I wish I had known Steve Carey

POEM

Oh, Mom, it is so beautiful

--Steve Carey, 1945-1989

The Selected Poems of Steve Carey

The Corner of Clark and Kent:: A Little Something for Wayne

Wayne Crawford (1946-2011)

I knew Wayne through poetry--his poetry, my poetry, poetry readings and the beast of poetry itself, what Martin Espada calls the Republic of Poetry, a particular kind of glue. Besides his own writing, he was an activist for poetry and the arts, especially in Las Cruces, NM. I want to tell something of his story because he was a poet, a storyteller too, and his life since he arrived in Las Cruces seems to me pertinent to the our culture. Las Cruces is almost an hour away from our house, but I’d see Wayne at all (literally, “all”) the poetry readings I went to in Cruces, many here in El Paso, and at all of the Somozas legendary Thanksgiving dinners. He was always good to talk to, sometimes funny, sometimes serious, all the time full of wit and intellectual curiosity. Over the last few years he was not in good health, always in some sort of physical agony, but he carried that pain with a certain grace. And I had come to admire his poetry—always unexpected pieces of his imagination—and his readings in which he'd always be trying something new. All his life, it seemed, he had been a devotee to the mythology of Clark Kent and Superman. Shape-changer. Transformer. Mytho-americano hero. Maybe that helps explain what happened—after he retired from teaching at the Western Illinois University (students attest he had been a wonderful teacher) at the age of 55, around the year 2000, and moved with his family to Las Cruces, he decided to step out of the closet. He had been too long in there. It smelled of his sweat and his sorrow. He was a gay man, he said, and he wanted to live openly as a gay man. It broke his wife Barbara’s heart. Of course, she probably knew already. Bedrooms don’t hold many secrets. Not after 30 or so years anyway. Still, she must have hoped he would change his mind, changed his heart and body--she must have prayed to God and to hell with the Clark Kent and Lois Lane rigmarole. But Wayne had walked away. He had done his job as a married man and as a father and now he had to be himself. Wayne’s poetry flourished. He was writing daily—strange surreal poems, Superhero poems, serious political commentary poems, funny poems, frivolous poems, anything that popped into his head. He worked on a crime noir novel and a non-fiction book about a crime back in Illinois. He became a leader in the local poetry scene, organizing open mic readings, sending out a monthly newsletter about poetry events, serving as editor of Sin Fronteras (a poetry collective), publishing the poetry e-zine Lunarosity and hosting a monthly poetry workshop at his house that included poets Joe Somoza, Dick Thomas, Sheila Black and others. He fell in love with Randy Granger—flute player, composer, musician—, and he invited Randy into his home. They lived in a sprawling house on the West Mesa overlooking the Rio Grande Valley, the lights of Las Cruces, and the magnificent Organ Mountains. Their garden was wonderful place to be at twilight on the end of a perfect October day. The garden had a small pond with Koi and goldfish and lilies. The pond was fed by a bubbling fountain, really a contraption of found junk that Wayne pieced together. It was an ugly thing really, but that was okay. It had a peculiar and wise charm and, besides, Wayne made it and he thought it beautiful. I bow to people who do things with their hands to bring home-made beauty into their homes. But of course there’s always trouble. Without trouble there’s no story. No poetry. Even for Clark Kent who turned into—not Superman—but Wayne the gay poet. His son John moved in. John is a good young man, shy and introspective. All his life he’s suffered from cerebral palsy that runs down the left side of his body like a clogged up drain. John and Randy were friends at first but as time wore on they got in each other’s way. One the lover, the other the son. How could it not happen? They, like us, are human beings. John moved away. He too fell in love, Melissa, a wonderful young woman in El Paso, but he stayed close to his dad. He just stayed away from the house. Wayne was happy with that. He loved his son John, he loved Randy. The same tension grew with Wayne’s daughter but from afar. Children must watch. Their mother was very sad. She still harbored her hopes for Wayne’s return but had moved back to Illinois. Her sense of herself had been pulled out from under her. All the habits of everyday life are wiped away. It opens up all sorts of questions about who we really are. Life went along. It always does. Wayne had a heart attack and survived. He hurt his neck and back terribly and had to wear a brace for a long time. The doctors had a terrible time trying to control his blood pressure. But he continued to write and to live a full intellectual and creative life. Then he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He wouldn’t live. The doctors tried hard—radiation and all the rest. But Wayne was wasting away, he made his plans to die, sorting out his belongings for his children and for Randy, saying goodbye to friends, all the while the cancer eating at him. Friends—especially Dick and Sherry Thomas, Joe and Jill Somoza—helped Randy, who was always there along with hospice, to care for him. Son John and his girlfriend Melissa drove him to Houston for treatments. “Wonderful and special times for John and me,” Melissa said, “in the midst of that sorrow of his dying.” Sure enough, Wayne died on March 5, 2011. Ten days later his ex-wife Barbara had a massive heart attack and died. “Her heart was broken,” John said. Our lives are like this. We breathe in, we breathe out, and then we don't. 

