We lost a great American poet on Monday: RIP, Hayden Carruth

[cali]

Hayden Carruth was a great poet and activist. He won the national book award in 1996 for his book of poems "Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey". He won numerous other awards for his work. He's surprisingly little known. Here's the title poem from his award winning book.

Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey
by Hayden Carruth


Scrambled eggs and whiskey
in the false-dawn light. Chicago,
a sweet town, bleak, God knows,
but sweet. Sometimes. And
weren't we fine tonight?
When Hank set up that limping
treble roll behind me
my horn just growled and I
thought my heart would burst.
And Brad M. pressing with the
soft stick and Joe-Anne
singing low. Here we are now
in the White Tower, leaning
on one another, too tired
to go home. But don't say a word,
don't tell a soul, they wouldn't
understand, they couldn't, never
in a million years, how fine,
how magnificent we were
in that old club tonight.

[dweller]

1. Summer's Early End At Hudson Bay

The old sandpiper contemplates his age
As one only can, with ignorant unease,
And the scene imparts a mood of sad alarm.
A steady wind bends the thin grass,
And the sunlight, too, streams thinly, distantly;
The first ice gleams on the water,
Embracing the rocks and reeds with brittle strength.
The flock is nervous, like clockwork toys, the shapes
Mill and bob, a confusion of white and gray,
A hundred dances of anxiety
And fluttering movements begin and flare
And subside. The old one, too, turns on his rock,
Round and round with ceremonial steps,
His eyes wary for the others; and this old land
That had been so alien once
And then so familiar is alien again--
A point of coldness.
The imperfect young are fledged or dead,
Scarcely remembered now.
Upon the evidences of the scene
Mount tremors, warnings, subtle arguments
That urge his shivering nerves and awkward wings--
The other land is an impulse he must keep.
Into the uncertain air, on painful wings,
The aging migrant labors,
Dull to the image of the other land
And to the storms that prowl
The longs seas of Brazil.

(1955)

RIP to a fellow alumni of UNC, a link to his Poets.org page follows with links to other poems.
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/232


dp