Tag Archives: Philip Whalen

Made In The Shade 3-3

Interview, Letters, Poetry, Poetry Journal, Prose, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 
9/4/94
went right by my birthday
didn’t bother to check the odometer

button holes gaped like tiers of silent mouths
the certain cynicism of my reflection

coming on that moon
          gully mist
and a cool drizzle
drenches orange petals
surf up from a storm
          way way out
blasts the granite to sand

9/10/90
I dwell on the page
year in and year out

Maxims of Modern Life:
1. These days when a man glimpses death over his shoulder, he stops to put on his running shoes.
2. You win, and you lose, all at the same time—the lot of a parent.
3. One day we all go our own separate ways—no explanation needed.

9/13/91
Virgo: You’ve overextended yourself. Time to decide which associations to keep and which ones to dump.

long awaited the visitors arrive
the tea cups have been set out

this is the way I’ve come to know how to live

9/14/91
auto satori
happens in Japanese cars
auto epiphany
in European models
auto jackpot 
from Detroit

               Casual my sleeves pushed up to
               my elbows that’s the way I want
               to be immortalized in marble
               fist to hip and staring off
               to a point where a hot little
               turn of the century sports 
               car is parked at the curb
               and the pigeons are pecking
               at the cracks in the sidewalk
               as I compose my very first poem 
               effortlessly 
                                   forever

               say again
               
               I was just thinking
                                   thanks

               (the sales girl of my subconscious
               goes back to filing her nails)

               I shop around
               a knick-knack here
                    a gaudy trinket there
               in the great flea market of ideas
               the forgotten at bargain prices
               recall for sale
               never finding what I really want
               caught in the contest
               between the magic and the terror
               
               huh
               
               like I said
               I posture therefore I am

—Suppose that there were a California School of Poets, who would they be?

—A question like that can only lead to trouble, mainly because of who might be left off such a list. There is also the danger of saying “California” and meaning the West Coast, or vice versa. There is not the cohesion or concentration of literary talent in one close area as there is in that black hole of New York City. Many writers are on the West Coast because they want to get away from the light devouring gravity of the literary scene back there. Or they’re looking to make the big money in Hollywood. Be that as it may, there seems to be no central area where the literary talent congregates. It’s a lot more disparate. Writers are more into woodshedding, living away from the big urban centers. There are loose networks, of course, and much of it is based more on personal friendships than on any dogmatic line. San Francisco, historically, has been the so-called cultural mecca, and the Language School had a formidable presence there for years. Now Los Angeles and Seattle are holding their own, with LA outdistancing the Bay Area just by the sheer number of writers.

—Not to beg the point, but you haven’t mentioned any names.

—I was trying to avoid having to, but if there were a California School the prime progenitors would include Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, Lew Welch, Joanne Kyger, and Philip Whalen, just as the icons of the New York School are said to be Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, James Schuyler, Barbara Guest, and Frank O’Hara. A gang for each coast.

—Isn’t the function of a literary movement primarily to secure publication of poets connected with that movement?  

—That seems to be the way it works. The poets associated with L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine, for example, and its off shoots, succeeded quite well with this strategy. Their publications were professional if not conservative. They presented the tenets of their philosophy in the accepted academic manner with much of the same professorial aplomb that you would find in any university house publication. They served up definitions and apparent conclusions. They appeared to have a goal. While the rest of American poetry reveled in the leftover anarchy of the Beat era or was held hostage behind the gates of academia, they presented a clear direction for the future of poetry. It was like they had it all mapped out. Their publishing record was amazing. Once you had the blessing of the inner circle, you were virtually assured a book of poems. They captured academic citadels and the apologists that come with them. They became literary darlings. They churned out tome after tome, spewing chapbooks from just about every small press in the country, and their monumentally indecipherable anthologies clogged the arteries of biblio-commerce, lining the shelves of specialty bookstores with their slick but ultimately insipid spines. Success, yes, but at what price? Where are they now? And is anyone reading that stuff? So, I guess the answer is yes, an organized effort is more effective in getting a group of writers’ works published. The Objectivists are a good example of this, so are the Surrealists. History has already passed judgement on them. The jury is still out on others.

9/17/89
Day’s mood chill with damp, blanket of gray clouds and the brow beating worries that accompany it. Those miserable raindrops, who told them summer was over? The oblique rays of late September had yet to bleach the golden landscape. The staggering heat of those late days like a door open onto a blast furnace reduced to a finger-numbing cool. And that semi-tropical ease evaporated like heat from a body whose circulation narrows its confines, and the grandeur of leisure is replaced by concerns over the mundane. Dust collects indoors to remind us of our transitory nature whereas outside of this tomb we are joined easily with the free flow of air. The ancients lived with these superstitions so long they’ve become second nature now and without them we wouldn’t know enough to come out of the rain.

