After Morning Rain will be released tomorrow (Tuesday, May 15, 2018.) It is the last book by renowned poet, translator, editor and founder of Copper Canyon Press, Sam Hamill and there will be a launch at his house in Anacortes, Washington, starting at 3pm.

Christopher Yohmei Blasdel, the internationally-known Shakuhachi flute master will perform. He collaborated with Sam on many occasions, including November 1, 2014, about which I wrote this post, which includes a link to sound from that evening.

The book itself is quintessential Hamill, with allusions to ancient Chinese and other world poets (Lorca, Sappho, Gwendolyn Brooks), memories of travel in Buenos Aires, Paris and elsewhere and poems about getting old. He’s at his best when there are zen-like moments of inspiration, such as in:

Oracle

Only the fish who leaps
sees the moon on the water.

and

To Margaret, the Librarian

It was a librarian
who first showed me
how to properly

open a book.
The rest

is all my fault.

You can hear him read that poem and one other from the new book here. 

Chris Yohmei Blasdel

There will be saké and Sam stories, flute music, copies of the new book and a gathering of the Friends of Sam. During his recent memorial, also at his house, those who knew Sam best gathered — not in the living room with a view of the bay and Mt. Baker, but around the dining room table where they’d spent many nights with Sam, listening to country music, drinking too much saké and hearing Sam pontificate on the ills of the world (ecocide, &c.) and/or poetry, maybe a story about Denise Levertov, or another one of Sam’s many life friends.

(Photo by Ian Boyden)

But the post-Hamill era has begun and if there was any doubt about that, the display at his memorial of the glass jar of what was left of Sam’s vertebrae after his cremation, and his ashes divided up into small, round, elegant containers for his friends and loved ones to bury in a special place, or make into objects of art, these items made things painfully clear, Sam’s gone and there will never be another poet and human quite like him.

SPLAB is working on plans to create an edition of the Cascadia Poetry Festival in Anacortes that would be dedicated to his memory and if you have interest in making that a reality, please get in touch.