Down at the depot

I don’t like to romanticize my subjects. I find no reason to. I believe it to be a kind of bullshitting, although nicer. Which is why when a friend lent me a copy of Down at the Santa Fe Depot: 20 Fresno Poets (Giligia Press, Fresno: 1970), I realized that I found what for me best describes this place. In the bio that precedes his poems, C.G. Hanzlicek says that “[Fresno] is such a dull, dull town …”  

               A Larry Levis poem (“Mountain”) in the anthology seems apt—

Things want to burst here—

like the slash of the roadside

glaring with shred tires and car sickness,

broken glass and the ripped tongue of shoes.

Even the rocks are troubled

               by a deep itching inside them.

               But I might be accused of taking Chuck Hanzlicek out of context. In spite of Fresno being what he says it is, this place has afforded him what many writers always desire more than anything. Fresno, he says, is “such a dull, dull town that I’ve had time to write.” 



Down at the Santa Fe Depot includes poems by James Baloian, B.H. Boston, William Childress, Michael Clifton, Glover Davis, Peter Everwine, C.G. Hanzlicek, Lawson Inada, Gary Johnson, Robert L. Jones, David Kheridian, Philip Levine, Larry Levis, Robert Mezey, Khatchik Minasian, DeWayne Rail, Dennis Saleh, Luis Omar Salinas, Herbert Scott and Roberta Spear