9/19/92
the antiquity of denial is noteworthy
righteousness arrived with property
and the choice of ownership or divestiture
moral value is basic diluted by possessions
less is moral and more is less moral
to deny is to remember who we are and
to remain moral is to keep that in mind

9/20/91
The formula for poetry is PIE: personality (wit) intellect (form) experience (content). Without one, the other two don’t make it.

smugshitdisturbinginsufferablecondescendingbadmouthingblowhard

9/22/90
now I worry over every precious  
little inkling of my existence

in waning day clouds continents of fluff and light

it’s 1984 all over again

never trust a man who takes the laughter out of meaning

growing up we diminish the purity of our feelings by accepting responsibility and an overriding symbology that lets us hide how we really perceive things. . .once the human has reached the age of seven (the age of reason) he or she has had it as far as really experiencing. . . .

               Have I always been this forgetful
                  	       I can’t remember
               some Marcel Proust I am
         	      one moment to the next without a thought
                  	  worth hanging on to
               unmemorable to the extreme
                  	       I mean
               I’m the only one whose thoughts cause
         	                          instant amnesia
                  	  kids sound off
                    in their own hierarchy of things
         	                     desires mainly
               accumulating the need
         	                to have more than others
                  	       the original social disease
               if I deal with the present
         	      I can see its relationship to the past
                  	       a kind of artificial memory
                    made of assumption
         	                     and speculation
               I suppose I was that way at their age
         	      now my desires
                  	            compounded over time                              
                    return the original investment
         	           in the memory bank
                  	                      where was I
               I had forgotten to call the plumber
         	      dripping faucet reminded me
               and distracted toaster pops up
         	      while I’m out of the kitchen
                  	                 my muffins get cold
               I’m guessing but 
         	                I forget therefore I am

