DOIREANN NI GHRIOFA'S A GHOST IN THE THROAT

 I always said 'poetry saved my life' and what i meant was when i was at my most despondent, reading a poem that I connect with in the often mysterious ways creative arts can personally reach into us, would transform my deep disappointment (with the world or myself) into deep gratitude for that connection.

I rarely get despondent any more, but if i were to be, this new favorite book of mine would be a lifesaver, just for the beauty of the language. Every word seems necessary in the ways only words can. I highly recommend (though everyone's taste is their own) Doireann Ni Ghriofa's A GHOST IN THE THROAT. 

HETTIE JONES R.I.P.

 
Here's my personal anecdote about poet/writer Hettie Jones. Around 2000 I had recently moved back to the East Coast and ran into Hettie at The Saint Mark's Poetry Project. As too many people know, I can often say the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time. I had just read and loved poet/writer Diane di Prima's memoir Recollections Of My Life As A Woman and was raving about it to everyone I saw, like a small group of poets that included Hettie. 

In 1960, when I was 18, Diane's "Thirteen Nightmares" had a big impact on me, as did she, and I was grateful to eventually consider her a friend. She was an inspiration to me, and I admired the courage of many of her life choices, one of which was to have a child with LeRoi Jones, as he was then known, who also had a huge impact on me back then. At the time LeRoi (later to become Amiri Baraka)  already had two children with his then wife, Hettie.

Hettie's best known book was her own memoir How I Became Hettie Jones, which tells the story of their marriage. I wasn't thinking of any of that as I praised Diane's memoir, though everyone else was so they weren't surprised when Hettie walked away in a huff. In the following years whenever I ran into Hettie, at readings we both were part of, or events for Hanging Loose Press, who published books by us, she was always her dynamic and impressive self while I worried if she was as happy to see me as I was her.

She was admired and beloved by many, including me, and will be sorely missed. Rest In Poetry, Hettie.

[PS: Anyone interested in The Beat era should read both these excellent memoirs.]   

MALACHY MCCOURT, JEROME ROTHENBERG, DAVID SHAPIRO,, TOM BOWER R.I.P.

We're halfway through the year, and I haven't marked the passing of some contemporaries (more or less). Partly because it's physically challenging these days (which is why I no longer post daily). First was Malachy McCourt, Frank's brother, who became famous first, as a raconteur bartender and popular guest on THE TONIGHT SHOW getting him backers for his own Manhattan bar, and later acting jobs in movies and on TV. 

Before Frank published his classic memoir ANGELA'S ASHES, I saw them both perform in the original version of that story, each playing multiple roles of the people in their Irish childhood, including women in kerchiefs and shawls, in a church basement to a small audience. Malachy later published his own memoir, A MONK SWIMMING, which came out around the same time as my poetry collection CANT BE WRONG, in the late '90s. We did a reading for the books in a San Francisco bar and restaurant. That's a photo of us with our friend the writer/scholar, and long gone Dan Cassidy (me with Dan on my left and Malachy my right).

Then two poet/scholars I knew passed, Jerome Rothenberg and David Shapiro. Jerome had a great impact on my generation of poets with his anthologies of world poetry focusing on the work of indigenous peoples. His own poetry impactful as well. When my SOUTH ORANGE SONNETS first came out in 1972, he sent me a postcard praising them (in my archives at NYU). He was a kind and gracious person.

David Shapiro had an impact on our generation as well.  We were both Jersey boys, but from such different backgrounds I was sometimes a bit chip--on-my-shoulder confrontational with him. He had the kind of articulate wit I didn't, and early success as a teen in the poetry world where he was admired as a "poet's poet" and in the academic world. But in the end we had much more in common than our home state and poetry (and music, him classical me jazz), including Parkinson's which he suffered from for many years with a kind of acceptance and even nobility which I can only aspire to.

And most recently Tom Bower, an actor I knew and greatly admired, and could fairly be called an "actor's actor" if he hasn't been already. You may not know his name but  you've most likely seen him in a movie or on TV. In my encounters with him, he was always so easy to get along with, both humble and grounded, never arrogant or self-centered as I could often be back in the day. I liked him and hoped he liked me.

