Rain on the River: Selected Poems and Short Prose

by Jim Dodge

While Jim Dodge is internationally known for his fiction, his first and abiding passion is poetry. After eighteen years of publishing anonymously and reading only to local crowds in the Pacific Northwest, he began to issue occasional limited-edition letterpress chapbooks with a small press, as well as occasional broadsides and, since 1987, a winter solstice poem or story, most given as gifts to friends. Rain on the River contains work collected here for the first time, as well as three dozen previously unpublished poems. Dodge's poems and short prose offer the same pleasures as his fiction -- a splendid ear for language, great emotional range and subtlety, a sharp eye for the illuminating detail, and a sensibility that encompasses outright hilarity, savage wit, and tender marvel, all made eminently accessible through writing of uncompromising clarity and grace. "Like being at a nonstop party in celebration of everything that matters." -- Thomas Pynchon "A rollicking, frequently surprising adventure-cum-fairy tale. It also has a sweetness about it and an indigenous American optimism." -- The New York Times Book Review "Diverse, savvy, passionate.... Poetry should be a pleasure, and Jim Dodge's work is just that." -- Gary Snyder

Genres: Poetry, American, Fiction

144 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2002

About the author

Jim Dodge is an American novelist and poet whose works combine themes of folklore and fantasy, set in a timeless present. He has published three novels, Fup, Not Fade Away and Stone Junction and a collection of poetry and prose, Rain on the River. Dodge was born in 1945 and grew up as an Air Force brat. As an adult he spent many years living on an almost self-sufficient commune in West Sonoma County, California. He has had many jobs including apple picker, a carpet layer, a teacher, a professional gambler, a shepherd, a woodcutter and an environmental restorer. He received his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing/Poetry from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop in 1969. He has been the director of the Creative Writing program in the English Department at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California since 1995. He lives in Manila, California with his wife and son. (from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Маx Nestelieiev · Rating 5 out of 5]

верлібри-неверлібри. мікс доджа з дощем. дві думки незабутні: "є лише два виправдання для вбивства живої істоти: коли хочеш її з'їсти, коли вона хоче з'їсти тебе"; "не живи там, де не можеш посцяти з ґанку". ідеально.

[Sterling · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nothing like a story about your dog getting its balls stuck in a bathtub drain to lighten your day.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I was to sum up this book in a single word (a task which does no book any favours) I would probably go for anecdotal, ergo “A brief, revealing account of an individual person: ‘a story with a point.’” A good anecdote can be grasped immediately but a great one stays with you and has more to reveal. A simple example then, the ending of ‘Reason to Live’: “…and I’ll remember that night forever as the time I figured out that money and food and poetry were ways to live, not reasons.” I pretty much forgot the rest of the story—sorry, Jim—but that’s not because it’s bad or even forgettable, it’s just that final line kind of blew everything else out of the water. It’s not always the last line; sometimes it’s the first as with ‘Salvage’: “Love is the salvage of rapture.” Personally I think I might’ve moved that to the end of that particular piece because it would’ve worked fine there.

The works here are unashamedly autobiographical but unlike your bog-standard bio this is more like an album full of snapshots—that’s me playing Whiffle ball with Jason, just tuned six (he couldn’t say “beaver” properly; he said “beeber” and “skirl” for “squirrel”) and that’s Vicky and me steelhead fishing the day I hooked Godzilla; that’s my grandma polishing her mahogany china closet over and over again, oh, and that’s old Freeman who used to feed me venison stew in wooden bowls while we retold old stories to keep them new—and after a few pages you start to get to see the bigger picture people keep harping on about. When I first picked up this book and glanced through it I was reminded of Richard Brautigan and since I’ve read everything of Brautigan’s I can get my hands on the idea that there was something comparable appealed greatly. (Although Brautigan was born on the other side of the country and moved about quite a bit in his life I’ve always tended to associate him with California where his life ended; Dodge, from what I’ve read, seems to have spent all his life there.) Both have a lazy style of writing and that’s not meant to be disparaging, far from it; simplicity is harder than it looks. Dodge’s novel Stone Junction has been described, in The New York Times Book Review, as “part Thomas Pynchon, part Tolkien, part Richard Brautigan” and Colum McCann said of Fup: “[i}t’s almost as if Richard Brautigan and Mark Twain got together and decided to lay claim on American eccentricity.” Of course he’s not Brautigan—Dodge uses much longer sentences (sometimes a tad too meandry for my tastes)—but there’s a shared sensibility and if you appreciate writers who don’t seek to overcomplicate the already pretty complex both are worth a read.

