The Testing Tree

1

On my way home from school
  up tribal Providence Hill
     past the Academy ballpark
where I could never hope to play
  I scuffed in the drainage ditch
     among the sodden seethe of leaves
hunting for perfect stones
  rolled out of glacial time
     into my pitcher’s hand;
then sprinted lickety-
  split on my magic Keds
     from a crouching start,
scarcely touching the ground
  with my flying skin
     as I poured it on
for the prize of the mastery
  over that stretch of road,
     with no one no where to deny
when I flung myself down
  that on the given course
     I was the world’s fastest human.  
     
       2

Around the bend
  that tried to loop me home
     dawdling came natural
across a nettled field
  riddled with rabbit-life
     where the bees sank sugar-wells
in the trunks of the maples
  and a stringy old lilac
     more than two stories tall
blazing with mildew
  remembered a door in the
     long teeth of the woods.
All of it happened slow:
  brushing the stickseed off,
     wading through jewelweed
strangled by angel’s hair,
  spotting the print of the deer
     and the red fox’s scats.
Once I owned the key
  to an umbrageous trail
     thickened with mosses
where flickering presences
  gave me right of passage
     as I followed in the steps
of straight-backed Massassoit
  soundlessly heel-and-toe
     practicing my Indian walk.
     
       3

Past the abandoned quarry
  where the pale sun bobbed
     in the sump of the granite,
past copperhead ledge,
  where the ferns gave foothold,
     I walked, deliberate,
on to the clearing,
  with the stones in my pocket
     changing to oracles
and my coiled ear tuned
  to the slightest leaf-stir.
     I had kept my appointment.
There I stood int he shadow,
  at fifty measured paces,
     of the inexhaustible oak,
tyrant and target,
  Jehovah of acorns,
     watchtower of the thunders,
that locked King Philip’s War
  in its annulated core
     under the cut of my name.
Father wherever you are
   I have only three throws
      bless my good right arm.
In the haze of afternoon,
  while the air flowed saffron,
     I played my game for keeps—
for love, for poetry,
  and for eternal life—
     after the trials of summer.
     
     4

In the recurring dream
  my mother stands
     in her bridal gown
under the burning lilac,
  with Bernard Shaw and Bertie
     Russell kissing her hands;
the house behind her is in ruins;
  she is wearing an owl’s face
     and makes barking noises.
Her minatory finger points.
  I pass through the cardboard doorway
     askew in the field
and peer down a well
  where an albino walrus huffs.
     He has the gentlest eyes.
If the dirt keeps sifting in,
  staining the water yellow,
     why should I be blamed?
Never try to explain.
  That single Model A
     sputtering up the grade
unfurled a highway behind
  where the tanks maneuver,
     revolving their turrets.
In a murderous time
  the heart breaks and breaks
     and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go
  through dark and deeper dark
     and not to turn.
I am looking for the trail.
  Where is my testing-tree?
     Give me back my stones!

by Stanley Kunitz, read at The Higgins House, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 1972

 

 

Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006), twice named Poet Laureate of The United States, was born in Worcester in 1905 and has become one of the most celebrated poets in the United States.  He once said, “Worcester provoked me into poetry.”  Regardless, we can savor the brilliant work those provocations created.   His childhood home is a poetry mecca for poetry lovers over the world.     

He has been featured numerous times in The Worcester Review and the WCPA has honored him first as one of the initial poets invited to read at its founding in 1971 and with many celebrations since.

 

 

Learn more about Stanley Kunitz by visiting the following sites:

Stanley Kunitz Boyhood Home

The Poetry Foundation Stanley Kunitz Page

Stanley Kunitz on Wikipedia

Literary Landmark: Boyhood Home of Stanley Kunitz

the Paris Review interview with Stanley Kunitz

Stanley Kunitz Obituary in the New York Times

Poetry Everywhere with Garrison Keillor on PBS “Touch Me” by Stanley Kunitz

That’s all. I said. I promise to witness.
Charles Olson, Interview, 1970

To build out of sound the walls of the city
And display in one flower the wunderworld so that
By such means the unique stand forth
Clear itself shall be made known.
Charles Olson, Unpublished Fragment

Excerpt from The Charles Olson Sympsium:

Charles Olson’s inventiveness as a poet and scholar, as well as his engagement in community and national politics, have rendered him an American poet who continues to be an originating influence in our times.
Please join us as we mark the centenary with a challenging few days of poetics, friendship, and exploration.

