
Three Years on the Nowhere Road: The Awakening of a Poetic Sensibility
Volume I: Autumn '72 to Spring '73
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BJ Omanson's road to becoming a poet began about
as far from the classroom as can be imagined. He had
dropped out of high school five years earlier and had
no intention of returning. He was 22, living alone in a
primitive shelter above the Calawah River in the wilds
of the Olympic Peninsula and working in a little shake
mill outside of Forks, Washington. His journey began
one winter morning in a stand of old-growth Sitka spruce
when a fellow mill-worker and ex-Sgt of Marines named
Mitch handed him a sheaf of folded pages. Smudged, worn
and tearing at the creases, they were poems that
Mitch had copied out by hand and carried in his jacket
pocket for months until finally deciding to pass them
along. They were Gary Snyder's translations of the
Cold Mountain Poems, written by a half-mad old hermit
named Hanshan who lived in a cave overlooking the
Yellow River in 8th-century China. For the rest of the
winter, ensconced in his shelter with a small fire for
warmth, seven miles from the nearest neighbor,
Omanson read and re-read the ancient poems, along
with other books of literature, ethnology and mysticism,
and wrote his first cycle of poems. ---- Volume I of
Three Years on the Nowhere Road chronicles that first
winter on the Calawah, his hazardous work in the mills
and on the steep, logged-over slopes, his encounters
with a Sasquatch and other backwoods eccentrics, and
his first steps on the arduous, solitary road
to becoming a poet.
Details
- Publication Date
- Jul 5, 2021
- Language
- English
- Category
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Copyright
- All Rights Reserved - Standard Copyright License
- Contributors
- By (author): BJ Omanson
Specifications
- Pages
- 108
- Binding
- Paperback
- Interior Color
- Color
- Dimensions
- Pocket Book (4.25 x 6.875 in / 108 x 175 mm)