Friday, November 25, 2011

from "The Weather Within," Ted Enslin (1925-2011)

Theodore Enslin (March 25, 1925-November 23, 2011)

photo by Alison Enslin




A place swept smooth a place

where sand and wind have agreed

to keep no record each time

a mark appears wind or water

tide or storm will erase it.

The mind is like that for all its memories

it has agreed to none of ours

individual conditions what it keeps

lies deep an animism

collected from all of us

in all conditions our sands swept smooth.



Poet Ted Enslin passed away on November 23. He was interviewed at length in 2006 about the connection between music and his poetic form by Robert Bertholf in an online edition of Conjunctions. First publication of The Weather Within (1985) was a cooperative effort between Landlocked Press, Woodland Pattern Arts Center, and Membrane Press (Light and Dust). Walter Tisdale produced an exquisitely printed limited edition letterpress, making a set of prints on hard stock from which Karl Young printed an offset trade edition. The poems of The Weather Within are presented here in their entirety.


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