Poetry
John Briscoe
John Briscoe’s Crush:
Wine and California
from the Padres to
Paris was one of four
finalists for the 2016
California Historical
Society Book Award,
and, dedicated to Kevin Starr, will
be published by the University of
Nevada Press this fall. His essay “The
Judgment of Paris,” lavishly praised
by California Poet Laureate Dana
Gioia, ran in Catamaran Literary
Reader last year and is a nominee
for both the Pushcart and Best
American Essay awards. Briscoe’s
The Lost Poems of Cangjie, published
by Risk Press and just released, are
translations of recently discovered
poems of the Chinese historical
figure Cangjie, storied inventor of
the Chinese system of writing during
the reign of The Yellow Emperor,
Huangdi, in the 27th century BCE,
approximately 4,700 years ago.
Briscoe has published several other
books, on history, law, and of
poetry. His Tadich Grill, a history of
San Francisco’s culinary scene (Ten
Speed Press, 2002), remains a popular
history of a colorful and historically
remarkable aspect of San Francisco.
His poetry and legal, literary and
historical essays have been widely
published in literary and scholarly
journals. He has practiced law in
San Francisco for 45 years, tried and
argued cases in the United States
Supreme Court and the Permanent
Court of International Arbitration in
The Hague, was Special Adviser to the
United Nations for the environmental
aftermath of the Gulf War, and is a
Distinguished Fellow at the University
of California, Berkeley.
The Crown of
Literature is Poetry
—W. Somerset Maugham
Deaf Adder, Deaf Heaven
Venomousness
hisses in Jewess,
in Negress but it can’t be in
the innate sounds of those words. It must lie
in the sneering, sibilating way
this woman chooses to
enunciate them.
Then again mimsy, slithy toves
and every child’s favorite borogoves
made us giggle long before Humpty Dumpty
told Alice what they meant.
For that matter if borborygmus
were redefined to mean Armegeddon
we’d still titter at its silliness.
My grandmother, who raised me, suckled me
she said, would have forbidden me
to dwell a day in this place, Squaw Valley, squaw
the most mocking caw of Crow, the bird,
a word crueler than digger, the unutterable,
the for-this-you-fight-Son D word.
I will take you, she would tell me,
to Place Where They Burnt the Digger.
It isn’t far.
My eyes flit up one granite cliff, alight
on a saddle on its east, drop down its draw
to a high spring which falls and feeds Squaw Creek
feet from me, where the August grasses part
fast as a bobcat’s prowl and flatten
silent; a snake I cannot see must be
sidewinding by the bank down the valley
to the Truckee. A raven croaks. A crow
squawks retort. I grope, dig hard
but cannot hear
her hurt.
[Place Where They Burnt the Digger Amador County. Place
Where They Burnt the Digger is a Miwok Indian ceremonial
area located on Old Stockton Road east east of Highway 88
near lone, California. See nps.gov. See Psalms 58:4-5; Sh., Son-
net 29]
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MARIN ARTS & CULTURE 31