>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
[ Silence ]
>> Betsy Peterson: Have the great honor and pleasure
of introducing a colleague and a friend
and a distinguished folklorist, Jens Lund.
And I learned in this introduction a whole lot
of new information about Jens.
Jens holds a Ph.D. in folklore
and American studies from Indiana University.
And Jens and I were, in fact, classmates there.
And he has worked as a freelance field worker in folklore
and oral history in 23 states.
His fieldwork prowess is legendary, preceding him everywhere.
In addition to teaching
in five universities Jens was also the Director
of the Washington State Folklife Council
and until his recent retirement developed
and managed the Washington State Parks
and Recreation Commission's Folk and Traditional Arts in Parks Program.
He's the author of several books including "The Folk Arts
of Washington State," "Flatheads and Spoonies,"
and numerous articles and reviews.
And I should also say he is a recipient
of the Benjamin Botkin Public Folklore Award that is given
by the American Folklore Society as well.
Jens also has worked extensively in cultural tourism
and developed the Washington State's innovative
"Highway Audio Heritage Tours," excuse me.
So you get from this description that Jens could speak
about any number of things.
But today he's going to focus on a topic
with which he's widely identified in the world of folklore scholarship
and that is Occupational Folk Poetry.
And because the topic focuses on poetry, I'm happy to say
that the Poetry and Literature Center is serving
as a co-sponsor for this lecture today.
And I just want to give a shout out to Rob Casper,
who's sitting over there, and is the Director
of the Poetry and Literature Center.
And I hope that this is the first of many to come.
So enough of all of that.
Please let me introduce Jens Lund.
>> Jens Lund: Thank you Betsy.
That was quite an introduction.
I hope I can live up to the expectations.
Okay, I'll make sure I know what I'm doing here
and can operate this machinery.
"I've gone to Valhalla, I've gone like a man.
I done what I could and I did what I can."
So ends "A Viking Funeral," a gripping tale
of a down-on-his-luck north Pacific commercial fisherman in a poem
by former commercial fisherman Geno Leech of Chinook Washington.
This dramatic story is told entirely
in the rhymed quatrains of the ballad style.
Many of us are familiar with this style from literally poets
like Rudyard Kipling and Robert Service
and we'll hear Geno actually recite the poem
at the very end of the talk.
Dangers and difficulties of certain physically challenging occupations
or sometimes expressions, traditions of composing
and reciting poems often
in the traditional ballad form of rhymed couplets.
But the tradition also-you know,
best known as a cowboy poetry of the American West.
This tradition also occurs among other occupational groups and can
yet be found among workers in the Pacific Northwest such as loggers
and commercial fishers and miners.
Such repertoires arguably belong to the genre of folk poetry.
And this term has been defined by Pauline Greenhill in a 1987article
in Western Folklore as quote: "locally made poetry
on everyday topics meant to be read and recited."
In Roger de V. Renwick's 1980 book, "English Folk Poetry: Its Structure
and Meaning," the author does not offer one simple definition
but defines folk poetry in part by its content.
Quote: "topics and sentiments that are expressed explicitly situated
in the poet's bounded and knowable world."
Although some of the topics described
in Northwest occupational poetry are hardly everyday they are nonetheless
part of the daily way of life for people in these occupations
who compose, perform, and enjoy them.
It's important to note and until well
into the 20th century locally composed poems
of the kind usually dismissed as doggerel were regularly published
in local newspapers, magazines, and trade journals.
Folklorist Pauline Greenhill refers to the" occasional poet,"
who writes a poem in short order to celebrate, commemorate
or memorialize a particular occasion of importance to a community
or a family or other group of people.
It was often a local school teacher or a librarian
who commemorated an important local event, a wedding, a funeral,
a wedding anniversary by composing a poem in short order.
Although they had become rare by the end of the 20th century,
these occasional poems and poets were once common
in the English speaking world and elsewhere.
And few literate people, especially in provincial areas,
could avoid encountering them.
In fact speculation about the history
about cowboy poetry almost always refers
to 19th century Western newspaper and cattle industry journals.
This kind of poetry is an example of how, in the words of Karl Marx
in an essay on Louis Napoleon's 1852 coup, quote,
the common people make their own history and do
so under circumstances found, given, and transmitted from the past.
It's also important to note that only a tiny percentage of loggers,
fishers, miners and ranch people have actually composed occupational
folk poetry, which suggests that the poets themselves are extraordinary
especially the more talented ones.
Before mass communication people who worked in isolated occupations
and were physically separated from the rest of humanity
for long periods, had to make their own entertainment.
There are many examples of this.
Fiddlers on ships fo'sails and cowboys packing harmonicas along
on the trail, a mate with a talent for memorizing, composing, reciting
or singing or some combination thereof would be a welcome antidote
to boredom in the bunkhouse, fo'sail or the trail camp.
Several of my logger poet acquaintances remembered what they
called "camp bards" whose performances they remembered
from their own days in remote logging camps and whom they cited
as inspirations for their own poetic efforts.
In a 1990 interview on NPR literary poet Gary Snyder recalled hearing
loggers reciting homemade poems in the logging camp where he had worked
as a young man in Washington and counted them
as his inspiration to take up the pen.
Narrative poetry at least in the form of the lengthy epic dates
at least as far back as the 18th century BC epic of "Gilgamesh"
and probably further back into prehistory.
It is of course also well known for the Mediterranean classical period
and the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, the Icelandic sagas and eddas,
the historical epics recited by African griots,
all are manifestations of this tradition.
Many other examples abound many places in the world.
