I own four books of poetry by Harold Dull. One of the books, Venus and the Moon Poem, which offers no publishing information on its 8.5x11" stapled format at all, also turns out to be incorporated – even the cover art is the same – into The Star Year, published by White Rabbit in 1967. Another White Rabbit book – actually the one that first turned me on to Dull’s work – is the 1963 volume, The Wood Climb Down Out Of. The fourth volume I have is The Door, published by Open Space in 1964. Two books of poetry I don’t have lie at the far ends of Dull’s literary career, a White Rabbit book from 1958, called The Bird Poems & a 1975 volume entitled A Selection of Poems for Jack Spicer on the Tenth Anniversary of His Death. I don’t know when Night of the Perseids was published.

Even you had never heard of Harold Dull before, anyone with passing knowledge of these presses, Open Space & White Rabbit, will recognize them as imprints closely tied in to the Spicer Circle and the San Francisco Renaissance, so-called. And while the Spicer circle in particular has earned its reputation over the decades as a gay Mecca for poetry in the New American period of the 1950s & ‘60s, Spicer always admitted a few women (Joanne Kyger, Fran Herndon, Dora Dull) as well as a few straight men (Harold Dull, Larry Fagin, James Herndon) in the mix. But just as James Herndon turned outside of poetry to establish himself as a leading activist among California school teachers, Dull went on to become a successful therapist, eventually developing a form of aqua therapy that combines shiatsu with water: Watsu. Watsu has become a big deal in recent years – there are now over 1,000 trained & certified Watsu practitioners worldwide – & Dull’s books, tape & teaching on this are clearly what people will associate with his name several decades hence.

In 1977, tho, Tom Mandel & I coaxed a reluctant Dull into giving a reading at the Grand Piano. He was tall, quiet & shy, not yet the Watsu guru. He wasn’t’ really writing any more, he told us. But he gave a fine reading that left me with a pang at the idea of another good poet putting down his pen. Frankly, I thought that was his last work as poet when I sat down to write this ote, but happily a little googling proves me wrong. Right click here to download a PDF file that amounts to a “new and selected” poems, a 54-page book that includes maybe two-dozen poems from the Spicer years, and an even larger gathering of new work.

In The Star Year, you could feel Spicer’s presence in the work. Here are three poems from late in the book, only the first of which is reproduced in the ebook where the title has been fleshed out into “For George Stanley”:

for George

I wish
every year
in June when the moon is full,
these, or their successors, would come
with wine and food and sleeping bags
and make love in the garden
and dance in the living room
and sleep all over the house,
so many cocoons or great birds roosting in a tree,
and you and I
could sit up and drink and talk
of how they do,
or do not, change and we change,
of how,
in our poems for them,
we are immortal,
though everything changes,
and, before dawn,
before they awake
and turn to each other for a last embrace
or crawl out of their sleeping bags to make coffee,
you and I could walk through the garden,
the moon’s light fading.



§

In –
terrupted
I think that death will be as sudden
a dragonfly exploding in the brain
”Do you think they saw us?” she asks.
”It doesn’t matter.” I say. The met –
al dust of its body’s sheen
falling through the thin air.
The unclimbable cypress’s branches droop
as if overburdened with fruit, not
cluster of small dry cones that look like bells
that ring when the wind pulls


for Jack

It wasn’t
until I was halfway down the hill
I saw the bees
I was so worried I’d step on
were monarchs
their new wings
the same color as those we found so many of last winter
we couldn’t walk without stepping on them
(and I think I’ve read someplace
they fly over a thousand miles north
– the same orange butterfly I chased when I was a child?
and back to mate and die)
and they seemed to still move,
but I think it was only a wind
up through the needles and twigs they had dropped on
for now, in memory,
that whole hillside seems to move as to one rhythm,
and now, these

These poems, published two years after Spicer’s death in 1965, have an optimism one never finds anywhere in Spicer, even contemplating the demise of butterflies. Yet the devices are largely similar, a good demonstration of poetry’s formal neutrality – any device can turned to almost any purpose if done so thoughtfully.