May all of the above Rest In Prose, Poetry, Performance, and Peace.

PAUL AUSTER R.I.P.

 

We met in 1970s NYC, and discovered we grew up in the same town in Jersey but on different sides of it, and at slightly different times (he's five years younger). Despite my sometimes arrogant persona, he seemed always friendly and tolerant and a little amused by my relentless attempts to share the truth I thought only I could decipher.

I liked him, his writing, and like everyone else, his sexy smokey eyes. My favorite book is his INVENTION OF SOLITUDE, maybe because he writes about the town that made us homeboys of sorts, but with two distinctly different perspectives. Grateful to have known him. Condolences to his family, friends, and many fans.

MARJORIE PERLOFF R.I.P.

 
Marjorie Perloff was an unparalleled scholar and interpreter of the avant-garde in the arts of the 20th century, especially poetry. I first encountered her in my DC days of the early 1970s. I take pride in her championing my early poetry book ROCKY DIES YELLOW and the poetry anthology I edited NONE OF THE ABOVE, praising my most notorious poem then, "My Life", in The Washington Post.

She was more critical of my later work and we had other differences of opinion, which I arrogantly gave her shit about when we both lived in L.A. in the '80s and "90s and I went to her home there. The thing I appreciated most about Marjorie was the twinkle in her eye when she gave me shit back.

She was an extraordinary person, someone to learn about for women's history month, which is every month for me, just like black history month and poetry month and pride month etc. 

[And if you're wondering, my blog obits are about my take on my personal connection to the subjects, the facts of their lives otherwise available online.]  

SAY IT AGAIN

 
Now available, my latest book, SAY IT AGAIN: An Autobiography In Sonnets (Beltway Editions). Been working on this since 1960, one way or another. This contains all of my location sonnets covering my first thirty years ("Volume 1, The Road Goes Away") focusing mainly on the 1960s. Some published before, most not or revised, now chronologically correct and meant to be read like any autobiography or memoir, A personal cultural, social, and political history of my  times. 

[The book cover photo is me at 29 in early 1972, taken by Len Randolph.]

'NOTHER LIST

For some reason woke up with a list forming in my mind of my ten top favorite authors sixty years ago when I was 21 in 1963! Here they are in no particular order:

Diane di Prima

Bob Kaufman

James Baldwin

LeRoi Jones (later became Amira Baraka)

Walt Whitman

James Joyce

Fydor Dostoevsky

William Goldman

Jack Kerouac

Lilllian Smith

PERSONAL SAINTS

Woke up this morning to a text from a fiend with a photo of Father Mike Judge, the Franciscan chaplain to a NYC fire brigade who died at Ground Zero on 9/11 and who we knew. I replied with the single word SAINT. Which then led my mind to generate an alphabetical list of dead folk who are personal saints in any world, or heaven, I have a say over (i.e. in my heart):

SAINT ANNE FRANK

SAINT ANTHONY (DINOVI)

SAINT AUNT MARY (LALLY)

SAINT BASQUIAT (JEAN-MICHEL)

SAINT BERRY (BERENSON)

SAINT BILLIE (HOLIDAY)

SAINT BIRD (CHARLIE PARKER)

SAINT CAL (JOHNSON)

SAINT CANDY (DARLING)

SAINT CAMPION "TOMMY" LALLY

SAINT  CLIFFORD ("CLYDE" HEARD)

SAINT COOKIE (MUELLER)

SAINT DIANE (DI PRIMA)

SAINT DOLPHY (ERIC)

SAINT DOROTHY (DAY)

SAINT DOUG (LANG)

SAINT DOUGIE (STEINDORFF)

SAINT ED (COX)

SAINT ELIO (SCHNEEMAN)

SAINT EMILY (DICKINSON)

SAINT EVA (HESSE)

SAINT FANNIE (LOU HAMER)

SAINT FRANK (O'HARA)