The English language ballads presented by Francis James Child
in his, "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads," which are mostly
of 18th and 17th century origin, in their earlier predecessors
on the European continent are much shorter than the epics
but continue the tradition of poetic storytelling.
Despite the ballad-like structure of so many
of their compositions the individuals
who composed contemporary fisher and logger poetry are more likely
to have been exposed to rhymed couplet poetry
through sources other than the Child ballads.
And I'll explain that a little bit later.
This leads us to the topic of recitation.
It seems that many of the logging poems that appeared
in industry publications in the last two decades
of the 20th century were never recited.
The last logging camps in the lower 48 had closed by then and radio,
television, and recorded music had already taken the place
of homemade entertainment by then.
And venues for public presentation were few and far between.
On the other hand, cowboy and fisher poetry has had plenty
of opportunity for public recitation.
The former since 1985 at the National Cowboy Poetry gathering
in Elko Nevada and dozens of its subsequent imitators
and the later even been shared on, you know,
fisher poetry having been shared on marine VHF radio on slow nights.
Perhaps because bush poet, Banjo Patterson is a national hero -
and there he is on the ten dollar bill -
Australia still has a tradition
of men reciting bush poetry for beers in rural pubs.
Eastern Washington farmer
and rancher poet Dick Warwick recalled how at least as late
as the 2000s when he went to Australia to work on "header,"
that's Aussie for combine crews, he saw it happening
around that country's grain belt.
Both logger and fisher poems have been set to music
and sung often at public events.
And the distinction between song writing
and composing poetry is often ambiguous.
And both classic epic poems
and traditional ballads were of course also sung.
Oregon singer and songwriter and log truck driver Buzz Martin, who wrote
and performed numerous songs about Northwest logging and traveled
with the Johnny Cash show, also performed
and recorded several musically accompanied logging poems,
several on this album, in fact, in the style associated with if any
of you are familiar with Hank Williams's
"Luke the Drifter" recitations; very much influenced by that.
I first became interested in and involved with this type of material
in the summer of 1984 when I came to the State of Washington
to run a small nonprofit established to develop folk life programming
for the Washington State Arts Commission in anticipation
of the state's 1989 centennial.
Shortly after my arrival I was contacted by Hal Cannon
of Salt Lake City, who was in the process
of organizing the first Cowboy Poetry Gathering,
now known as the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering,
to be held in Elko Nevada the following January.
He enlisted me to recruit a few poets
from Washington to attend the gathering.
In the process of doing that I met Harold Otto of Pateros,
Washington- whose photo I could not for the life
of me find anywhere in my files or online.
Which is why you don't get to see him; interesting looking character.
And he recited a poem for me, "Cows and Logs," about a couple
of eastern Washington cowboys
who having heard a logger's pay was much better than a cowboy's,
and I'm sure it still is, traveled to the western part of the state
to try their hands at that trade.
A humorous sequence of mishaps then occurs, most of them based
on misunderstanding of occupational terms.
The two cowboys are indeed greenhorns in the logging woods.
And Otto informed me that a similar poem from the opposing perspective,
in which he had read in a timber industry journal,
inspired him to write "Cows and Logs."
And I later discovered what that was and met the poet and so on.
It was my encounter with Otto and a first meeting soon afterwards
with folklorist Robert E. Walls of Seattle,
who was researching northwest logger culture at the time
and who late wrote an article for Northwest Folklore
about logger poetry, its structure and meaning.
And he led me to pursue logger poetry as a subject
for research and, given my new job
as a folklife programmer, in public presentation.
I soon found out that the monthly industry journal, "Loggers World,"
published in Chehalis Washington - we have someone here
from there I believe - often published poems sent in by readers.
A meeting with its editor publisher, Finley Hays, led me to contact
in loggers and loggers wives who wrote and submitted poems
to Logger World, Loggers World.
Having worked as an event staff
at the first two Elko Cowboy Poetry Gatherings,
I organized the first Logger Poetry Gathering held in May 1986 as part
of the Mason County Forest Festival in Shelton, Washington.
Two more followed and the Cowlitz County Historical Society organized
three more at a Grange Hall near Mount St. Helens.
I also organized a series of seven combined cowboy
and logger poetry recitation concerts
at Seattle's annual Memorial Day Northwest Folk Life Festival.
And for about five years at the Cowlitz County Fair in Chehalis.
And I brought three of them to the Elko gathering in 1995
as officially invited guests.
And I was about to say I didn't know whether anybody was still doing this
and just a couple days ago I discovered
that at the Friendship Jamboree and Logging Show in Vernonia,
Oregon still has a logger poetry recitation event,
which I just missed by the way because it was in early August.
So I'm going to try to be there next year.
During the first half of the 20th century,
a number of folklore collectors documented so called
"lumberjack ballads" and published collections of them.
Most of these were collected in the Northeastern
or upper Midwestern states or in eastern Canada.
Very little collecting was ever done
in the Pacific Northwest or in western Canada.
They're also examples of- I mean there are examples of logging poems
and songs found in very early publications.
Newspapers in Quebec that printed "Lines
on the Death:..."Lines Upon the Death of Two Young Men" in 1815,
probably the earliest one that I could discover
and "The Falling of the Pine" in 1825.
Both of which were published in English in Quebec.
Almost all the logger poets I knew, most of whom were
of the generation older than the contemporary fisher poets,
mentioned that at one time or another that they'd be required
to memorize and recite poetry in public school.
A few of them said they had especially enjoyed this
and that it led them at an early age
to begin writing informal humorous verse, sometimes bawdy
or scatological, in reciting it to their schoolmates.