HOME MOVIE II

Ragtime piano roll music over pan up of a huge cement phallic fountain which then erupts against a background of tall yellow California grass and the mottled variegation of multiple evergreens in the distance. A blurring pan across the landscape. A fire burns in the firepit. The back of a woman at a piano. Die are cast and pennies move about to form shifting designs in a stop action sequence. A large sensuous wave breaks over itself.
Close up: Hunce Voelcker stares slightly above the lens and holds that gaze with an air of not quite agony and not quite ecstasy for the duration of his recital. The ocean breeze whips his wispy hair. In the distant background, the cliff-lined Pacific and the white glare of sea froth. His voice over speaks the introductory passage from his Hart Crane’s Voyages.
“. . .and Cutty Sark was drunk. . .the myth was sucked.. . .”  
Medium shot of Hunce donning his hat at shore’s edge. Another breaker spills over itself. Piano roll music over.
Close up: Dick Gallup’s long black hair surrounds his head like a dark halo obliterating everything but the mask of his face. He remains passive and a little self-conscious as if sitting for a portrait, eyes framed by glasses. His voice over speaks his poem.
“. . .urban blues may make me gray. . .victory or defeat.”
Close up of oil painting of Rich Taggart by Jose Lafitte. Medium shot of Jose watering the garden.
Close up: Rich Taggert, young handsome face’s trusting gaze at the lens, delicate cheek boned, seductive in a passive way. His poem is about Phaedrus.
“. . .the fire in turbulence. . .the scrotum’s blossom. . .”
Piano roll music resumes laconic. Medium shot of water rolling over a dam. Segue to wine stream from bottle neck into glass. Medium shot of Gil Helmick putting the bottle down, raising his glass to the camera.
Close up: Gil stares insolently into the lens, challenging it to be more than it is. His droop moustache and the wiry unruly tufts guarding his hairline give him the presence of an absolutely sane and ruthless Edgar Allen Poe. His voice over speaks his poem.
“a tiny explosive up for grabs. . .irreverently armed assassins”
Close up of Susan in profile with Gil glaring in the background. Medium shot of a woman at piano (presumably Susan).
Close up: Phil Newton, angry young poet with angry young beard stares relentlessly at the lens with angry dark eyes. His poem’s about eyes.
“. . .the sly eyes of kindness. . .two black eyes. . .”
Medium shot of Phil walking off into lush green underbrush. Resume piano. Medium shot of phallic cement fountain spouting jet of water. Medium shot of Ellen Appel’s husband, Doug, and their son, Adam. In the background, the sloping wooded landscape of Hunce’s property.
Close up: Ellen, the golden hue of waning day attached to the wisps of her hair in the slight breeze, mugs a pouty insolence, assured that it won’t affect her stark intellectual beauty. Her voice over insinuates her poems.
“. . .the yellow jackets are unrelenting. . .not adrift. . .”
Medium shot of Ellen, nude, bathing in one of the ponds in Hunce’s moat while husband and son look on.
Close up: Pat Nolan in straw hat with green plastic visor bringing cigarette to lips. Top half of face obscured by shadow of hat. Thoroughly animated, whistling, drinking from white coffee cup, mouthing words of insult. His poem about hitchhiking is a tribute to Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
“. . .the coffee trade is brisk. . .a car pulls up and I get out.”
Close up of baby Irene, cherub cheeked, golden curled. Music resumes, harpsichord and piano duet. Medium pan across the construction site in Pat Nolan’s back yard. Close up of Irene again, removing or placing something in her mouth.
Close up: Gail King, framed by a blank sky, coyly expressive indicating a giddy uneasiness with the camera hence the protruding tongue and the wrinkling of the nose. Her breathy voice over in the upper octaves speaks her prose poem.
“Mom was spaced out. . .a touch of science fiction. . .”
Medium shot of Jeffrey Miller and Michelle leaning on the fender of his old Ford, looking under the hood. Close up of Jeffrey’s hand placing a wad of bubble gum to seal the hole in the radiator hose. Raucous ragtime piano over.
Close up: Jeffrey’s head cocked to one side, dirty blond hair not so much slept in as lived in, generous amounts of mascara (raccoon-like) around half-lidded eyes that seem the perfect companion for the smirk and the delta of lip beard straight out of Dumas. The winning smile lets go with a puff of smoke. His poems sparkle, irreverent.
“. . .it felt like a kiss. . .I’m not Ted Berrigan. . .”
Stop action sequence. Medium shot of Hunce in a red dress, Jeff  in a suit twirl around the old VW station wagon. In the background, the red hued wooden A-frame of Hunce’s house. Medium shot of Alice’s yellow Vega zigzagging across the parking lot under the Monte Rio bridge. Montage of shots showing Andrei and Alice Codrescu mugging for the camera in their home. Close up of Alice’s portrait of Andrei on the wall. Up-tempo piano rag.
Close up: Andrei framed by luxuriant black curls of his long hair (shades of Louis XIV), dark compelling eyes give it the Svengali routine, lips under the dark moustache rouged. His Romanian accents curl around his English words.
“. . .a man of hair. . .my fingernails look good in jello. . .”
Medium shot family portrait of Alice standing to one side behind Andrei sitting with young Lucian on his knee. Resume piano. Montage of stop action shots as all the players appear one by one in front of the piano in a jovial gathering of artists and poets, Ellen reprising her nude scene stretched out atop the piano. Long shot of phallic fountain in the shadows moves in for close up of water jet gushing from tip. Linger on water stream. Slow moody piano. Long shot of sun in the trees at sunset as the signatures of the poets crawl across the landscape. Spare laconic piano. 15

9/28/91
Souls migrate like continents. Souls migrate with the sureness of continents. We all have our faults towards which we lean. Time erodes the standpoint from which we view ourselves, the curse of immortality.

I’m never done with anything

too many directions
not enough places to go

The theory of reflexive utterance is simply struck by phenomena (any), the mechanism of our souls (insides) starts the whelming and depending on the time or mood we are either speechless or like a mug with a good head we can translate our wonder into the creaks and groans of crying out loud

the baroque of being organized

no matter the technology
photos don’t show everything

language doesn’t change
it shifts like light
               Strife grief constant
               smooth cosmetic numb
         	      shatter response fail

               not exactly Mark Twain
         	                but what can I expect
                  	  screws clamped tight
                    I grind out my disappointment

         	           “I believe in love” 
                  	                      radio mocks

               feeling for a friend
         	                     (one of the few)
                  	       served injustice
                    with a side of heartache

         	           and I had to find out
               the hard way
         	                the dreaded phone call
                  	  of the ‘80’s
               where the tense
         	                     on the other end
                  	  is past singular

               another mistake admitted to
         	      and its residual sadness
                  	  like the odor that comes
                    with the opening of
         	                a can of worms

               “Hey, it sucks!”
         	                          I want to shout
               and it’s not even
         	                any of my business

