Thursday, April 22, 2010

A LIST AT LAST

As I’ve written here several times in the five months since I had brain surgery (I'd guess you’re as tired as I am of hearing about it, but…) the compulsion to make lists constantly in my mind that I’ve had as long as I can remember disappeared after the operation. I've had no inclination to makes lists at all ever since.

Or hadn’t until I noticed I’ve been revising the “favorite movies” — “music” etc. categories on my profile for this blog every now and then.

Then after the past two days’ posts about poets I dig who are contemporaries of mine I started to think about books of poems by others around my age that I dig and thought I’d make a list.

I used my bookshelves to make sure I had some titles right as well as the internet to check a few ages (it’s amazing how many folks ages are impossible to discover so I probably left a bunch out), but anyway here’s a list of:

FAVORITE BOOKS BY COMTEMPORARIES (THOSE WHO COULD HAVE BEEN IN HIGH SCHOOL WHEN I WAS) IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER [THERE MAY BE BOOKS SOME OF THESE AUTHORS DON’T EVEN DIG ANYMORE AND I MAY BE LEAVING SOME FOLKS OUT BECAUSE I’M GUESSING THEY’RE A LOT YOUNGER OR OLDER AND PUTTING SOME IN WHO I THINK ARE WITHIN A FEW YEARS OF MY AGE BUT MAY NOT BE!]:

BOY DRINKERS Terence Winch
THE ANCIENT USE OF STONE Ray DiPalma
SMALL WEATHERS Merril Gilfillan
SOMETHING SWIMS OUT Darrell Gray
LEAVING EDEN Ralph Dickey
THE NAOMI POEMS: CORPSE AND BEANS Bill Knott (Saint Gerard)
A RUMOR OF INHABITANTS Robert Slater
OBSIDIAN POINT Ken McCullough
MAGIC FIRE CHEVROLET Doug Lang
POEMS Nick Piombino
I REMEMBER Joe Brainard
BLOCKS Ed Cox
I SHOULD RUN FOR COVER BUT I’M RIGHT HERE Harris Schiff
THE NO-TRAVELS JOURNAL Maureen Owen
GEORGE WASHINGTON TRAMMELL Robert Trammell
THESE DAYS Lee Lally
TOUJOURS L’AMOUR Ron Padgett
YOU BET! Ted Greenwald
THE NEW WORLD Tom Clark
O MY GENERATION Aram Saroyan
“AUTOBIOGRAPHY” AND OTHER POEMS Tony Towle
ENIGMA VARIATIONS Bill Berkson
PURITY OF ABSENCE Dave Margoshes
THE LONG EXPERIENCE OF LOVE Jim Moore
STONE SARCOPHAGUS d.a. levy
NEMO Paul Vangelisti
HIDDEN PROOFS Bill Mohr
WHERE X MARKS THE SPOT Bill Zavatsky
LIGHTS OUT Geoffrey Young
REUNIONS Harry E. Northup
BLUES OF THE EGYPTIAN KINGS Jim Brody
SINCE 1964 Peter Schjeldahl
THE RIVER Lewis MacAdams
HOW SPRING COMES Alice Notley
MIDWINTERS DAY Bernadette Mayer
IN BALTIC CIRCLES Paul Violi
LINE UPS Charles North
LIFE NOTES Anne Waldman
MANY TIMES, BUT THEN Ann Lauterbach
FIT MUSIC Lorenzo Thomas
AMERICA: A HISTORY IN VERSE Ed Sanders
MOVING THROUGH AIR Lewis Warsh
THE REVISITONIST Douglas Crase
JOHN HENRY’S PARTNER SPEAKS David Salner
LETTERS TO OBSCURE MEN Gerald Burns

[PS: I knew I'd forget a lot, especially with my post-op memory diminishment, but how could I forget John Godfrey's DABBLE, one of my alltime favorite books of poetry period! And I'm sure there's many more...]

9 comments:

Elisabeth said...

A list at last, good for you.

Not being into lists myself i can only browse through it but I'm impressed by your contemporaries, mine too I suspect but unfortunately from my place in the world I scarcely recognise a single name. Oh the shame of it all. My ignorance that is.

I also notice a shortage of women. Four maybe five in a list of about fifty. I have a bad habit of counting male to female ratios in reading lists.

Any reason for this do you think Michael, or is it just the way of it?

Lally said...

E., a lot of these poets, most I'd guess, aren't known much here either. These are just some personal favorites sparked by my last two posts so heavily weighted toward a specific time and the approaches generated by it. I'm sure I've left off many I just didn't think of or whose books have been taken or borrowed and never given back or lost or etc and so I didn't have that spur to my somewhat diminished memory etc. And I too noticed the sparsity of women and can explain that only partly. Many women I thought of who might be close to my age have no record of their birthdates anywhere on the web, even on their wikipedia page if they have one (unless my techno-dyslexia is causing me to miss something) and I didn't want to insult them if they're younger or passing for younger (several men fit that situation too actually that I thought of but couldn't find anything for). Maybe I'll try to make another list sometime soon of just women poets I dig with no age constrictions.

Lally said...

PS: I think I meant restrictions for the last word. And not that it matters but I counted six women on the list. Interestingly back in the '70s when I edited the poetry anthology NONE OF THE ABOVE, I made sure there was a gender balance, about an equal amount of women and men, but because there were several new anthologies devoted strictly to "black poets" that had just come out at the time, I only included one poet who is African-American and got a lot of flack for that later when those earlier anthologies disappeared (in the case of NONE OF THE ABOVE I was trying to bring together poets not ussualy or at all represented in any anthologies before. Oh well.

Lally said...

I went back and checked NONE OF THE ABOVE and I;m wrong about there being "an almost equal" amount of female and male poets in it, it's more like one third women and two thirds men. The quota system obviously ain't working for me.

tpw said...

Great list. Some of these writers I don't think I know, unless I've just forgotten them. What about Tom Raworth? Or is this just Americans? (One correction: Magic Fire Chevrolet.)

Anonymous said...

Michael, Ted Berrigan? Also, do you actually own the Darrell Gray book? I'd love to find a copy of that myself. Darrell was such a terrific guy.
- Suzanne

Lally said...

T & S, Tom Raworth and Ted Berrigan are both too old for this list, I made it anyone within three years of my age so that we could have been in high school together. Tom just missed.
And yes Suzanne, I do have a copy of that Darrell Gray book and am glad I kept it all these years. Reading so many contemporaries who aren't around to talk to in person is like having them in the room or at least in my mind.

Anonymous said...

Did you ever read Darrell's poem about eating only white colored food? I still remember that...lol

By the by, so true about having friends books in eyesight. I have about ten of yours in the bookcase outside my kitchen.

suzanne

Lally said...

I love picturing my books on a shelf outside your kitchen! Thanks kid. As for Darrell's poem about only eating white food I think it might be in his other book which I can't find right now but if I remember right it's called: SCATTERED BRAINS.