In formal conversations, and I have yet to undertake a serious survey,
maybe now that I'm retired I'll get a chance to do that,
suggest that many if not most
of the occupational poets I've known were exposed
to poetry in public school.
Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
and Rudyard Kipling are a few
of those whom my poet friends have mentioned as learning,
as running into in school.
Many of the fisher poets with whom I have had this conversation refer
predictably enough to Coleridge's "Rime
of the Ancient Mariner" as a favorite.
That happens to be my all-time favorite poem, I mean,
I used to know, I used to be able to recite parts of it from memory
and always make sure my kids got to hear me read it to them.
It's just, I mean it's just one
of the most dramatic things I've ever read or heard.
The one poet most often cited however is Robert Service,
who's Yukon repertoire was a major inspiration.
His works are familiar and uncomplicated in content,
narrative style and meter, and they have at least
in the past been widely popular in the Northwest.
Another favorite was Robert E. Swanson, a British Columbia logging
and railroad engineer and a protégé of Service, who wrote dozens
of poems about logging and railroading
in the same style as Service.
Many of Swanson's poems were published in the '40s and '50s
of the last century as cheap chapbooks and several of my logger
and cowboy poet friends cited Swanson's chapbooks
as their inspiration.
And I did have the privilege of presenting Swanson at a couple
of events but he passed away I think in '94 or '95 or thereabouts.
Interesting guy.
Invented the train whistle that you hear on diesel trains that go "whoo;
that have the sort of dissonant notes.
Made a fortune from that, by the way.
Now regarding fisher poetry, back around 1995 a poet friend
who lived near the mouth
of the Columbia River told me about a friend of his.
A commercial fisher, who not only wrote poems but also read
or recited them over the marine VHF radio during slack times at sea.
Soon afterwards I met Wesley Geno Leech of Chinook, Washington who had
by then left fishing and resumed his career as an able seaman,
this time aboard a Columbia River-based salvage tug.
And now he works actually on a dredging boat down in, on the Gulf.
In fact I just had a conversation with him recently telling him
that I was going to talk about him in D.C. Geno recited some
of his poems for me and gave me some copies of it.
And he also informed me that there was a move among some
of the maritime folks in that region to organize a gathering
of fisher poets in nearby Astoria, Oregon.
Chinook is really just across, you drive across that five mile bridge
and drive another two miles west and then you're in Chinook.
So they're, you know, really close to each other
but have some water between them.
The first of these gatherings occurred at the Wet Dog Tavern
in February, 1997 and packed the house.
And it was organized by Jon Broderick of Seaside,
Oregon who taught high school English
and creative writing during the school year and had
for many years fished Alaska waters during the summers.
Broderick had brought his high school creative writing class
to the previous year's Elko Cowboy Poetry Gathering.
He and some other local people working with faculty members
at Clatsop Community College
in Astoria organized the first Fisher Poets Gathering
which I then attended and I've attended all of them but four
since in well- I think it was 1997 was when that happened.
The Fisher Poets Gathering had grown into a much larger four day,
six venue event attracting poets from as far as Alaska, Hawaii,
and the East and West Coasts.
Since 2002, the Port of Seattle has sponsored an annual "Stories
from The Sea" contest with cash prizes
at Seattle's Fishermen's Terminal, most of whom,
whose contestants are poets.
There's a pub in there called the Highlander Grill,
which is where that event happens.
Some of the better known poets have been invited to perform at venues
around the country, New York City's Peoples Poetry Gathering,
again the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering at Elko,
New Bedford Massachusetts' Working Waterfront Festival,
Lowell Massachusetts' Folk Festival to name a few.
Mostly though fisher poems were recited
at smaller local commemorative occasions, private parties,
dinners for maritime and fisheries related organizations
such as the Oregon Seafood Association
and the Columbia River Gill Netters Association.
The local star power of a few of the poets, reciters, occasionally leads
to one of them walking into a local tavern for a beer and being asked
by the other patrons to recite.
"Give us another poem, we'll give you another beer.
" Luckily, it actually, I actually witnessed
that at the Fish Trap Tavern in Chinook when Geno and I walked
in there to get a beer and people started shouting,
"Oh, give us another poem!"
Luckily, we were within walking distance of Geno's house so they got
to hear quite a few recitations and we got
to enjoy quite a few draft Buds.
And I was told that it wasn't a unique situation.
At this point you might be wondering why the phenomenon
of contemporary fisher poetry mostly occurs in a limited area
of the Northwest Coast of the United States.
And there are a few possible reasons for this.
And it's an issue I have raised with some
of my fisher poets acquaintances.
The nearby Oregon, Washington coasts and the Columbia River estuary were,
until the late-20th century, very heavily fished and very intensely.
And as these fisheries declined and more opportunities became available
in Alaska waters, a lot of the fishers
of the Northwest Coast became seasonal Alaska fishers;
annually motoring north along the inside passage,
about a six day motoring or more, sometimes two weeks,
you know, for the Alaska resource.
Summer season Alaska fisheries and opportunities
to earn substantial pay in a single season attracted newcomers;
many of them school teachers and college students
who had time in the summer.
Thus a North Pacific fisher was more likely to be educated and familiar
with literature as was the case with Broderick
and some of his colleagues.
The long distances from the West Coast to the Lower 48 to Alaska
and the very uneven openings and closings by fisheries authorities
up there provided long periods of relative inactivity
at sea punctuated by sporadic frantic efforts.
Women also entered the profession
of fishing earlier in the North Pacific.
In other words, in the late 20th century, first as boat cooks,
then as deck hands, and ultimately as captains,
as Erin Fristad here became.
