My latest
full-length books of poems are
The
Alchemy of Opposites and Aspens in the Wind,
both published by Chiron Review Press.
My first
book, Jesse Comes Back (1976), has long
been out-of-print,
and as far as
I know is available only in libraries.
Published by
the late Leo Mailman's Russ Haas Press,
it was praised
by Christopher Isherwood, who wrote:
"Clifton
Snider's book of poems, Jesse Comes Back, impressed me very
much.
It is very
seldom that I . . . can recommend ["a book by a young poet"]
as highly as
this one."
The cover
drawing is by Jonathan Ahearn.
My second
book, Bad Smoke Good Body (1980), I have seen
available
online.
Bad Smoke Good Body is an elegy for my
older brother,
Evan Allan
Snider, who disappeared on 22 October 1976
and whose body
has never been found, thanks in part
to the
incompetence and homophobia of the Long Beach Police Department.
I don't think
I will ever "get over" the loss of my brother. The subject haunts
my dreams even
to this day, and it appears now and again in the poems
of my new
book. I deliberately left out the comma after Smoke
in the
title to show the lack of connection knowledge would bring,
to leave the
subject, as it were, unfinished, as it is. Trent Edward,
who did the
illustrations for Edwin: A Character in Poems, and
who died in
1995,
did the cover
drawing for this chapbook published by Applezaba Press.
His Autumn
Tulips graces the cover of my novel, Bare Roots.
I have an
entire section about Trent in The Alchemy
of Opposites.
When I recently revised my novel, Wrestling with Angels: A Tale of Two
Brothers,
a fictional version of the story of my brother, Evan, as well as my own
story
up to seven years past his disappearance, I decided to begin each of
its
twelve chapters with one of the twelve poems in Bad Smoke.
The
juxtaposition of the poems with my fictional prose provides, I hope,
tension,
understanding, and consolation--separate artistic progressions that end
at the same place.
Even though the impact of reading the poems this way is quite
different, I think,
from the impact of reading them at one sitting in the long out-of-print
chapbook,
the new context helps provide a perhaps deeper dimension to the poems,
and in any case allows me to get them back in print as a tribute to my
brother.
Although the chapbook, Jesse Comes Back, is unavailable by
itself,
it is
available as the first half of Jesse and His Son (Maelstrom Press, 1982).
Jesse is a
character I made up, part devil, part Christ, part father or
grandfather.
To compensate
for him, I made his son a saint, patterned in part after the life of
Ramakrishna,
the 19th-century Indian avatar, and his disciple, Vivekananda,
who helped
establish Ramakrishna's teachings in the United States.
In writing
about this character, I was deeply influenced by Christopher Isherwood's
biography of
Ramakrishna and his writings about Vedanta, the society based on
Ramakrishna's
teachings. The back cover drawing dates from January 1977
and is by
Isherwood's long-time companion, Don Bachardy. The cover
illustration
is a photo montage by Craig Stoker.
Edwin was the first of my books to come out in
hardcover.
Unfortunately, the hardcover version does not have the cover drawing
by Trent Edward of the boy coming out of the shell.
It does, however, have the other drawings Trent made
in the late 1970s when we were together.
The title comes from from Chaucer's "The Nun's Priest's Tale."
Read my poem, "D. H.
Lawrence in Vence," from this book.
Here is the title poem:
Impervious to Piranhas
He sculpted a statue
in marble
that resembled
himself.
By sheer will
he kept the pigeons off.
--Copyright © Clifton Snider, 1989 and 2011
This little poem was a good way, I thought, to begin my little book,
and perhaps it's a good way to end this little survey of my books of
poetry up to The Age of the Mother
and my most recent
poetry books, The Alchemy of
Opposites, Aspens in the Wind, and
my career retrospective, Moonman:
New and Selected Poems (World
Parade Books, 2012).
I've written and published in magazines, journals, newspapers, and
anthologies a number of poems that have not yet appeared in my books.