by Catherine Marenghi

This article is part of a continuing series on poets and poetry with roots in San Miguel.

When American poet Sam Hamill (1943-2018) lost his wife Gray Foster, a painter, in 2011, he had lost the love of his life. They had been married for 17 years. He entered a period of deep and very public grieving, often expressing his sorrow in poetry.

Hamill was a prolific poet, translator, and political activist who, in 1972, co-founded Copper Canyon Press, publisher of extraordinary poetry including works by Nobel laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners. Hamill served as editor of Copper Canyon for more than three decades.

One of the many poems of bereavement Hamill wrote:

Poet Judyth Hill, who had been teaching poetry workshops from her Simple Choice Farm just outside San Miguel since 2009, noticed Hamill's palpable suffering. She decided to invite him to San Miguel in 2011. "I thought it would do him good — the weather, the beauty of San Miguel, and most of all the poetry community here. I thought he would find healing here."

Hamill accepted the invitation, and Hill handled all the arrangements, from the airport shuttle to lodging. "Hamill became a beloved teacher at my farm, and we taught workshops together. He was so generous with his time," Hill recalled.

Poet Ken Morrow, formerly a participant in Judyth Hill's poetry workshops, agreed to house Hamill in his San Miguel home, first in November and December 2011 and again the following year. Morrow recalled doing "a lot of eating, drinking and talking" with Hamill and grew to admire him for his social consciousness. "What was most revealing about Sam to me was his dogged devotion to finding the right way to be human — best stated by Sam himself in so many of his poems," Morrow recalled.

Hamill's sojourn in San Miguel resulted in at least three poems inspired by the city, all written in his characteristically elegant free verse. They were published in Border Songs (Word Palace Press, 2012). The full text of one of these poems is below.

Any SanMiguelense will recognize the picture Hamill paints of San Miguel — the Hotel Posada de las Monjas, formerly the Convent of the Immaculate Conception. is surely the "fine hotel that was a nunnery in its day." The church bells that chime over "el jardin" are surely from the iconic Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel, the parish church of San Miguel.

He brought to San Miguel "a load of grief" he thought "no human heart could bear," comparing that burden to the load of firewood carried by the burro. But if, a heaven awaits him, instead of "angels, saints and bells," Hamill endearingly prefers the company of burros.

The Making of a Poet

Born in 1943, Hamill was placed in foster care while still an infant. He was adopted at the age of three and grew up on a poultry farm near Salt Lake City, Utah. Hamill's adoptive parents had been abusive. His early years were troubled, leading to petty crimes, drug abuse, and jail time. As a teenager, he ran away from home, making it to San Francisco, where he began using heroin.

There he had the good fortune to meet the poet Kenneth Rexroth outside the legendary City Lights bookstore, and the two became friends. Rexroth fed Hamill, helped him give up drugs, and taught him about poetry — kindnesses that Hamill credited with changing his life. .

He attended Los Angeles Valley College and the University of California (UCSB), Santa Barbara, where his teachers included Kenneth Rexroth. He joined the Marine Corps before he turned 20 and was stationed in Okinawa, Japan, where he began studying Zen Buddhism; his commitment to the Zen practice would later inform his poetry. During this period Hamill also encountered Albert Camus's essays on pacifism, and he became a pacifist — which did not endear him to his commanding officers. He was honorably discharged in 1965.

As a UCSB student, Hamill had won a $500 award for producing the best university literary magazine in the country. With that money he left college and, with Jim Gautney, William O'Daly and Tree Swenson, co-founded the all-poetry Copper Canyon Press in Denver. Two years later, the publisher joined with the nonprofit arts organization Centrum in Port Townsend, Washington. Hamill was editor-printer for the press from 1972 until 2004.

A young Tree Swenson and Sam Hamill, founders of Copper Canyon
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"Poetry gave me a reason for being, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that. My ethics, my sense of morality, my work ethic, my sense of compassion for suffering humanity, all of that comes directly out of the practice of poetry," Hamill stated.

He acquired an early interest in the Beat poets, especially Allen Ginsberg. Other major influences included Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Denise Levertov. He and Levertov shared a passion for political resistance and corresponded with each other for many years. In his book of essays In Her Company, Hamill wrote this remembrance of Levertov:

"When, in 1994, I presented Denise Levertov with a copy of my then new translations of classical Chinese poetry, Midnight Flute (Shambhala Publications), she called a day or so later to say, 'Thanks,' and to admonish me: 'You spend too much time working on translations,' she said. 'You need to concentrate on writing more poetry.' By then we'd known each other casually for twenty years, we'd taught in a few workshops together, and since her move to Seattle, had visited regularly. She knew how important the Chinese and Japanese poets were to me. She nevertheless scolded me with a laugh: 'I want to see more poems!'

