For Crying Out Loud by Cid Corman

For Crying Out Loud
by Cid Corman
Mountains and Rivers Press in Eugene, Oregon 2002

Second printing 2011 www.mountainsandriverspress.org
31 pages, US$8


Review by Moira Richards

It’s not often, I guess, that a poetry chapbook goes into second printing. It’s not often either, that someone produces more than 80 chapbooks of poetry in a lifetime – even if he does live to be octogenarian. For Crying Out Loud is, by my count, the 81^st and last collection of poems by Cid Corman published before his death in 2004.

Cid Corman did a lot of translation work too, and I love the energy he gives to Bashō’s oku-no-hosomichi translated as Back Roads to Far Towns (The Ecco Press, 1968 and again in 1996 with introduction by Robert Hass). Corman translates the hokku in the haibun in a way that evokes the sense of a rich variety of writing technique at the command of the old master. His translations suggest too, that Bashō reveals diverse facets of mood and personality through his poems.

I’ve also noticed interesting similarities between the way in which Cid Corman and Bashō led their lives. Corman, like Bashō, devoted his life to poetry; to teaching and to sharing the poetry of others, with others. Both earned very little money from their literary work, and both men were indebted to the generosity of friends and patrons to be able to pursue their passion. I thought it’d be fun to place a few of Corman’s poems from his last chapbook alongside his translations of Bashō’s last journey. And to watch how the two old men converse.

Both poets are master of drawing great beauty with few words – is it too fanciful to imagine Corman also standing, in 1689, at that most sacred of shrines atop Mount Nikkō albeit a few months later in the year?

O glorious
green leaves young leaves’
sun light                                                          (Back Roads to Far Towns, 29)

Within the
fallen leaf

to trace the
standing tree.                                                  (For Crying Out Loud, 17)

Perhaps Cid Corman was there, alongside Bashō that long-ago autumn night to echo, as drily, Bashō’s resignation at the non-appearance of the year’s much-anticipated full moon…

harvest moon
Hokkoku weather
don’t depend on it                                          (Back Roads to Far Towns, 143)

The only
thing you can

be sure of
is nothing.                                                       (For Crying Out Loud, 22)

Do you not enjoy picturing Corman, sharing three days of enforced stay in an inhospitable border-guard hut at the Shitomae Barrier, bouncing repartee off Bashō’s droll, dour, and powerfully succinct comment on the experience?

fleas lice
horse pishing
by the pillow                                                   (Back Roads to Far Towns, 91)

Get the life
outta here

That seems to
be the word.                                                    (For Crying Out Loud, 26)

I like to think of Cid Corman as travel companion who understands and empathises with the old master’s weariness and ambivalence at the aloneness of a nomadic life; the upside of which is privileged of witnessings of  the grandeur of the natural world.

wild seas (ya
to Sado shoring up
the great star dream                                        (Back Roads to Far Towns, 117)

Like finding yourself
lost and knowing there was no
where else you could be.                                 (For Crying Out Loud, 15)

Bashō, at the end of his months-long oku-no-hosomichi, does get to celebrate the joy of good friendships renewed but he acknowledges, simultaneously, the inevitability of future partings. Corman, with considered choice, placement and replacements of the few words selected for his own poem as well as for the translated poem, demonstrates mastery in both poets.

Clam
shell and innards parting
departing fall.                                                  (Back Roads to Far Towns, 151)

Every
moment

Any
moment now.                                                  (For Crying Out Loud, 14)

In a long conversation, a couple of years before his death, Cid Corman talks about his life’s work and explains his reasons for not wanting to be published or anthologised by a big publishing house. That entire interview with Philip Rowlands is online (http://www.flashpointmag.com/corman1.htm) and is as well worth the reading as is For Crying Out Loud. Both pieces gives great sense of the voice of the man and the can’t-stop-or-sit-down busy-ness that must surely be trademark of anyone with so large a body of work which includes, some dozen and a half translations.