DAVID BUDBILL [19.238]

David Budbill 

Nacido el 13 de junio de 1940 en Cleveland, Ohio, EE.UU. - Murió el 25 de septiembre de 2016 en Montpelier, Vermont, EE.UU. Poeta, dramaturgo.

Budbill vivía en las montañas del norte de Vermont con su esposa, la pintora Lois Eby; su hija es la poeta Nadine Lobo Budbill. Su trabajo se llevó a cabo en la Universidad de Vermont.

En 1968, Budbill firmó el manifiesto "Guerra: protesta de escritores y editores", haciendo la promesa de rechazar el pago de impuestos en protesta contra la guerra de Vietnam. 

Budbill murió a la edad de 76 años en su casa de Montpelier a las 12:30 el 25 de septiembre de, 2016, habiendo hecho frente a la enfermedad de Parkinson. [

Poesía

Barking Dog (Barking Dog Press, 1968)

The Chain Saw Dance (Crow's Mark Press, 1977; Countryman Press, 1983)

From Down to the Village (The Ark, 1981)

Why I Came to Judevine (White Pine Press, 1987)

Judevine: The Complete Poems (Chelsea Green, 1991, 1999)

Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse ( Copper Canyon Press , 1999)

While We've Still Got Feet (Copper Canyon Press, 2005)

Happy Life (Copper Canyon Press, 2011)

"Park Songs" (Exterminating Angel Press, 2012)

Discos compactos 

Zen Mountains-Zen Streets: A Duet for Poet and Improvised Bass (with bassist William Parker) (Boxholder Records, 1999)

Songs for a Suffering World: A Prayer for Peace, a Protest Against War (with bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake)(Boxholder Records, 2003)

Obras de teatro 

Mannequins' Demise (1965)

Knucklehead Rides Again (1966)

Pulp Cutters' Nativity (Countryman Press, 1981)

Judevine: The Play (New American Play 2, Heinemann, 1990)

Thingy World (1991)

Little Acts of Kindness: A Poem for Fourteen Voices and Blues Band (1993)

Two For Christmas (1997)

"A Song For My Father" (2010)

Opera Libretos

A Fleeting Animal: An Opera from Judevine (with composer Erik Nielsen)(2000)

Cyberzines 

The Judeville Mountain Emailite: An On-line and On-going Journal of Politics and Opinion

Historias cortas

Snowshoe Trek to Otter River (The Dial Press, 1976; Onion River Press, 2005)

Novelas 

The Bones on Black Spruce Mountain (The Dial Press, 1978; Onion River Press, 2004)

Libros para niños

Christmas Tree Farm (Macmillan, 1974)

El “Lirio de Día” Ubicuo de Julio

Hay un “lirio de día” del color naranja que florece en julio

y está en todas partes – justo ahora.

Común. Corriente.

Brota en el patio delantero, si abandonado o habitado;

a lo largo de la calle, en frente de murallas de piedra,

al lado de la estación de servicio o de una cochera,

en la entrada del acceso; en hecho: a cualquier parte quiere crecer.

Los ve en racimos, no solos.

Se propagan por rizomas, entonces son resistentes y los encuentra en matas.

Hay un “lirio de día” que florece en julio

y está ubicuo – ahora mismo.

Las podadoras grandes de grama los “talan” muchos

pero no segan todos.

Estos no son los “lirios de día” raros y delicados

que alguna gente tienen alrededor de su casa.

Éste es áspero, ordinario, a veces severo en su curtida belleza

– casi como una mujer veterana de cara correosa, arrugada,

que conoce mundo.

En esta flor no hay nada núbil, lisa o animada.

No es fresca; la hemos visto de largo, de aquí para allá;

todos la conocen.

He dicho que el “lirio de día” es áspero y ordinario;

y es bello a causa de ser ordinario.

Una planta que ha naturalizado en el campo y en la ciudad;

una planta que se vuelve robusta, irrompible, indómita.

En pocas palabras: firme y fuerte, como

alguien o alguna cosa que debe sobrevivir.

