“Only the fish who leaps
sees the moon on the water"
The Oracle – Sam Hamill

As writers and poets, reading the works of others is de rigueur and one resource I’ve been using recently is The Literary Birthday Calendar, a list of writers by birth date which I then follow up. Thus today is the birthday of Sam Hamill (1943-2018), an American poet I admit to not having read before and yet he was highly lauded in his lifetime, publishing more than a dozen of his own poems and translating volumes of Chinese and Japanese poetry (hence he has been mentioned on dVerse before under Haibun Monday prompts).

Hamill’s poetry is absent on rhyme and heavy on unadulterated lyricism. He talks his poetry to the page as here in “After Morning Rain” which switches between his personal loci and wider, world issues:

“...It is September, the end of summer.
My backyard maples turning orange
and red and gold. From my high window,
the great mountain looks
painted on the horizon line,
small mountains at its feet, then
headlands and the Salish Sea below.

I can read no more today
about the agonies of this world,
its desperate refugees, the men
of arms and gold whose death tolls
are as numberless as the stars.
I’ve grown weary, impatient,
as I’ve grown old...[more].”

Hamill was a poet both in the world and of the world, being the leading light for ‘Poets Against the War’ and still his poetry does not stray far from what he sees, feels and knows directly, as in this autobiographical poem “Of Cascadia”

“I came here nearly forty years ago, 
broke and half broken, having chosen 
the mud, the dirt road, alder pollen and
a hundred avenues of gray across the sky 
to be my teachers and my muses. 

I chose a temple made of words and made a vow. 
I scratched a life in hardpan. If I cried 
for mercy or cried out in delight, 
it was because I was a man choosing 
carefully his way and his words, growing 
as slowly as the trunks of cedars 
in the sunlit garden. [more]” 

His immersion in classical Chinese and Japanese poetry could only have added to his keen pictorial observations and mastery of the succinct as here in “After Po Chu-i”

“winds toss up white wavecaps
like ten thousand flowers

dark geese against a clear, blue sky
as if written in Chinese”

And today we are going to write ‘The Tableau’ created by Emily Romano in 2008:

Poetry Style:

• 1 or more verses
• 6 lines per verse
• 5 beats/syllables per line

Poetry Rules:

• title should contain the word ‘tableau’
• poem should aim to be pictorial
• no rhyme scheme

Hint: Its optional but you could let your tableau reference the poet Sam Hamill, a poem of his, or his style of poetry.

Useful links:
The Tableau poetry style
‘Gratitude’ – poems by Sam Hamill – google taster

So once you have posted your poem according to the guidelines above, do add it to Mr Linky below then go visiting and reading other contributors as that is half the fun of our dVerse gatherings.
[N.B. Mr Linky closes Saturday 3 p.m. EST]