Cahuenga Press has just published red snow fence by Harry E. Northup (Cahuenga is a cooperative press and red snow fence is the fifteenth book they have published since their inception in 1989). The collection includes poems written from October 2002 to September 2005.
As I read Northup’s poetry, I would have felt like a voyeur had it not been apparent that Northup’s generous heart invited me into his private conversations about poetry, film, and love, the most universal and therefore most intimate subjects. This is the delicate balance of red snow fence, that inclined structure that keeps the cold and harsh realities of the world at bay to allow us to live in a protected place. Artists like Harry E. Northup, talented and generous with his gift, embody that structure. A constant theme in the book is his search for an open and listening community of souls, willing to engage in shared exchange as in past periphery:
communion requires depth,
mystery, respect, one listening to one
other
As I read and listened to his daily life with his wife (the poet Holly Prado) and his cats and his work, I couldn’t help but cry for the simplicity, for the clarity of love, passion and compassion that he embodies: just a man who writes in the middle of the night with a cat on his lap and his wife sleeping in the next room as in the night:
the night has always been a friend
& I’m with cats, my wife sleeps
& I write, not only
The book also recounts his trials and triumphs as a working actor in Hollywood, and in that world of material rewards, Northup reminds us that while some find modest success and most turn sour, something larger is at stake in the reason of the heart:
& in 2 or 3 there is care and comfort
and in the majority a desire to work, a carefree
for films and directors that I appreciate& in Hemmingway it was the theme
to continue life with grace and dignity
although the physical damage &
there has been damage to the psyche& spiritual pain has an interior
indefinable reason to hope
And that’s why I read and why I write
While the first two-thirds of the book are based on everyday physical realities, the last third of red snow fence takes us on a journey of nocturnal visions that seem to me part memory, part premonition. I was struck by the beauty of these abstract images and in awe of an artist who could move from the basic reality of the everyday world to the surreal terror, hope and spiritual flight of these poems. In particular, I responded to recluse of lightperhaps because the visions reminded me of my North Dakota roots, so similar to earlier images of Northup’s native Nebraska:
isolation, green valley and then a
rolling disc, giant wheels turn
golden wheat, grain elevator, moon
complete and golden too, an eye on a
dark ship, pushing in the dark
For me, it felt like a passing memory but also a spiritual awakening. The truth is buried deep in our subconscious and waiting for us beyond our imagination at the same time. The simple truth is that red snow fence by Harry E. Northup has deeply affected this reader and writer of poetry and will resonate with me for a long time.
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