Is, Is Not
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Section Quotes: Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death became especially important to me during my cancer battle from 2002 onward. It was compiled with an introduction and excellent commentary by Yoel Hoffmann, and published in 1986 by Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc.
Specific quotes within the above book are:
Section ii: Give my dream back … by Uejima Onitsura, p. 251.
Section iv: If your time to die has come … by Sengai Gibon, p. 74.
Section vi: For eighty years and more … by Narushima Chuhachiro, p. 77.
Section vii: A raging sea … by Doppo-an Choha, p. 153.
Other section quotes in order:
Section i: Am I real … by Osip Mandelstam, translation by Robert Tracy, from Stone, published in the US by Princeton University Press, 1981; Harvill UK edition used, 1993, p. 93.
Secton iii: I hate Batyushkov’s arrogance … by Osip Mandelstam, translation by Robert Tracy, p. 105.
Section v: Rather than words comes the thought … by Philip Larkin from “High Windows” in Collected Poems, edited by Anthony Thwaite, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989, p. 129.
Section viii: Who’s singing? … by Jaime Sabines, translation by Philip Levine and Ernesto Trejo, from Tarumba: The Selected Poems of Jaime Sabines, published by Sarabande Books, 2007, p. 103.
Irish artist and storyteller Josie Gray, my companion of a quarter of a century, sustained me with wit and delight in each new painting and story. His passing on December 19, 2017, before he could see my book bearing his painting and my dedication adds another reaching to my efforts here. Our singing to each other by the fireside in my cottage in Ballindoon, Northwest of Ireland, is the undertow of music these poems bear for me.
Many thanks to Alejandro González Iñárritu, great director and friend, for giving me the work of the Mexican poet Jaime Sabines. And for his incomparable friendship which companions me deeply.
Abiding support comes always from enduring friends Dorothy Catlett (her late husband Dick), Alice Derry (her late husband Bruce), Lawrence and Karen Matsuda, Alfredo Arreguin and Susan Lytle, Greg Simon (who midwifed this book), and his wife Helle Rode; Holly Hughes and John Pierce, Jill Ginsburg and Louise Clark, Jeffree Stewart, Tim and Debra Roos, John Hamrick (his late wife, Nita); Ann Elizabeth Fisher and her late husband, Jim Fisher; Howard Chadwick, and Harold Schweizer. The late poet extraordinaire Lucia Perillo graced me with friendship over thirty years. Jane Mead’s friendship and poetry span my life with Ray and Josie. Tony Hoagland’s wit and unequivocal intelligence blazed forth in my University of Arizona classes and grew to irreplaceable dimensions for all poetry, not just American poetry. Joan Swift’s friendship and extraordinary poetry were a mainstay and a privilege, since our classes with Theodore Roethke at the University of Washington in 1963.
Both my American and Irish families have been good to understand and put up with my crucial hyphenations, when the hummingbird-mind of writing stole me away at intervals.
My Irish grandchildren and great grandchildren by way of Josie contribute the long arm of the future—Gemma Gray Fitzgerald, Edward Fitzgerald, Brian Questa, Karen Gray and her children Jade and Lee; Megan and Eithna Boyle with her Abbey; Brendan and Collin Cunningham.
Two Eileens, my neighbors in Ballindoon—the late Eileen McDonagh heard my early poems in her cottage parlor in the early 1970s, and Eileen Frazer gave me well water for tea during the writing of Under Stars next to the Abbey Ballindoon just steps from my own Abbey Cottage. Without their sustaining welcome over more than fifty years, this book would not have been possible.
Friendship with Oliver Wall, a young Irish traditional singer, allows me to reach back into time, when I travelled both the North and Republic of Ireland with musicians and poets. The tradition of singing before the hearth, which so preserves the Irish past, is greatly alive in Oliver himself, and places my cottage wondrously in that past, then carries it over into the present and future.
Irish friends and family, Marese McDonagh and Brian Farrell, have taken me out to Irish music, shared walks around Ballindoon, and invited me to sit before their hearth with Eddie and Sadbdh, their children. Paula Gray drove me to Spiddal, from where my mother’s family, the Morrises, hail.
Dymphna Gray, a friend for over fifty years, without whom I would have no Irish life, graciously continues our London friendship when we worked in the Dress Circles of several theaters. If she had not suggested I meet her sister Eileen McDonagh—no Ballindoon, no quarter of a century of life with their brother Josie!
