A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. So says Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu. But poet and journalist James P. Lenfestey’s journey of more than 6,000 miles began with a book.
Lenfestey, known as Jim to friends, lives in Minneapolis now, where he writes for the Star Tribune, but in the 1970s, he was “director” of the alternative high school at Woolman Hill in Deerfield. Speaking by phone earlier in the week, Lenfesty said the title belongs in quotes because the school was run by consensus.
“It was hard to ‘direct’ anything,” he said with a laugh.
On a day in 1974 that turned out to be life-changing, Lenfestey walked into World Eye Bookshop in its former location on Federal Street in Greenfield, where then-proprietor Charlie Miller handed him a copy of “Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by Poet Han-Shan, translated by Burton Watson.”
“It really felt like he understood something about me,” Fenestey said of Miller.
Soon enough it would feel like Han-Shan understood something about him, too.
Han-Shan means Cold Mountain — the reclusive poet took the name of the remote mountain he retired to at about age 30, after an unsatisfying career as a civil servant. Details are sketchy: some accounts describe him as a 7th-century poet; others place him in the late 8th century. He is purported to have lived to be 120 years old and, rather than dying, to have disappeared into a crack in the cliff wall. A high-ranking official, Lü Ch’iu-Yin, is credited with gathering Han-Shan’s poems — which were inscribed on trees, stones and village walls — for publication.
On a car ride from Woolman Hill to a staff retreat in Maryland, Fenestey read aloud from the book Miller had given him. He and the others were so moved by the poems, “We were laughing with tears in our eyes,” Fenestey said.
One poem described “a bunch of poor scholars” who wear their brains out scribbling poems no one will read.
“We could inscribe our poems on biscuits/ And the homeless dogs wouldn’t deign to nibble,” Watson’s translation of Han-shan reads.
Fenestey laughed out loud.
“Soon enough I swallowed Han-shan’s other short poems like aspirin,” Fenestey writes in the introduction to his memoir, “Seeking the Cave: A Pilgrimage to Cold Mountain.” Fenestey will be reading from the book, newly out from Milkweed Editions, on Friday, April 29, 5 p.m. at World Eye Bookshop.
Poems as salve
Fenestey writes that Han-Shan’s poems acted as salve to wounds he didn’t know he had. He began to write back, scribbling spontaneous poems in the margins. Over the years, a desire grew in him to make a pilgrimage to Cold Mountain.
In the fall of 2006, at the age of 62, some 30 years after he’d first discovered Han-Shan’s poems, Fenestey climbed the hundred stone stairs to the cave, carrying a copy of a hand letterset, hand-sewn book of 21 of his responses to Han-Shan’s poems.
The journey was highly personal, Fenestey said. He’d had no intention of writing about it; it was just something he felt called to do. At the same time, he knew it would be an amazing journey, so he invited longtime friend and documentary filmmaker Mike Hazard along. Also on the trip were a couple he’d met at a reading in Minneapolis and guide Bill Porter, known as a translator and interpreter of Chinese texts under the pen name Red Pine. Hazard produced a short film, “Cold Mountain,” that features footage from the landscape as well as clips of Fenestey, Watson, Red Pine and poet Gary Snyder reading Han-Shan’s poems.
“Seeking the Cave” is a spiritual travelogue that takes the reader through the “noisy, neon-lit frame of modern China — what we quickly dubbed the ‘Ka-ching Dynasty’ for its obsession with the gleam and rattle of money” to the quiet slopes of Cold Mountain. Along the way, stops at monasteries, teahouses and shrines offer glimpses into a foreign world, as well as insight into Fenestey’s inward journey. Borrowing from a Japanese form called “haibun,” Fenestey blends prose with poems written by himself, Han-Shan and others.
Fenestey says he doesn’t remember writing the poem reprinted here, “Poetry and Birdsong.” He found it in his notebook after he got home. He likes the way the poem puts people into relationship with birdsong, without asking that they understand it.
“They do wake us up,” Fenestey says of birds. “And waking up is a Buddhist concept.”
Another pilgrimage
The trip back to the Greenfield area is another kind of pilgrimage, Fenestey says. In addition to reading at the World Eye Bookshop where his journey began, he’ll be reuniting with students and other acquaintances from his days at Woolman Hill. Fenestey says he hopes to reconnect with or hear news of Charlie Miller’s widow, Lynn, with whom he has lost touch.
For more information about the reading, contact: World Eye Bookshop, 156 Main St., Greenfield; 413-772-2186; www.worldeyebookshop.com. Books will available for sale and signing.
Visit Fenestey’s website:
www.coyotepoet.com
Watch Hazard’s film: www.cultureunplugged.com/play/2457/Cold-Mountain
Trish Crapo is a writer and photographer who lives in Leyden. Crapo is seeking published poets and writers for her column. She’s interested in books written by Franklin County poets and writers and/or published by a Franklin County press. She can be reached at: tcrapo@me.com