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| Dale Shaw (left) with Ralph Nazareth |
If
artistic expression is at its best when it casts a playful,
reflecting light on the conventional, then Dale Shaw was all about
basking in it, right to the end.
Recalls
Ralph Nazareth, visiting Dale in Fairfield February 5, two days before his passing at 94, “I saw him
appear suddenly next to me. 'Ralph',” he said, 'look, the
ducks are flying backwards!' That was vintage Dale, with eyes to
see the miraculous on the back of his palm!"
Ralph's friend Lynda Sorensen, who worked extensively with Dale, along with Ralph, similarly marveled at how his personal whimsy and wonder translated into his work. "Dale was a living poem, moving through this world on his legs of poetry, his heart of rhythm, his vision of light, and his soul of magic."
First
encountering him over forty years ago, Ralph collaborated with the
former Field & Stream writer on numerous poetry projects
over the years, becoming “a steady and wonderful presence in my
life and in that of (my) little family.”
Upon learning of the sad news, Lynda drew attention to
the closing, elegiac line from “I Am One”, one of Dale's contributions to the 1986 companion anthology to his workshop, On
This Crust of Earth (Yuganta Press), which was co-edited by Ralph and Lynda: “'I
am the one with no shoes and no horse', and so Dale takes his leave;
we live on, holding close our memories of him, as if they are a
precious bowl that we hold high between heaven and earth.”
When
the PoemAlley group meeting at Curley's Diner began sharing their
work via Zoom in 2020, Ralph introduced his friend with a brief
tribute during one reading: “'I am the one with laughter on my
hair',” says Dale Shaw. He had it when I first met him in 1980, and
he still does, now at 93—laughter on his hair, a twinkle in his
eye, a chuckle in his throat, and surprising, often stunning, wisdom
on his lips.”
A
poet and poetry guide par
excellence,
Dale led an impressive group of writers with fellow poet Janet
Krauss, including Doris Lund, author of the national bestseller Eric,
children's book writers Freya Littledale
and
Ruth
Krauss (collaborator with Caldecott Award-winning illustrator Maurice Sendak), author of The
Carrot Seed.
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PoemAlley co-founder
Ann Yarmal |
Ann
Yarmal credits the discipline of Dale's weekly Clay Place writing
workshop with nothing less than giving her the strength to rebuild her life: “He never
let us get away with anything. If we wrote it, we owned it... We had
to examine what we wrote and thought and intended and we had next
week to work for.” In partnership with Catherine Ednie, Ann went on
to found PoemAlley at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in
2000.
From
the 1980s to the mid-1990s Dale's role in the Westport and Norwalk
poetry communities lit up every kind of venue, be it someone's living
room, an art gallery, or a town hall, anticipating today's popular
“performance” poetry scene by many years.
Ralph
alluded to the gift of Dale's continuing impact on peers and creative
aspirants, alike: “His original combination of “gnomic sayings, a
seemingly quirky but original vision and love of all things (oddly)
human, distinguishes him among
most teachers of poetry.”
As
many in PoemAlley will recall, his style of delivery, so laced with
irony and embracing humor, was so much of a piece with his writing
that to read “the following sample of his work is to get only a
faint impression of the real Dale phenomenon,” says Ralph. “I
know you’ll enjoy it all the same!”
Bread
bread
of sun, sun bread rising
wheat
of the dawn, dawn-wheat
bread
of the mother’s belly
sweet
bread belly
bread
of the sea, lifting
upon
the rock, bread rising
crash
of the sea bread, rising
bread
of grass, growing
out
of the bread loam rising
bread
loam risingbread
of child, bread of moon, on
cooking
hill baking
bread
of brain, thought rising
thought
shining, moonbread
in
the brain, hill, cooking
sun
bread and dawn bread, belly bread
and
sea bread, bread of money
in
the oven bank lifting
bread
of the forest in the heat of ages
green
growing, bread of streets
filling,
bread of night, fermenting
bread
of laughter, leavening
bread
of dreams, pocketed with fearbread
of duck loaves and chicken loaves
rooting,
bread of autos parked
in
asphalt pans, bread of graves
bread
of friendship,
best
bread of all
bread
with
raisins
I
Am the One
I
am the one who makes mathematics the dark angel
I
am the one who burrows the earth
I
am the one with laughter on my hair
I
am the one to butter bread with steel
I
am the one wired to the wings of dead birds
I
am the one playing darts in a cave
I
am the one with strings on my nose
I
am the one laughing in the cathedral
I
am the one with money in my eyes
I
am the one with snakes in my hair
I
am the one who has tattooed my whole bodyI
am the one who has scalded my babies
I
am the one peeking through ferns
I
am the one who sees what you are doing
I
am the one who must wonder aloud
I
am the one who asks why you can stand this
I
am the one with the puzzled expression
I
am the one with no shoes and no horse
