Introduction to Scott Green and his Poetry
by Jeff Kaliss, Mill Valley Literary Review Poetry Editor
Does poetry sound different — maybe better — when it’s proclaimed in the outdoors, and/or at high altitudes? Scott Green should know. Not only does he compose his own verse “when no one is looking” in and around his family homestead at North Lake Tahoe, but also founded and produces the Tahoe Poetry Collective and sixteen Poetry in Parks events across Northern California.
Last October, he partnered with the inaugural Tahoe Literary Festival, and has worked as a California State Archaeologist, in which capacity he discovered an abandoned cabin in Marin’s Samuel P. Taylor State Park which served as a hidden retreat for Kenneth Rexroth, a forefather of the Beat poets.
Advocating for the voices of students and indigenous storytellers, Scott’s poetry, sampled here, is sometimes visionary, prompting the reader/hearer to active listening and seeing, as in“The Creative Process”. “Winter’s Dream” wanders far and wild, from Spain to Ukraine to the Tahoe region, with fascinating and unexpected shifts of perspective. “In Situ”, prompted by the Martis Valley north of Tahoe, forms in part as shaped poetry with a pure and uncluttered adventure of man-and-boy. “Pegasus and Patsy Cline” is music to my ears because of its affinity to the songstress and her lyrics and its sparkling stream of consciousness, unaffectedly iconic and spare.
Enjoy this trek, and see if you can find a way to join Scott somewhere soon.
The Creative Process
There are no limits to the creative process.
Slap on another coat of paint.
Mix in enough pigment.
Darken the lines and adjust the brightness a bit.
Throw in some flowers and a splatter of blood.
Your blood, of course spilled from pruning the rose bushes in the community garden for your annual service hours just so you can water the weeds in a less than sacred place.
Throw a pot on a wheel of porous stone. Fire the kiln with the bones of ancestors. Your ancestors, of course until the temperature melts glass and forge iron.
Look for it at the exorcism of the family ghosts with a spell from the old man at the campsite whose cabin burned down in the fire. Who dances with Dylan and cries to presidents.
Receive it from the babbling boy in the bleachers of the baseball game who carves wooden signs and speaks in rhyming juxtapositions.
Find it in the painting above the piano in the blue branches and the tulip magnolias painted by the artist that loves too much.
Locate it in the willows without leaves buried in snow by the creek side of childhood, your childhood of course.
For it will be found in the last patch of snow when the Evening grosbeaks come to play.
Winter’s Dream (A prayer to St. John Coltrane)
A love supreme, a love supreme, a love supreme, a love supreme…
A love supreme, a love supreme, a love supreme, a love supreme…
In the winter I dream of the southern coast of Spain with its gold sand beaches
In Kiev, they mourn the young commander killed in battle
He was a famous soldier as a boy and now a hero who died in battle with sunflower seeds in his pocket.
Heavy snow on cedar and pine
Lake waves crash on boulder after boulder
Water spits into the sky and returns as ice.
Emerald Bay has frozen over
The eagle counts are high
The white firs are dying. The wolves are back.
You don’t need a boat, just a friend with a boat.
You don’t have to be faster than the bear, just faster than the other guy.
Take it slow on ice and snow, know before you go.
Do your homework, study your maps
Excavate your memories
Separate artifacts from false positives and burnt wood from
“the campfires of youth where I once saw fire cities, towns, palaces, wars, heroic adventures.
Now, I see only fire”.
Mail your responses to me in a letter from earth, in the voice of Hades
In the spirit of Bilbao, through the peace of Patrick
And from within the heart of the sunflower blooming from the rotting pocket of the soldier
who dies on the battlefield today for a reason he didn’t understand.
Tell it to me in a whisper, say it into the ear of the dying soldier.
Dig your own trenches and rise from your own ashes.
Because the boat will sink, and the bear will catch you both!
Compose your suite in four parts, chant your acknowledgments and resolutions!
State your pursuance and read your psalm as you struggle for purity.
Do I express gratitude to a higher power?
Do I bang the tam-tam and hit the cymbal to wash me clean?
Do I baptize myself in the waters of my children’s streams of consciousness where they fish with hook and line for dreams of their own?
Repeat the solo, sing the chorus, learn the chords.