9/29/97
Dear Jeffrey (in Heaven), 
     I know that’s where you are because all dogs go to Heaven (poets included). Poets only visit Hell in their mortal lives or for literary conventions. I’m writing this twenty years after your death16, and as we approach the millennium (something you would have had great fun with), the frenzy intensifies — all this fuss over a round number. Gail and I are the last of the old poet gang still in Monte Rio. I know you’re not surprised. Everyone else has moved away or died. I won’t bore you with news of the dead for obvious reasons. Andrei is in New Orleans. So is Gil. Dick, last I heard, was still driving cab in SF. Ellen is a teacher in Vermont. Rich is back in SF, and Phil is living off the land in Oregon. Lana landed in Oxnard. Michael-Sean dropped off the face of the earth (maybe you’ve seen him). Keith teaches in Boulder. Carol lives in SF, Karen is wildly successful, and Steve is back in Oakland. I’m still here because I didn’t have anything better to do or any better place to go.
      You probably know that Hunce and Andrei guided you across the Bardo plane with their readings from the Tibetan Book of the Dead shortly after your demise. A few weeks later your poems were read at an amazingly surreal memorial event in Cotati by a gaggle of friends and famous poets. You would have hated it. And within six months a selection of your works appeared, complied by Andrei and Jim Gustafson, and entitled The First One’s Free. You would have disagreed with the selection. As the title suggests, the books were free. Alive, it’s doubtful that your words would have seen print with such swiftness and ease. Ironic, isn’t it? As it was, once published and delivered to bookstores, your volume of poems was on its own. Unfortunately, the fact that they were free might have worked against them. Bookstores are not, for the most part, interested in “free” and the reading public regards anything free as disposable and probably not worth their time. Hence, a few of us took it upon ourselves to sell your books to used book stores, a copy at a time, so that they did eventually find their way onto shelves with a respectable price rather than in the bargain bin or the throwaway box. Your fame is also assured by another friend of Andrei’s from Denver, Ivan Suvanjieff, who became a great fan of your work and published some of your unpublished poems in his magazine, The New Censorship. Andrei also published your works in his magazine, Exquisite Corpse (no pun intended, I’m sure). You haven’t been forgotten. In fact, a filmmaker from Budapest looked me up a few years ago. He was comparing you to Kerouac and James Dean. You would have died, laughing. You were designated the first “punk poet,” after all. He wanted to produce a documentary of you for Hungarian National TV. I told him that you had worked on Christo’s running fence, something that would resonate with his countrymen. And I told him how your heart was ripped from its place when you were thrown from the car when it hit the tree. I took him out to Hunce’s and to where you used to live. He took some pictures out by the old whaling boat. Yes, it’s still there! Then his car got stuck in a ditch. I had to help him out using the old jack trick, you remember the one. Some things never change. In fact, they repeat themselves. I never heard if the documentary ever got made, but at this point, do you care? Whenever I dust off a copy of your book of poems to take down to the used bookstore, I always think, his was such a great beginning, it should never have been an end. Say “hi!” to everyone “up” there for me.

                       When there’s nothing else 		
                        to be done
               		     it’s hard to imagine
               		sitting still for this
               		a corona descends 
                    		and surrounds
                         		the body
                    	to announce
                           	   a pop quiz
               		tell
               		me who
                         			“who”
               		are
                    		you
                    	I examine my fingers
               		conclude the obvious
               		these agents of my desire
                    	have seen it all
                    		but they ain’t talking
               		I have to take an educated guess
               		so much for learning
                              anarchy at least entertains
                             I never get the whole picture
                  		           the blanks
                                 left up
                  	       the imagination
         		                     fills in
                               opportunity is having the time
                  	  to sit and say
                                “I don’t know”
         	          golden light pales
                                electric high hum
                                                   sputters
                                   near
                         the bottom of the page

Endnotes
[15] Hunce Voelcker first taped the poets reading on a reel to reel machine in his attic workshop. Then he filmed each of the poets in a setting of their choosing with a Super 8 mm camera. The premiere showing was at Hunce’s, attended by all plus some. The tape player and the projector were synchronized by hand, Hunce flipping the switch on both machines simultaneously after he’d yelled “lights out!”

[16] Death is a displaced name for a linguistic predicament.

Subtext
“. . .the name Orpheus itself belongs to the oldest level of Greek  names. . .pre-Homeric. . .an initiator whose power transforms even the wildest creatures, animals and men who live in the wilderness. . . associated with the initiation of young men in the wilds of nature. . .there something significant was disclosed to them in music and song that delivered them from their blood spilling savagery and gave a deep sense to the ceremonies of transit from immaturity to adulthood. . .the announcer of this mystery played the lyre but was not a mere singer. . . .”

