Have you ever shot a charging lion?

Flying into Sun Valley, Idaho

Strange the way
all men eventually become
Hemingway, or worse.

Today I saw no color
other than white.
He would’ve liked that line.

The locals described it
as “socked in”
and they even plow
the sidewalks.

What they lack in ordinary lives, they make up for
in fireplaces. Not a bad trade.

The white bark pine is fluent in raven
and, these days, tired of our politics.

An icicle falls, and another,
God is chewing herself again.
It’s 40 degrees, and still snow is falling.
A place will bury itself when it knows.

This one was established just after the depression and
just before the war. Funny how time,
like the sky after a storm, rids itself of all traces—
until, of course, the rhyme.

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A few weeks ago, I visited Sun Valley, Idaho, a beautiful setting, tucked right up into the Rockies. Not being a skier, I’ve always found ski towns charming but at arm’s length. There is a spirit there that’s hard to pinpoint—as if the people of the world who wouldn’t wake up early for anything are suddenly, and handily, willing to get up early… or something.

Sun Valley is semi-known for being a place that Hemingway lived. After seeing the Hemingway statue (a small head), I spent some time thinking about him and his cultural influence. I realized pretty quickly that I only had a few touchpoints for Hemingway:

• I’d read a few books in high school.

• I knew he went to Africa a fair amount (safaris, hunting, etc.)

• I knew that he had lived in Sun Valley

• and I’d seen Midnight in Paris, where he’s played by Corey Stoll, who says the title of this poem, a line that isn’t the real Hemingway’s but somehow has become definitive in my mind.

This strange confluence of semi-useless information about an otherwise canonically important writer led me to think about the flattening of time and culture and what that does to artists who have such a “vibe” that the perception is louder than their work. Having had the privilege to both go on safari and attend Sun Valley this year, these thoughts led me to think about Hemingway as the blueprint for the modern American tourist. That’s a long way into the origins of the opening of this poem… and the ending, with time and a play on “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

Also inspiring the last line was last night’s storm, the first lightning storm I’ve seen in the northwest. Strange how they don’t happen here very often. The midwesterner in me missed them dearly.

Poems like this one are a testament to curation, a skill that I think will continue to mount in importance in these strange creative days. At its core, similar to this travelogue from a few weeks ago, it’s a list of observations laid parallel to accentuate, augment or alter meaning.

I’m trying to read some literary theory again (with D because she helps me understand it). It’s proving to be thought-provoking

With gratitude and some more pics,

Slopes, Hemingway, Sky

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