Poet Drum Hadley 1943-2015
(an interview by Larry Goodell which appeared in the Malpais Review, editor, Gary Brower)
a duende digital release november 2015 larry goodell / placitas, new mexico larrynewmex@gmail.com
An Interview With Drum Hadley by Larry Goodell Poet Drum Hadley died on Thanksgiving Day 2015 and has been buried on his ranch, the Guadalupe Canyon Ranch. This interview appeared in the Malpais Review.
Drum Hadley on Drumm Street, San Francisco photo by Emma Piper-Burket 2009
Drum Hadley brings all the best of American poetry into land-speak. There are no acanemic cubicles here, no lecture-poetry from a lectern under florescent lights. There’s the broad expanse of the West voiced, the particulars of nature and its demands, the human character of real working individuals, the intense humor and relaxing stories, the music of the voice of words at its best. Voice of the Borderlands is a grandiose cumulative achievement. It exists in 368 pages plus the entire composite of writing read by Drum Hadley on 12 CD’s – all from Rio Nuevo Publishers in Tucson, Arizona, 2005. I asked Drum Hadley some questions via email and Holly Piper helped facilitate this exchange. Here are his answers, year 2010.
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Larry: Robert Creeley wrote me about the Vancouver Poetry Conference of 1963 saying if Charles Olson alone was there it wd be worth going. Ginsberg, Duncan, Levertov, Whalen and other poets were there. And that's where I met you & Diana. What prompted you to go and what was it like to you? Drum: Keith Wilson had told us that there was a great wonderful get together of poets. Keith didn’t go to it, he was a functioning professor. He just told me to go. He said that it would be a wonderful opportunity to go and be with these new poetry people. It was very exciting to be part of . . . it was very ‘far out’ as they say. It was people who were very sincere at that time which was sort of a ‘ hippy time’. Larry: Drum, what initiated your great love of the land? Drum: My relationship with the land was irresistible, the land itself was stretching out all around me. It was a compelling being that I wanted to meet. I loved the land because it seemed to be the only thing that was sane to me. Whatever the land showed me, I thought was true. Larry: What got you into ranch work? Drum: Ranching was simply an extension of large, open spaces and interacting with them, again it felt true to me. It was a way to get to know the land better. Larry: Did you write out there “on the job”? Drum: I wrote on everything I could find to write on. I always tried to have something on which I could write – envelopes, napkins, scraps of paper. For awhile I had a tape recorder I carried with me and was able to record. Sometimes if you’re in the saddle and you want to write and you don’t have a pencil or pen you can write if you have to using a lead bullet and pieces of rawhide (chaps). Larry: What prompted you to put your writing to heart? When did you first start saying your poems to others? At the time it was rare for poets to say their poems from memory, like Vachel Lindsey did . . . . Drum: Heart is simply a term used to express the feeling that human beings have when they have a strong feeling. I felt so strongly. I thought that there might have been something of value. I was able to chart my feelings and writing was a way to do that. I wrote a story about Cynthia my donkey when I was 9. That was probably the first thing I shared with others. Larry: I found your direct eye contact with the hearers very powerful. Drum: I was giving them the poem. I told poems in the same way that I spoke to anyone else. -2-
Larry: How did The Webbing get published? Donald Allen? (Four Seasons Foundation, San Francisco 1967.) Drum: Donald Allen was a publisher – he was at the Vancouver Poetry Conference. He heard my poems and he asked me if he could publish my work. The poets liked what I was doing. That first book was The Webbing. I had been in the snow and in snow shoes and I thought of a webbing to be able to walk on the snow – that’s why I used the word “webbing.” Larry: How did your friendship with Keith and Heloise Wilson come about? Drum: They thought I needed some food so I ate some food with them on 3rd street I think it was. (In Tucson.) Keith was writing poems. We jibed together ‘cos we were both writing poems. Larry: I remember visiting several times in Santa Fe. How was it living in Santa Fe? I know you had some notable visitors. Drum: Santa Fe . . . It’s beautiful country. I loved the Pecos Wilderness. I shod a horse for someone in exchange for being able to ride the horse whenever I wanted. We would go to the Pecos Wilderness and explore. I got a job cowboying on the WS Ranch (now the Turner Ranch). I still sing the songs I learned from the vaqueros then. We had a number of poets come by to the house on Delgado Street – Gary (Snyder), Allen (Ginsberg), Keith (Wilson), Harold and Larry Littlebird . . . and we were talking about poetry. It was very much alive in that time . . . Lots of Poetry Readings around. Larry: And there was that Southwest Poetry Conference that you and Jim Koller put together. How did that come about & how was it? Drum: I was certainly part of it. I didn’t think I put it together. Larry and Harold Little bird were there reading their poetry and doing chants. Larry: I'd sure like to know some specifics of your ranch. What did it look like. . . Where & how did it change over time. The running of it. The problems. The rewards. How did the kids like it? And where you stand with it now. Drum: It’s beautiful . . . huge valleys stretching into eternity. I saw the beauty of the country and was very moved by it. There are cliffs and rocky bluffs, waters that had been developed so that cattle could drink and sustain themselves in the canyon systems, cottonwood trees and sycamores line the creek beds sometimes filled with water, more often dry. For about 50 years I have called the borderlands my home. My children were raised here and continue to have roots here. It has always been a wild and remote world but has been more so lately.
