Judy Halebsky: Spring and a Thousand Years [Unabridged]

If one knew nothing of the Tang Dynasty poets or of Sei Shonagon’s A Pillow Book, or literary history or pop culture or a dozen other fields of study that inform Judy Halebsky’s Spring and a Thousand Years, one could still relish these poems for their fresh language, delightful juxtapositions, vivid imagery, and humor. In this regard, Halebsky’s grasp has at least attained her reach described midway through the book in her poem “Days Idle, Cumulative.”

(1) I want all new language, I want the words hosed off and scrubbed 

clean. I want to come back tomorrow and see them gleaming and

single and unattached, willing to hook up with any word that has at

least two vowels. 

Later in the same poem she further illuminates her aesthetic sensibilities with an enactment of her own similes and metaphors:

              (3) Don’t confuse me with a haiku poet. I am firmly here in free verse. 

              I want it big like a cherry Slurpee, a boob job in an anime film, the

              biceps of a trainer at Gold’s gym. Bursting, pushing on prose, veering 

toward a movie script with popcorn and hair-salon updos and all the 

hours until dawn.

But armed with even a cursory knowledge of Li Bai and Du Fu or Shonagon, Spring and a Thousand Years—a master class in observing the collision of poetic galaxies centuries apart—creates completely new constellations among the more familiar stars of Ilya Kaminsky, Robert Hass, and Charles Wright, e.g. And Halebsky’s expert commentary not only points out what we’re seeing, but as commentator-poet-teacher-referee holds these worlds together with her own linguistic gravity. Listen to her subtle yet dominant presence in “The Sky of Wu,” a poem set in a hotel room the night before a poetry workshop. 

            It’s 4 a.m., the bar is closed, and Starbucks isn’t open yet, so they keep

            talking, Li Bai at least. Du Fu is shuffling a deck of cards that is missing

            the ace of spades. 

            Play anyway, Li Bai says

            Du Fu hesitates

            Li Bai wants to meet Robert Hass, but I don’t know his room number.

            And he’s got a poem due tomorrow. How about hot chocolate? No dice.

            Li Bai wants the party to start

                        (I have not been displaced by the war, discomforted maybe)

            Du Fu is smoking an e-cigarette. Li Bai is laughing at him. They want to

            meet Charles Wright but I don’t have his number.

            The night is already over. There’s nothing that’s going to start, except

            the nature walk and then workshop.

            We don’t write the poems together, I explain, we just talk about them

            Li Bai rolls his eyes

            America, he says, it’s worse than I thought

And yet it is the collaborative effort that Halebsky brings to the page that adds the thousand-year depth to her bright-as-spring poems. Her knowledge of Tang dynasty and 10^th century Japanese poetry—particularly The Pillow Book—infuses her poems as they transport thousand-year-old plus poets into the 21^stcentury. And she makes the most of the resulting juxtapositions, notable in “Between Jenner and a Pay Phone,” by adapting Tang dynasty formal poetic elements and customs of Japanese Court Society to 21^st century free verse prosody.

Between Jenner and a Pay Phone

on the longest day of June

dusk finally falls

I cut my hair flat across my forehead

Li Bai, the shadows tonight are from street lights

I’m in the middle of a parking lot

wondering where the locals drink beer

from now on:

         

                        only practical clothing

                        only blank pages

The tone, as in The Pillow Book, is light-hearted, almost gossipy. The style is appropriately rambling (as is the assemblage of poems within sections and the arrangement of sections in the book). But instead of recounting events of the day, as was the custom of the time in the Imperial Court in Kyoto where Shonagon lived, Halebsky flips the switch in the second line and concerns herself with what’s happening tonight, a much more American gesture. The ensuing lines hearken back to Li Bai in ways deeper than the mere mention of his name. 

