"Defense Secretary Robert Gates is deluding himself -- we hope! -- if he seriously thinks that appointing someone other than Gen. Peter Pace to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is going to avoid turning confirmation hearings into a 'divisive ordeal' about Iraq. But at least Gates' pick to replace Pace probably won't have to answer questions about some of the more embarrassing episodes in Pace's recent past. To wit:
"Showing his biases, I: Back in March, the Chicago Tribune asked Pace about the military's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy. His response: 'I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts. I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way. As an individual, I would not want [acceptance of gay behavior] to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else's wife, that we would just look the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior.'
"Showing his biases, II: When Scooter Libby was prosecuted and convicted for obstructing justice, perjury and making false statements -- conduct one might, indeed, call 'immoral' -- Pace took it upon himself to write a letter to Judge Reggie B. Walton in support of the defendant. 'I was alwas impressed with Mr. Libby's professionalism and focus and attention to the matters at hand,' Pace wrote. 'He impressed me as a team player when addressing issues with his selfless approach to his wide-ranging responsibilities . . . . He always looked for not just what was in the best interests of the country, but also for the right way to proceed -- both legally and morally.'
"Trusting Rumsfeld: Coming to the defense of the defense secretary who picked him to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Pace said last October that Donald Rumsfeld 'leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country.'
"Misunderestimating problems in Iraq: In a TV interview last March -- which is to say, after the bombing of the Golden Mosque of Samarra, which in the Bush administration's telling of it is the moment when everything went completely to hell -- Pace said that Iraq was looking pretty wonderful. 'I wouldn't put a great big smiley face on it,' he said, 'but I would say [things in Iraq are] going very, very well from everything you look at . . . . No matter where you look -- at their military, their police, their society -- things are much better this year than they were last.'
"Miscounting the dead: In a television appearance on Memorial Day 2007, Pace minimized the human cost of the war in Iraq by suggesting, in a non sequitur sort of way, that the U.S. death toll there was just now 'approaching' the death toll from 9/11. He was wrong on both counts: The U.S. death toll in Iraq was higher then than the death toll from 9/11. Thanks in no small part to the policies Pace helped execute, it's even higher today."
-- Tim Grieve
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Thursday, June 7, 2007
ANOTHER QUOTE
“When publishers fail, they fail at being readers.
When readers fail, they fail at being listeners.
When writers fail, they fail at being lovers.”
—Nick Piombino from FAIT ACCOMPLI
When readers fail, they fail at being listeners.
When writers fail, they fail at being lovers.”
—Nick Piombino from FAIT ACCOMPLI
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
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”
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”
Monday, June 4, 2007
ELISABETH SHUE IN GRACIE
Last summer I was walking by a park, at the other end of the street I was then living on, and saw some “honey wagons”—as they call the RV size vehicles with tiny dressing rooms for actors used on film locations.
I wondered who would be shooting a movie around here and asked a guy with a walkie talkie who the director was. He said Davis Guggenheim. I told him I knew him, and he made an expression like, “yeah sure.”
I went to where they were shooting, and the little group of canvas chairs they use for the director and stars and cinematographer, etc. behind the camera and monitors, and there was Davis, watching the playback of a scene just shot.
He was as nice to me when I walked up to him, as he was on the set of DEADWOOD, where he directed the episode I had a small role in. In fact, he’s one of the nicest directors, or for that matter people, I ever worked with (which added to my delight to see him a few months ago among those accepting the Oscar for AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, which he also directed).
What I discovered that day last summer was that he was making a “small” movie based on real incidents in the life of the actress Elisabeth Shue—his wife. When I ran into him again with my little boy and a friend a few days later in the local Starbuck’s, where I was buying my Sunday Times, he was alone, working on the script, but took time to chat with my son, as well as with me.
Then a few days ago I was walking past the local movie theater with another friend, and our two little boys, when I ran into Davis again, this time in town for the premiere, which somehow I hadn’t known about, and he generously stopped to chat and remind my little boy that they’d met before and ask after him and then stop his wife as she rushed by to reintroduce her to me and to my son.
I forgot to introduce them to my friend Bill and his son—my social skills still need work—but I was happy to see the movie had made it to release and that they held the premiere here as a benefit for the high school it was set in, the same public school my brothers and sisters went to many decades before Elizabeth Shue. (I went to an all boys Catholic school in Newark in the 1950s.)
I was sorry I missed the premiere, but yesterday my son and a friend of his—and his friend’s mother and a mutual friend of ours—all went to catch a matinee of the movie, and only one scene into it and my eyes were already tearing up. By the end of the film I was outright sniffling and wiping my eyes to see.
I’m always moved by movies about underdogs and outsiders, as many of us are, because, if you’re anything like me, you have often felt like an underdog and an outsider. And I’ve never been afraid of sentiment, even back in the decades when I was too macho or too repressed to cry over anything. At the heart of my emotional response to these kinds of stories is the fact that my mother died before I ever had any kind of success, and though I had a few triumphs out in the world before my father died, he never acknowledged them, or encouraged me in them.
So stories about kids or young adults who face tough odds and overcome them, while getting no support from their fathers, hit me right in the heart. And when, in most of these flicks, the fathers finally show up for their kids, to share in their victory, even if it’s a minor one in the grand scheme of things, it still gives me tears of joy to bear witness to that resolution, no matter how Hollywood contrived it can be in some of those films.
But there’s another reason I was so emotional in response to this flick—Elisabeth Shue. She’s one of those actresses that seems to me to be underrated. Even though she was nominated for an Oscar for her role in LEAVING LAS VEGAS, it was Nick Cage who got it, not her, but I felt his performance wouldn’t have worked if it wasn’t for her, but hers would have worked even if she was playing opposite a cat or dog.
