
Download poetry chapbook (pdf): Hotsprings + Stubbed Toe, by Dave Olson, 2004
Download poetry chapbook (pdf): Hotsprings + Stubbed Toe, by Dave Olson, 2004
After arriving in Japan for the first time, i began exploring Japanese poetic forms – realizing that the didactic 5-7-5 structure *wasn’t the point* / Then combining with impressionist colours seen on a recent ramble in Europe, Read it a series combining, in a fashion, Japanese forms with European colours and “new-world” themes.
Then with brother Bob’s upcoming wedding, compiled a bunch of these creations into a little book and read (with translation) at his wedding (mostly to blank stares of bewilderment.
A few years later in Guam, did a proper layout and production run (maybe 50?) and mailed the chapbooks out around the world. Used hemp/cereal straw paper from China (ordered from Paul Stanford in Oregon) which was rough going through copy machines of the day –especially my complicated double-sided / zigzag layout with topstitch binding – of course sewn with hemp twine.
I don’t have one of the “finished ones” in my archive, but do have the original layout production master / will eventually dig out > in the meantime, here is the cover (not hemp paper) + Pay special attention to my proto-Creative-Commons non-copyright on the erstwhile colophon and the pseudonym (do you know the origins?)
While I have few delusions about my poetry chapbooks being “popular” this one especially seems to have disappeared into the wind with nary a sound (despite it being one of the projects of which i am most proud).
Note: a few of these poems were used/re-mixed in a collection from 2004 (assembled in Olympia) called “Hotspring and Stubbed Toe” which was distributed digitally and will be available shortly in this archive as part of #daveo50 series.
Bamboo dish
pointing skyward listening
perhaps
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from Hotsprings and Stubbed Toe, Occasional haiku… 1992-2004
Download Hot Springs and Stubbed Toe (.pdf)
10 years later
trees taller
concrete the same
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from Hotsprings and Stubbed Toe, Occasional haiku… 1992-2004
Download Hot Springs and Stubbed Toe (.pdf)
Mostly so i can answer Drs when they ask if significant exposure to heavy metals. Not more than others except for Geneva steel labourers. Never worked in an aluminum smelter assuming aluminum is smelted and changing pronunciation in my head, proudly on the fly.
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from Towns and Trains, Sudden poems 2016-2018
If only this mountain
two fingers taller
I’d climb it to the sky
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from Hotsprings and Stubbed Toe, Occasional haiku… 1992-2004
Download Hot Springs and Stubbed Toe (.pdf)
Sanambin road goes to the airport
Occasionally closed for a motorcade of minor relations of Royals Reviewing, visiting Buddhas, adorned with black-clad citizens, black ribbons to indicate respect and match endless bunting and banners of visage — with camera, saxophone, with monkey cheek, with ribbons, bespectacled always
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from Towns and Trains, Sudden poems 2016-2018
Found you like a seashell
picked up
before cutting my toe
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from Hotsprings and Stubbed Toe, Occasional haiku… 1992-2004
Download Hot Springs and Stubbed Toe (.pdf)
The obvious anonymity allows one to wander, unhindered by conversations about homes, jobs and places to go
Nowhere to be but here
Markets of fruits, meats with flies and disposable clothes
Hospitals, shops of pots and pans and endless choices for scooter repairs, stationary by train station Sidewalk stands of noodles, meat on sticks which unify the world, tuk-tuks, rickshaw bikes who don’t want to go far, bank machines and carbon sheet receipts, taxis never seem to know any one of my three destinations: inn, hospital, clinic
Repeat
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from Towns and Trains, Sudden poems 2016-2018
Coral green
your eyes
follow me to sleep
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from Hotsprings and Stubbed Toe, Occasional haiku… 1992-2004
Download Hot Springs and Stubbed Toe (.pdf)