May they both rest in peace.

●

The Corner of Clark and Kent

Most of us boys were born
under the hood of a car, forearms
like Popeye's, pliers for fingers, grease
behind our ears.
By the time we were thirteen
we knew everything there was to know
about standard transmissions and short cuts
through country roads.
We were raised at the corner of Clark
and Kent where gods descend into men,
men into steel machines, bodies
built like Buicks,
faces framed by work.
We learned to eat with our mouths' full,
talk when we needed to piss, grunt
and groan through meals.
My daddy said I had what it took.
I just didn't have the desire
to spend my life with my dick
on a fender,
my head beneath a hood. I pulled out,
like I told Jenni I would, pulled out
before I was married and mortgaged, fighting
whoever came near.
One day I was thinking about Jesus, remembering
"wipe the dust from your cuff." I hit
interstate 80 at 75,
picked up
Jimmy, drove west 'til we ran out of talk.
He said he missed Cindy more than he'd thought.
I didn't miss Jenni enough
to go back
to a Sinclair future or a body shop job
in a town with gravel driveways, no
traffic lights, lots of old family vans,
balance
and align myself with steel-belted men
who stick oil-stained fingers in their ears, walk
like they're full of shit, sit like they're
straddling a gear,
and all I kept thinking was, Jesus,
I'm going to end up in a neighborhood bar
where you know a man by his truck and his tab,
spitting image
of his daddy, same bruises, same worts, same scars.
I pulled out, like I told Jimmy I would,
pulled onto the highway and never went back.
Sometimes
I wonder if I'd been better off
chained to a white picket fence
than wondering how to make sense
of dreams
that don't connect and can't be recharged
at the corner of Clark and Kent.

Watch Presumed Guilty online until March 31

If you live along the border, especially here in El Paso a few minutes from Juarez, you are always hearing terrible stories about the Juarez police and Mexican army abuse of civilians, seemingly with a free reign to do what they want. This impunity extends into the Mexican judicial system where the Mexican judges at all levels act so many times without any regard to the facts. It's more about money and power and fear, the old mordida system--a system that's lost its core integrity. The movie Presumed Guilty by Roberto Hernandez and Geoffrey Smith document one such case. But what makes the movie so much important to me is that I've met and talked with Kevin Huckabee, the father of Shoun Huckabee, who has been incarcerated in the infamous Cereso Prison in Juarez now for over a year. He never got a fair trial and there's good reason to believe that the evidence that put him in jail was planted by the Mexican army. Shoun and his friend Carlos Quijas had witnesses to support their claim, but one witness was killed, the father of another was killed, and all other witnesses have disappeared. Who is to blame them? So Shoun and Carlos languish in prison, learning the hard truths of life in a prison where everything is bought and paid for. Kevin, who is in poor health, goes over as much as he can, he helps pay for bribes to keep his son safe, he negotiates with the Mexican prison system, he enlists the aide of Amnesty International and lawyers and activists--anybody who can help. Infuriating in all this madness is the U.S. government's total lack of help. Our U.S. Representative, Silvestre Reyes, totally ignores Kevin's pleas for help, saying he trusts the Mexican legal system, saying his hands are tied, saying it is not his problem. Meanwhile, the U.S. government will send Bill Richardson around the globe to extricate American citizens from similar situations, it refuses to pressure the Mexican government for release of its citizens five minutes from its border.

Below is the introduction and a link to the Wall Street Journal article by Nicholas Casey that documents the terrible dilemma that Shoun Huckabee and Carlos Quijas find themselves in. The El Paso Times has totally ignored the issue. And below that is a description of the movie Presumed Guilty. The movie is essential to anybody wanting to more fully understand the distress of the citizens of Mexico. It's available free for streaming on PBS POV. Please send the link along, especially to those able to raise a voice in support of a true justice system in Mexico.


