was half pre-Raphaelite, somewhat of Ruskin, fond also of Pater who never quite gave up on mysticism. Wilde lived every hour whole.

I wish I could be worthy of my blue china. I wish I could be worthy of this dear bookshelf. Oh the china works better. Why?

Collection is a contraction of imagination. If we’re entirely in the wrong labyrinth, and I mean all of us, then objects of nearly childish longing mean far more than we can say. In a dark wood I still have two agates in my pocket.

—September 29, 1973

If he’d been born this day
So the newspapers said

He’d have listened for ideas, not words
He’d have been lighter than air

It was Saturday under Libra
And all the pans were empty

America’s best names
Were Michael and Amy

He’d have been Mike Auden
And how do I know about you?

Asked the troll in a tale
I found myself reading

Alone in a library
While the leaves came down

Death’s butterflies

In my twenties and lonesome I spent a day walking around a Viking burial mound. I was purging myself of atavistic sentiments—ethnic romanticism, my own Scandinavian sensibility. I told myself the dead don’t mean a damn thing.

Now I know better but I was partly right. Never romanticize your ancestors though they linger, trouble, conflict us. Epigenetic research is correct.

Oh I don’t like them. My private genomic dead. Money grubbers, god fearers, stabbers, superstitious. I don’t like them. And when they came to America in search of juicy prunes they just continued being themselves.

My point is simple. America is better when other people’s children come here—differing nationalities, other epigenetic stories.

Whenever I see Donald Trump I think: “there’s a man whose grandfather came here for the juicy prunes and nothing more.”

The stance taken—tonight
Wind rain winter branches
At my windows

I chose a vision
Of light
My neighbor chooses blankness

Now the dog walks into the room