Perhaps because opportunities for making the big bucks
on the water coincided with greater mechanization of fishing equipment.
You didn't have to pull it all up by hand and with greater acceptance
of women in non-traditional roles.
Now, let's talk about the poems.
The first important point to make is that much of the poetry
that I've encountered among these two occupational groups as well
as among people in ranching and mining is narrative.
In other words it is the telling of a story.
The most narrative of the poems display a clear progression
of exposition, rising action, climax, and denouement.
Most are composed as a long sequence of rhymed couplet stanzas.
Rhyming is typically AABB, AABA, ABCB,
although some of the rhyme scheme and even the meter
in the stanza structure sometimes change when a poet finds
that necessary to advance the narrative.
Because the narrative, the content, is the most important thing.
And so the art is in the telling of a story,
not in the being a good poet, but if you can get the two
to work together then there you are.
Whether or not a specific poem is a clear narrative it almost always
includes a typical repertoire of content.
But there are, however, some exceptions
to my generalizations about meter.
Some of the fisher poets at least including Erin,
write in the more contemporary literary styles,
a free unrhymed verse.
Although, again, much of their content and narrative drive mirrors
that of the more traditional poets.
Contents of the poems deal primarily of the challenges of danger,
with tragedy, adventure in one's life and work environment.
It is often powerfully emotional.
It is the emotional content, as expressed in the unfolding narrative
that makes these works so compelling.
Pride, nostalgia, sentiment, resentment, drama, fear,
even terror are typical emotions expressed in these poems.
Esoteric knowledge abounds in the form of occupational jargon.
I thought of actually creating a little glossary to hand out, too,
for some of the things but I'll try to answer those.
Some I don't know the answer to, in fact, or I've forgotten,
I was told and I've forgotten.
Reference to specific skills and tasks unique
to the work environment and to its tools.
Mastery of a dangerous environment
and of complex skills are highly esteemed and thus major themes.
On the other hand some poems are comical and ironic.
Despite the importance of the environment, many of not most
of the poems are people centered, either in the first-person
or in their descriptions of others.
Vivid imagery places the listener or reader right
into the environment of a narrative.
Although women are among the poets and reciters, much of the content,
including that composed by women expresses experiences, values,
and narrative style traditionally associated with masculinity.
In fact I've often referred to this genre as "macho poetry."
In fact, that was my first idea for the title of this
and it was suggested that some people might object
so that's why I didn't call it that.
But I think of it that way, that's certainly the case.
And although there are many women fishers on the North Pacific,
there's still very few women who actually work
in the Northwest woods as loggers.
Logger poetry by women is mostly written from the point
of view of the logger's wife.
So let's look at some examples.
And I've passed out four complete poems which we'll look at last
and then at the very end we'll listen to Geno Leech recite
"A Viking Funeral" in conclusion.
Except for two short examples, the ones I'm going to read
to you are excerpts chosen to make my points:
"In the great Northwest I've logged with the best
and camped with the bad ones, too.
Why anyone stayed with the logging trade, I don't think anyone knew.
Soaked with rain and wracked with pain I dragged
to the bunkhouse door, and then jump like hell for the morning bell
and head for the woods once more.
Wear your corks with pride, boy Stag your pant legs high.
We have not logged at all, boy, there's more for you to try.
And when the skies turn blue and the sun shines, too,
and the snow is melting back, I long then to blow, hit the roads I know,
and leave my winter shack."
That poem, "A Tramp Logger," was composed sometime in the early 1980s
and after his retirement by the late Otto Oja of Cathlamet, Washington.
It has internal rhyme, it has chorus,
its content is heavily focused on pride of work and pride
of work history and physical hardship.
Considering that Otto was retired when he wrote this
and that the tramp logger
and logging camp lifestyles had almost completely vanished
at the time he wrote it,
it was certainly also an expression of nostalgia.
"I long then to blow, hit the roads I know,"
expresses the keen sense of adventure.
"Corks," referring to the caulked boots, and "stag," referring
to cutting trousers short to keep it from tangling
in the brush are characteristic inclusions
of occupational jargon found in many occupational folk poems.
Vivid imagery abounds in this poem and the one following
and I chose a Northeast example now just to mix things up a little bit.
It was from a former Rhode Island fisher who's been a regular
at the Astoria gathering for years,
John Campbell of Exeter Rhode Island.
"They used to haul home up the wind carrying dories and oars.
Sailed out of the Port of Gloucester converted to the nets and doors.
They cut the masts a few years back leaving just these three short
twigs, but you'll always know her by her lines,
the last of the Eastern rigs."
By the way that picture was taken in Astoria not in Rhode Island.
"Now these boats of steel it seems to me don't offer very much,
and it seems to me a welded hull is always cold to touch.
I never liked those painted ladies with all their fireworks
and who could trust a vessel born amide the sparks.
So I don't care if they lend me the money 'cause the banker never was a
captain's friend,And this old boat she's running smooth as honey
and there's dollars in the southwest wind.
The wake she bubbles up like coffee, so we're setting out the gear,
and if there is a God in heaven, she'll float another year."
So "Last of the Eastern Rigs" by John Campbell,
retired commercial fisher, still an active poet, singer, songwriter
and musician of Exeter, Rhode Island and a long time regular
at the gathering in Astoria, vivid imagery.
Nostalgia for wooden watercraft including a degree
of anthropomorphism of the craft itself.
Distrust to the outside forces, in this case the banker
to whom the narrator is beholding.
Pride in the competence of their work.
Like many of John's poems this is one that he's set to music
as performed and recorded as a song.
Now here's another one by Dave Densmore of Larsen Bay,
Alaska and Svenson, Oregon- depending on the season.