July 17, 2010 from the Wall Street Journal by Nicolas Casey.
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico—Two Americans were driving back to El Paso, Texas, last December after an afternoon across the border in Ciudad Juárez. A few blocks from the border, they were surrounded by Mexican army trucks and pulled from their Dodge Ram.

Violence escalates in the drug wars in Mexico as a car bomb set off by a cell phone kills at least three people. Deborah Lutterbeck reports. Video Courtesy of Reuters.

Mexico's military says it found two suitcases full of marijuana in the cab of the pickup truck. Two soldiers later testified that they drove the two Americans to a military compound on the outskirts of town, questioned them briefly, then turned them over to civilian authorities. The Americans were charged with possession of marijuana with intent to sell.

Those two men—Shohn Huckabee, 23 years old, and Carlos Quijas, 36—are being held in a Ciudad Juárez jail. They tell a different story about what happened that night. They say Mexican soldiers planted the marijuana in their truck. When they arrived at the military base, they say, they were blindfolded, tied up, hit with rifle butts, shocked with electricity and threatened with death.


Presumed Guilty
Directed by Roberto Hernandez & Geoffrey Smith

In December 2005 Toño Zuniga was picked up off the street in Mexico City, Mexico, and sentenced to 20 years for murder based on the testimony of a single, shaky eyewitness. PRESUMED GUILTY tells the heart-wrenching story of a man who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A friend of Toño’s contacted two young lawyers, Roberto Hernández and Layda Negrete, who gained prominence in Mexico when they helped bring about the release of another innocent man from prison. As Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) legal researchers, they tracked an alarming history of corruption in the Mexican justice system (93% of inmates never see an arrest warrant, and 93% of defendants never see a judge).

Looking into Toño’s case, Roberto and Layda managed to get a retrial–on camera—and enlisted the help of filmmaker Geoffrey Smith (THE ENGLISH SURGEON) to chronicle the saga. Shot over three years with unprecedented access to the Mexican courts and prisons, this dramatic story is a searing indictment of a justice system that presumes guilt.

Japan (2)

ACT GREAT

What is the key
To untie the knot of your mind’s suffering?

What
Is the esoteric secret
To slay the crazed one whom each of us
Did wed

And who can ruin
Our heart’s and eye’s exquisite tender
Landscape?

Hafiz has found
Two emerald words that
Restored
Me

That I now cling to as I would sacred
Tresses of my Beloved’s
Hair:

Act great.
My dear, always act great.

What is the key
To untie the knot of the mind’s suffering?

Benevolent thought, sound
And movement.

~ Hafiz ~

(The Gift – versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

For those brave souls who Act Great

that others may live....

 

●

I stole this from a great website--PANHALA--I only found this week through a newsletter I receive. I've been astonished, reading about the news in Japan, the men who are walking into the inferno of those reactors, doing their incredibly dangerous job, acting great, as Hafiz has said. Hafiz was the great Iranian (Persian) poet and mystic. The Panhala website marries poems with images and the results are many times very beautiful and meaningful. 

I wish the people of Japan peace and good health.

Japan

The following five poems from Japan were translated by Kenneth Rexroth (see his beautiful book 100 Poems from the Japanese). I receive the Village Zendo Newsletter. A person who I assume is Nina K posted them this morning, having received them from another list operated by Larry Robinson of California, "who sends out poems almost daily." The poems found a place in my heart today, so I thought to share them. I wish you are all well. Peace and hope for the people of Japan. For us all.



●


I can no longer tell dream from reality.
Into what world shall I awake
from this bewildering dream?

                       — Akazome Emon


●


The fireflies' light
How easily it goes on
How easily it goes out again.

                       — Chine-Jo


●


The crying plovers
On darkening Narumi
Beach, grow closer, wing
To wing, as the moon declines
Behind the rising tide.

                       — Fujiwara No Sueyoshi


●


I loathe the seas of being
And not being
And long for the mountain
Of bliss untouched by
The changing tides.

                       —  Anonymous


●


If only the world
Would remain this way,
Some fishermen
Drawing a little rowboat
Up the riverbank.

                       — Minamoto No Sanetomo

Mas: Puro John Ross, RIP

"Then there was John. Even in his seventies, a tall imposing figure with a narrow face, a scruffy goatee and mustache, a Che T-shirt covered by a Mexican vest, a Palestinian battle scarf thrown around his neck, bags of misery and compassion under his eyes, offset by his wonderful toothless smile and the cackling laugh that punctuated his comical riffs on the miserable state of the universe."
--Frank Bardacke, in the Nation

"Life, like reporting, is a kind of death sentence. Pardon me for having lived it so fully."