SAINT FRED (HAMPTON)

SAINT GRACIE (ALLEN)

SAINT HARPO (MARX)

SAINT IRENE (DEMPSEY LALLY)

SAINT JACK (KEROUAC)

SAINT JIMMI (HENDRIX)

SAINT JIMMY (SCHUYLER)

SAINT JOAN B. (BARIBEAULT) 

SAINT JOAN G. (LALLY GLOSHINSKI)

SAINT JOAN R. ("BAMBI" ROBINSON)

SAINT JOE (BRAINARD)

SAINT KENNY (GRAHAM)

SAINT LEE (FISHER LALLY)

SAINT LEWIS (WARSH)

SAIINT LOUIS (ARMSTRONG)

SAINT MALCOLM (X)

SAINT MARILYN (MONROE)

SAINT MARSHA (P. JOHNSON)

SAINT MARTIN (LUTHER KING)

SAINT MCCARTHY (JOHN)

SAINT MEL (JOHNSON)

SAINT MIKE (JUDGE)

SAINT NATALIE (WOOD)

SAINT NORMAN (LEAR)

SAINT OTIS (REDDING)

SAINT "PRES" (LESTER YOUNG)

SAINT ROSE (MCBRIDE LALLY)

SAINT SELBY (HUBERT JR.)

SAINT SIMONE (SIGNORET)

SAINT SISSY (JOHNSON)

SAINT TED (BERRIGAN)

SAINT TIM (DLUGOS)

SAINT 'TRANE (JOHN COLTRANE)

SAINT UNCLE JOHN (LALLY)

SAINT VERONICA (LAKE)

SAINT WALT (WHITMAN)

SAINT WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

SAINT WILLY (FARRELL)

SAINT YVONNE (DE LA VEGA)

There are more in my head but I can't get them out. How 'bout yours?

TWO NEW FAVORITE QUOTES

"I would like to live in a world where you didn't have to be ashamed of shame."

"If you can acknowledge the complexity of your own heart, then you're not going to look for scapegoats."

—Jacqueline Rose (from "Presence of Mind" in The New Yorker, Aug. 21, 2023) 

SUSAN HAYDEN'S YOU ARE NOW A MISSING PERSON

 
A new addition to my all-time favorite books list. The title page says it's "a memoir in poems, stories & fragments" but it could easily say "a memoir in poems and poetic prose." It flows so naturally it was more like the book was reading me than vice versa. Fascinating, poignant, funny, at times, breathtakingly honest, totally engaging, and literally charming.

And yes the author is a longtime dear friend, and I'm briefly mentioned in a list of LA poets, but anyone who knows me knows I don't hesitate to criticize my friends' work if I feel it's deserved. Not NOW I AM A MISSING PERSON. Read it and see for yourself. 

JOHN YAU'S JOE BRAINARD THE ART OF THE PERSONAL

 
In this beautiful book poet and art critic (and friend) John Yau has put together a wide selection of Joe Brainard's artwork and written a great argument for why Brainard should be seen as a major and seminal artist (full disclosure: Joe and I were periodic lovers for several years), and not marginalized as too "gay" or "decorative" or "not serious" or "comic" or "pornographic" etc. As Yau writes: "What shines through in everything  that Brainard did is a melding of genius and generosity that has rarely if ever been seen in art before or since." Find out why Joe's work is so beloved by so many discerning creators of art and poetry, buy  this book.

TBT

 
Today is the birthday of one of my favorite writers, Nadia Owusu (with me in photo after we read at Pace in 2019). If you haven't read her memoir AFTERSHOCKS, do.

DOUG STEINDORFF R.I.P.

Not sure who created this enhanced portrait of Doug, but it captures some of what made him special. Like him it's fierce, over-the-top, heroic, ridiculous (Rambo on a bicycle), movie-star handsome, rugged, intense, and iconic. What 's missing is the unconditional love that poured out of him. Since we first met in 1980s LA when, as he told it, our mutual friend Hubert Selby Jr. told me to "talk him" [Doug] "down" I've been trying to keep up with him and his loving spirit. 