And Dave is sometimes, has a nickname "Dangerous Dave Densmore."
And in fact Geno worked for Dave and Dave was the first person
that Geno knew of who did the reciting
over the VHF radio at night.
And that's how he got interested in doing that.
"I'm out here on the road learning to drive a truck 'cause
for years I just worked on deck, they say that's my tough luck.
Hell, I'm not crying sour grapes, and I don't want a giveaway,
but 30 years on the ocean should earn some rights, I'd say.
Well, I know the laws I can't change once they're set in motion,
but I just don't believe that it's a pencil pusher's ocean."
Dave Densmore takes the distrust of outside forces to the degree
of resentment in this poem titled "For Those on Deck."
Resentment is an emotion also often heard in logging poems composed
after logging began to clash with environmental protection
as in the following example by Craig Jenkins of Mapleton Oregon.
Craig was part of a duo, Craig and Terry,
who performed in logging communities
with a band during the 1990s economic crisis associated
with the shutting down of the woods
to protect the endangered spotted owl.
"Society has turned against us now from the lies
that they've been told, The press, the media
and some opinions have been so biased and bold.
It makes me wonder how did we exist, looks like now,
like the spotted owl, we've made the endangered list."
Now, here's a different take by Dave Densmore: "I hear the rigging begin
to hum, doors and windows set to rattle and I know that wind and sea
and I will soon be locked in battle.
The bow goes rocketing toward the stars and falls off in flying spray.
Once again we're just hanging on, can't make her pay this way.
Wind is my nemesis, ocean's my home.
seems I always seek big water no matter where I roam.
I don't quite understand this trilogy we form,
but it seems to be my destiny since the day that I was born."
And in that poem wind, Densmore's pride and his seamanship skills
as well as his questioning of his own destiny are closely tied
to his choice of a working life in a difficult and dangerous environment.
Now let's look at some of the women's poems.
The author of the following poem, Erin Fristad, worked Alaska waters
over 20 years, eventually becoming skipper of her own fishing boat.
And she is now a professor of creative writing
at Goddard College's Port Townsend, Washington campus.
In advice to women deckhands, Fristad warns that expectations
by male shipmates of women's roles continue,
at least for women new to the trade.
And note that it, unlike the others we've heard is written
in a literary poetic style: "You will be the cook in addition
to wheel watches, working on deck, unloading fish, fueling up,
filling fresh water, mending nets,
grocery shopping whenever you come to town.
You'll also prepare three meals a day and two hearty snacks to go
with coffee, you must keep the kettle on the stove full
and the juice jug and two gallons of milk in the fridge."
Another woman fisher poet, Jen Pickett of Anchorage Alaska writes
of the physical challenges she has faced in her poem "Free."
Pickett and Fristad were two,
actually I believe they were the two first women owner/skippers
in the north pacific waters.
I may be wrong about that but I'm pretty well convinced
of it from talking to them.
"Getting launched from my bunk in Shelikof Straight,
spend hours upon hours not sitting up straight.
The ramming, the jamming, the reaming and screaming,
hopes of redeeming yet another season.
The cold wind, the cold water, eyes full of jellies, all this slaughter
for fish for our bellies.
The sore arms, sore backs, sore neck, the numb hands
that won't work, The moldy cheese, the curdled milk.
That cook is a jerk!
No sleep, no rest, no fish, no money,
weeks out at sea, no word from my Honey."
Logger's wife Darcy Cunningham of Buckley,
Washington writes these two short poems
or wrote these two short poems devoted and side washed
from the perspective of a logger's wife.
"There's pride in her eyes for she knows he's the best,
as turn after turn he is put to the test.
A kiss means so much as he goes out the door, she knows one mistake
and there won't be any more.
But her smile disguises all the fears held within,
she whispers 'I love you' and hugs him again.
Her love is made stronger as she goes on her way,
just having the hope at the end of day that he will return with a kiss
that she gave, and bring her the strength to face a new day."
Now here's "Side Washed": "'Howdy,' he says, I can just see the grin
as he gives me a call to say where he's been.
The guys are all thirsty and Raws [assumed spelling] he's here, too.
They yarded me in, what could I do?
Timmy's arm's - bending, here comes a round.
I'll be home soon as we drink this one down.
But I knew for sure as I hung
up that phone it'd be while before he got home."
Now, we've handed out or allowed you or encouraged you to pick up copies
of four complete narrative poems.
And I don't expect you to read them all here
and we'd be here all afternoon if I read them to you.
But if you look at Otto Oja's "Ballad
of the Mount St. Helen's Ape Man."
It's a humorous narrative of two loggers
who encounter the legendary creature and use both their toughness
and their skill as loggers to prevail.
It first appeared with illustrations in a 1964 issue
of "Chain Saw Age," an industry publication.
It is comparable to, and was probably inspired
by Gail Gardner's much older cowboy poem, "Sierry Petes
or Tying a Knot in the Devil's Tail."
Humor, exaggeration of loggers confident and fearless machismo,
trade jargon, and tool mastery abound in this poem.
The Ape Man has appeared on the mountainside
and everybody's fled except for...
"Two there were who chose to stay and take a look around.
A pair who never turned for home until timber hit the ground.
Big one-eyed Jim, a chainsaw man, whose name all loggers knew,
for he had traveled far and wide wherever timber grew.
And Slabwood Bill a bucking fool from somewhere on the Sound,
Whose chainsaw roared a hungry tune and logs did roll around.
They take on any foe they'd meet and fight with knuckles bare.
No Ape Man roaming logging roads could stay the famous pair.
