RAY DIPALMA AND MY MATCHBOX MADELEINE

Got a little packaged in the mail from my old friend, the poet and artist Ray DiPalma.

Inside was a little matchbox, with “Ray DiPalma / 5 Poems” printed on the top over a little work of art that looks like a yellow fire extinguisher inside the green frame of an old style TV.

On the bottom side of the matchbox is a photo of Ray, very small, and an admonition to “KEEP IN A SAFE PLACE” with the message to “USE MATCH TO PRISE POEM FROM BOX/AVERAGE CONTENTS PER BOX - 5 POEMS/CUSTOMER QUERIES TO MATCHBOX POETRY/87 THORNTON ROAD, FALLOWFIELD/MANCHESTER, MI4 7NT, UK”

(It almost reads like a parody of an English address. Who knows, maybe it is, if I’m reading the tiny type correctly.)

That’s on the top half of the rectangle that is the bottom of the matchbox. Across the middle in white type on red background is: “HOW GOOD IS YOUR POETRY KNOWLEDGE?”

And then, in the bottom half of the bottom of the matchbox is first the question “In what year was Gertrude Stein born?” And below that in red caps: “DID YOU KNOW?” Below which, back to regular tiny black type on a white background is the poetry fact: “Ben Johnson was the first English poet laureate in 1616”

And at the bottom one last bit of type: “For answers go to www.matchbox.org.uk”

Inside the matchbox is the aforementioned single match, and the five poems by Ray DiPalma promised on the top of the matchbox, each on a separate tiny piece of folded graph paper.

On the top of the stack of 5 poems is a tiny piece of graph paper with Ray’s name and “5 Poems” and then the titles of each poem, and under the fold it says “New Titles”—underlined—and then lists two: “Quatres Poemes” and “Caper” which I assume are Ray’s since I have CAPER (and mentioned it in previous posts) and under that is the credit for the tiny drawing at the bottom of the tiny stack of poems “Drawing: Head of John by/Harry Simmonds”

Then the address for the website of matchbox again.

The reason I mentioned all this is because it perfectly illustrates what I love about the poetry world, or one of the poetry worlds, or any relatively unknown—to the wider world—creative scene that isn’t about money or fame, at least not in any conventional way, but is mostly about the joy of creating and sharing the results of that creativity.

What I mean is, receiving this matchbox with Ray’s poems was like Proust’s madeleine, only the memories that came rushing back to me when I opened it were those from my earliest excursions out into the world of bohemia—the Beat and other 1950s avant-garde scenes of my youth—and the excitement I felt when I discovered the paintings and collages that were so much more expressive of what I was about and, though respected as accomplishments, not treated like precious objects but things to be used, to be dug, to be made a part of your life, even like living things, members of the family or whoever occupied the “pad” I was in, or the 8 millimeter movies never seen in movie theaters projected onto sheets pinned to walls of these hipster “cribs,” or the mimeographed magazines with crude illustrations and poems that would never be published in any “literary” magazines.

The thrill wasn’t of “the forbidden”—I’d already had plenty of that—but of the creative passion that fashioned something uniquely individual and got it out into the world in the most immediate and personal way with no care for any “practical” aspects of distribution or accessibility or even of positive response, or so it seemed. It was more like: this is what I have to say, or do, or present to you—dig it or don’t.

And I almost always dug it, because it had the feel, the smell, the touch of that passion to create and to share the creation without any concession to convention or expectation or being “practical.”

I mean, five tiny poems in a tiny matchbox? How impractical can you get?

But not “precious” except in the “value” meaning of that word. Precious like a favorite keepsake or personal talisman, but squished a little in the mail, and an actual real matchbox with the print and artwork glued to the top and bottom (and one side, opposite the sandpaper match striking side, where it said in bold letters: “DiPalma/Matchbox No.3”).

Ah the freedom of not aiming for the blockbuster, the top of the hill, the bottom line, the X game life-and-death gamble, no, something more quiet, more about inner excitement and a deeper satisfaction—at least for me—that let’s the child and the man join hands in total appreciation.

Oh, and Ray’s five poems, for my taste, are unique as all his work is, including his collages and rubber stamp works and other art.

To quote a favorite couplet from one of the five poems (“Mansion Avenue”):

“The universe is not expanding
It’s just coming around from the other side”