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A question from Bruce Holsapple to Drum Hadley: Larry: My friend Bruce Holsapple has a question for you: “Speaking of that relation between poetry and love of the land, are there poems that speak explicitly to that relation or is it the feel of your work overall?” Drum: There is a poem from Voice of the Borderlands that exemplifies this (though there are others). (From memory . . .)
A Walk Down the Canyon Because of one rock Five cottonwood trees have come up Because of three grass stems, A sycamore tree has grown Because of a rain high in the mountains Two Cooper’s hawks raise their family of one Because of you and I taking this walk together Each of us is true Earth and Sky along this dirt path One white cloud drifting by. (page 327 of Voice of the Borderlands)
Another piece . . . (not published), almost a chant . . . A landscape to shape the heart of a people A people to shape the life of the land.
(end of interview)
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Title page of the Chax Press beautiful publication – The Light Before Dawn
Some Poems from The Light Before Dawn by Drum Hadley Drum Hadley has a new book of poetry due out from Chax Press in Tucson, The Light Before Dawn. Also, there will also be a piece Drum wrote on Edward Abbey in a journal called "Matter" by Wolverine Farm Press in Fort Collins, Colorado. Here are a few excerpts from his new book. As Holly Piper says, they are “quite different than his other work (written when he thought his days were almost gone so that perspective flavored the work). They are more like koans, or frozen moments to meditate on . . . quite personal in an inner way.”
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So then we are the movements Of the mountain mists, Set free among the mountains.
What I have Learned I have learned to place the tea bag Into the hot water in the morning And to sit looking at the far hills On the other side of the lake. Drum Hadley
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Dead Horse Poem The last horse at Guadalupe: All of the hoof prints, All of the valleys, All of the ways, all of the trails . . . Her hoof prints in the sand, All of the mountain ranges, Even the tracks of the buzzards through the sky; And the ant lions and the ant lion's dens Dappled shadows Drawn in the dust.
Now we'll sit here, Through these storms and the leaves In the blowing sunlight, To wait for what will come.
Water falling Away, away, away And nothing more but the sky To dance with . . . Drum Hadley
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In Praise of Drum Hadley’s The Light Before Dawn, from Chax Press, 2010 James Northrup A poet's style is closer to being like a"voice" than any other writer's. And Drum's voice is stripped to the bare essentials, and mercifully so, since his subject matter lends itself to aminimalist approach. To paraphrase Pound, "a poem should be written at least as well as a short story". And in Drum's case, as with all great American poets,that means cutting the superfluous to get not just to the point, but the heart of the matter. Coming so soon after his magnum caliber reminiscences of a venturesome lifetime, Voice of the Borderlands, these intimate new works are surprising reminders of what this 21st century transcendentalist can do when he turns his mind inwards. Drum's is a uniquely American poetic voice – as developed by Whitman, perfected by Emily Dickinson – and taught to Drum by his mentor, Charles Olson, his friends and fellow pranksters, Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. So it's good to "read" Drum's voice again – as he channels the great metaphysical like some back country Zen riddler. The key is that voice comes from the breath, the heart, the sentiment is unvarnished and unlimited by metrical constraints. That's Olson's heave of the trochee – blank English verse going back to Shakespeare – verse as if spoken on a stage or around a campfire. Verse meant to resonate a direct meaning when received. Not frenchified with iambic pentameter or overly academic in its approach or content. Not tricky – at least not overtly so. In Borderlands, we have stories remembered as poems, picaresque vignettes and campfire tales rendered in the original voices – as faithfully and fully as by fellow cowman Will James. In The Light Before Dawn, we have the koans of a mortality faced as quietly and introspectively as Emily Dickinson. Hers:"I heard a fly buzz when I died". The fly outlived the protagonist. But the poem, as information, is forever. Drum's: "He knew who he was, And then he was gone". The poem is a declaration that he knew who he was – which is a rare feat for any sentient being – and the poem, as information, is at the deepest level, immortal. Nice trick for an old cowman. James Northrup
Drum Hadley’s Voice of the Borderlands is readily available online. This is a great measure of the poet’s life work.
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And most if not all of the book is available read by Drum on 12 CD’s.
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Poet Drum Hadley 1943-2015