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Made In The Shade 2-2

Interview, Letters, Poetry, Poetry Journal, Prose, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

FROM NEW YORK TO MONTE RIO

Dick Gallup spent some time on the Russian River. He was associated with the New York School of Poets as well as being one of the “Tulsa triumvirate” which included Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett. Dick, family in tow, drove up from San Francisco, where he’d been staying, to visit Andrei one weekend. Fresh from the Big Apple, the idyllic spring weather and laid back California life style extended numerous possibilities for beginning life anew. Before long, Dick, Carol, and kids had moved up to the River, and the literary scene was notably enlivened. Andrei’s prediction that Monte Rio would soon become the next Bolinas was beginning to appear likely. A community of writers blossomed and a reading series was deemed necessary. A local café called Stone Soup obliged with the space. Jeff Miller was one of the first poets to read there, along with Dick. The series was quite successful until a grease fire burned the tiny wood frame diner to the ground. The community of writers rallied and soon another venue was found. Dick’s arrival also hastened the adoption of literary labels as designations for individual poets. It started off with the obvious tagging of Dick as “the New York poet.”  Once that was established, everyone, in a fit of morbid self-consciousness, imagined what their own labels might be. Andrei was the “Transylvanian poet” of course, and Hunce Voelcker was “the Bridge poet” because of his obsession. Jeff was “the punk poet” because of his spiky hairdo. I was “the haiku poet” because I had just devoted an entire issue of my magazine, The End (& Variations Thereof), to western Haiku. And Michael-Sean Lazarchuk was “the LA poet” although he was merely from Southern California. As well, there were also the River Poets, the Just Awful Poets, the Poets of the Vineyard, the Women Poets, the Gay Poets, the Academic Poets, and the Crazy Poets. All the ingredients for a self-devouring microbic literary soup were mixing and coming to a boil in the little bowl of a valley of mist and redwoods watered by a winding narrow green river. One of the first things to boil over was Dick leaving Carol and moving back to San Francisco. After all those years, two kids, they were through. It happened as I was helping them move into the house I had just vacated. One moment I was lifting furniture and the next thing I knew I had emotional baggage on my hands. Those things happen and they’re hardly ever pleasant. Michael-Sean, up for another of his visits, was upset that he’d just missed meeting Dick. Dick had been featured in Ted’s poems and had shared the intimate details of Ted’s life. As a consolation, Gail took Sean over to meet Carol. Carol had known Ted, quite well in fact. And since nature abhors a vacuum, they were drawn to each other right away. It was a match made in poetry heaven. Gail wrote a funny account of how all that came about, and how she, as the Haiku Poet’s wife gave the New York Poet’s wife driving lessons in an old ‘64 VW with a stick shift. But that’s another story, full of stops and starts, jerks and stalls.

5/1/90
“American genius (in lit) cannot be distinguished by a casual glance from charlatanry. Purity of intention lies at the heart of American achievement.” 
                                                         –Hugh Kenner

5/2/90
fantasy doesn’t have to be real

feed the disaster of apprehension
I have become mediocre destitute
imagination like fleeting thought
never to return or be regained

“I’ve forgotten more than I can remember”

religion—organized sex with the best part left out

feeble asides

animate pliers

5/8/90
Mon Cher —     
Already, bootleg tapes of your appearance on Nightline are on the black-market. I got mine through Voelcker Video Ventures, a video pirate down the road in Duncan Mills. You were brilliant, professional, larger than life though smaller than actual size. The piece was touching and you were its perfect expositor. There was much cheering in our living room when we saw your image appear in that familiar square to the left of Ted Koppel’s ear. The fact that we were seeing it “post-event,” so to speak, made no difference. Wish I’d been at the Pink (now since closed) knocking back a few when Nightline aired—I could have said, “Hey, I know that guy, me and him used to play eight ball at that very same table over there!”  Anyway, amigo, congrats on being chosen to deliver a beautiful (poetic) piece (a near first on near prime time) on the liberation of your homeland.
I won’t bore you with the well-known details of my existence, but as you know, life continues, and as Seneca said, “destiny leads those who are willing and drags the rest.” 
A bientot.

