The brief wonders of David Budbill

One more note on brevity:

David Budbill, a remarkable poet, was an advocate of brevity. Here’s a clue:

Pare Everything Down to Almost Nothing

then cut the rest,

and you’ve got

the poem

I’m trying to write.

Budbill’s poems are spiritually aware with — in the words of an inspired obituary writer for The New York Times — a “streak of cussedness.”

I can vouch for that. When Budbill’s book While We’ve Still Got Feet was published in 2005, Copper Canyon Press sent the newspaper a review copy. I picked it up on a coffee break and spent a couple of evenings with it.

I was so delighted I called him at his homestead in Vermont. The conversation ranged over Zen influences and a book called Four Huts. Ancient Chinese and Japanese sages used to go the woods, as Thoreau would do centuries later. They wrote “huts,” as Thoreau wrote Walden. They’d build places — most simple, but a few palatial — to be away from the city and society and close to quiet and nature.

Some of the Budbill’s poems followed the life of the Chinese poet-monk who built a hut on Cold Mountain. The monk watched nature and seemed determined to confront something essential about himself.

I asked Budbill if he was a model for the wise, yet cantankerous, monk. Budbill never gave me direct answer. But he was a good conversationalist, wise and cantankerous at the same time.

He died five years ago.

He and his wife, Lois Eby, were teaching at Lincoln University in 1968. They planned to build a little place to store their stuff — books mostly — and then go wandering.

What they discovered was a place and a sense of place. They called it Judevine, after a neighborhood mountain. They found it endlessly fascinating.

Budbill’s poems often are about paying attention. When you are doing the dishes, you shouldn’t be contemplating the meaning of life. You should just be doing the dishes.

Part of your life is to wash the dishes — but also to watch the moon rise and listen to the wind blow. Part of your life, he said. Not part of your job. Not something you have to do. Something perhaps you should want to do.