[New-Poetry] Wise men fish here....

[JforJames at aol.com]

I was in a bookstore in Berkeley last week and one of  the titles
I bought was a book not much fatter than a typical collection  of poems.
(More and more I'm drawn to thin books...perhaps it's a  recurrence
of  childhood ADD.) Anyway, the book was  a very nice tribute to 
Kenneth Rexroth, with lots of quotes from Rexroth's prose and  poems
roughly  divided into thoughts on literature, philosophy and politics...
 
Quoted in _The Relevance of Rexroth_ by Ken Knabb,  published
in 1990 by the Bureau of Public  Secrets....
 
"Whoever wrote the little psalms of the Tao Te Ching believed  that the long 
calm regard of moving water was one of the highest forms of  prayer…Many 
sports are actually forms of contemplative activity. Fishing in  quiet waters is 
especially so. Countless men who would burst out laughing if  presented with a 
popular vulgarization of Zen Buddhism, and who would certainly  find it utterly 
incomprehensible, practice the contemplative life by flowing  water, rod in 
hand, at least for a few days each year. As the great mystics have  said, they 
too know it is the illumination of these few days that gives meaning  to the 
rest of their lives."—Kenneth Rexroth, “Isaak Walton, The Compleat  Angler,” 
Classics Revisted

--
& requoted by one known to spend a few days each year out  on the fishing 
rocks
off Briggs Beach RI.
Finnegan
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