August Kleinzahler, our favorite “witty, gritty poet” (Publishers Weekly), penned two original pieces for FSG’s National Poetry Month. The poem “Snow Approaching on the Hudson” offers a striking and atmospheric view of New York City. In “Notes on Snow Approaching,” Kleinzahler steps back and meditates on the sights, spaces, and sensations that inspired the poem.
Passenger ferries emerge from the mist
river and sky, seamless, as one –
watered ink on silk
then disappear again, crossing back over
to the other shore, the World of Forms –
as-if-there-were, as-if-there-were-not
The buildings on the far shore ghostly
afloat, cinched by cloud about their waists –
rendered in the boneless manner
Cloud need not resemble water
water need not resemble cloud –
breath on glass
The giant HD plasma screen atop Chelsea Piers
flashing red and green –
stamped seal in a Sesshu broken ink scroll
A tug pushes the garbage scow, left to right, toward the sea
passing in and out of the Void –
vaporizing gray, temporal to timeless
Clouds wait, brooding for snow
and hang heavily over the earth –
Ch’ien Wei-Yen
Bustle of traffic in the sky, here, as well, on the shore below
obliterated –
empty silk
The wind invisible
spume blown horizontal in the ferry’s wake –
wind atmosphere, river silk
Notes for “Snow Approaching on the Hudson”
Envelop in cloud or sink into blankness
Monochrome landscape painting in ink
Blow-cloud method Apply white powder lightly on silk
Clouds appear to have volume but show no traces of ink
Splashed ink without shaping lines
Blot
Sesshu Haboku landscape Hatsuboku Broken ink
Clouds rendered by leaving parts of painting surface untouched by wash
Jan an overall wash
Snow – spaces left free of ink
Snow suggested by omission
Ink pine soot mixed w/glue
Zither rough, unadorned, without strings the body of the instrument
contains within itself all possible sound
A sea of flat, indefinite space fore and middle ground
Empty silk
Wet, glazed washes of rock
Winter moods
Juxtaposition of ink tones
Soft, wet washes
River landscape in Wind and Snow
Clouds and vapors mist and haze mist-cloud
Clouds and snow may swirl aloft without the use of white color
Breath-force abstract space
Flat distance vistas
Wind-swept stream
Concealed by mist
Void
Even if outlines are clear they appear to have come out of the mist and dew
Ability to render blank spaces into rising and falling, opening and closing
breath-force movement
Different tones of ink run into each other creating the impression of wet, blurry surface
Cloudlike mountains seem to float in the picture plane
Wafting mists
Interpenetration of solids and voids
Landscape forms seem to simultaneously emerge from and recede behind
dense, wafting mists
When mist and haze encircle/cinched their waists the trees and buildings seem taller
Mottled outlines and ink washes that wrestle landscape forms from the silk surface
Graded ink washes diminish and fade into the distance
Ghostly building
River indistinct from silk
Silver, pewter, gray
Breath on glass
August Kleinzahler was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1949. He is the author of eleven books of poems and a memoir, Cutty, One Rock. His collection The Strange Hours Travelers Keep was awarded the 2004 Griffin Poetry Prize, and Sleeping It Off in Rapid City won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. That same year he received a Lannan Literary Award. He lives in San Francisco.
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