Hemingway went to Paris
and all the counterfeits followed
Henry Miller drove out to Big Sur
and the posers came running after
The Beats advanced on San Francisco
and generations have worked to find the magic again
Now it seems our little Portland
has been touched
A few luminaries have come
and the wave of knockoffs
are arriving with them
Newspapers and magazines
in major cities across
the country are full of it
Portland, Portland, Portland
Her streets are swarming with
the eternally hip
I’d almost prefer the
Shanghai Tunnel days
when this was the most dangerous
port town in the world
When a man worked a job
and came home to do his art
with whatever time
he had left on the clock
or in his gut
This was a time that mattered
the quiet hours that took off
creating fire in the night sky
illuminating the dark city for a moment
if he got lucky
Now it’s little boys
wearing the
right pants
the right hat
the right shirt
the right book
Sitting seven hours
in a swank cafe
dribbling a few delicate lines
onto the page
How do these guys do it
pay for the expensive dinners
and the endless cocktails
four nights a week?
I thought they were artists
Where do they find the time?
Most artistic tendencies
will fade
When the raw force of their twenties subsides
and it becomes harder to fill the notebook
When the first big job comes along
and the lazy afternoons disappear
When the depression of the thirties hits hard
and the pills join the booze in the bloodstream
When the success of the forties and fifties materializes
and a new car looks a lot better than a new poem
Then Portland
can return to a bit of sanity
like Paris
like Big Sur
like San Francisco
before her
And the men and women of this little town
will breathe easy again
knowing that the hipsters
have moved on
to
Omaha
Or
maybe
Billings
_____________________________________________________
Apologies to the late John Lee Hooker, for swiping your title man…
27 responses so far ↓
1 Brian Clark | 7 Jan 2008
Love it.
Guess I’m sticking with Austin. Can’t be seen as a Portland poseur. :)
2 jancartier | 7 Jan 2008
Real hip is so unhip…it is an internal rhythm. All the rest is “show.
Love this one.
3 Robert Bruce | 7 Jan 2008
Brian - You are far too talented and far too old to ever be counted as a poseur ;)
4 Robert Bruce | 7 Jan 2008
Jan - Uh-huh, like JLH holding that guitar… at 82…
5 Andrew Eglinton | 7 Jan 2008
Thanks for this Robert. I’d never heard of the Shanghai Tunnels before. Fascinating.
I remember listening to Gary Snyder speak in Tokyo a few years back, he’s still traveling, still on the road…does the road ever end?
I remember he played the shakuhachi, a haunting sound, soft and penetrating, and then he’d pause and stare before turning to his text.
He was winding round a mountain pass that night, his narrative uncoiled, memories appeared, re-behaved behaviours etc…and I remember thinking that he was a long way from home. A long way from all of them…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEUjTpyBhOo
6 Robert Bruce | 7 Jan 2008
Andrew - Yeah, I’ve always wondered why a serious movie hasn’t been made of the Shanghai story. There’s some amazing characters in there, like the crimper Bunko Kelly. That role’s got Joaquin Phoenix written all over it.
And thanks for the Ginsberg, hadn’t heard his voice in a while.
7 Robert Bruce (The Namibian One) | 7 Jan 2008
Oh this is so hip! Yeah, yeah, yeah I love it.
I recall my cafe’ days. I was so the intelligentia wannabe! False as my girlfriends eyelashes.
You have summed it up Mr Bruce. So well.
The graphic above reminds me that if you have not yet read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, then you must indeed do so. Poste Haste.
It is witty. Very. And for such a serious subject - the wit is absolutley apt.
8 communicatrix | 7 Jan 2008
Bullseye, brother. Although I’m sad to hear PDX has tipped. I’m keeping my next potential recampment location a secret. Dang.
9 Zak | 7 Jan 2008
You should be careful on “Trendy-third” street for a while now. A lot of people enjoy having their delusions intact, and they might not respond well to a cold, hard dose of reality.
