Before Grenier Made His Major Statement

John Wieners guest edited Floating Bear #33.  Like many of the guest edited issues after Leroi Jones left, it is pretty haphazard and chaotic stuff, but I love these issues.  You never know what is going to turn up.  Issue 33 features an early poem by Robert Grenier around the time his first collection, Dusk Road Games, was published out of Cambridge.

A Race

Picking strawberries,

in the sun,

on opposite sides of a row,

she says, “I’ll race you!”

the bitch, and we did, picked

berries & runners & leaves & straw

laughs mad dashed in our baskets

whirled about hair, and there

was an immense, red, “Mine!”

I cried, my fingers upon it,

her hand upon mine, “No.”r

Sap.  Her soft, black hair.

She won:  the wondrous berry

raised and placed in her mouth.

Robert Grenier

Cambridge 1962

JB