Rays of light
			enter my head
	brighten up 
		some dark little corner
revealing little more
	than what’s left of shadows
everything that happens
			in the dark
		has scurried off
I pare my nails in the meantime
	I’m using myself as bait
		(if you couldn’t tell)
and wait
		for the gnaw
				on my nerves
the better mousetrap isn’t used on mice
	it has a captive audience

	tonight’s full moon
		creeps up
	above the tree line
   (is it too early to take a bow?)
	planets surround it
	Venus’ white marble
	Mars’ red comma
	and some other dots
	in the pale glow
	of a hot nickel
	flipped up into
	the dark of night

			mantle of mist
	cuts the stark pointy
		silhouettes in two
clear as day

—What do I expect from poetry, anyway?

—You have no idea. You really have no program or established plan. You never ask yourself if you should ever sell your writing or not. There’s no theoretical substratum. You live, you write, you’re a poet—it doesn’t mean anything, fundamentally. You’re a poet because you want a vague so-called freedom, but really you just don’t want to go to an office every morning.

—Do I credit any one writer, ancestor or contemporary, with a strong influence on my poetry?

—You read. Everyone and everything. That’s the prime requisite, you read extensively, and pretty soon your head gets packed with all kinds of stuff and then some of it leaks out of the end of your pen into what you’re writing in that the trivia comes out between the lines or as quotes—depending on how you feel about plagiarism—or whatever, as impossible paraphrases. So no one writer has a corner on influence and all are mixed nameless into the reflex of memory. There are writers you revere but they’re much the same ones that everyone else is in awe of, too. There are vast repositories of literature to draw from, ancient and contemporary, classical and popular. All writers offer you something even if it’s nothing more than the recognition that you would or could never write that way.

—How long does the writing of a poem take me?

—Sometimes you just write something in your notebook and turn the page and write something else and forget about it. And you continue to write in your notebook and days later during a pause in the action you leaf back through the pages and find what you’d written on one particular day and wonder “where did this come from?”  Then you go back and reconstruct as best as you can remember to determine whether or not you wrote it or lifted it from someone else. Not that that would do anything to hamper its utility.

—Should I be troubled by this, that I rely so heavily on what I read to affect what I write?

—What you read has more of an effect on how you write than what you think. You are an information junkie, a detail demon. Trivia is like candy. What you write is determined by a subtle chemical interaction triggered by one or more of the senses which transports the assessment of those sensations into a realm beyond the physical. It is a suspension of belief that allows the imagination to color certain aspects of existence that are often hidden or unnoticed or invisible unless enhanced. Writing is a physical act, pick and shovel work. The best thing to do when digging a trench is to sing, it enforces your rhythm. Thinking would only hamper you so you don’t think. That’s what you do when you take a break to wipe your brow and swig from the canteen. You’re thinking, “Why am I doing this?”

—Alright, but what about thought? Profound thinking? Am I totally devoid of intellectual depth?

—You’re surprised that you have any thoughts at all no matter how banal and that’s why they get jotted down. Sometimes that’s all there is, and, after all, your pen is always ready no matter what. Then you go back and throw out the really leaden thoughts. Or some. Otherwise you keep them and make more banalities to go along with them. Something that seems no more than the sickening thud of hitting rock bottom can end up weeks later an airy lyric central to the mechanism of your latest creation. Though writing creatively is sometimes compared to fishing in the stream of consciousness, you don’t always throw back the little one. But to get back to the point, often what starts out as philosophy with you ends up as science fiction.

—Then, what is intelligence?

—The word “intelligence” is a rubber band of ambiguity. There’s the logical or Cartesian form of intelligence, but you mean something else, a freer form of the problem. For you intelligence is the penetration into what the average “normal” man finds incomprehensible or difficult to understand, the everyday mysteries that are the foundation of surrealism which in the latter part of the century have become nothing more than raw doses of reality TV shows. There is something like an explosion of meaning, something you aren’t likely to get from a dictionary. We are men of the same order, you and I share a community of vision which is why you understand this idea of intelligence, enlarged, drawn out, extended, inflated. . .

—In what sense have I enlarged, inflated, exploded the limits of creation, according to my own intelligence?

—Try to shy away from the word “creation.”  In the ordinary, social meaning of the word, it’s very nice, but, fundamentally, you don’t believe in the creative function of the artist. You are a man just as any other. You have a job to do. The word “artist” was invented when the painter became an individual, first in monarchal society, and then in contemporary society where they’re supposed to be gentlemen, an archaic concept all its own. They don’t make things for people; people come to choose things from among their production. The artists’ revenge is that they are much less subject to concession as when they were craftsmen. Unfortunately like poets they deal almost exclusively in framed metaphor rather than in the thing. So angst can be expressed on the square canvas or the rectangle of the page. Let’s move on.