Whenever we expressed our love for each other we used the word "adore" and it was, and still is, the way I feel about him. I adored the way he talked and wrote (pretty much every utterance was uniquely poetic, darkly hilarious, and totally original). and I adored the way he looked and carried himself, even when, maybe especially when, he was goofing. 

And damn was he supportive. You knew he had your back even when he was flat on his from heart problems and cancer and more. Unlike anyone I've ever known in my 80 years. We're all unique in our own ways, but Doug was the most unique, to me. When I gott the call that he had passed at 61, I had trouble accepting it, something I've otherwise grown good at. But the thought of no more almost daily posts and comments from Doug on my computer anymore, left me heartbroken in new ways.

Deepest condolences to his wife, Cynthia, and their children. Life is often unfair, and often what's most unfair about it for those left behind is death.

ADA CALHOUN'S ALSO A POET: FRANK O'HARA, MY FATHER, AND ME

 
It took me only a few days to read this memoir/biography/critique, its prose is so inviting. But also because I was a friend of the author's father (the recently deceased poet/art critic Peter Schjeldahl) and Frank O'Hara's life and poetry had a big impact on my life and poetry. And though I never met O'Hara, I know almost everyone else mentioned in this book, some of whom I consider dear friends, and a couple of whom were lovers. [I'm briefly mentioned in the book as well, and a poetry anthology I edited in the 1970s—None Of The Above—is listed in the bibliography.]

When me and my poetry started getting some attention in the early 1970s, several of O'Hara's friends, starting with John Ashbery, said I reminded them of "Frank," and after I moved back to NYC in 1975 O'Hara's sister Maureen asked me to write a biography of her brother, because she felt I got him and his work the way she wanted someone to. Like her brother I was an Irish-American Catholic (at least raised), military veteran, poet/critic (at the time I was a book reviewer for The Washington Post and Village Voice), lover of men (as well as women), pianist (like Frank I started as a boy playing and performing classical music), and more.

But being a single parent to a five-year-old and busy with my own writing projects, I turned her offer down, We remained friends with her often explaining her reluctance to give others the rights to her brother's writing, which is part of what this book is about. I found her protective of Frank's work and legacy but not totally unreasonably (e.g. she agreed to allow Frank's poems to be used in a stage play made up of poems by poets in downtown Manhattan in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s called The Rhythm Of Torn Stars, which included a poem of mine).

In my experience each of us has a personal perspective when it comes to reality, especially the past. Part of the pleasure of encountering others' takes on shared history is being invited in to their perspective. I agree with many of Calhoun's assessments of some people and events, but some not. Her struggle  to understand and articulate her experiences with her father including his unfinished commissioned, and then blocked, biography of O'Hara is a unique reading experience. I obviously found it hard  to put down.

PETER SCHJELDAHL R.I.P.

 
This is what Peter looked like when poet  Ted Berrigan introduced us in the 1960s. We became instant, if wary, friends. Hearing Peter read his "Paris Sonnets" back then inspired me to transform an autobiographical piece I'd been working on for years into "The South Orange Sonnets" with the attitude of working-class New Jersey trumping the Paris I had yet to encounter.

In the early 1970s I was teaching at a college in DC and taking the train often to NYC for poetry readings and other events and would usually have lunch with Peter and then make the rounds of the galleries where he'd deliver mini-lectures on the art there, turning me on to some of my favorite artists, like Eva Hesse. In the late '70s and early '80s when I lived in Manhattan, we'd see each other at events and occasionally get together and the same after I moved to LA and he'd be visiting and, for a while, even living there.

By the time I moved back to Jersey at the turn of the century we weren't in touch as much but I was always delighted to see him at various events and always let him know how much I enjoyed his weekly art reviews in The NewYorker. Reading them was for me like a visit form him. He was a terrific poet and one of the great prose stylists of our time, always worth reading even when you don't agree with him. Rest in Poetry (and poetic prose) Peter. And condolences to his wife, Brooke, and daughter, Ada.