--John Ross, in refusing to accept recognition from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, 2009. They wanted to celebrate him for telling "stories nobody else could or would tell." John defiantly created his own story that they would not want to tell. Here's the poem he read to them to conclude his bit of very public guerrilla theater.

RONCO Y DULCE

Coming out of the underground
On the BART escalator,
The Mission sky
Is washed by autumn,
The old men and their garbage bags
Are clustered in the battered plaza
We once named for Cesar Augusto Sandino.
Behind me down below
In the throat of the earth
A rough bracero sings
Of his comings and goings
In a voice as ronco y dulce
As the mountains of Michoacan and Jalisco
For the white zombies
Careening downtown
To the dot coms.
They are trying to kick us
Out of here
Again
They are trying to drain
This neighborhood of color
Of color
Again.
This time we are not moving on.
We are going to stick to this barrio
Like the posters so fiercely pasted
To the walls of La Mision
With iron glue
That they will have to take them down
Brick by brick
To make us go away
And even then our ghosts
Will come home
And turn those bricks
Into weapons
And take back our streets
Brick by brick
And song by song
Ronco y dulce
As Jalisco and Michaocan
Managua, Manila, Ramallah
Pine Ridge, Vietnam, and Africa.
As my compa QR say
We here now motherfuckers
Tell the Klan and the Nazis
And the Real Estate vampires
To catch the next BART out of here
For Hell.

Three recent tributes to John Ross really catch his flair and his life, so I thought I would link to them: The Frank Bardacke piece in Counterpunch linked to above; "Rebel Journalist John Ross, the Master of Speaking Truth to Power, Is Dead" by blogger John Nichols in the Nation; and "John Ross, 1938-2011, Beat Poet, Revolutionary Journalist" by Tom Robbins in the Village Voice. Each writer seems to have known John well and loved and respected him. It's nice to see John get all this attention. The Nation piece has John's complete rant of the speech to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He was a Wobbly in the original sense. He spoke his truth to power, he put himself in danger, he was brilliant, he was raw, he was witty, and he loved the Lakers (why, I don't know) and probably the Knicks too if they would ever get their act together.

JOHN ROSS, 1938-2011

 

Photograph by Elizabeth Bell

JOHN ROSS: 1938-2011

Listen to him here on Progressive Radio

Rebel Journalist, Poet, Novelist, Human Shield

He was a good friend. May he rest in peace.

THE REVOLUTION IS NOT LIKE A FAUCET

The Revolution does not begin
over coffee at the Epicurean,
does not begin over gravy and grits,
in the first joint, the last hit,
the Morning Chron, your morning shit.
The Revolution does not begin
pulling greenchain on the graveyard shift,
or making the welfare line by nine.
The Revolution doesn't begin
in your mind, your heart, your liver,
your prick, doesn't begin
when you clench your fist,
The Revolution doesn't being in 1776,
1917, the depression, the dawn,
doesn't begin with gurus, Cinques,
the news from L.A.  Havana, manana.
The Revolution doesn't begin
with both barrels, at the bottom of bottles,
on the pages of bibles, with the blues.
The Revolution does not begin,
The Revolution has no beginning.
The Revolution is unending.
The Revolution is not like a faucet –
you can't turn it on and off.
The Revolution leaks all the time –
you can’t call a plumber to fix it.

Janine Pommy Vega: 1942 - December 23 2010

Yesterday Janine Pommy Vega took the journey to the other side. We found out last night, just before heading off to bed. I was doing one of my habitual tours of the internet. One stop is Ron Silliman's blog. When I saw that wild spiked hair appearing on the screen I knew she had died. Lee and I lay in bed talking about Janine, her visits to El Paso, her being so much alive. We'll miss her. Here's a video of her reading the poem "Habeas Corpus" which reflects deeply her work with prisoners, talking with them, learning about them, helping them to write. May she rest in peace. As my previous blog shows, she has been in our hearts for a week or so. We'll miss her. But her poetry is still here.

Janine Pommy Vega & the Black Sparrow

Kitchen Dream

In my room over the kitchen
in Barranco, the shadow of incense
curls across the wooden floor
I lean over the kingdom
of my possessions, and just like that
one day
the smoke will stop

A pigeon lands outside my door
and coos coming in and
out of silence
like a life
lit up for a moment
like someone at the mouth of a river
rushing out to sea.