Yet if you look at a poem that is just four years older, written at a point when Spicer is still alive (and Dull has been part of the scene now for some six years), there is hardly a hint of it, save perhaps for the anti-lushness of the lines and the use of a deliberate misspelling. This is The Wood Climb Down Out Of, as published in Dull’s ebook:

The wood climb down out of
(and almost dark) footing
nearly lost leafmeal and cones
leaves underfoot turned
(almost lost) the

The climb down
to the sea
across
not straight down
but across
the up-from-the-sea-
tree-tilled-ravines
(and almost dark)

The climb down
to the sea
not straight down
but across
the up-from-the-sea
tree-tilled-ravines
(and almost dark)

It was the behind from the sea

Following the trail
b
Following the trail
the road ending
we began climbing
w

Following the trail
the road ending
we began climbing
up the hills
behind the sea
open country
through woods

open country
out of the woods

Over and over
open country
behind the

Steep country
up and down
these hills behind the sea
trees come up the ravines between
and bareness over the top of each

Steep
the hills behind the sea
trees up ravines between
bareness over each

Steep
the hills behind the sea
trees up the ravines between
bareness over their tops
we walk together
nothing separates up
and the sea lies flat below
 
Steep
the hills behind the sea
trees up the ravines between

as if seven years
we have lived
like this
tried
nothing but
to cross
and climb down
to the sea

as if seven years
we cross
and climb down
to the sea
across the ravines

we cross
and climb down
to
across ravines
my heart
grows trees so straight
they cut the sky
into a thousand pieces
we climb
not up
but down
and stumble
clubsily (fearful) almost clumsily
almost dark
and my footing
is not so sure

and stumble
clumbsily
for it is almost dark
the footing
not so sure

a thousand pieces
and

bareness over
the sea flat below
we come to

we come down to
not straight
but across
(so steep
it could not be otherwise)
the ravines
(and almost dark)
filled with trees
almost invisible
the sea
is a thousand miles
below us

a thousand miles
below
half open
and half filled

half open
half filled
with trees so straight
they cut its surface
into a thousand lines

they cut
a thousand lines
seven years
we have lived together

as if seven years
we have lived
like this

to try
nothing but
to cross
and climb down
to the sea

my footing
is not so sure
and the trail
 
the trail
though down now
disappears up
into the tree's straight bare branches

disappears up
into trees
the hills between
stand out ou

stand out over the sea

stand out over sea
so bare
I can see all of the sea

I can see all of the sea
darkly

I can see all of the sea
and there is no way down

and no way down
but across
these hills
and ravines

the ravines
each darker with trees
than the one before
the sea
is no light
but the bottom
what I mean is
to get down to it

the sea
is no light
but the bottom
to get down
we must cross
these open hills
and these ravines

these ravines
not straight down
as trees grow straight up
from the soil
but across
the heart
does not know how
to change its direction
we love
like some trail
that is hardly passable
but still holds
beneath it
where it is dropping to
in the only way possible

the heart
does not know how
to change its direction
the trail
is hardly passable
but still
it is the only way possible

the heart
does not know how
to change direction
is hardly passable
but still
the only way possible
trees fall
the sea flattens
trees fall
the sea rises
the hills smooth out
and move closer
to the sea the trees

rising up what is left
between them the ravines
we must cross in the almost dark
scrambling from left
to get down not right
but the only way
tired but the only way
the only way
to get down to the sea
over these steep hills
is across

trees fall
the sea rises
the hills smooth out
and move closer
to the sea the trees
rise up
between
cross
the only way
down to the sea
is across

and down that way
the trail ends
not in the sea
but in the dark
they are not in the same
though they are as close together
and as often
as bare hills
and tree filled ravines
we cross

the trail's end
is not the dark
but the sea
they are not the same

though they seem so now

This is not the text as I first read it in the mid-1960s – mostly passages have been cut away that cast the poem as an elegy for a seven-year relationship come to an end – but it’s fascinating to read it now, knowing the importance of water to Dull’s life in the decades to follow. It’s also fascinating to hear the use of reiteration here, an echo of Robert Duncan that, in these deliberately plain lines – I’ve never been sure why Dull so apparently prefers them this way – presages a kind of writing we will be hearing from John Giorno (and, via Maria Sabina, even in the work of Anne Waldman) not so far into the future.

Reading Dull’s new work is interesting as well. There is a lengthy daybook account of a trip to Italy in 2003 to teach Watsu. The line remains consciously plain, but there’s no sign of Spicer anywhere to be found:

Everything was a mistake.
This train does not stop.
The stops just slip up alongside at the same speed
and if you step out of the station
the sidewalk slips alongside the street at the same speed.
The city does not stop for anyone.
I would love to hold you in my arms.

Unless you hear that final line – an allusion to the process of giving a massage in water – as reminiscent of the quick shift of a Spicerian last line: This is a poem about the death of John F. Kennedy.

It’s good to see new work after all these years & find that the hand hasn’t lost its sense of sureness as it writes. Dull spends much of each year at Harbin Hot Springs at the north end of California’s wine country. It would be great for him to connect up with the current generation of poets. And I’ll wager that there are more than a few poets who could use Watsu.