thinking about the cranky buddhist

Sometimes I wake up really early in the morning in the summers. That's what I did today. I don't even remember what I was looking at on the internet--I think maybe I was on Copper Canyon's webpage, and it made me think about one of my first poetry teachers, Sam Hamill. I studied with Sam when I was 17, and then we became friends when I would randomly show up at the press on many wandering trips around the Washington peninsula and up into Canada. That was such a long time ago, now. I haven't talked to Sam for years, and thinking about when I used to makes me feel embarrassed, because I had no idea what Copper Canyon Press was, or who Sam was, aside from him being my poetry teacher for a workshop.

Every time I showed up at the press after getting off some bus, or hitching a ride with a traveling friend, he always talked to me, and he always gave me free books. Most often I would actually stay in the bunkhouse of the youth hostel at Ft. Warden State Park and walk the few hundred feet from there to the press, which is also on the grounds of the park. Sam doesn't know this, but I would lie to him about why I was in town, saying something like "Oh...you know...I'm on my way up to the San Juans," when really, I usually rode a greyhound bus specifically over there from eastern Washington/Idaho to talk to him about poetry. I remember actually asking his advice once about whether or not I should leave the northwest and move to Kansas for the first time for a girl when I was 18. I wish I could remember what he said. What a strange question to ask Sam Hamill. My friend Kate once worked as an intern for the press. When we talked about him, for awhile I would call Sam "the crankiest Buddhist in North America." I didn't mean anything negative by it; Sam has this gravelly voice that sounds like he swallowed bleach or broken glass. Sometimes I think that makes him sound cranky to people.

In High School, an essay I wrote about one of Sam's poem's was chosen for the valedictorian speech. I don't know how that worked, exactly, because I was no valedictorian, but I wound up reading my essay and one of Sam's poems to a lot of them. This morning I found an interview Sam did for The Progressive shortly after the start of our most recent war. In it he mentioned the poem "The Bear" by Galway Kinnell. I hadn't read that Kinnell poem in a long time. Another poetry teacher of mine, and close friend, once gave me a print with the poem on it. I remember now that she actually gave me the print just a few months before she died of breast cancer. I didn't really like the poem at the time, but I do now. My friend's name was MaryAnn Waters. I'm going to go and find one of her poems and post it after I make coffee.