Those familiar with Li’s work will remember his poem, “Drinking Alone by Moonlight” containing the following lines, which inform Halebsky’s “shadows” formed “from street lights,” and the reference to finding a place to drink beer:

            A cup of wine, under the flowering trees;

            I drink alone, for no friend is near.

            Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,

            For he, with my shadow, will make three men.

Li Bai, of course, was part of the “Eight Immortals” who drank wine to an unusual degree and wrote about it. And Li Bai, in particular, wrote much about shadows formed by the moon. Halebsky not only brings this information to bear thematically, but also changes the wine to beer, and the moon to streetlights in order to thoroughly Americanize the ancient poet’s influence. It is noteworthy that, like Li Bai, Halebsky escapes formal meter and rhyme, but still retains his type of musicality (“wine” / “alone” / “moon” / “men”) with lines like “Li Bai, the shadows tonight are from street lights.”

The final three lines of “Between Jenner and a Pay Phone,” as do additional lines and, no doubt, as do most of the poems in this collection, combine an homage to both Chinese Tang Dynasty and Japanese court poets. Hyperbolic statements, such as “from now on: / only practical clothing / only blank pages” are typical from poets of the “Golden Age of Chinese Poetry.” Additionally, these two indented lines are a short, personal list, a preview of several lists in poems throughout the collection, echoing the 164 lists found in The Pillow Book. And their content may be seen as references to the clothing requirements of the court and the minimalistic style (blank pages) of ink brush arts such as painting and calligraphy.

Five sections in all, the first has poems like “Dear Li Bai” a prose poem answering an imagined letter from the poet who in his lifetime traveled extensively, now visiting Melbourne and the Galapagos, with lines like “…I’m glad you liked / Melbourne and I’m sure the Galapagos were amazing. I’ll look up / the pictures on the Internet (that’s a new kind of library, more on / that later)…, and “Lai Bai Considers Online Dating,” closing the section out with “About Last Night,” hearkening back to the Japanese Heian court practice of writing a poem to the beloved the morning after. 

Section two is entitled “Glossary.” The first entry, “Ambient,” let’s us know this is more than merely a tool for understanding unfamiliar or technical words, and unfamiliar customs or times. Here are examples of Halebsky’s ability to “hose off and scrub clean” language, making them “gleaming and single and unattached, willing to hook up” with words she chooses to significant points about her poetic, political, and personal lineage, the state of affairs in America and the world. 

            

            Ambient—What you hear right now, wherever you are—this requires 

            switching from hearing to listening and waiting a minute for your

            attention to adjust like your eyes in the dark.

            American—Permeable to water, sunlight, radio waves, river runoff,

            mass media, mania, conspiracy theories, thunder storms.

            Fossil Fuels—Coal, sulfur, seamen, rigs, wells, oil, comfort, ease,

            quality of life.

            Geographic Distribution—Range, wingspan, shade cast by tree

            branches, how to count whales, bird habitat, air temperature, ice floe,

            polar, panda, grizzly.

                        Note: This is a record of what is living now. In the future, it will

                        serve as a historical record.

            January—This year I will trace my lineage, a female line, starting with

            Sei Shonagon and moving on to Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Adrienne 

            Rich (search extant texts for years lost in between). I will remember

            that these pages have been passed down to me, some at great risk, that

            value is assigned, that my mother has asked me to be brave.

            Z.cookie—Writing the cookie with a Z before it.

                        Note: Li Bai: It’s too much. This whole freeway art murmur,

                        airplane, avocado toast thing. Du Fu: I can’t sleep one more night

                        with central heat.

            Zule, Zuppa, Zuz, Zythum—I knew it would be a hard ending.

                        Note: No more vegan donuts, no more craft beer. Now, I will

                        become the girl poet packing tuna fish sandwich in wax paper

                        and waving from the Amtrak platform.

            Li Bai: I’m used to traveling alone.

            Me: I know.