5/4/93
Affected by the negative
worry’s sad anticipation
frozen as a turd on the tundra

the horrible awakening 
from the dream of life

spend a lot of time looking
for things I don’t need to find

5/9/89
fleeting sunset caught
along the edge of a single cloud
in the rearview mirror

5/10/90
Sudden California as opposed to Gradual California

5/12/89
ah, the four seasons of my discontent. . . The Guggenheim, the National Book Award, the Pulitzer, Book Circle Critic’s Award, After Columbus, Before Columbus, Best Unknown Poet Award, The Posthumorous Award, all of them will never be mine. Feelings of alienation so familiar10 and yet so alienating, push me further back into myself, to that self-comfort of self-knowing which is the same as asking “why do I care?”  I care that I don’t care. Every day myriad new names are appended to the already long list of pretenders. Why am I any different? Should I ask that my name be removed from the list? It’s a thought. I am repulsed at the thought of being associated with such Sisyphean futility. Day in day out, though, I find myself caring to be in this mental place where what I do is what everyone else does.

5/15/89
what have you got to lose

brilliant burning in anger
but getting burnt out

the acrobatics of memory
what was once becomes now

  Artifice
		of pen
	from which words
			dribble out
a closed universe
		only
		a message in a bottle
	no deposit
	no return

air struck wind feels good
as it dips into heat of day
and takes me out of my skin
I spin with the world around me
a cavalcade of clouds a carload
of teenagers a covey of quail
couple stray mutts kids crying
close call I almost stepped in
dog shit at the side of the road
I may have thrown my back out

I’m in for a big surprise

“what’s the matter”
refers to something
	entirely out of context
a question frequently asked
		around here

“no more electric trains”
sinks in

5/26/87
we have abandoned the reader for the writing.
“Know what? You’re not supposed to understand it!”

“In this poetry business, there are rings of intrigue.”
					—Amy Lowell

brains with stones already in them


5/27/89
	“night’s magic seems to
whisper and hush”
	I am the loud one exhaling

I know these moods11 
they will pass

gray noon
time molasses

when you displease the goddess
you become an insignificant worm


5/28/83
his face just flies apart when he cries

there is no spiritual enlightenment
only paychecks

VIRGO: Break new ground with your writing skills or musical talent. Something you launch will create a ripple effect. Logic only goes so far where romance is concerned.

I may have bitten off more than I can chew
which is why all this is so hard to swallow
it’s gulp time immobilized by fantastic disgust
conservative to the point of distraction
when I come face to face with the great stuff
I don’t even have an inkling of how to take
and the fruitless impersonations I endure rot
often surprised by how seriously I can be taken
my moments of truth few the rest make-believe
in one scenario I’m as brilliant as morning
later on it’s revealed that I have jaundice
end up spending some time on the funny farm
not true of course I’m as sane as the next guy
drawing the smoke of inspiration through a straw

the grand scale of landscape doesn’t diminish
at the horizon
distance reduces vision
where’s this stuff come from
						             anyway
grin and bear it
				quote unquote
no matter what
“there’s something fluent in the transparency”
the words of the review continue
“that stinks worse than a spoiled banana republic”

and isn’t it about time
a VW bus full of fans
			stops to pick me up
they’re surprised to find
		I travel by thumb
just like I said in my poems
of course
	my life imitates my art

5/30/84
A large crowd came to hear Alice Notley read at New College. Rows of chairs had been set up in what once had been a mortuary chapel. To name the names of the literary set in attendance would leave open the opportunity of omitting someone or mentioning who was not there. Suffice it to say, a queue formed to have a word with Alice. She would read her sad poems tonight. She had read her “jokey” ones yesterday at the San Francisco State Poetry Center. She might even cry. Yesterday, also, she had gone to Berkeley with Philip Whalen. They had gone to a sculptor’s bronze foundry, and then she had hunted the bookstores for first editions of Ted’s books . . . .  Tomorrow, she would go shopping for the boys, and Sunday return home to them in New York City. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”  Long fingers touching her cheek, she gave half a smile. At the podium, in her purple blouse, she was a regal priestess. Her incantations, her witty digressions, her mood pieces were delivered with a rushed breathiness. She presented her works with an accomplished air that made obvious her practice and invention. Their integrity was solid, beautiful as well as modern. She read from her published works. And she read more recent poems that reflected the grief inflicted by the loss of her companion of many years, Ted Berrigan. It became quite evident that these two great poets had made quite a team. Through him, she had verified her strength. His invention had been the source of her inspiration. Her natural power and talent had been his affirmation. There was one image that depicted their union as a whirlwind that circled them like the stroke of a brush, blue in color. It sounded more permanent than a band of gold. In other works, she alluded to her children, and things taken from Mad Magazine and Star Wars. Throughout, she was constantly in touch with her everyday life, realizing through language, like a true artist, the opportunity presented by everything for poetry. And so it was. Alice made it so.

