Maverick (His)tory

Henry Oso QUINTERO

MAVERICK (HIS)TORY: ABOUT PHIL LEVINE

When one speaks of Maverick Poetry, one speaks of politics. Referring to the Great Red Book again, examine the root--

Politic: 1. Artful; ingenious; shrewd 2.using, displaying or proceeding from policy; wise; prudent; judicious--see synonyms Suave-- Websters' New Lexicon Encyclopedia of the English Language.

I, knowing little, will tell you that only a graceful animal survives an urban range. Only the awkward Coyote is scoured across the road, tracing the lightning zags of rubber. Rarely do you see the Coyote of 7th and Grand trampled by the feet of cars. The Maverick Coyote, Skunk, Bear, Possum--whatever survives the sentence of becoming a meat cookie cooked on the concrete of our own humiliating kingdom by simply Observing the luxuries of man, sampling the bounty of society in our own quiet moments of inattention.

Now, speaking back to the Websters' Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language, I would like to bring the second definition of Maverick to Bear again:
A member of a political party who will not tow the party line.--
Here, we examine the party, we examine the line.

I began reflecting on the political nature of poetry when I was in Manali, India wrestling with the idea that this was one of the few times in my short life that I "felt" like I was truly an "American", with all the rights and freedom the word entitles to relative man. This is not to say that I felt as though I didn't belong, but, that I did belong--to a larger sense of humanity. I experienced a sense of liberty that I have seldom felt in the country of my ancestors but in the most solitary canyons of the desert.
Reminiscing to the crisp fall nights of the Northern Himalayas, I remember wishing I had brought words of an "American Poet" to wash my tongue in the printed voice of The One from the Motor City, the One Who Likes Horses.

I did not have his words with me, keeping in mind the poem for his wife, Fran, the poem of the silent in America, Not This Pig. I Remembered his political honesty, how he railed like a maddening catbird to the interviewer--not the brightest bulb on the line -- how he was going to fuck, then kill, then marry a succession of relatives. The smoke of cream, Sweet Will, such nobel poems as A Walk with Thomas Jefferson and this will always bring a smile to my face.
Upon the return to the land of my mother's mother, I was restless, I wished to return to that "sense of liberty" and I returned to the Detroit Horse Lover's poetry. It is his verse mostly, that I use to paint the sounds, to write in black ochre the politics of Maverick verse.
*

When the Detroit Man Who Likes Horses asks the reader to "don't ask", then answers with apologies in his preface, he sings:
"When I refer to myself as an anarchist I do not mean to invoke the image of a terrorist or even a man who would burn the deed to his house because property is theft, which I happen to believe is true. I don't believe in the validity of governments, laws, charters, all that hides us from our essential oneness."
He quotes the Man Who Doesn't Dirt:
"That we learn to Bear the Beams of Love"
He goes on to say:

"In my poems I memorialize those men and women who struggle to bear that love. I don't believe in victory at all, but I do believe in the struggle and preserving the names and the natures of those who fought for their sakes, for my sake, and for those how come after."
Keeping this quote in mind, I was surprised to find that as I revisited the body of work, that what I and many others would carelessly consider Levine's most political poems, such as "Gift for a Believer", "on the murder of Lieutenant Jose Del Castillo by the Flangist Bravo Martinez July 12, 1936", and one of my all time favorites on the noble beast, "Francisco I'll Bring You Red Carnations", were not his most political poems at all. These songs become a dramatic catalog of our own shortfalls in humanity. Dramatic monologues that cinematically replay the tragedies of HU-MAN ignorance.

Perhaps, the single publicly overt political action Detroit makes is his personal decision to catalog the action of LT. Castillo-not to mention the fascist, I choose not to not utter such sounds as his name, not because the Horse Lover from the Iron City would not want me to, rather Detroit allows the reader a neutral song. As it is, we choose our own names.
Others might say that these beasts be like us, mavericks. Here I talk about Pigeons being people, and the Dogs are shepherds, our sister the loamy ground we stand upon, and the brothers, beasts like us.
To swing too far to the right would be to deconstruct the wilds in the work of Detroit in the rich tradition of Derrida. Who is this fox that runs from his own fondness, and who are these birds that run through the stanzas of work musing the most soulful realizations in this toil of being? Would these critics dissect the very fabric of nature, count every tree in every poem, note the birds phylum and species?
But, this is not deconstruction, as many children have been raised to find what stands out most within the world of the hand, the eye, and the ear, and bring meaning to it. Like the Apache, many also believe that it is not politic nor cautious to speak of such things as animals and people. Besides, I am sure I am foolish in that way of understanding. The only wise words I can remember relating to this are the words of Detroit himself :

let memory sleep,

bow your head so that you might live-
I am sure that is a gift for a believer.
Where, I believe a Man Who Likes Horses , the one who settled in the San Joaquin Valley most political poems grow from his sense of value in the individual and the creative. The Saint of Fresno consternates that it equally important to consider Detroit's political beliefs, as his narrative and his meter.

"it is equally important to consider the issue of Phillip Levine's political beliefs, which he calls 'Anarchistic' and which are in fact quite simple:
1. He believes an individual human being is of more value than any government.

2. He believes human freedom and dignity are the worlds most precious resources.

3. He believes that faith in the individual and the truthful (poetic ) use of language are both political acts."
These words remind me of the Ocean of Wisdom when he sang clearly, like an arrow of lightning passing through the night sky:
"Repression will never crush the determination of any people to live in freedom and dignity."
Buddhist Tantras and Vedic Scriptures, I'm told relate certain seed syllables as energy. By combining the tools of skillful means, with the innate wisdom of sound, mantra is realized. Once again knowing nothing of these things, intones create a vibration where the relative mind recognizes the ultimate mind and ultimate nature where the Yidim, or the representation of the practitioners ultimate nature arises. Perhaps in another ten thousand moons.
In the language of my mother's mother it is a common allegory of truth to be akin to things that are quick as, lightning, or indeed, a hummingbird.

Cochise is often remembered by his words:
Speak truthfully so that your words may pierce our hearts like arrows of lightning through the night sky.
Grandmother also spoke of truth and quickness when she spoke of my uncles long tradition of wives:

He is an arrow falling as fast as a horses head to the other side of the fence...for the same grass.
Great Bliss, my lover imparts:

language is kinetic.

A moving energy much like water passing over stone. In the repa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, Yoginis and Yogis seclude themselves in mountain retreats with the instructions to "Kregs- Chod" --to cut through the minds solidity.
Perhaps then it is better to broaden our approach to politic and poetry.
A politic as artful as a Spider sewing the night with ingenious labyrinths

as Beavers of autumn vein the water to us all. Wise as a Bear of eight winters. The witness bearer to the justice of time brings salmon to bounty, die, and become again, and again, as we who are beasts will--for the benefit of us all beings.
Poetry, we won't even go their, as many sounds as their are for godi, for biyi ko í or story keeper, there will be forms of voice in all its' etcetera.
Finally, here is the politic of Detroit boxer who lost no teeth to Sweet Berry Man.

A policy of passioned compassion exists within the five stanzas work "For Fran". Sweet Will, a recipe for truth in being. Whispering of a mandala where those who follow Iron Horse into the image and the sound find themselves in a universe where wherever you stand you stand at the center.

I will even go on as far to say, that while walking with Thomas, the man who likes horses crossed the bridge that Crane, in his fishings for fame never built, rather catching glimmers of shad who themselves never crossed the river.

I fear Cranes failings were shared with Cowboy Poetry. To approach verse truthfully in its representation, as the art and toil, language within the comb and loom of bliss and suffering that is undefinable from the earth under your feet. The wind painting dust of sun to the brim and the brow. But the glamours of the Wests' idea of what it was overpowered the sense if what it is. Man, I tell you sage can rhyme with stallion only so many times. Still like all good roads paved to hell, I believe Zarzisky and Doffelmyer, like Levine, to define the voice of the west, the politic of being in the last light of a frontier.

Do you see the Difference? He asks again,

the reporter stunned by what he is hearing,

while the black man sits inanimate,

his working cowboy hand

filling the camera's close up lense

with the landscape of canyons,

coulees and arroyos, buttes and mesas, mountains

and plains the black man may have ridden,

hands by pistol grip, lariat,

and reins, had he been born of another geography

and time--just another wind-burned hand

of a cavvy man, sinew and knuckle,

flesh and blood, pocked, porous, scarred,

and dark as lathered latigo. The hand

alongside the aristocrat's

tissue-paper appendage always reaching to take

even another man's hand, and own it,

and hold it open, because he knows the fist

is as big as a man's heart

and this is the difference he fears.

The Man who was scarred by the Grim Reaper
So the answer to maverick politic.--

I could tell you Lóshguh, I am foolish. Many times I have heard these wise words:
It is not the case that a man who is silent says nothing.

Don't ask

and place fruit in front of the horse and cart.

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