Section three poems weave back and forth between lyrical narratives about life like “River Merchant in Blue" with gorgeous lines like “blue plum—a kind of apricot / in the damp heat of this summer night, wherever you are // blue for pale / blue for livid and leaden and bruised // know that I chose you as my spouse / you were never my king or my lord”—and poems that continue to articulate, albeit sometimes in a slant fashion, the poet’s task. In “Ikebana Instructions” the poet says “what shall I say? // the work of my life has been to arrange flowers / cut at the stem." And the delightfully brief, one-line poem with instructions:

Poem

            

to live as bright as wild as close to the fire as possible

            [repeat for 14 lines]

“Field Exam” comprises the entirety of section four. Poets must ostensibly pass this test in order to become a licensed poet with the “State Board of Poets.” The five-page piece is humorous and sometimes frighteningly similar to reality in the context of Li Bai’s comment “America…it’s worse than I thought.” Section A is titled “Self-Identification” and asks test takers to select all that apply under categories such as “Hoarder,” “Drifter,” “Romantic,” “Deal Maker,” and “Failure.” In Section B, “The Elevated Heart,” Halebsky imagines reactions to the exam from ancient and contemporary poets, including Li Bai (“…furious that this is even on the exam”), Du Fu (“…suggests that applicants write an ode to loneliness every day and then we average the results”), Grace Paley (…wants us to give a license to anyone who applies), and others. Halebsky inserts an editorial note prior to additional responses from Grace Paley and Donald Hall. 

            [I would go on but I kind of hate poems about poems] [since this isn’t 

            a poem, it’s an exam, and I hope you pass, I hope I pass, I hope we can

            all be healed, and my father, for a moment, from the haze, would nod,

            would glow, because we are trying to write a poem which will mend

            the wreckage he lived through]

At the close of Section C: Craft, the following statement appears:

            Applicants who score 80 or above receive certification. Remember, we

            are writing with the living and the dead (see rubric). With my father

            and Grace Paley and all the workers who believed things would get

            better but didn’t see it in their lifetimes. What is hidden floats, what is

            buried rises.

Lists, ramblings, letters, and a prose poem entitled “Li Bai Interviews for a Job at Green Gulch Zen Center” rounds out the final section. It is my favorite for its advice to Li on how to get the job—something I have personal experience with as a retail executive for decades. Here is the first paragraph in section I. with the accompanying footnote.

            No ragged beard. No wild gray hair. No ink-stained pants. In that

            Macy’s suit you don’t look anything like the poet I know. It’s just that

            we need to find some way to trade part of ourselves. (I’m trying

            to not believe this) (unless you have a rich uncle or can claim a family

            connection to the Kardashians, which might have worked for you in

            Changgan but at Market and Geary, it’s doubtful.)*

            *Instructions on how to dress for a job interview, for a position that might

ruin your life, are included, because I have tried this and failed 1(to get a job) 2(to escape ruin). 

Spring and a Thousand Years will expand one’s understand and appreciation for what poetry can do and how far it can range even with only the investment of one afternoon for a quick read. But given the time to go down all of the rabbit holes that Halebsky provides, one can tunnel back and forth between 20^thand 21^stcentury American poetry and its 7th-10th century Asian roots, making connections both clear-cut and nuanced. In “Appendix: Lost Sections of the Pillow Book*” Halebsky even points the way with seven more pages of addendums and notes.

          [these sections were found at the Bureau of Song by an appropriately

          depressed graduate student looking for her stash of pretzel sticks and

          chocolate-covered almonds**]

Judy Halebsky is the author of the poetry collections Tree Line and Sky = Empty. 
Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, she spent five years studying in Japan on fellowships from the Japanese Ministry of Culture. She now lives in Oakland and teaches English and Creative Writing at Dominican University of California. More about Judy and her work can be found HERE.

Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged), (The University of Arkansas Press, 2020) selected by Billy Collins as a finalist for the 2020 Miller Williams Poetry Prize is available for purchase directly from the press HERE, as well as from several bookstores and online sources.