Poet Craig Arnold’s path reportedly found

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The Poetry Foundation put out a call to help find Craig Arnold on April 29, after he’d failed to return from a hike on a small Japanese island. The poet, who teaches at the University of Wyoming, was in Japan on a creative artists exchange fellowship.

He was on his way to visit the volcano on the island of Kuchinoerabu-jima. His fiancee, Rebecca Lindenberg, said that Arnold has visited many volcanoes around the world in recent years; in March, he launched a blog about his Japan trip called Volcano Pilgrim. On April 24, he wrote:

You have made no plans, have no reservations, no place to go or stay. You do not speak the language. What you do not need, right now, is to think about these things, but to sleep.

At four thirty in the morning, the ship’s PA begins to play lilting, wakeful music, the volume gradually increasing. At four forty-five, the lights flicker on. You are beginning to like these soft nudges, which question and suggest rather than announce or demand. Why don’t you think about getting up? Wouldn’t it feel nice to brush your teeth? It would be so wonderful if you could have your things packed and ready to disembark in five minutes.

Outside on deck there is a lot of dark. Dark sky, glittering dark of the harbor, somewhere above you the paler dark of a new volcano.

Asleep on my feet –

a sudden whiff of seaweed

and fishnets drying

Yesterday, the Associated Press reported,

Searchers found what they believed were Arnold’s footprints near a volcanic crater at the top of the volcano. They judged them from a photo Arnold once took of his own footprints in volcanic mud.
The searchers followed the footprints to an area with deep ravines but couldn’t be sure whether Arnold entered them.

The search for Craig Arnold continues.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: File, undated