--Barranco, Lima, Peru, September 1993

●

This is another reason I love being a poet.

Last weekend I was cleaning my office at home--always a long process because I start picking up books, especially poetry books, and opening them up to random pages and reading. So I picked up Janine Pommy Vega’s book The Mad Dogs of Trieste and opened to that little poem above. I was enchanted with the poem. Sad. Wise. Joyful. All at the same time. I forgot my cleaning-up tasks and spent an hour or so with Janine's poems. She’s a good friend and a wonderful poet. I’ve known her work a long time through Bob and Susan Arnold’s Longhouse Books. She came to El Paso twice, both times performing her poetry at the Bridge Center for Contemporary Art and we became good friends. She’s a great storyteller, and she told us about leaving her New Jersey home at the age of 15 and moving to NYC to be a poet. Like so many of us she had read Kerouac's On the Road and was, well, persuaded. She took up with the Beats and began being a poet. All those legendary times with Ginsberg, Orlovsky, Ray Bremser…you can read about it in the many books about the Beats. But like all the other poets of those times, NYC was only a jumping off place for her journeys into the world. She loved following her nose for life and vision--intellectually, figuratively, spiritually—as the poems in Mad Dogs testify. And she’s a wonderful performer. A wild and excited voice, especially when collaborating with musicians. Janine is also a teacher of the writing of poetry, and she’s done much work in the prisons. I took the photograph above on April 14th, 2004, so, if I remember rightly, Lee, Janine and I were celebrating my birthday (I would be 62 the next day--Janine also was born in 1942 but a few months before me) in the backyard. A bottle of wine, good food, good talk. She and Lee became good friends, talking all the woman stuff that is a mystery to me. I was honored they let me listen.

It was then that Janine gave us our copy of Mad Dogs. It’s a Black Sparrow book (2000). Black Sparrow books--John Martin the editor, his wife Barbara the cover designer, the nice rough feeling cover, the colored end sheets, the generous typography inside. You could always pick out the Black Sparrow titles on the poetry shelves. A long time ago (the 70s, 80s?) I had sent John Martin a manuscript for consideration. He wrote me back a generous letter. He had thought seriously about publishing it, but in the end had to decide against it. I was honored. Janine’s Mad Dogs was probably one of the last before John and Barbara Martin sold the rights in 2002 to Harper Collins (Bukowski, Paul Bowles and John Fante) and the rest to David Godine. Oh well. All good things end. It’s the law of change. That’s okay. I still love those books. I have bunches here and there.

I’m so happy I picked up The Mad Dogs of Trieste. Such a good book of poems by a good friend. It’d be great to see her again. Saturday I start cleaning my office again.

Walt Whitman y the Huevos Racheros at the H&H

This is what you shall do:
Love the earth and sun and the animals,
Despise riches,
Give alms to every one that asks,
Stand up for the stupid and crazy,
Devote your income and labor to others,
Hate tyrants,
Argue not concerning God,
Have patience and indulgence toward the people,
Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men,
Go freely with powerful uneducated persons
And with the young and with the mothers of families,
Read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life,
Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book,
Dismiss whatever insults your own soul,
And your very flesh shall be a great poem
And have the richest fluency not only in its words
But in the silent lines of its lips and face
And between the lashes of your eyes
And in every motion and joint of your body.

 

--Walt Whitman, from the Preface to the Leaves of Grass

How to Eat Tacos on Piedras Street, El Paso, Texas

Eileen Myles' THE INFERNO

"I am glad I am not an artist. A poet kind of is, but really it’s like you’re like a professionalized person. Poetry. Nobody knows what the fuck it is. And what makes it entirely odd is that there’s no money in it.


So in the awards it’s worse than art. No poetry-driven economy. No critical machinery. There’s just no thing at all. Which could be Zen but instead it’s entirely the opposite. It’s so symbolic. And humorless. Awards are the only currency American writing has to describe a writer’s work. It’s almost French. But in France at least the ribbons mean something. You get dinner, a bottle of wine. People know you. Here it’s nothing. And like everything else horrible eventually it leeches into t the soil. Even Allen Ginsberg wanted an award. The week before he died he emailed Bill Clinton to say I’m Allen Ginsberg, the poet. I’ve never received any kind of award from my country. It would be great if I could get something before I die.

But it would make difficulties for you with Gingrich and the right, I understand. Clinton didn’t write back. Nothing for the man who wrote “America”? Allen knew it wasn’t remotely possible to get honored by the superpower that can’t tolerate criticism of itself.  But he was dying and he had to ask. Robert Lowell got honored but he wasn’t a queer or a Jew. He was Robert Lowell."