They gathered up their gas and oil and buckled on their packs,
and heading up the mountainside spit snus upon the tracks."
And then there's the confrontation with progresses
with them falling an old growth fir on the creature.
"Then Slabwood with his chainsaw flew with speed you seldom see,
the sparks were flying from his corks and he tore down the tree.
He bucked that gent from head to toe and made a long butt, too.
His chainsaw roared and never hung as fur and fire flew.
No more the Ape Man roams these hills, a-hunting logger souls.
He lies up there among the crags, up where the thunder rolls."
And what's interesting is that after he had written the poem,
a neighbor of his who was a high school music teacher set it
to music as a song.
And they hired a local guy, this is when he was living in Detroit Oregon
in Northwest Oregon, hire a local singer to make a demo,
a tape demo of it as a song.
I think the song was just great, but it was never released
or nothing ever was done.
I think I have a third or fourth, third or fourth dub of the demo
so still makes for a great song.
Far different is "The Hooker and His Lady"
by the late Woody Gifford of Seaview, Washington.
It's a tale of love; the civilizing effect of a woman companion,
danger in the logging woods, and ultimately tragedy.
It is loosely based on a real incident in a logging camp
where Gifford had worked as a young man.
It's a consummate display of sentimentality mixed with nostalgia.
And the little occupational term: "hooker," in this case,
refers to the rigging crew boss also called the "hook tender."
And the "rod," when they talk about the rod, is the camp rod,
who was in the old logging camps a worker who relayed instructions
and commands from the camp boss
out to the various crews on the various sites.
"T'was in the highly days of the '20s on the blue ridge logging show.
The rigger was pushing the outfit
because the hooker was taking a blow.
Down in the resort city just to get away from the show, he would be back
in a fortnight all fired up and ready to go.
You could see big Dan the hooker,
his broad shoulders filling the door.
Quickly he stepped down the cross walk between the track
and the camp warehouse door.
Big Dan sort of hesitated and his face seemed kind of red.
Then down stepped a well-dressed lady
with a wide-brimmed hat on her head.
The boys glanced around at each other, but nary a word was said.
We knew too well if we had of, big Dan would have smote us dead."
So the woman civilizes Dan, hangs curtains in the cabin,
plants flowers by the door
and Dan skips the payday even poker games because,
"The lady is waiting supper and I'm going so's I won't be late."
But one day tragedy strikes and Dan is fatally injured by a falling log.
"The rod was coming fast-like with the lady at his side.
Her face white as death and her eyes were set and wide.
Big Dan was sort of drifting off but he sensed the lady was near.
He opened his eyes as she stifled a sob and then held him fond and dear.
Dan faintly smiled and tried to speak,
but his words we could not hear.
The end was closing in fast.
Thank God the lady was near.
She seemed to freeze in that last embrace,
clutching him close to her breast.
So softly she spoke, and kissed his brow,
and then laid him down to rest."
Now "The Ride," also by Dave Densmore,
recounts a near fatal shipwreck in the Bering Sea in the late fall
that ended well only because of an unlikely coincidence
and the brotherhood of all who go to sea.
It's a tale of sheer terror.
And it's a long one, the one that's got four sides to it.
After an engine room explosion and fire destroy their boat
in just a few minutes, Dave and his two shipmates have spent three days
and nights without food or fresh water
in a damaged lifeboat in a blinding blizzard.
This is the Bering Sea now.
If any of you watch that "Dangerous Catch," you know, or "Deadly Catch,"
I guess it's called, you'll know what I mean.
With enormous waves breaking over them
and with one wet coat between them.
So here's the excerpt:
"The fourth night the winds eased up and just before the dawn.
I saw a set of running lights and they were coming on.
Port, starboard, and both range lights were aiming straight at me.
So I stood up in the boarding port the better for to see.
And suddenly it dawned on me, I could see all their lights.
They were coming straight towards us and they had us dead to rights.
I started trying to rouse my crew yelling, 'Grab a paddle,
we're about to be run down.'
They just sat there ignoring this hallucinating clown.
With curses and kicks I finally roused my engineer from his seat.
By then it was too damn late, we were right there at their feet.
While Jan jumped up for the anchor flukes,
I braced for the canopy crown, as that ship hit the raft
and flipped us upside down.
It seemed I was driven a quarter mile down into the Bering Sea.
When I came up I was under the raft,
straight lines wouldn't have set me free.
As I struggled to get freed one thought kept coming down:
I got to get loose, this would be a hell of a time to drown.
I finally got clear and burst to the top.
Jan was on the overturned raft screaming and shaking his fist
at the ship as it went sliding past."
And after that the story takes a turn for the better
and all are rescued by the Japanese trawler
that had rammed them because, just by chance, one of the deck hands was
out by the rail and happened to see them down there in the water.
Even more dramatic than "The Ride," although out of respect
for its author, I leave it to him alone to share it,
is "Skeeter's Song," a lengthy true account
of how Dave Densmore helplessly watched his father and his son drown
in waters off Kodiak Island after a boat mishap.
Like "The Ride" and "Wind" and for those on deck,
Densmore unfolds a story in rhyme.
And there's key.
These are primarily stories each told
for the sake of the story itself.
Poetry gives them a rhythm and a structure
that accentuates their dramatic element.
The meter and prosody, sometimes good, sometimes fair,
but it emphasizes the drama of the story
and thus makes it all the more listenable.
Now, finally, let's listen to Geno Leech recite "A Viking Funeral."
Again think of my politically incorrect nickname
for the genre, "macho poetry."
