The title of Dennis Maloney’s “Clearing the Stream” (Walton Well Press, 2026, 143 pages) could be a metaphor for public activism, or it could be a literal statement for actions related to environmental activity. In fact, after reading this collection of “Selected Poems” (1975-2025), one could say that it pertains to both scenarios, as this book is both a collection of poems pertaining to “clearing of obstructions” in reference to climate change and to social-political conditions related to the history of the human species, including current events.
Immediately, I was taken in with the epigram on the first page with his tribute to poets Robert Bly and Gary Snyder “who showed me the way to these trails,” as I, too, was lucky enough to know them both and to have them as mentors for my own work. Then, right away, he quotes singer Leonard Cohen his song “Tower of Song,” who is also one of my favorites. So, before I even read the first poem in the book, I was locked in.
But the synchronicities didn’t stop there. Throughout the book there are dedications and references to the heroes of that late 1950s-1960s generation like Pete Seeger, Lew Welch, James Wright, Allen Ginsberg, Garcia Lorca, Paul Winter and others. In fact, on page 39 the poem “Gratitude to Our Teachers” that begins with the lines “They were the majestic/oaks and maples/in our forest,/teaching us to/write and sing/our own songs/by hearing theirs,” is a perfect example of what I’m getting at.
So, on we go with poems that were fun for this reader such as the poem “Janis,” a homage to Janis Joplin and her band and to the Fillmore East in New York City (where I saw many a live concert by all the 1960s rock music heroes): “Voice bursting out caressing/each word with tenderness/each song ravaged, shredded/singing down the wind/like a raging gale,” as he describes her performance. In another musical tribute he cites Santana and The Grateful Dead “swaying to the band,/seduced by the/singing guitar.” And Allen Ginsberg “pumping his harmonium.” And if these aren’t enough, we’re given Muddy Waters in the section “from Windows” who “transitioned from the acoustic Mississippi/delta blues to the electric of Chicago.”
But I digress. Maloney’s book is not only about rock and roll, but it’s also, among other things, a treatise on Buddhism and the wisdom and mindfullness that goes along with this tradition. From the section “The Things I Notice Now” and the poem series “Just Enough,” he writes: “When a man reaches old age/he has no need of men/and their noisy world./What he needs is peace/and time to face what is next.” Or in the poem “Facing the Autumn Wind,” he emphasizes “exploring the realms/of poetry and consciousness.” Or in his poem ‘Ku-Tei,” he states: “I learn only to be contented.”
As a poet and publisher, Maloney also devotes space to the act and art of writing. “I am a nomad searching for a language/in which I am a word unbound,/wandering between the world/we inhabit and the world we create — listening to meanings that reside, flowering/beyond the thickness of dictionaries,” he writes. And he goes on to fathom even more depth in the poem “Border Crossings”:
“Sometimes language borders are permeable,
where breath itself is a conscious action
that travels across languages and joins us together.”
And then there are little gems and lines that metaphorically take the reader to even loftier heights, like “Where is that poultice/that can heal, lift us into/the sunlight of morning.”
Some poems in “Clearing the Stream” are confessional in nature, and we get a glimpse into the thoughts and musings of Maloney’s more personal life as a writer/poet. Again, in the section “Windows” referring to Robert Bly, he writes: “Robert, I heard your poems/and translations of Machado/in college like you heard Yeats,/those poems made me follow/the path of poetry nurtured/by those words, and yes/I would do it again/a thousand times.” In a similar vein in the poem “Letter From Machado,” referring to the Spanish poet, he drops the name of Garcia Lorca: “Reading the verses I have written/for Garcia Lorca I find the elaborate/expression of a direct thought/influenced by consciousness.”
Ending in the section of “New Poems,” we get Maloney’s take on climate and nature and the environmental state of things. “…t here are those who see the mountains, rivers, grass, rocks as their/own essential nature and their minds are one with the atmosphere of the waterfall, stones, trees changing through the seasons” Or, again, in the same section, bringing everything full-circle, he writes: “…you must recreate with a quiet,/graceful charm those moods that speak to your inner-most heart … the garden is landscape raised to the level of painting or poetry.” Appropriately, and in the book’s final poem “Celebration For a Gray Day,” is the stanza stating “we found sanctuary/in the temple of music and poetry,/working years in its halls and taverns/… perhaps a few of our songs will remain/present in the hearts of those who remember.”
(Thomas Rain Crowe is the author of more than 30 books, including the award-winning nature memoir “Zoro’s Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods,” and is a longtime resident of Jackson County.)