On the whole I preferred the poems to the prose and I preferred the shorter poems to the longer ones and never having fished in almost fifty years (and never having caught anything when I did) I got a little tired of all the fishing references but I got them well enough:

The Work of Art

The only essential creation
Is a life that gives you life.
Figure you’re doing real good
When all you need
Is bait and ice.

Not too crazy about the capitalised lines. He doesn’t do it all the time (mostly the older poems) but I wish he didn’t do it at all.

Not everything will grab you but there’s plenty here and who knows what’s going to be over the page? It might be a poem about his colonoscopy, why Orpheus was on a hiding to nothing right from the start, the true account of the saucer people or a Zen-like homage to Walt Whitman. All in all it’s a surprisingly mixed bag but what holds it together is the voice. The love poems work well; hard to put off even a half-decent love poem.

Of all the pieces in the book the one I think will stay with me the longest is this one:

Love Find

After the Oklahoma City bombing,
search-and-rescue dogs
were flown in with their handlers
from all over the U.S.

But when the dogs couldn’t find
any survivors
they became disconsolate,

and after another day of nothing
but dead bodies,
if they’d even search
it was desultory at best.

So the handlers began taking turns
hiding in the rubble,
letting the dogs find them alive.

[Harmonyandpollution · Rating 4 out of 5]

good book! his chapbooks have been compiled into this volume and made available to those who don't live in the northern california environs where the limited editions were originally released. Be sure to read Stone Junction!

[Velma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. I *adore* this book. Even if I wasn't a 20-year resident of the setting for these slapstick and personal poems, I think I'd love them all the same for their simultaneously prosaic and transcendent themes delivered in Dodge's signature jocular voice.

[Eric Hinkle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great poems about life and nature, and life in nature. Also a couple about dogs and aliens, for good measure.

Dodge's _Fup_ is one of the best books I've read this year, so finding his poetry was an exciting thing. He has a great ear and an even better voice.

[Nathália]

já li varios poemas deste livro na travessa do barra shopping.
já quis levar pra casa duas vezes.
mas cara, quase 80 reais numa edição bem sem graça não deu ainda.

mas q eu amei as partes q li, amei mesmo.

[Dhartridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

A friend of Gary Snyder, teaches here at Humboldt State,poems and prose with a local flavor, love of the outdoors, affection for people.

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

April is poetry month!

[Niles Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jim Dodge is a truly gifted author I could read him all day and most of the night ............he's awesome

[Clarity Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sex, love, death, work, nature and humor-- a little something for everyone here.

[Lot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can do no wrong in my eyes.

[Al Maki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dodge is one of the Pacific North West, Buddhist leaning, writers like Gary Snyder and Red Pine. For my money, this is one of the most beautiful books to come out of it.

[Marcus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jim Dodge is lyrical personal confessional and expansive. The world is made more flexible (and open) thru his poetry and prose. Like the story about bathing a dog in an old bathtub. It is very good.

[Jur Koksma · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5 stars; I like Gary Snyder's blurb too: "some profound comments on dogs and salmon..." "...and much else that defies description." A real pleasure to read.

[Jimmy Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's magic in these pages, not much but it's there. The least of all Jim Dodge's works. There's a lot of hippy twaddle here. Still it's Jim Dodge and when he hits it, he hits it like no other

[Kirti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful set of poems, learned a lot from them.

[Rosse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Восхитительно, нифига не поняла (кроме пары штук), ощущение, что посмотрел авангардисткий модный фильм - вроде красиво, но что это было?)

Но иногда прям хорошо.

Находка любви

После взрыва в Оклахома-сити
собак-спасателей
свезли самолетами вместе с кинологами
со всех Штатов.

Но когда собаки не смогли найти
ни одного выжившего,
они впали в уныние,

и после очередного дня без единого
живого спасенного,
даже если собаки искали,
все было без особого толку.

И тогда кинологи принялись по очереди
прятаться в руинах,
чтобы собаки нашли их живыми.