Tim Bryant's Blog: Writing in South Carolina, page 2

Reading As a Contact Sport

This morning's coffee time writing session is about books to take sailing but of course I have to yammer awhile before getting to specifics.

My sailing buddies know the duffle bag I toss aboard will have one swim suit (a faded red one that says "Lifeguard"), a couple of shirts, a pair of finger-less gloves for pulling lines taunt around the winches, a red hat with a frayed brim from the 1998 Outback race and, in addition to the flip-flop-style sandals I wear when stepping aboard, a pair of sturdy deck shoes to protect my almost always broken pinky toes.

They know there will also be bandages, a suture kit and antiseptic.

In fact, my onboard injuries are still cited in whispers along the docks as I pass.

In addition to basic cuts, bruises, and sprains, my credentials include a blown out knee, the near loss of a finger, and a head on collision with the boom that I'm told much resembled a baseball bat looks bashing an over ripe melon.

But beyond this, I’m also known for the books I bring along.

My formula for packing goes something like this: "Start with half as many clothes as medical supplies then add twice as many books as both."

It’s a small bag, mind you, and rum and limes are weighed in separately.

My portable cruising library changes for every trip.

On one occasion it may include a book about Irish folklore, a homeowner's DIY guide to electrical wiring or building decks, a Michener or John Irving novel, and an atlas.

On another outing there might be a collection of Spanish verbs, an anthology of short stories, and an over priced copy of the latest and greatest marketing theory.

And a book or two of poetry.

Not rhyming poems. But the open ended kind. “The work of geniuses,” I say.

Still, the crew will busts my chops.

As I step aboard, instead of “Hey, Mate.” Or “Wassup?” one of them will say “Here he is lads!” and another will say “Hey, I've got a poem for ya!” and then recite a randy, hand hewn limerick.

As we stow things away, check over the boat and get ready to free the dock lines, others will make up limericks of their own or, worse, a recite variations on Hallmark-style poems beginning with “roses are red, violets are blue…”

Only in their versions something other than roses are red and something other than violets are blue.

Were it not for my plethora of scars and x-rays, I doubt they’d take me seriously even on my own boat…

By day three, however, they’re bored enough or drunk enough to want a peek at what I’ve brought.

Especially the poetry because poetry can be consumed in the time it takes to poop. No, poetry doesn’t require a huge investment of time. The pay off—or lack of—can be determined in minutes, not hours. And so I get the reviews right away.

The guys I sail with regularly have been around long enough to at least give books a shot. I've gone below during swaggering, mechanical bull-style bouts of bad weather to find one fellow or another taking a crack at Happy Isles's of Oceania or The Old Patagonian Express.

I'm pretty sure someone got away with my copy of Our Man in Havana before I'd had a chance to finish.

However, every so often a "newbie" will have to be indoctrinated.

The first thing I do when one of them makes a crack about poetry is to toss him Charles Bukowski’s Burning In Water Drowning In Flame. Then I’ll get busy with a winch or have to go below to replace the Cuba Libre that just went into the scuppers, and come back to find the guy reading Bukowski's poems “dogfight” or “shot of red eye."

Next thing you know, he won’t give back Bukowski unless I trade him for John Berryman’s 77 Dream Songs where Berryman sort of hides behind Henry (an alter ego we’re led to believe is a cat). Henry and Henry’s friend “Mr. Bones” (aka Death) follow Berryman through all of his depression and loves and losses. Basically, it’s the poetry of a playboy whose well educated mind had been festering for years.

[NOTE: What most of the crew will love about Barryman is the way he died: A dapper dresser, he strolled across NYC’s Washington Bridge, tipped his hat to a lady, then jumped. So the story goes.]

The deep thinkers aboard (if we’re on a seriously long tack at least) may go from there to Gary Snyder (“If you’re into martial arts, you like him, he’s very "Zen”).

Or Bly ("Snyder-like but wears heavy woolen sweaters").

Or Plath. ("That bitch had daddy issues.")

One or two may press on to Ginsberg (at least as far as his The Howl which begins with the line “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness” then goes on for pages and pages backing up that claim).

For the lightweights aboard, I bring William Carlos Williams, not because Williams is a slacker but because his poems tend to be just a few words wide across the page (less intimidating, visually at least). They’ll at least read his The Yachts …or, this one, one of my favorites, a note to his wife:

This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams


I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet and so cold.


I've left similar apologies on Post-It notes.

Anyway, the shelves in my library at Pineapple Hill are loaded with the thoughts of these and other writers.

Merwin, Creeley, Lowell, Wright, Hugo (Richard, not Victor), Ferlinghetti...

To be fair, however, the bulk of my collection is testimony to the lesser known.

I gravitate to writers of the New York/West Coast poetry renaissance, but also those writing from Central and South America—the latter being so passionate in their downtrodden themes, the women especially.

If only I had few dollars for every time I sat bleeding while one of my sailing buds went looking for Chapman’s Quick Reference First Aid Guide For Onboard Medical Emergencies but came back with a book of Billy Collins poems. The one called Sailing Alone Around The Room.

My blog posts, if there are any, will probably be about books I've read and about my writing life at Pineapple Hill, the sort of far where I now live in rural South Carolina.