Jimmy Frazer who ditched his field to save my cottage from flooding more than once, but crucially in spring of 2018.
My two American nieces, Rijl Barber and Laurie Ellison (her daughter Lilly and son A.J. and husband Tom), visited me in Ballindoon August of 2016. In 2003 my nephew, the poet Caleb Barber, accompanied me to Ireland. These visits, along with those of Jay and Raku Rubin, Jan and John Harrington, and Louise Clark with Jill Ginsberg, helped stitch my American life to my Irish sojourns.
My Irish “daughter-in-poetry” as we claim for each other, Medbh McGuckian, visited Abbey Cottage summer of 2015 with her son Liam. The poem “As the Diamond” celebrates that visit and her own matchless poetry.
Ciaran Carson and Deirdre Shannon Carson have been central to many welcomes in Belfast City, a place where many of my inner notions of music and Irish poetry and, indeed, Irish life were formed.
The Dublin poet, Nessa O’Mahony, and her writer-cinematographer husband, Peter Salisbury, have been supportive friends in visits both in Dublin and at my cottage. Peter’s wonderful documentary, At the Ballindoon Café, on Josie Gray, celebrates his painting on josiegray.com.
Liliana Ursu welcomed many of these poems into her Romanian for their publication in September of 2017 in The Gold Dust of the Linden Trees.
Hiromi Hashimoto, my Japanese daughter-by-heart-adoption, has been a responsive and companioning spirit for many years. As friend and translator she is purist gift to my work. Each visit is a pure oasis.
Vicki Lloid, choreographer and friend, from Walla Walla, Washington, has set poems by Raymond Carver and myself in dance arrangements over the past twenty years. Her latest dance uses “Blue Eyelid Lifting.”
Pat Henry and his wife Mary Anne, colleagues from my teaching days at Whitman College, have inspired me with their projects—especially Pat’s We Only Know Men: The Rescue of Jews in France during the Holocaust.
Laurie Lane of Fox Island—who is my driver and boon companion going and coming from airports and ferry crossings while traversing great ongoing conversations about poetry and life—deserves mention for her faith in me, her smiles, her can-do, “I’ve got your back” kindness!
Danielle Vermette, who bent over this manuscript like a mother, cherishing me and the lives of those I carry. Her continued support during and after the death of my companion as I crisscrossed from America to Ireland, then in April sidetracked to Spain to lecture, has been an incalculable gift! Her wit and deep corridors of understanding have kept me going.
Bounteous thanks to Katie Dublinski for the exceedingly close attention she has given each element of this book. She is nothing short of amazing.
Jeff Shotts, steadfast editor for most of my books at Graywolf, has again helped make this book come together in what I believe to be its best form. His vision, good judgment, and attentiveness continue to guide and inspire me.
Alice Derry, my dear friend and neighbor on Deer Park from times with Ray onward, deserves highest mention as my companioning poet, who often shares meals, walks, and her poetry with delight and sweet readings aloud to me. We are each other’s mainstays!
TESS GALLAGHER is the author of ten previous volumes of poetry, including Midnight Lantern: New and Selected Poems, Dear Ghosts, and Moon Crossing Bridge. She is also the author of four collections of short fiction, including The Man from Kinvara: Selected Stories and Barnacle Soup: Stories from the West of Ireland, a collaboration with Iri
sh storyteller Josie Gray. She has also published two works of nonfiction, Soul Barnacles: Ten More Years with Ray and A Concert of Tenses: Essays on Poetry. Her poetry has been translated into Spanish by Eli Tolaretxipi (Amplitud, Ediciones Trea, 2015) and Romanian by Liliana Ursu (Pulberea de auro a tailor, Baroque Books & Arts, 2017). She worked with Alejandro Iñárritu on Birdman, and Robert Altman named her “a real contributor” to his Short Cuts, both films based on stories by her late husband, Raymond Carver. She spends time in a cottage on Lough Arrow in Co. Sligo in the West of Ireland, and also lives and writes in her hometown of Port Angeles, Washington.
The text of Is, Is Not is set in New Baskerville.
Book design by Rachel Holscher.
Composition by Bookmobile Design and
Digital Publisher Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Manufactured by Versa Press on acid-free,
30 percent postconsumer wastepaper.