That’s not to denigrate Cage, but to say she’s simply perfect, as far as I’m concerned. Unafraid to be vulnerable or strong, to be vividly expressive or repressed, and especially to simply be. Her presence on screen is so strong, sometimes all she has to do is be still and I’m moved.
And she has the capacity to convey a look I don’t see in women on screen, that “thousand yard stare” people are always talking about war veterans and city cops and others having, who have faced death and seen horrible things, but always men. They should watch Shue sometime.
She had it almost throughout LEAVING LAS VEGAS and it devastated me watching her move through her character’s life with that look in her eyes. And she has it, when necessary, in GRACIE.
Her husband’s direction is terrific, like Shue keeping it simple for the most part, allowing a lot of things raised by the film to not be resolved by the end, not even explained, trusting us to understand them anyway, because we’ve all experienced similar no-need-to-explain relatives or family situations or relationships with family members.
The central issue is resolved in a way that made the tears really flow. But in between the opening scene and the end of the movie there was plenty of what some might describe as “small moments” in which the actors made me feel the emotional baggage they were dealing with, but without the need for the usual “small” movie irony or dark humor or “quirkiness.”
The film is set in my hometown, South Orange, New Jersey, in 1978, almost 20 years after I left, and shot mostly in the town next door, where I live now, a lot of it in the recently refurbished to look old-style, little village center. Not much like South Orange in the ‘70s.
The story is an altered version of Elizabeth Shue’s story, as the younger sister of a local soccer star who died young but obviously was a deep and gifted boy, after which she became one of the first girls to make it onto a boys soccer team, before Title IX kicked in and girls soccer became relatively common.
The movie was produced by her brother Andrew, who came up with the idea for it, based on the loss of his big brother and his sister’s struggle to honor that brother’s death by overcoming the then prevalent prejudice against girls in “contact” sports.
Andrew has a small part in the movie, as the assistant soccer coach and history teacher. He too was moved by his older brother to take soccer seriously, becoming a professional player for the Los Angeles team at the same time he was making a name as an actor on MELROSE PLACE.
So, this movie is a family affair. And it has that feel to it. It’s like if you or me were able to turn our home movies and family photos into a feature film. Only they actually did it.
This is a movie about a real family with real problems. What I liked best about it was that there were things in the movie that you couldn’t miss but were never explained, and didn’t need to be, because most of us can recognize them from our own family histories, and like I said, the moviemakers trust us to.
Carly Shroeder as the young Elisabeth Shue is particularly a standout in the film, since she is the star of it and without her excellent performance it wouldn’t work. But the best thing about this film for me—is Elisabeth Shue, playing a character based on her own mother.
What a wonderful thing movies are, and how happy I am that this talented family got to make this one.
I wondered who would be shooting a movie around here and asked a guy with a walkie talkie who the director was. He said Davis Guggenheim. I told him I knew him, and he made an expression like, “yeah sure.”
I went to where they were shooting, and the little group of canvas chairs they use for the director and stars and cinematographer, etc. behind the camera and monitors, and there was Davis, watching the playback of a scene just shot.
He was as nice to me when I walked up to him, as he was on the set of DEADWOOD, where he directed the episode I had a small role in. In fact, he’s one of the nicest directors, or for that matter people, I ever worked with (which added to my delight to see him a few months ago among those accepting the Oscar for AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, which he also directed).
What I discovered that day last summer was that he was making a “small” movie based on real incidents in the life of the actress Elisabeth Shue—his wife. When I ran into him again with my little boy and a friend a few days later in the local Starbuck’s, where I was buying my Sunday Times, he was alone, working on the script, but took time to chat with my son, as well as with me.
Then a few days ago I was walking past the local movie theater with another friend, and our two little boys, when I ran into Davis again, this time in town for the premiere, which somehow I hadn’t known about, and he generously stopped to chat and remind my little boy that they’d met before and ask after him and then stop his wife as she rushed by to reintroduce her to me and to my son.
I forgot to introduce them to my friend Bill and his son—my social skills still need work—but I was happy to see the movie had made it to release and that they held the premiere here as a benefit for the high school it was set in, the same public school my brothers and sisters went to many decades before Elizabeth Shue. (I went to an all boys Catholic school in Newark in the 1950s.)
I was sorry I missed the premiere, but yesterday my son and a friend of his—and his friend’s mother and a mutual friend of ours—all went to catch a matinee of the movie, and only one scene into it and my eyes were already tearing up. By the end of the film I was outright sniffling and wiping my eyes to see.
I’m always moved by movies about underdogs and outsiders, as many of us are, because, if you’re anything like me, you have often felt like an underdog and an outsider. And I’ve never been afraid of sentiment, even back in the decades when I was too macho or too repressed to cry over anything. At the heart of my emotional response to these kinds of stories is the fact that my mother died before I ever had any kind of success, and though I had a few triumphs out in the world before my father died, he never acknowledged them, or encouraged me in them.
So stories about kids or young adults who face tough odds and overcome them, while getting no support from their fathers, hit me right in the heart. And when, in most of these flicks, the fathers finally show up for their kids, to share in their victory, even if it’s a minor one in the grand scheme of things, it still gives me tears of joy to bear witness to that resolution, no matter how Hollywood contrived it can be in some of those films.
But there’s another reason I was so emotional in response to this flick—Elisabeth Shue. She’s one of those actresses that seems to me to be underrated. Even though she was nominated for an Oscar for her role in LEAVING LAS VEGAS, it was Nick Cage who got it, not her, but I felt his performance wouldn’t have worked if it wasn’t for her, but hers would have worked even if she was playing opposite a cat or dog.
That’s not to denigrate Cage, but to say she’s simply perfect, as far as I’m concerned. Unafraid to be vulnerable or strong, to be vividly expressive or repressed, and especially to simply be. