When Making An Axe Handle

You Run Into People Who Want To Write Poetry Who Don't Want To Read Anything In The Tradition. That's Like Wanting To Be A Builder But Not Finding Out What Different Kinds Of Wood You Use.

All This New Stuff Goes On Top Turn It Over, Turn It Over Wait And Water Down From The Dark Bottom Turn It Inside Out Let It Spread Through Sift Down Even. Watch It Sprout. A Mind Like Compost.

I See A Vision Of A Great Rucksack Revolution Thousands Or Even Millions Of Young Americans Wandering Around With Rucksacks, Going Up To Mountains To Pray, Making Children Laugh And Old Men Glad, Making Young Girls Happy And Old Girls Happier, All Of 'em Zen Lunatics Who Go About Writing Poems That Happen To Appear In Their Heads For No Reason And Also By Being Kind And Also By Strange Unexpected Acts Keep Giving Visions Of Eternal Freedom To Everybody And To All Living Creatures.

Wherever Man Exists, He Finds The Need To Redesign, To Recreate The World. A More Beautiful World, Purer, Sweeter Smelling And More Colorful. A Garden Is Probably The Spot Where The Hopes For Civilization Are Best Captured. In Fact, Man Defines Himself By His Garden. My Grandmother Standing Wordless Fifteen Minutes Between Rows Of Loganberries, Clippers Poised In Her Hand.

Grandfather Space. The Mind Is His Wife