GERALD NICOSIA'S MEMORY BABE: A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF JACK KEROUAC (THE KEROUAC CENTENNIAL EDITION: NEW & REVISED)

 
Maybe you have to be as intensely compulsive as I am to read a 770-page biography (not counting endnotes etc.) that's an updated and expanded version of an earlier edition that was already a huge book when you read that version decades ago, but I binged read this with enthusiastic joy despite the tragic figure it depicts in more detail and critical appraisal than any other book about Kerouac.

As I say in my blurb for this book, it's "the definitive text" and it is. I may not always agree with Nicosia's critical assessment of each of Kerouac's books (though I mostly do) but I appreciate the thoroughness of his coverage of the writing of each and the life experiences of Kerouac at the time of their creation. If you're like me in digging the details of the creative processes of people whose work you find compelling, then buy this book and settle in for the ride. 

[full disclosure: Gerry and I have become friends since I read the first version of this book, and I recommend starting with the prelude on page 55 and going back to the earlier prefaces later] 

JENNIFER BARTLETT R.I.P.

Jennifer Bartlett is one of my all-time favorite artists, who I'm surprised to learn was less than a  year older than me. She seemed so much more mature than me to me when I was around her in 1970s downtown Manhattan. When I encountered her soon to be most famous artwork—RHAPSODY—at the Paula Cooper Gallery in 1976 I felt high from the magnificent originality of it, and embraced in a sensual joy from its achievement.

It was controversial from the get go because of its too-muchness. Made from hundreds of small square tiles, combined to create patterns or scenes or not, in ways that you could dig up close as  separate artworks or step back and get a bigger pattern or scene and then even more by stepping back further. I went back to immerse myself in it day after day while the exhibit lasted. Dragging my kids and lovers and friends to it too.

I wrote about it, but this was the pre-computer and social media era and I can't remember where it might have been published (but it may be in my archives at NYU). To me it was and is perfect, but even the person who wrote the intro to the coffee table book about it, Roberta Smith, called it "imperfect" (which came out in 1981 and I still cherish my copy, signed by Jennifer, though it's no substitute for a full immersion in the whole piece).

I loved her writing too and remember her reading at Saint Mark's an interminable list of the brand names of various products that I slowly realized was a completely unique new way of writing an autobiography. She was one of a kind (as I guess we all are) and I'm sorry to hear of her passing, though it sounds like it was for the best. Rest In Painting, and poetry, Jennifer Bartlett. 
 

GREAT QUOTE FROM ONE OF MY FAVORITE WRITERS

 

FINTAN O'TOOLE''S WE DON'T KNOW OURSELVES: A PERSONAL HISORY OF MODERN IRELAND

A detailed record and analysis of the last several decades that transformed Ireland politically, spiritually, and culturally, by a journalist who experienced and/or witnessed first hand, and wrote about, the changes as they were happening, I found this account so engaging I "couldn't put it down" as they say.

I don't know how those without an interest in Ireland and the Irish will respond to O'Toole's book, but for those who are into the ongoing story of the Irish at home and abroad, this is quite a successful feat of tying a lot of historic currents and upheavals into an impressive and informative document worth reading.

1000 YEARS OF JOYS AND SORROWS: A Memoir by Ai Weiwei

 
The artist and political activist Ai Weiwei's memoir covers the history of more than a century of resistance to repressive authoritarian political forces in China through the stories of his father's and his lives. His father was a revolutionary and renowned poet who was acclaimed and then attacked by the Chinese Communist Party, whereas his son was mostly just attacked.

I'm a great admirer of Ai Weiwei's courage as both an artist and activist so found this book compelling as well as revelatory. The English of translator Allan S. Barr is accessible and clear, except at times for Ai Weiwei's father's poetry, more clumsily rendered. If you're an art, or history, or Chinese culture, or Ai Weiwei fan or student, as I am, you should find this book as engaging as I did.

In the context of current events, it is also a tribute to resistance against restrictions on human rights.