Oregon Experience: CES Wood
The Artist: Poetry and Paintings
 Poet in the Desert book cover. Book title painted by CES Wood. Image courtesy of Lewis and Clark Special Collections College |
About Poet in the Desert
Wood was a frequent visitor at Bill Hanley’s P Ranch in the Blitzen Valley of eastern Oregon. In this excerpt from a letter, C.E.S. Wood describes the origins of the poem:
"Here in the willow banks of the Blitzen River flowing out of the Steens Mountain I used to camp with my sons—sometimes my daughters…in the summer of 1912 "The Poet in the Desert" was written, sometimes on the river bank, where the shallows of the river warbled, sometimes out in the lonely silence of the desert among the sagebrush, sometimes in the shadows of a great rock overlooking the oasis. I was full of my life-long meditations that this is a world distorted by man and founded on injustice. And with little thought of art I expressed my soul." - p. 224, Wood Works, The Life and Writings of Charles Erskine Scott Wood, edited by Edwin Bingham and Tim Barnes, Oregon State University Press, 1997.
New York Times review of Poet in the Desert
Many surprises await the reader of "The Poet in the Desert.," for it is strong meat, the work of one of those rebel spirits who cannot free their souls without smashing most of the conventions. - New York Times, June 1915
Poet in the Desert
XLIX I have lived with my brown brothers Of the wilderness And found them a mystery. The cunning of the swift-starting trout A mystery, also; The wisdom of voyaging birds; The gophers’ winter-sleep; The knowledge of the bees. All a mystery. I have lain out with the brown men And know they are favored. Nature whispered to them their secrets, But passed me by. They instructed my civilization. Stately and full of wisdom Was Hin-mah-too-yah-Laht-Kt: Thunder rolling in the mountains; Joseph, Chief of the Nez Perces; Who, in five battles from the Clearwater To Bear Paw Mountains, Made bloody protest against Perfidy and Power…. L Just over there where yon purple peak, Like a great amethyst, gems the brow of the Desert, I sprawled flat in the bunch-grass, a target For the just bullets of my brown brothers betrayed. I was a soldier, and at command, Had gone out to kill and be killed. This was not majestic. The little gray gophers Sat erect and laughed at me. In that silent hour before the dawn, When Nature drowsed for a moment, We swept like fire over the smoke-browned teepees; Their conical tops peering above the willows. We frightened the air with the crackle of rifles, Women’s shrieks, children’s screams, Shrill yells of savages; Curses of Christians. The rifles chuckled continually. A poor people who asked nothing but freedom, Butchered in the dark….
Portland's Feast of Roses, Pacific Monthly, 1908
CES Wood was an early supporter of Portland's Rose Festival. The following is an excerpt from an article he wrote for Pacific Monthly in 1908.
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Shall China have her Feast of Lantern and Japan her Feast of Cherry Blossoms and all Europe its Feast of Fools (a festival no place really need be without), and shall not Portland have her Feast of Roses?
Blessed by the gods, Portland sits like a young queen awaiting tribute, the whole world lies at her feet. Golden seas of grain are at her back which last year furnished nearly sixty million bushels of wheat and over twenty million bushels additional, barley and oats; and the country not yet touched. Orchards which produce apples, cherries and pears unrivaled in the world. Forests and mines, and the latest discoveries in Eastern Oregon indicate gas and petroleum. She sits truly crowned with roses. Her summers are Eden and her winters are only the fresh warm weeping of the skies; no storms; no freezing; no biter winds. Health waits upon her, and she is foremost in the world in that blessing without which all else is naught.
These are some of the thoughts which lead her lovers to place upon Portland's brow the queenly wreath of roses.
- Courtesy of Reading Portland: The City in Prose
- Resources
- Read more about the life and legacy of CES Wood.
© 2009 Oregon Public Broadcasting.