In 1911, Ishi emerged from an isolated hunting and gathering lifestyle in the foothills of northern California. Called the “last wild American Indian,” he was taken to San Francisco, where he lived until his death in 1916.
Songs from a Yahi Bow, released by Pleasure Boat Studio, is the first published book of poems on Ishi. This book consists of work by three poets, including Pulitzer Prize-winner Yusef Komunyakaa and NEA Literature fellowship recipient Mike O’Connor, written across four decades, and coincides with the 100th anniversary of Ishi’s emergence from the wilderness. This colllection includes an introduction to recent discoveries about Ishi, as well as Thomas Merton’s 1968 essay, “Ishi: A Meditation.”
See a sample from Scott Ezell’s poem “Ishi” on the POETRY page.
SONGS FROM A YAHI BOW is available now from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and may be ordered by your local independent bookstore.
Petroglyph Americana is a book-length poem about the landscapes, communities, and history of the American west, with resonances and reflections from Asian landscapes and cultures. Petroglyph Americana is published by Empty Bowl Press, an independent press in Port Townsend, Washington, that has published poetry, essays, and translation with bioregional, anti-militarization, and Pacific Rim themes since the 1970s.
See a sample from Petroglyph Americana and other poems by Scott Ezell on the POETRY page.
Petroglyph Americana is available now from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and may be ordered by your local independent bookstore.
OCEAN HIEROGLYPHICS is a 58-page book of poems, paintings, and photos that express the color and texture of the ocean. You can order the book with a credit card using the Paypal button below.
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***OCEAN HIEROGLYPHICS is temporarily unavailable for order with Paypal. Please use the “contact” button on the right-side menu to query if there are copies available for shipping to your area.***
You can now download the first half of the new album “Where Will You Go When Your Heart is Free”–10 cover songs by Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Cat Power, Billy Bragg and others. Download these songs HERE FOR FREE!
The second half of the album, 10 original songs, will be ready at the end of June–pre-order it HERE!
We’ve all gone about 10,000 miles too far in every direction. Train, boat, helicopter, jetski, horse, somersault, bellyflop, whatever. Steel engines, coal smoke, landscapes passing through a streaked pane of glass. Spilled coffee and peanut shells strewn across the floor like abandoned hopes. Don’t worry about it. Buy your ticket. Step from the cement platform to the moving car. Read your pulp detective novel, watch the wheat silos drift by, stare down into the stained stainless steel toilet bowl, watch your efflux disgorge and spill onto the ties between the rusted tracks–
“The Death of the World Undone” is a 33-minute tribal-industrial composition that combines guitar feedback, beercan percussion, bamboo flute, djembe, and cricket songs–recorded on a single reel of 1-inch analog tape at Hinoki Studio in Dulan, Taiwan, in the mountains above the Pacific coast.
Scott Ezell’s poem-painting cycle “Migration” was posted in 8 installments in Seattle’s Center on Contemporary Arts (CoCA) website. This work is based on an art residency in New Caledonia in September 2007. Click here to see the last and latest post, or here to start from the beginning.
A selection from “Migration” part 1:
islands rise
from Pacific blue
like amphibians,
low and long,
with teeth raised into clouds
and tails that moult
from green to blue,
lipped with shimmers of sand
and wreathed in tropic flowers….
Welcome to scottezell.org. Pull up a chair and stay a while…
*Click the play icon to listen to Blue Bird Gray Day (lyrics below)
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Blue Bird Gray Day
Re-evolution
“Re-evolution” is about crawling out of the sea a second time, trying to get it right. This piece was composed on the Pacific coast of Taiwan in 2003, but recently revised and recorded in Seattle.
“Blue Bird on a Gray Day” was written in Beijing after several months on the road in Vietnam and Western China. The words go like this:
It’s been a hard day to make it through
I never thought I’d feel so far away from you
A thousand city skylines striding thru my brain
And I’m tired
Sometimes I forget how much I love you
I don’t know why…it’s some kind of misguided continental drift of my mind….taking me over….making me lose myself, I lose myself….
I’ve been walking all day these city streets
Everything is changed, everything is gray
I saw a blue bird fall down from the sky
He walked up the street, stepped into a bar, ordered up a drink
He drank a double shot of whiskey, smoked a cigarette….
Played a lovesong on the jukebox, told a couple of dirty jokes…
All the barflies laughed
Then he stepped back out into the gray
Spat in the gutter, spread his wings, rose up into the air
And the wind blew him away
I wish I could follow, follow
I wish I could follow him
I’d fly back to you, you
I’d fly back to you
Thank you for visiting scottezell.org. Here you can enjoy poems, essays, music, paintings, and photos by Scott Ezell, and keep up to date with new publications, projects, and performances. We will continue to expand the site, and to post new work—if you’d like to join the mailing list to receive updates on new developments, please write to info@scottezell.org.