These are giant steps for heroes, but small leaps for boys and girls.
Listen to the bear as she growls, a love supreme, a love supreme and wakes you from a boat called winter’s dream.
“In Situ”
Martis Valley, CA May 2015
for Gavin
I followed the boy
towards the stream.
Clouds spit rain slowly,
thunder rolled,
eagle soared.
We stepped over sage and coyote brush.
Ceanothus
We came to the stream,
it narrowly split the grass.
Steadily flowing past,
ribbon of water.
No water would course its path in a month or more.
Its ribbon would vanish before
a Cancer moon would visit a
Sierra black night sky.
The boy stood by the stream.
Holding an arrow leaf,
He innocently asked “is this a willow?”
Stream flowed
we followed…
I beckoned him to the small rise.
Black soil
rich loam in a sandy place.
An out crop of gnarled rock.
Lichen covered
Not good for mortars.
Not good for grinding.
But there the boy saw them.
1 2 3 4 tools
Artifacts left behind.
Stone artifacts
lithic tools.
Bifaces
Obsidian
Basalt
Left long ago
still there.
Placed by hands no longer working
no longer
gathering
cutting
weaving
mending
holding
helping
carrying
cradling
nursing.
Tools made of rock, placed upon rock.
Thousands of spitting storms ago,
millions of raindrops
snowflakes
hailstones.
The boy
9 years old
Starting new memories in new places,
left alone in time.
Pegasus and Patsy Cline
Pegasus rises above Jupiter
Eastern stead
Leaping over Round Valley
Crossing Casa Diablo
Mahogany obsidian
Ancient caldera.
Pinecone campfire
Patsy Cline sings
I go out searching
After midnight
I fall to pieces.
Pegasus laughs
And snorts
Stamps his hoof
He wants to go
He wants to ride
With haste
To tomorrow
To the sunrise.
To the Warm sun
To be walked in front of the grandstands
To wear the roses
I want to see the horse win
And strike the bell for his final lap
To take my ticket to the window
And cash in my winnings
She thought
I’d be interested to learn
That poetry was the medicine
The magic
To stop the sorrow
To return the smile
To make her see the lights
To dance to sing
To love
To feel what was lost
To find it and put it back where it belongs.
The wayward wind is a restless wind
Until it settles in the valley
Softly and with peace.
Pegasus laughs again.
Your stars twinkle
Your stars shine:
Markab
Alpherantz
Algenib
Sheat
The four horsemen
Ride till the break of dawn
When I saw your stars shine!
Each time I became more starstruck.
Each time I cupped your light
And held it fast to save for a
Cowboy dance on a winter’s night.
“I’m crazy for trying.
And I’m crazy for crying.
And I’m crazy for lovin’ you.”
Scott Green is founder of the Tahoe Poetry Collective and Poetry at the Backyard summer poetry reading series in Kings Beach, CA. He is also the founder of Poetry in Parks, a special event series held in various State Parks across California.
As a California State Archaeologist, he was drawn into the work of poetry serendipitously when he discovered that a historic archaeological site located in Samuel P. Taylor State Park in west Marin County, was associated with Kenneth Rexroth, a mid-20th century American poet who helped usher in the San Francisco Renaissance in the 1940s and is affectionately known today as the Grand Daddy of the Beats.
Encouraged by support from poetic luminaries and admires of Kenneth Rexroth, such as the late Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, Dana Gioia, Kim Stanley Robinson and the artist, Tom Killion, Scott has produced 16 Poetry in Parks events working with over 100 poets, numerous local Poet Laureates, California Poets in the Schools, Poetry Out Loud students and Native tribal storytellers.
In 2015, Scott partnered with Quiet Lightning, a literary non-profit from San Francisco to hold a poetry reading in the redwoods at Samuel P. Taylor State Park to honor Rexroth and Poetry in Parks was born.
Poetry in Parks was an initial grant recipient from Arts in California, a special initiative from the State Government to bring together talented artists, wise culture bearers, California Native American tribes, and our diverse communities.
When Scott is not putting on poetry events, he is enjoying life in North Lake Tahoe with his wife of 20 years, two teenage children and his trusty hound dog, Tommy. He writes his own poetry when no one is looking.