10 e | 7 Jan 2008
Don’t you know, Zak? “Cold, hard dose of reality” is the new hip! Trendy-thirdians are going to be all over this one. Nothing you can do about it.
Oh yeah, and stop trying to be so cool by being different from everyone else. That’s so not cool—everyone’s doing that already! Let me tell you what’s cool…
11 James Shaw | 9 Jan 2008
ah yes, the hip people. luckily i’m a slob in comparison and don’t wear the uniform as well as they do.
plus, i’m about as far from city life here as you can get. the posers are different in the countryside.
12 Jecklin | 10 Jan 2008
good one.
we’ve all been posers.
haven’t we?
in something in life.
13 Jecklin | 10 Jan 2008
So I was up on the roof finally getting around to taking down el Christmas lights, thinking about these things, and I think I’m wrong.
there’s a difference between being eager, young and trying, sincere and working hard, even if part of that is modeling others, and being a hipster/poser.
Sure, I look back and shake my head at myself, but even then I could tell the difference between the hipsters and those that are trying.
14 Arthur Klepchukov | 12 Jan 2008
a wave is a wave is a
copy of another wave of
replicants of clones of
something seen before and
forgotten in a blink with a
turn of mind, over
like a leaf, a life
a sheet of paper, blank
prelude to the blizzard
kissing all into oblivion
where everything is white, the
opaque night and up is down and
down is where you wanna
be, because it’s
different
15 Robert Bruce | 13 Jan 2008
Robert - I think I was in that cafe too, I guess we all were, in some sense.
On Dawkins, I don’t buy his shit, but I’ll pick it up and read it. I do like to keep up with my atheist friends…
16 Robert Bruce | 13 Jan 2008
c-trix - Oh, come on! You guys still need to make it up here… it’s like the lies we tell:
“It rains ALL the time”
Or, the now-famous Oregon motto:
“Thanks for visiting. Don’t stay.”
They don’t apply to YOU.
17 Robert Bruce | 13 Jan 2008
Zak - I can take them. I carry my steel at all times…
18 Robert Bruce | 13 Jan 2008
e- You don’t know it, but you are the coolest.
19 Robert Bruce | 13 Jan 2008
James - I sometimes long for the rural life. In fact, if some things go right in the near future, I’ll be driving a 1976 Chevy half-ton through the streets of Portland.
I’m a poser too.
20 Robert Bruce | 13 Jan 2008
Jeck - I can see you up there on the roof thinking. Classic Jecklin, with a brand-new kid in the bassinet.
I agree, big difference between earnestness and the con.
21 Robert Bruce | 13 Jan 2008
Arthur - I think “up” is actually different now. Cool.
22 Arthur Klepchukov | 14 Jan 2008
Really? I must have missed that memo :)
23 Robert Bruce | 15 Jan 2008
I most certainly did ;)
24 Darshan Chande | 20 Jan 2008
GREAT POEM. VERY BEAUTIFUL, DEEP, touching. LOVED READING :)
25 LeRoy K. May | 22 Feb 2008
Fisrt time around here Robert, great poem. I particularly like your analysis of the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s.
Didn’t know I was suppose to start popping pills with the Boréale dorée (beer) :)
Will be a steady reader from now on. And yes, even when you get the big job (if you do), poetry is still about work. If you want to be a poet, don’t think *about* being one, *be* one.
There are 24 hours in a day, and sleeping is not always relevant :)
26 LeRoy K. May | 22 Feb 2008
Oh and I didn’t know about those Shanghai tunnels. Fascinating. Very Lynchian (as in David Lynch).
I knew about the underground in Seattle, but didn’t know Portlanders had a similar story.
27 Robert Bruce | 22 Feb 2008
LeRoy - Glad to have you, though it looks like I’ll need to pick up a Berlitz language course to read your stuff ;)
Thanks man.
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