Earth Apples

The Poetry of Edward Abbey

Edward Abbey

• Publisher: RosettaBooks
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780795317545
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Poems about love and landscapes by the author of the classic Desert Solitaire, an "environmentalist, nature writer, novelist and all-around iconoclast" ( The New York Times).
 
While better known for his nature writing and his comic classic The Monkey Wrench Gang, Edward Abbey was also an enthusiastic creator of verse. The New York Times called his memoir Desert Solitaire "deeply poetic"—and now Earth Apples gives us his actual poetry, in Abbey's first and only collection.
 
Whether writing about vast desert landscapes, New York City, or a love of bawdy women, Abbey's verse is eloquent, irreverent, and unapologetically passionate. The poems gathered here, published digitally for the first time, are culled from Abbey's journals and give an insightful and unique glance into the mind of this literary legend.

POEMS AND SHARDS

(1965–1970)

BOOK I

Poems for Judy

[Editor’s Note: Judy Pepper was Abbey’s third wife (of five) and the mother of his eldest daughter (of two), Susie. Judy died of leukemia in 1970, at the age of twenty-seven.]

Love Letter

The land is lovely here,
more beautiful every day.
The golden light of autumn now appears,
not in the sky but in the flowers—
matchweed, rabbitbrush, prince’s plume,
beeplant, mule’s-ears sunflower—
all blazing yellow.
A cold October wind blows from the mountains
although it’s still September here below.
I must climb old Tukuhnikivats once more
before I leave.

The travelers are gone,
I roam the purple evenings alone,
thinking of you, treasuring
our trysting places, stopping each night
at that cove of sandstone
near the ancient juniper where we built a little fire
and last made love…
I kiss it where you lay.

The Gift

(May, 1963—Sunset Crater, Arizona)

There was a dry season in a dry country:
barren clouds above the mountain peaks,
blue delirium over the cliffs,
a hot wind moaning through the trees
of a dying forest.…

We waited, we all waited
for the soft and silver rain
to come and ease our thirst.
We waited, while our hearts
withered in the heat.

The first promise of a new season
came at evening in the form of evening light
(like the light in your eyes, your hair, your smile,
the soft glow on your arms).
The aspens shivered with hope.
The yellow pines stirred their heavy limbs.

The cliffrose opened its flowers
and a strange fierce joy sang through my heart,

in tune with the winds
and the ecstasy of the earth
and the singing of the wild and lonely sky.

Love Poem

(New Year’s Day, 1964—Hoboken)

Under that leaking sky
the color of dead souls
where the snow is always gray
on asphalt and cement
and obscure birds
of dubious origin
seldom sing
or never sing at all
in the naked elms—
we found, somehow, you and I,
through the confusion
and brutal dullness
of the city falling in its sickness—
the shock of something wild
and secret, almost forgotten,
that flows through eyes
and nerves like fire—
yes, you and I,
in the good sweet luck
of our coming
together.

Song from the City

(June, 1965—Room 12, Third Floor North, Klingenstein Center, Mount Sinai Hospital, 99th and Madison, New York City)

There is a hermit thrush that sings
near a mountain spring,
its music like the flutesong
of some wild and lonely thing

under a silent sky. Far above
on the mountain’s crest the snow
is melting now. The waters rush
down toward twilight, through the alpenglow

of evening. Smoke rises slowly
from an old campfire. A bird calls,
still, alone, in the clear dark.
And my heart falls.

Soaring Song

(October, 1967—San Francisco)

Yes—even after my death
you shall not escape me.
Reincarnate, I’ll follow you
in the eyes of every hawk,
every falcon, vulture, eagle
that soars in whatever sky
you walk beneath,
all the earth over,
everywhere.

Yes—and when you die too,
and follow me into that deep
dark burning delirious blue
and become like me—
a kind of bird, a feathered thing—
why, then I’ll seek you out
ten thousand feet above the sea;
and far beyond the world’s rim
we’ll meet and clasp and couple
close to the flaming sun
and scream the joy of our love
into the blaze of death
and burn like angels
down through the stars
past all the suns
to the world’s beginning again.

North Rim

(July, 1970—Grand Canyon, Arizona)

Everything conspires to haunt me here
with memory and thought and sense of you:
the fragrant lupine and the quiet deer,
the hawk that soars against the icy blue
of noon, the silver aspen on whose bark
I carved your name and mine within a heart;
the night you came so softly in the dark;
the day I came to you at last—to part.

My darling girl, is there no end to love
which lives despite all loss, regret and tears?
that flourishes on mountain rock, above
the plain, and grows against the wind and years?
Let it be so. I’ll consecrate my days
to loving love, and you, and all I praise.

Idle Music

Silver music in
an idle tune
dark laughter under
the haunted moon
—oh, the heart’s brave
thunder dies so soon!

BOOK II

Occasions

A Simple-Minded Song of Hatred

(October; 1962—Hoboken)

Stated baldly—and why not?
I hate New York.
Why? Well—why not?
Why the hell not?
This vampire city, sucking the juice
from us poor country boys,
cracking hearts, smashing fingers
and toes, jabbing you in
the fucking eye, chewing the flesh
of a continent, breaking
our bones and lapping the marrow
up with a sibilant sucking sound
from a hundred million
dislocated joints, etc. etc.—
This wart, this chancre, this evil
carcinoma, feeding on the face
of a nation, befouling the earth
for a thousand miles.…
Your ship of asphalt, smoke and iron,
floating forever upriver into the heart,
obstructing the normal channels
of elimination, compounding
the national constipation, polygamous
city of—oh!—naked shame!
Island of madness! Death ship!
Concrescence of sickness, sore point,
needle of lunacy, scientistic
fantasy of electrical gardens,
impossible prison, lockstep bedlam,
oh towering carnival cell blocks
of schmuck-eating cannibals.…
Yes. Eight million pounds
...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Confessions: 1951–1965
• Poems and Shards: 1965–1970
• Confessions: (1972–1989)
• About the Author
• About the Editor