Among the finds from our recent trip to Oregon was a lovely collection of Cid Corman poems called Plight (The Elizabeth Press, 1968), discovered at Powell’s Books. Here’s one I’d give my eye teeth to have written:
THE DIASPORA
Uncle Harry—why
should I remember
him—half tinsmith halfrabbi—the leader
of that wandering
always foreign tribeliving in a house
his ancient mother
kept immaculate—rarely visited
by any of us.
He had a voice ofsuch helpless sweetness,
as if whatever
had to be said werebetter sung or kept
for the glory of
God. And gentle. Aperfect nobody,
his family all
seemed feebleminded(the rubble of souls)
and he, free through them,
shone in the clear spacehis wife would fill with
her small largesse, her
smiling hopelessness.
I don’t believe any of the poems here ended up in The Next One Thousand Years: The Selected Poems of Cid Corman, but that fact (if it is a fact; I’m running on memory here) just shows how vast and various Corman’s corpus is. Someday somebody will figure out a way to present it all in some kind of order. Maybe a Cid Corman posthumous blog: one poem a day would keep it running for decades.
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
say hey twicest in one day<BR/><BR/>check this review out… speaking of Cid..<BR/><BR/>http://newmysticsreviews.blogspot.com/<BR/><BR/><BR/>I would say more but I shy away from these blogette public displays..<BR/><BR/>and<BR/> yes I know Ce<BR/><BR/>her press did first two books of Cids trilogy<BR/><BR/><BR/>The Despairs and The Exultations<BR/><BR/>the third never done (that I know of)<
Hi, Ed—<BR/><BR/>Ce Rosenow—why do I think you know her?—is a distant cousin and the co-editor of Cid’s <I>Selected</I> from Longhouse, and she told me about the poetic diaspora that is Cid’s publishing legacy and how hard it made the process of editing that collection. I love the note (in your separate email) about having "a trunk-full" of Cid’s books. Count me envious! The fact is that even his
good "stuff" in plight<BR/><BR/>it was published a cpl years before I connected w Cid<BR/> but wasn’t the imp-it-us to so do…<BR/><BR/>now:<BR/><BR/>to "check out" your site<BR/><BR/><BR/>cheers