Back home

A week of writing and reading—a perfect vacation. It started on the plane as I was drifting off to sleep, tired beyond my bones. In that state of extreme relaxation—surrender—the images arrived. I didn't get a nap, but I did get another poem.

I spent my time away reading Il Purgatorio and The Beautiful and Damned—not the usual poolside fare, but a strangely compatible combination. And I worked on my long project, although I'm still struggling with the Italian. (Do I need it? Am I forcing it? Am I chickening out?)

But my attempts to write about Hawaii are still trivial. I know that sometimes travel poems come long after the trip has ended, and I have some ideas intellectually about how to craft them, but the images remain predictable.

Do you write travel poems or place poems—whether they are the same or different? How do you approach them? Do you have favorite travel, or place, poets whose writing inspires you?

Postcards

Tomorrow morning well before dawn we leave for Hawaii. I'm looking forward to some sun and sand and fish. In between adventures, I'm hoping to relax and read and spend some time with my long project.

I'm not a very good traveler, but I like being places and I like writing about them—not that I'm necessarily successful. It's good practice and a good way for me to reflect on my experiences and surroundings. But it makes me wonder about the difference between a travel poem and a place poem—or is there a difference?

I guess I'm thinking of the travel poem as being about the place and the place poem being about something more. If none of this is coherent, I should probably go finish packing.

In 2007 Poet's Market, the entry for the journal Kaimana: Literary Arts Hawaii notes: "Hawaii gets a lot of 'travelling regionalists,' visiting writers with inevitably superficial observations." Fair enough—and that's the bar that I'm trying to transcend.

In the meantime, for whatever postcard respite it can provide, here is a poem from a previous trip.

False Bloom


Bougainvillea clouds the hillside
in flocks of purple, orange or red.
Its papery leaves mimic true blooms,
the throats of hibiscus,
the fragrant plumeria.

The bougainvillea, guest from Brazil,
grows by the name pukanwila,
shows rampant on roadsides
by old lava flows and pale grass—
hard to tell what doesn't belong.

I would be a visitor here
even if I put down shallow roots
and spoke of local plants
in a new tongue,
learned another language for time.

I would need a strong anchor
when the trade winds blow,
good reason to stay as a stranger.