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Smith continuedfrom previous page with longtime friend Ted Kooser Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry (2003), which quietly celebrates a zenlike absence of ego and an openness to the everyday. That spirit resides in Saving Daylight, where "Both cat and man are bathed in pleasant / insignificance, their eyes fixed on birds and stars." In "Mother Night," Harrison shares the night with us and confesses his own late wakefulness: When you wake at three AM you don't think of your age or sex and rarely your name or the plot of your life which has never broken itself down into logical pieces. At three AM you have the gift of incomprehension wherein the galaxies make more sense than your job or the government. ... In what direction do the dead fly off the earth? Rising sun. A thousand blackbirds pronounce day. The book moves though poems of memories Detailfrom cover brought into present day awareness, songs ofregrets, tributes to old friends and loves, old sexual longings alive still. It also has a fine sense of animal wonder that has run throughout Harrison's books, echoing dogs, fish, cats, birds, the weather ofchanging light, sun moon rivers, all held to the elemental: "the world / becomes only what it is, the unforgiving flow / of an unfathomable river." Throughout this book, the poems speak with rare authenticity, giving us ourselves back in the mirror. Though Harrison was never much on form, he rides the looser form here like a veteran. We share the person behind the words, the earned life, and the inevitability of his language, plain speaking beyond the exuberance of youth and the confusion of mid-life, the freedom to say what matters. No more preaching and teaching, just the sharing of last words. These earthy songs of experience become solid rocks along the path. It is a generous act we share here, a fine poet making his art real and memorable. Larry Smith directs Bottom Dog Press. His most recent book ofpoems is A River Remains: Poems (Word Tech Editions). Canto, Can Do, Can't Do Paula Koneazny Spade David Bromige and Rychard Denner dpress http://www.dpress.net 93 pages; paper, $20.00 Spade, a collection of thirty-three cantos, is the first ofthree books in a projected trilogy (Spade, The Petrarch Project, and Garden Plots) that records an ongoing collaboration between the poets David Bromige and Rychard Denner. Spade, which was reportedly the first word that came to these poets' minds (ór lips) at the start of their project, aptly characterizes the process they engage in here: digging up, sifting through, and turning over autobiographical fragments. These finds are served up in a smorgasbord of daily specials (canto by canto as it were) accompanied by all manner ofphilosophical, political, meteorological, and literary musings. Just as the garden metaphor can be extended to include mulch, compost, and preparation of the soil for another cycle of planting and harvesting, Bromige and Denner's conversation circles and loops back on itself, accumulating and recycling as it progresses. Indeed, Canto 33, the last canto in Spade, presents a summary restatement of the thirty-two cantos that precede it. Spade could be considered more an event than a book. When I heard Bromige and Denner read from their work, I enjoyed the performance and felt that the book was in many ways a script, one that encourages improvisation, anecdotal digression, and elaboration. It amuses me to imagine Spade as a radio show, a zany fireside chat—Sunday nights with David and Rychard—with millions tuned in, just as audiences listened to Edna St. Vincent Millay's popular broadcasts back in the 1930s. There is a quality of open-ended ongoingness to Spade that reflects its creation. In an impromptu interview, Denner described how the two friends would meet and engage in conversation, which he would record on tape. Back at his desk, he would transcribe and tweak each session's text, then print it into a book. He'd bring the book to their next meeting , where they would collaboratively revise it and add new conversation. They repeated this process until there were a series of bookstall leading up to the final copy. In...

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