5/31/86
The story goes: this guy goes to see a psychiatrist and says, “It’s my brother, he thinks he’s a poet.”  The doctor frowns (he’s a Frowndian). “This sounds serious,” he says. “Does he teach at a college or university?”  “No.” “Has he received any government grants or awards from private foundations?”  “No.”  “Does he teach poetry in grade schools?”  “No.”  “Does he teach creative writing in adult education programs?”  “No.”  “Does he hold poetry workshops for seniors?”  “No.”  “Does he edit or publish a literary magazine?”  “No.”  “Does he publish literary criticism in literary periodicals?”  “No.”  “Is he claiming lineage with an acknowledged poet of the past?”  “No.”  Anyway, this goes on with the good doctor exhausting any avenue that would justify the brother’s claim of being a poet. Finally, he says, “This is indeed serious but . . . (pausing like a good Freudian) it isn’t untreatable. I believe we can work out a program of treatments that will, for all intents and purposes, eliminate this delusion.”  “But that’s the problem, doc,” says the man, “we’d like to see him cured, but we can use the poetry.”  

Pin to distraction pulled
			objective senses nullified
         by sweep of the beat
		             what underlying flows out
	            simple sentences
	            the basic code to the strands
		               that connect me to the sky

		               “I’m your puppet”

           transmission clearly worded
	             suspends superstition

	            unhealthy interruption

         day warm enough to stray full tilt introspection
         spreading leaves scatter light on concrete
         shade of another year grown into place
         tons good weather seems to lifts off your back
         day’s pasture widens in a sudden green rush
         I find myself arms akimbo growing with it
         spinning through the eons stop to feel
         thick air of morning swift breeze of afternoon
         pale sprouts flash their tiny spears in the sun
         garden stronghold of regimented vegetation
         dart of salamander bug and bee among the leaves

admiration for my choice of words comes from far away
too far away to make any difference
								                and too late
         a pirate edition sails away with the royalties
         despite my regards the gloved hand’s goodbye

End Notes:
[10] “Who needs the suckass scene? I scratch my own back and don’t need nobody kissing up like it’s gonna do them some good. Let’s keep our distance. That way I don’t owe you and you don’t owe me. There’s too much of politics in the world as it is. Ain’t gonna get the poetry any better and it’s gonna alienate the true hearts who don’t want no truck with those machinations in the first place. Why do we have to sell ourselves? Ain’t it enough what we distill into this imperfect medium of language? Why do we have to promote it any further than the edge of the page?”

[11] But if progress is not to come to a standstill, concepts of being and objects must remain plastic, must be modified, enlarged, limited, transformed, must separate and unite continually in the light of experience. If they become too rigid and turn into a system which claims to be self-sufficient, the mind engaged in such a system will go on working inside it forever and ever, cut off from any contact with reality which these very concepts are supposed to represent. They become the object of a hollow and useless dialectic and the source of deathly infatuation.

Subtext: 
Undercover report:  subject talks to himself. Complains of not being understood, being taken for granted, too little sexual activity, over-active imagination. Vain, examines his own image in the polish of his fingernails. Admits to having forgotten more than he can remember. Observed getting messages from the car radio. Finally noticing the lack of significant mail in the last several months. Beginning to suspect a conspiracy. Moods subject to change without notice. Continues to write poems throughout. Conclusion:  obvious obsessive personality.

“ . . . Eurydice’s death by snake bite and Orpheus’s failure to bring her back into the day light figure only in later myth. This idea is mistakenly deduced from pictures on vases that depicted Orpheus’s welcome to Tartarus where his music charmed the chthonic snake-goddess Hecate into giving special privileges in the afterlife to those who had been initiated into the Orphic Mysteries—an affirmation of the poet’s efficacy on the serving vessels of the day. Eurydice’s victims die of snake bite, not her, whose name means “wide justice” or “all just” and as Hecate is the serpent-grasping ruler of the underworld to whom young men were sacrificed, their deaths caused by a vipers bite just above the heel. Orpheus chose not to submit. There’s more than one way to skin the cat . . .”