Appreciation of poetry involves a felt change of consciousness.

-- Owen Barfield, Poetic Diction  

The Papago of southern Arizona said that a man who was humble and brave and persistent, would some night hear a song in his dream, brought by the birds that fly in from the Gulf of California; or a hawk, a cloud, the wind, or the red rain spider; and that song would be his--would add to his knowledge and strength.

-- Gary Snyder, The Old Ways  

Poems in Anthologies 

Sample Poems

Pines…

© Chris Hoffman 2006

Pines bristle with it.

Stones endure with it.

I come to the foothills meadow

to sit with it.

For here is another sight

that so fits the tumblers of the heart

that it unlocks the binding bands.

Enormous slabs of rock lean skyward

trimmed with Douglas fir and ponderosa

just behind the trees that rim this meadow,

a tufted pelt of grasses—tawny, russet, green.

And over all of this and through the blue sky

the sun pours out its syrups of light.

We know that each of us

is but a story that tells itself

within the play of eros and hunger.

But at certain moments we call good or true or beautiful,

as on a morning in a foothills meadow,

the story stops.  The way reveals itself.

And, more intimate than breathing,

we fall inward toward the arms of grace.

Go to the Holy Desert

© Chris Hoffman 2005

Go to the holy desert
at night and look at the sky,
where the stars extend beyond forgetting
in the emptying blackness deep and high.
They shine as clear as seeds of music
in the stillness of a prayer;
so many, they’ll turn till numbering’s numb
round the tail of the northern bear.
They accept everything that ever has been,
including your life.  Lying there,
your body resolves to leather and bone,
and then to a grain of sand
on a shore between two mysterious oceans
where outward and inward expand.
Then secret beings crossing out and in
may brush you with their wings
and stir you to resonance with each moment
like a harp’s quivering strings.
Go to the holy desert
at night and look at the sky,
where the twin cliffs above you open like eyelids
and you are the pupil of the infinite eye.

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Sustainable Souvenirs

[From a radio script by Chris Hoffman, originally broadcast 6/14/99 on

public radio's ECO-Essays produced by Peter Johnson (ecoessays@aol.com)]

            Have you ever enjoyed a beautiful place in nature and wished you could take that whole wonderful feeling back home with you?  The poets of ancient China knew how to do just that, long before souvenir stands, cameras, or video recorders had ever been invented.

After nature inspired one of these poets to write, the poet would always speak the poem back to the nature that inspired it.  This was a way of giving thanks.  It was also a way of keeping the wonderful experience alive in their hearts.

            You can try this yourself.  Take a poem--by someone like Li Po, Gary Snyder, or Pattiann Rogers--and say it to your favorite place.  Or better yet, use your own words of thanks, as you would say them to a dear friend.  After you have said your words to nature, you'll find them changed.  There will be pine resin stuck to the nouns, the smell of wood smoke in the silences.  Forever after when you say those words there will come back to you the murmur of the wind, the crow's raucous cry, or the thrash of surf on a deserted seashore.  Your words will have become low-cost, low-impact, sustainable souvenirs.

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Copyright © 2009  Chris Hoffman