Three Poems by Archie Minasian
Forever Saroyan, LLC, is not merely dedicated to the recognition of William Saroyan, but to the entire Saroyan-Minasian family. The family is one of the most talented families of writers in American history with more than a dozen members of the clan published in reputable journals and magazines over the last hundred years. These writers include journalists, novelists, playwrights, and poets. Foremost among the poets of the family is Saroyan's first cousin and closest friend, Khatchik "Archie" Minasian.
Born in 1913 in Fresno, Archie Minasian would become best known for his poetry, publishing pieces in magazines, and eventually in collections including A World of Questions and Things and The Simple Songs of Khatchik Minasian. Both of these volumes are extremely scarce today. His other writing saw publication in magazines including The Armenian Review and Ararat. His poetry ranges from haiku to longer lyrical works, often employing a simplicity of language that echoes his use of natural imagery.
Archie also worked in watercolor, and occasionally in oils and acrylics. His work is abstract, vibrant, and full of dense color often in undulating forms, expressionistic in a similar way to his poetry. While Saroyan's artistic work focused almost exclusively on line, Minasian was far more interested in form and color, and worked in representational art at times. Saroyan's works often felt more constructed, while Minasian's were more organic. The cousins were complimentary while working on opposing ends of the same spectrum.
In the coming year, Forever Saroyan, LLC, will be publishing an anthology of Saroyan-Minasian family literary works. This will include poetry, fiction, non-fiction, memoir, and theatrical writing from across five generations of this remarkable lineage. Some of the pieces will be appearing for the first time, while others will be re-printed from journals and literary magazines across nine decades.
We are pleased to present three Minasian poems, all of which appeared under the mononym 'Khatchik' in the Autumn 1952 issue of The Armenian Review, along with three of his watercolors from the 1970s.
AWARE OF AUTUMN
Can you hear the autumn rustle in the bare woods?
can you hear the sparrow’s disconsolate note?
I have listened and have heard the breath of the seasons
breathe their comings and farewells
I hear the inaudible complaints from the woods
when autumns’ there
From trees when leaves hang sick and dead,
from birds surveying naked boughs
and a host of other grievances unexplainable
mumbling in the hazy atmosphere
of the dying year.
I know a strange awakening
of the dying year;
what a fevor of delight –
hastening through the yellow woods
with a madness in my blood unequalled of other seasons.
I know the evening wind in the hedges
preparing the pathway of my exit to the fields
where smoke streaks from the piles lean horizontally still;
I know the moon of the late months
and the dim stars;
I know the naked trees against the days dying,
the breath of the damp herbage
rotting in the roadway ruts where leaves gather;
I know the shout of the house wife
from the house yard in the field,
the call of bird at dusk from the lemon trees;
I know the flutter of wings
when the quail soars aloft of the vines
in the dusk’s broad avenue of silence,
the sparrow’s soft stir in the hedges;
I know the smell of the after harvest
that rests above the stripped fields,
suspended like the smoke from the leaf piles,
I know the grape and the melon,
I know the peach and the huge family
of nectareous edibles
blistered in the sun’s heat and suspended
in the heaviness of the year.
I know of autumn’s presence
for I have been eager with expectance
with the recollections of autumns past.
I feel autumn
like the fingers of women on fabric during purchase
invisible to my touch
yet as tangible as the breath of my being.
I lean for autumn before the summer’s gone
eager for its arrival,
and I lean on it through every hour of its glorious stay.
I know autumn like the mother her child
from perception of manhood to age,
the days of watchful delight
to mischievous grieving.
My soul is the meter of this season
Registering is coming and going.
I feel its dampness
when I trounce the hay piles on my rounds at dawn,
on the sleek plum boughs beside the house;
I feel it in my clothes
when I prepare my dress on awakening,
chilled with its presence and ever grateful for the familiarity.
What a fevor of delight
to know, to feel, to breathe, to touch
this quiet season,
the restful season of sadness,
moody season
that I see suspended over me,
leaning across the roof tops to the bare woods
and beyond and beyond,
so gloriously commingled in the atmosphere
of the dying year.
LEAVE THE DEAD
Leave the dead where the red roots are,
shame to lift the bone etching itself
to the contours of the claiming rock,
decay’s inexorable sweet-tooth,
lock the door! lock the door!
Leave the dead where the spirit hovers,
the breath and the red pattern locked eternally
in the semblance of the inanimate crust,
still form perfect.
lock the door! lock the door!
Leave the dead to the green grass spears
after the maggot nausea and the stink,
sucked out of vision, diminishing pattern
quietly returning, returning.
lock the door! lock the door!
Leave the dead where the red roots are.
LIFE BEGINS AT THIRTY-FIVE
I counted on the elemental roadway, ran aground
and since dragged keel against a world of barbs-
grown weary, water-logged and scarred
with dislocated vertebrae and knotted head
that syllables a reason why I'm good as dead.
So plunge me down in cold surrender to the sea,
out in the levels of the flora and the fin,
the rhythmic crashing silence of the heaving continent;
so plunge and let me glide and let me glide
and rub my body in this subterranean tide
where Babel’s tower-like, all dismal with the word,
apart there I as lime ooze bubble and the whale,
suck in an understanding of this drifting world
through senses peeping out against the skin,
swing on a moment of eternity, black-out and then begin.
