Crysta Casey (1952-2008)

GREEN CAMMIE, Crysta Casey. Floating Bridge Press, 909 NE 43rd St, #205, Seattle, WA 98105, 2010. 47 pages, $12 paper, www.floatingbridgepress.org.

Many years ago now, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Washington, I enrolled in an evening class to study the writing of poetry with Professor Nelson Bentley. It was not the usual sort of class. Beginning, intermediate, and advanced poets were all thrown in together, along with a few graduate students. And there were some former students who wandered in and out. Crysta Casey was among this latter group. An unforgettable human being. Poetry, she said, was saving her. Reading her book today took me back.

The Sane and the Insane 

My thoughts are more exciting
when I’m not on meds.
On medication, I think
of vacuuming the carpet
to get rid of any bugs
Bonnie may have left
when she curled into a fetal position
on the rug last Sunday.
At three a.m., she lit
three cigarettes at the same time,
put them in the ashtray
and watched them burn,
said, “Kaw, globble,”
so I called 911. The medics were nice
when they took her to the hospital.
She put on her boots
without socks, did not lace them–
I had to give a poetry reading
the next night. “Don’t rock,”
I reminded myself, “that’s a dead giveaway.”
I think it was Robert Graves who wrote
in The White Goddess, “The difference
between the insane and poets,
is that poets write it down.”