We welcome the participation of poets, presenters, scholars and participants. Contact the WCPA or Olson Centenary Chair Mark Wagner at markgwagner@charter.net for additional information.

COMMUNITY EVENTS & OLSON SYMPOSIUM
SCHEDULE & ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Charles Olson photo courtesy of Charles Olson Papers,
Archives & Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.

A Brief Biography

Charles Olson was born in Worcester, December 27, 1910, the son of working-class parents, a Swedish immigrant father and an Irish Catholic mother. They lived on Mitchell Street, moving in 1912 to 6 Norman Avenue. In 1914 his family settled in a third-floor apartment at 4 Norman Avenue, where he was raised. Throughout his youth and into his years at Classical High School Olson struggled to overcome his consciousness of his size and height. He went to Wesleyan College in 1928.

Olson has strong association with two places other than Worcester: Black Mountain College, North Carolina, where in the 1950s Olson was a teacher, rector, advancing alternative ways of thought and verse; and Gloucester, Massachusetts, a north shore fishing community where he spent his childhood summers and a place that would provide the major background for his epic work, The Maximus Poems, which are rich in myth, full of geography, history, architecture, and personal reflections. Though his poetry may not be focused heavily on Worcester, in 1965 at a public reading in Berkeley, California, after reading a poem titled “An Ode on Nativity,” a poem set in Worcester, Olson blurted out, “Gee, I’m moved. Wow, I never write about Gloucester like this. Do you think? I’ve been wrong all this time… My subject is Worcester.” Though these words may have been spoken in jest, some of Olson’s finest moments are Worcester ones. Three stories about his boyhood in Worcester are “Stocking Cap,” “Mr. Meyer” and “The Post Office,” each a loving tribute to a father who took his young son berrying in the summer, gathering walnuts and wild grapes in the fall, and fishing through the ice on Worcester’s lakes in the winter. In “The Post Office,” Olson describes his father’s mail route in Worcester:

It stretched along the lake which bounds the city on the east.
Originally the route ran on both sides of the lake south from the
bridge which carried the road to Boston. The bridge alone, and the
other wooded side (where nothing much was but the city’s amusement
park and some summer camps) were enough to make the route what
my father would like. Just to cross the bridge a winter morning…
or to be a part of the boating around in the summer and the fall,
gave his workday a freedom…

Before Olson left Worcester in 1928 to attend Wesleyan, as Classical High School’s star speaker he had won a summer-long trip to Europe, top prize in a national oratory contest. He received a BA at Wesleyan and stayed on to earn an MA in 1933, writing his thesis on Herman Melville. Olson returned to Worcester to teach at Clark University. He was a favorite among the freshmen students he taught and proctored. He received two Guggenheim fellowships and a grant from the Gren Foundation to study Mayan hieroglyphics.

During WWII, Olson worked in the Office of War Information, then in Roosevelt’s 1944 re-election campaign. Finding no place for an artist in such pursuits, Olson left politics and began writing poetry seriously in the period during which he served as informal secretary to Ezra Pound at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, DC. In 1950 he stepped out of the footsteps of Pound and began the development of post-modern free-verse with Robert Creeley.

In 1957, Olson retreated to Gloucester to concentrate on his own poetry, emerging occasionally, the leader of anew poetic counterculture. He taught briefly in Buffalo and at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. He died in 1970 at the New York Hospital and is buried in Beechwood Cemetery, West Gloucester. Charles Olson was an extremely influential poet. His stature did not lie merely in his physical size but in the mythic dimension of his work.