Book review

This poetry makes me want to hike

Reviewed by Bethany M. Dunbar

While We’ve Still Got Feet by David Budbill came to me at an opportune moment. I had twisted one ankle quite badly, and a horse had stepped on the big toe on my other foot badly enough so I was losing my toenail.

Both feet hurt, and I was feeling pretty sorry for myself.

But Mr. Budbill has a way of making me acknowledge my problems, my mortality, my scratched-together existence and appreciate it all for what it is.  He’s not a sentimental poet or a fru-fru poet.  His work is crisp and dry and powerful. He makes me take a look at my life, smile at it, shrug and say something to myself like, oh well, what the hell, you’ve still got feet don’tcha?

It has taken me long enough to get this review written that my feet are healed up and I’m hiking again, so I like the book even better.

One of the reasons I have always loved David Budbill’s poetry is that it’s so simple to read it’s almost like a conversation you might have down at the general store.

For example:

Up Here

The people up here,
scattered through these hills,
leave one another alone.

Their houses are few and far between.
There’s nothing to do.
Cars almost never go by.

I cut wood and garden, listen for a poem
And in the evening the house offers
books and time for music.

So I might argue with the poet about how there’s nothing to do, as if he was my teenage child. Except my teenage son went to college in a city in Ohio (same place the poet came from originally) and kept calling me and telling me there was nothing to do there. Too much concrete, everything flat.  Anyway I know the poet is just saying that because people say that. It will get somebody thinking about what there is to do.

A lot of Mr. Budbill’s new book is about the struggle of finding peace and quiet but wanting people around too — the conflict of wanting awards and recognition and also to be left alone.  You sort of think you want some solitude, but then when you get it, well, you know, you just have to share it with somebody.

Mr. Budbill is in love with his fictional town of Judevine, but it’s true love, not infatuation. He sees Judevine for what it is and loves it all.

Green Mountain Woodchuck Landscape Haiku

Dirt roads, power lines,
chicken coop, dead cars, trailer —
mountains all around.

Mr. Budbill follows in a centuries-old tradition of hermit poets, and oriental hermits keep showing up in his work lately. This book is full of them. Oddly enough, they seem to fit in fine:

That Rebellious Streak Always Did Him In

Han Shan never could
                 get into officialdom.
Maybe it was his bum leg,
                 or maybe, more likely
his rebellious attitude toward
               the doctrinal rigidity
of the exams.  And he certainly
               revolted constantly
against the religious orthodoxies
               of his time.

He just never was able
               to do things
the way they were supposed
               to be done.

That rebellious streak always
               did him in,
and, without the imprimatur of
               a sinecure, there
never was much recognition or food
               on the table.

It was his fate. He couldn’t be
               any other way.

It takes a certain amount of arrogance to write poetry, more yet to publish it.  Mr. Budbill is not without ego, but he tempers it with an appealing dose of humility or just plain reality here and there:

What Would I Do Without Her?
                        or
The Hypocrite Tells the Truth For Once

I play my flutes and write my poems
about my purity and solitude
up here on Judevine Mountain

while she balances the checkbook
and worries about where the next
dollar is coming from while I play

my flutes and write my poems
about my purity and solitude
up here on Judevine Mountain

Another example:

Ryõkan Says

With what can I
compare this life?
             Weeds floating on water.

And there you are with your
dreams of immortality
             through poetry.

Pretty pompous—
don’t you think? — for a
             weed floating on water?

Weed or vegetable, flower or bush — sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.  Sometimes it’s better if you don’t worry too much about definitions.

And at the risk of giving away the punch line of this fine book, here is my favorite poem of this slim volume. It’s the one on the last page:

Tomorrow

Tomorrow
we are
bones and ash,
the roots of weeds
poking through
our skulls.

Today,
simple clothes,
empty mind,
full stomach,
alive, aware,
right here,
right now.

Drunk on music,
who needs wine?

Come on,
Sweetheart,
let’s go dancing
while we’ve still
got feet.

This is a great little book. Better get it and read it while you’ve still got eyes.