Translator: Alexander Best 

Sometimes

Sometimes when day after day we have cloudless blue skies,

warm temperatures, colorful trees and brilliant sun, when

it seems like all this will go on forever,

when I harvest vegetables from the garden all day,

then drink tea and doze in the late afternoon sun,

and in the evening one night make pickled beets

and green tomato chutney, the next red tomato chutney,

and the day after that pick the fruits of my arbor

and make grape jam,

when we walk in the woods every evening over fallen leaves,

through yellow light, when nights are cool, and days warm,

when I am so happy I am afraid I might explode or disappear

or somehow be taken away from all this,

at those times when I feel so happy, so good, so alive, so in love

with the world, with my own sensuous, beautiful life, suddenly

I think about all the suffering and pain in the world, the agony

and dying. I think about all those people being tortured, right now,

in my name. But I still feel happy and good, alive and in love with

the world and with my lucky, guilty, sensuous, beautiful life because,

I know in the next minute or tomorrow all this may be

taken from me, and therefore I've got to say, right now,

what I feel and know and see, I've got to say, right now,

how beautiful and sweet this world can be.

             

THREE DAYS IN NEW YORK: A BLUES IN Bb 

                     for William Parker

         

I

At The Painting Center on Green Street surrounded by Ying Li’s paintings,

oil and acrylic on canvas, of rivers and mountains and sky, fields in the distance

and apple trees—all only vaguely there in these thickly painted, abstract and

intense, splashes of color exploding off the canvas, emotion laden strokes

of the brush growing out of her life with Chinese calligraphy—all here on these

canvases, this so-called Western, so-called European art.

            

II

The New Chao Chow Restaurant on Mott a block above Canal:

Water Cress in Bean Curd sauce

Steamed Whole Founder smothered in shredded scallions and ginger

Seafood Hot Pot

Duck

And for desert a turn around the corner to the Italian bakery on Mulberry,

the one right next to The Luna. Then out again and walkin', eatin’ cannolis

on Canal Street headed for the Q train.

            

III

On the balcony overlooking the Rotunda at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

a display of pottery showing how the ancient Chinese and Persian Empires

(Iran and Iraq) influenced each other, how Buddhist, Taoist, and Muslim potters

traded back and forth ideas for glazes, colors, designs, shapes for their vessels—

all this back and forth on The Silk Road and Steppe Routes thousands of years ago.

Who told us Europe discovered the world?

IV

155th Street and Frederick Douglas Boulevard, Charles’s Southern Cooking:

            Collard Greens

            Fried Chicken

            Spare Ribs in Barbecue Sauce

            Collard Greens

            Macaroni and Cheese

            Chicken in Barbecue Sauce

            Collard Greens

Corn Bread

            Collard Greens

and your choice of Lemonade or sweet Iced Tea.

           

            

V

There are shards of 12th Century Chinese celadon pottery on the beaches of

east Africa. The Chinese were there with whole armies and horses, gobs

of stuff centuries before the European colonizers ever dreamed of going there. 

Who told us Europe discovered the world?

            

VI

Polyglot          Gumbo          Masala          Stew    

Hybrids          Bastards         Mutts          All of us.

All sloshed together.         Ain’t it grand?

            

VII

And here I am this old white guy all decked out in my

yellow, orange, red, black, blue and white dashiki

and my blue and gold African mirror hat playing

Japanese bamboo flute and ropes of bells from India

and a gong from Tibet, with these far-out, crazy

jazz musicians what come in how many different

shades of flesh and nationality, and me right here

on the Lower East Side in New York City reading my

cracker, woodchuck, honky, ofay, green mountain,

ersatz, Chinese, wilderness poetry.

                                                  

first published in Happy Life, Copper Canyon Press, 2011

BUGS IN A BOWL

                

Han-shan, that great and crazy, wonder-filled

Chinese poet of a thousand years ago, said:

We're just like bugs in a bowl.  All day

going around never leaving their bowl.

I say:  That's right!  Every day climbing up

the steep sides, sliding back. 

Over and over again.  Around and around.

Up and back down.

Sit in the bottom of the bowl, head in your hands,

cry, moan, feel sorry for your self.

Or.  Look around.  See your fellow bugs.

Walk around.

Say, Hey, how you doin'?

Say, Nice bowl!

                                   

first published in Moment to Moment: Poems of a  Mountain Recluse,

Copper Canyon Press, 1999

Tomorrow

 Tomorrow 

we are

bones and ash, 

the roots of weeds

poking through

our skulls. 

Today,

simple clothes,

empty mind, 

full stomach,

alive, aware,

right here,

right now.

Drunk on music,

who needs wine?

Come on, 

Sweetheart,

let’s go dancing

while we still 

have feet. 

               

first published in While We've Still Got Feet, Copper Canyon Press, 2005

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