And as you hear it, think although a man or a woman might run away
from an overwhelming problem, I think I can say
that the big guy's spectacular exit was for better or worse,
distinctively masculine and the story itself,
like the others we looked at, epitomizes their poets' topics
and sentiments that are explicitly situated
in the bounded and knowable world.
And just before I play the poem and hope to God that it works
when I click it, I'd like to concede that this presentation posits
at least as many questions and answers
and I'd welcome feedback regarding the directions I should take
for further study.
And take those four poems with you as examples of some
of the better dramatic storytelling by Northwest Occupational Poets.
And of course they're all copyright their authors.
So here's "A Viking Funeral."
>> Recording: "Well this guy was all cargo, not flotsam or jetsam.
Stood six football four and his dirty Ballard Stetson.
He wore gray Filson jacket and black Frisko jeans.
They were splattered all over with Norwegian green.
Well, he hiked his bulk up on a stool.
I tossed a coaster down.
He threw down a hundred and said, 'Buy the house a round.'
I rang a bell.
Up went a yell from a crowd of waterfront rats.
Their ship had come in.
They wore beer grins and slapped each other on the back.
Well this guy was big, you know the kind: they fill up a door?
He smelled like diesel fuel and stank of albacore.
His face was brown as runnin' rust.
Had hands like coffee cans.
His wrists were like vine maple.
He said, 'I'll have a Hamm's.'
Well, after three beers he got up to piss.
The jukebox was howlin' some old Hank Williams shit.
Then, through a screen of cigarette smoke, Kodiak Chris leaned
over and gave me this dope.
He said, 'I've fished with that guy.
He had a death wish.
He fished like a drunk and drank like a fish.
He's from Eureka, has a slab called Blue Star,
and he blows every dime in the Vista del Mar.'
Well the big guy came back from pumpin' his bilge.
He bought round after round with a fistful of bills.
The stiffs were ecstatic, God, what a racket when he fit 'em all
out in green tavern jackets.
Well, there's an hour to go before last call.
He said, 'I'm going next door for some real alcohol.
See I drink beer for bulk and whiskey for blast.
I'm goin' over to Red's and get drunk on my ass.'
He said, 'By the way, I got a plan.
When I go out, I'm going out like a man.
I ain't usin' no gun, I ain't usin' no rope.
See tuna's my game and the bank wants my boat.'
Well, I just stood there.
Hell, I didn't know what to think.
I let it slide he'd too much to drink.
Well, next night at the tavern I talked to old Pops.
He worked pumpin' diesel at the Union fuel dock.
He said, 'Remember that big guy that bought us all jackets?
That guy from Eureka that created a racket?
Well, he come in with Blue Star, drunk on his ass,
and got underway with two drums of gas.
Well one week later the story came out.
I got it from Larry who'd run up from down south.
The ocean was flat, they were onto the fish.
They're all close to havin' plugged tuna trips.
Well, here come the Blue Star with one busted pole.
They figured the big guy had been on a roll.
He ran past the Midnight, he ran past the King,
he ran past the Trojan, and past the Doreen.
He kept on a-running way out to the west.
Blue Star disappeared into a red orange sunset.
Well out on the horizon they saw a bright light.
It glowed for hours well into the night.
At daybreak they found her but they weren't in time.
Blue Star had burned to her waterline.
Well all they found was a note and a quart bottle of Hamm's.
And here's what was printed
in a block-lettered hand: I'M GONE TO VALHALLA.
I WENT LIKE A MAN.
I DONE WHAT I COULD.
I DID ALL I CAN.'" All right, that's it.
[ audience applause ]
So yeah, I think we have a few minutes.
I'm not sure, you'll have to let me know what the...
>> Nancy Groce: Absolutely, any questions?
>> Jens Lund: Yeah, so I'll be glad to entertain questions.
Yes?
>> Male audience member: Thank you for the talk.
It's really interesting.
My grandfather was actually a gill net fisherman in Minnesota
and I've never heard of any poetry, but he was quite a storyteller.
It's interesting to hear about this in a different context.
I was wondering though if in your work or in the research
that you've done so far you could comment a little bit
on the compositional process of the different poets.
Are there any commonalities.
You mentioned the stories and rhyme schemes a bit.
Are there any reoccurring stock characters,
phrases, things like that?
>> Jens Lund: Well certainly the occupational jargon.
Certainly some of those content -- contents that I mentioned earlier.
But in terms of actually composing them, what I have heard
from at least a number of the fisher poets,
and again this reflects the time, the time --
that they're out there on a boat with not a whole lot else
to do except to motor on -- is that they'll get a few lines,
they'll just kind of come to them.
They'll be thinking about something and they'll rhyme a few lines
and they'll jot them down on something
and stuff it in their pocket.
And then later on they'll do something else.
And then eventually it'll kind
of come together, come together for them.
The logger poets that I knew, and all but one
of them are now deceased, they, they,
the ones that I knew they actually sat down and they were the ones
who had been exposed to poetry as, or poetry memorization
and recitation as kids in school.
And they would like, you know, sit down and cook up,
cook up a poem based on some experience or some thought.
And that would also be the case for some of the more literary poets,
Erin Fristad being the example that I gave.
But she's certainly not the only one.
But, you know, that's really what,
it varies from individual to individual.
But I do know that several of the fisher poets and Geno,
although he no longer works as a fisherman, is still on the water,
you know, three works on, three weeks home and so on.
And that's, it's just these, a couple of thoughts come together
and you can rhyme them and then later on you just kind
of have the opportunity to put, you know, tack the rest of it on.
Other, yes?
>> Stephen Winick: I perform on the maritime music scene
which has some crossover with the fisher poetry.