"We shared some 'affinities of content,' to borrow the title of her 1991 essay on poetry of the Pacific Northwest, as well as convictions about the role of the 'engaged' artist," Hamill continued. "And we both felt passionately about the necessity of serving poetry — in my case including work as editor-printer as well as poet-translator-essayist. As 'engaged poets,' we shared a common struggle to resist bending one's art to the purpose of mere propagandizing while acknowledging one's politics within the living arts of poetry."

Hamill's commitment to moral issues came into play when First Lady Laura Bush invited him to a 2003 White House symposium on poetry. He famously declined, in protest of the impending war in Iraq, and he instead launched Poets Against the War, an online anthology that collected over 20,000 poems of protest and spawned an international movement. Hamill edited a collection of poems from the website, including poems by John Balaban, Ursula K. Le Guin and Adrienne Rich, in the anthology Poets Against the War (2003).

"It was almost as if they were waiting breathlessly for someone to step forward and say, 'Enough is enough,'" Hamill told The Progressive magazine. "We became a chorus."

Hamill's anti-war activity left him with less time for Copper Canyon, and he stepped down as editor at the end of 2004 over creative differences with the board. In 2005, The American Poetry Review praised his "diligent and imaginative guidance," which it said had helped make Copper Canyon "one of the most important publishers of contemporary American poetry."

Responding to critics who doubted the place of politics in poetry, Hamill noted in a 2006 interview, "You can't write about character and the human condition and be apolitical — that's not the kind of world we've ever lived in."

Hamill's Legacy

Hamill died on April 14, 2018, at his home in Anacortes, Washington. He was 74. The cause was complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Ken Morrow, who had hosted Hamill on his two visits to San Miguel, remembered Hamill's passion for social justice. He thought it was best expressed in Hamill's poem "Eyes Wide Open," which was published in Rattle magazine shortly after his death. The poem asks the poignant question, "How much grief is a life?" It is excerpted here:

Hamill's published works include 17 poetry books as well as exquisite and celebrated translations from ancient Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Latin, and Estonian. His translations included Crossing the Yellow River: 300 Poems from the Chinese (2000), Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching (Shambhala Publications, 2005) and Matsuo Bashō's Narrow Road to the Interior (Shambhala Publications, 1998).

His poetry books include Translations (2005), Measured by Stone (2007), and Habitation: Collected Poems (2014). Hamill's own poetry has been translated into more than a dozen languages. His last collection, After Morning Rain, was published posthumously by Tiger Bark Press in 2018.

From Matsuo Bashō
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His career also included twelve years as editor at the American Poetry Review and thirty years with the Port Townsend Writer's Conference in Washington (ten as its director). Hamill's many awards and honors included fellowships from Guggenheim, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Fund, and Woodrow Wilson Foundation; The Stanley Lindberg Lifetime Achievement Editor's Award from the Rainier Writing Workshop, Pacific Lutheran University; Lifetime Achievement Award in Poetry from the Washington Poets Association; two Washington State Governor's Writers Day Awards; the First Amendment Award from PEN USA; a US Japan Friendship Commission Fellowship; and the Decoración de la Universidad de Carabobo in Venezuela.

Hamill also published four books of literary prose, including A Poet's Work: The Other Side of Poetry (Broken Moon Press, 1990). He edited several volumes of poetry as well, including The Gift of Tongues: Twenty-five Years of Poetry from Copper Canyon Press (Copper Canyon Press, 1996).

In another San Miguel poem from Border Songs, Hamill wrote again of his grief for his wife, but his poem ends with a note of hope — "to love again":

About Hamill, poet Hayden Carruth wrote, "No one — I mean no one — has done the momentous work of presenting poetry better than Sam Hamill. His editing and publishing, his criticism and translations, his own very strong and beautiful poems have been making a difference in American culture for many years."

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Catherine Marenghi is a local poet, novelist and memoirist who has been active in the San Miguel literary scene for more than a decade. She has published three poetry books, a memoir, and a historic novel. A native of Massachusetts, she has made San Miguel her permanent home.

www.marenghi.com

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