—Eileen Myles, Inferno, pp 165-66.

Here's a weird thought. I worry about reading too much Eileen Myles. Her writing is so seductive. It’s saying stuff the way I want to say stuff. She even enjoys being not quite accurate. Like some pants with lots of legroom. Space for the mind to feel comfortable and at home. The words could mean this thing or it could mean that thing. And that’s alright. Like those three sentences that start this passage, the last one having two similes, two likes. “I am glad I am not an artist. A poet kind of is, but really it’s like you’re like a professionalized person.” Like she’s really not sure what she wants to say, not sure she wants to tighten it up so there’s no legroom. Like she wants the reader to figure it out herself if the reader cares. And she hopes the reader does care enough to think about what the meaning of being a poet and writing poetry is all about. It’s a crucial question for Eileen. It was a crucial question for Allen Ginsberg. And it’s a crucial question for me. And, like Eileen, I want to wear my own poetry with lots of legroom. Like those pants I wear in the zendo, the ones with the drawstring. I’m always wondering if they are going to fall off. There I am bowing to the Buddha and my pants slip down to my ankles. My legs are so white. My daughter Susie says I need to get more sun.

See there. You can see why Eileen’s writing is so seductive. Maybe infectious is the better word. Like Creeley was for guys like me growing up poet in the Far West 1960s, not many people to talk to. Those little delicate Creeley lines with the heavy breath stop at the end of the line. Such little poems. Creeley said it was okay to write short poems. Poems the length of your sheet of typing paper. That was okay. Then computers came along and we can go on forever. Sometimes I want to go on forever. Sometimes I’m happy writing little short poems. Shorter than haiku poems. Like I said: You can see why Eileen’s writing is so seductive.
POSTSCRIPT: Eileen underlines words in this novel INFERNO which is so much like a memoir it could be a memoir. But she said it's a novel so that's okay with me. Maybe she'd rather be a novelist than a memoirist. Who wouldn't? Especially if you're a poet. But back to the underlining of words. Like she’s writing on a typewriter and not a computer. She doesn’t italicize words. She underlines them. In some places she strikes through words. She didn’t like this or that sentence but she doesn’t delete it she strikes through it. Again like she’s using a typewriter. It has an old-fashioned look. But Eileen is not old-fashioned. She wants the reader to see what she took out and wants the reader to think about what she took out and why she took it out. Style or meaning? Whatever. It’s important to her. Sort of flip and fun. And important. At least in my head. Yeah, infectious is a good word. Like laughter. That kind of infectious. And seductive is a good word too. One or the other. Take your pick. But read the book. Especially if you are a poet. You can choose between one cover or the other cover. That’s odd, huh? Independent presses are always doing interesting things to make you think. So O/R has these two covers. And Eileen underlines words and strikes out sentences. Interesting publishing kind of stuff. I chose the white cover. Sometimes I wonder if many poets are out there buying books anymore. No wonder there’s no poetry-driven economy.

If you want to read a regular review of INFERNO, Liz Brown did a good one at Bookforum. Also, here's a video of Eileen reading from the novel. She reads the part about why she calls it a novel. "Writing a novel is like being buried alive." Etcetera. She's a very good and fun reader.

Charles Olson live @ the Kitchen Table

Below are some great videos of Mr. Maximus Charles Olson reading two of his wonderful poems. Watching these kitchen-made movies really lets you understand how Olson cast such a big light over the workings of the New American Poetry when I was getting into that world. Shy. Unsure. I must have read Olson's "Projective Verse" essay 15 times trying to figure out exactly what his complicated prose was talking about. (It's actually quite simple, I discovered, but I wouldn't trade that journey for an Idiot's Guide.) Barney Childs said one day in class, "Well, Byrd has a good ear. He knows how to do it. He just has to find something to say." Ha. I remember another home movie that I saw in Tucson must have been 1964. It was after a Creeley reading and there was a party up in the hills. The moon and the stars. Lots of booze and talk about poetry. Dreamy. I walked into one room and Creeley was showing a movie of him and Olson in Gloucester. They were walking down a road, hands in their pockets, talking, Creeley looking up to see this big man, his friend. Man, I thought, this is where I want to be. Thanks to Ron Silliman's blog for posting the videos, and to the Worcester Polytechnic Institute archives which is where I copped the photograph, one of my favorites.