>> Jens Lund: Definitely.
>> Stephen Winick: And there's a poet who's now become extremely
popular in the maritime music world.
She was a late-19th, early-20th century poet named Cicely Fox Smith,
an English woman, who spent a lot of time in Vancouver among sailors.
And she wrote sailor poetry and she wrote it under the name C. Fox Smith
so that nobody would know she was a woman in those days.
So everyone assumed she was a sailor at the time.
And now she's become, I mean everyone
on the maritime scene performs some of her poems set to music.
And I'm wondering if you've encountered her as a sort
of Robert Service figure?
If anyone of the fisher poetry scene has started to use her as a model?
>> Jens Lund: I have never heard that.
In fact, I'm ashamed to say I've never heard of her.
>> Stephen Winick: Okay.
>> Jens Lund: But I would bet that Jon Broderick and some
of his school teacher buddies, they probably are.
Because they sing as much as they recite.
I mean, they think of themselves as poets but then they write a poem
and they set it to music and then they end up sitting there singing
and doing a great job as songwriters.
And they're from Washington.
And we do get British Columbia poets at the Astoria gathering.
So that's a good question and it's something that I definitely need
to look into, because I did not know that.
But thank you for, in fact,
would you mind emailing me, yeah email me that clue.
And I'll ask around.
Thanks.
>> Stephen Winick: Sounds good.
>> Jens Lund: Someone else?
Yes?
>> Female audience member: Have the cowboy
and logger poets gotten together at the Gatherings?
And what do they talk about?
>> Jens Lund: Well they've certainly gotten together.
I've had two different times I brought some logger poets
to the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko in '95.
And I think it was in 2001 or 2000 or thereabouts
that I brought some fisher poets to Elko.
And then back when City Lore used
to have those bi-annual People's Poetry Gatherings in New York City,
one of the years they had a whole session on occupational poetry.
And I brought the loggers and the fishermen.
And, by the way, "fishermen" is really what people use out there.
Even the women primarily refer themselves as fishermen.
Although the gathering is called the Fisher Poets Gathering.
But they end up talking about a lot of the same problems.
Particularly government regulation, I can assure you, is a,
is something that concerns them.
And people not understanding them.
You know, the people of the rest of the country, you know,
the vast majority of people not understanding what their life is
like or what they're doing.
I think it was Sir Walter Scott who said,
"It's not fish you're buying, it's men's lives."
And you know, people just not understanding that
and not understanding, for instance, when they think of loggers as "Oh,
they're cutting down all the trees!"
Not realizing that we use more wood per capita nowadays
than we ever did in the past.
And how difficult it is to fish because of, you know,
the resource has been over fished, there's also been damage
to the ocean by acid rain and pollution and so on.
So a lot of the same kinds of things.
The fisher poets are the ones who tend
to be more environmentalist oriented.
You know, they have that, they have their feet in both camps much more.
But definitely those are, there are things that they-
and I can remember them hearing from people from all
of those occupations afterwards saying, "Well,
we're kind of like what they did, they're kind of like what we did."
There was a poem I tried to find and I have it on tape somewhere
and danged if I can find it called "Don't Talk to Me of Rodeo."
And it's from the very first Fisher Poets Gathering.
And it's a fisher, Alaska fisher, who'd been sitting on a plane
and there was rodeo cowboy sitting next to him.
Talked about, "Yeah, for 18 seconds I stayed on there," you know.
And he's, "What are you talking about?
For a month I was out there on the same conditions in the Bering Sea,
you know, with ice under me rather than a saddle."
So there, you know, you get that aspect, too.
And there is a, I can't remember the name of the guy,
there is a cowboy poet who always comes
to the Fishers Poets Gathering.
For some reason he hit it off with those guys when they were
in Elko and he loves to come.
And he recites his cowboy poems and he's welcome there too.
Quite a few of the people, I would say maybe a quarter
or a little less, maybe a fifth of the recitations or readings
at the fisher poets gathering are prose as well.
There's some great prose stuff coming out of there.
There's a woman named Moe Bowstern, who lives in Portland,
that's not her real name,
I think it's Laura Mulvaney [assumed spelling] but she,
her nom de plume is Moe Bowstern.
And she's an Alaska fisher during the season and lives in Portland
and is part of this sort of Portland punk performance art scene.
And just wonderful stories.
And she has a series of 'zines that's she's put
out called Xtra Tuf, spelled with an "X."
And they're named after a brand of raingear that fishers use.
And her stuff is absolutely wonderful.
And she is, of all the women fisher poets I know,
she is definitely the mach, "macha," I guess I have to say, of the bunch.
And just a, I realize, I've gotten to know her personally
and just a wonderful storyteller and amazing singer and just does,
is really in her element when she's performing.
But then she's up in Alaska waters and, you know,
sometimes in the summer and sometimes in the winter depending
on where the openings, when the openings
for what she does are going to be.
So anyone else a question?
Okay.
>> Nancy Groce: Well, you're going to stick around informally.
But for right now I'd just like to thank Jens Lund again
for coming for this great talk.
[ audience applause ]
>> Nancy Groce: And thank you all for coming.
And our next Botkin Lecture will be on September 20th,
Franklin Odo who used to be with the Asian Division here will be talking
also about poetry and song called "Voices from the Cane Fields"
about Japanese poetry from Hawaii.
And it should be a very good talk.
>> Jens Lund: More occupational poetry.
>> Nancy Groce: More occupational poetry.
But thank you again for coming.
>> Jens Lund: Well, thank you.
Thank you for inviting me.
It was an honor to be here.
And thank you all for coming too.
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.