The sun beamed gloriously as I motored into Astoria. That, in and of itself, was a revelation. Astoria is many ways favorable: historic, quaint, picturesque, fortuitously sited at the mouth of the mighty Columbia—but sunny it is not. Gray and silver, alloyed with an understated mousy ashen hue, serve as the team colors. It rains. A lot. But when the big yellow star shatters through the gloom and illuminates Astoria, the town looks like it could take on the world. It sparkles, glimmers, and glistens. Brand new? No, not even close, Astoria always looks old. But in the warm glow it conjures a telescopic, misplaced nostalgia. It emits an uncanny incandescent hominess.
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?
After reading a 2009 New York Times article about The Fisher Poets Gathering in Astoria I had desired to attend. Every February, poets from across the globe—but primarily from Alaska, Washington, and Oregon—come together at the Graveyard of the Pacific to slurp chocolatey stouts, dine on smoked salmon, revel in companionship, and read their poems about fishing, about baiting hooks, about purse seining, about busting your ass at top speed when the all-to-brief season opens, about salty dogs and true grits, about greenhorns, about hanging on for the ride while 20-footers batter the bough, about toughness, about loss, about a life on the sea.
It was the last days of the before times—late February 2020. The burgeoning pandemic was in the news, but not yet all consuming. A bottle of hand sanitizer rattled about in my car’s cup holder. Naked noses and lips greeted the brisk winter air.
My first stop was the Columbia River Maritime Museum. As museums tend to be, this one is inhabited by artifacts, story boards, replicas, informational videos, and various bric-a-brac. But truth be told, the museum is well curated, compelling, and far from boring. Granted, a lack of interest in maritime history would dampen the experience, but being the target audience, I thoroughly enjoyed my visit. The revolving Fresnel lens and the video detailing the duties of the Columbia River Bar Pilots were personal favorites.
The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.
I parked the car downtown and wandered. Eventually, and inevitably, I came upon a small bookstore and ducked inside just as it began sprinkling. Oh, thank heavens for the musty aroma of bookstores on dampened days! The uneven, creaking floorboards hidden by ancient stained carpet that should have been replaced a decade ago. The engulfing quietude broken only by muffled coughs, the turning of crisp pages, and the incessant ticking of a never-revealed wall clock. From the shelves I plucked The Overstory by Richard Powers. I had heard talk of the novel and had listened to a portion of an Oregon Public Broadcasting radio segment discussing the aspects of the forest wars the author had gotten right and wrong. It was thick, but as I perused the pages the language and syntax did not appear too dense or abstruse. I brought my selection to the counter and paid the clerk. Elegiac tome in hand, the afternoon was closing, and it was time to prepare for the main event.
The Sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.
My hotel rested beneath the Astoria-Megler Bridge, providing a weekend home base moored to a prominent landmark—a handy marker on a dark, multiple-pint night. Unburdened of my load, I alighted from the hotel on foot toward downtown. I found my way to the Fort George Brewery, claimed a stool at the bar, and settled in. February is Stout Month at Fort George, a precursor to the Brewery’s Festival of the Dark Arts where specialty dark beer is paired with equally dark music, art, culture, and celebration. I tabbed a barrel-aged pint of Matryoshka, Fort George’s much-lauded Russian Imperial Stout. Motor oil in appearance, the beer is imbued with hints of vanilla, cinnamon, roasted malt, bourbon, molasses, and chocolate. At around 12% alcohol, whether I paired my two pints with fish and chips or a haughty cheeseburger of some form I cannot recall, but whatever I ate it surely tasted wonderful and was thoroughly satisfying.
And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner’s hollo!
After dinner I employed my evening at the Liberty Theatre listening to a broad variety of poets. The following night I heard the bards speak as I split my time between the Astoria Brewing Company and the Lovell Show Room at Fort George. Some had fished the Pacific since childhood. Some were female commercial anglers with their singular experiences in the industry. Some had known loss and hard times. Other verses laughed now at what were hardly humorous past circumstances in which the poets tumbled limbs akimbo out of their bunks amid treacherous seas. And still others simply poked fun at the newbies and the uninitiated. The current that ran through all of the ballads was an unabashed appreciation of the lifestyle, the profession’s inherent camaraderie, and a reverence for the water. Audiences were in no short supply as often times every seat in the room was occupied and the unlucky stood at the back propped against a wall or door sill, pint in hand. Applause and whistles followed each reading. It was hard not to assimilate into the group, easily imbibing in the scene’s good-natured folksiness.
God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—
Why look’st thou so?—With my cross-bow
I shot the albatross.
After two nights of sea-drenched rhymes and starboard lyric, I prepared to head back home. The chilly drizzle that pelted my face as I trudged back to my hotel the night before had ceased by morning, and now glistening grass blades and slickened mossy rocks presaged the day. I entered a half-full coffee house, plopped down at a table beside the big windows, and watched the traffic whiz by on the main drag. Steam rose from my mahogany cup and pillowy chunks of a croissant were torn asunder. A regular at a nearby table seemed agitated as he fidgeted and fought with the daily newspaper, but the staff apparently knew his story and occasionally checked in on him and refilled his cup. In terms of sensory gratification, the Sunday morning soundtrack of the neighborhood coffee house perhaps rivals the perfume of the rainy day bookstore. Successfully integrating the two aesthetics would border on afferent ecstasy.
And I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work ‘em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Astoria—a town fit for literature and the written word. How one can devour Dostoevsky in Los Angeles or pen prose in San Diego I know not. These are not buoyant thoughts, fleeting permutations, or barmy orations. Real words, real speech; onerous, leathery notions. Plunging the deep, dark depths of soul and shadow. Mining the umbra’s enigmatic code circa 3 a.m. Endeavors for stormy, shaded Tuesdays; syrupy, treacle beverages and requisite dusky tobacco. If mariners write rhymes, then wet port towns are their proper, ancient stage. If mariners recite songs, they should sing them in Astoria.
Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
‘Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!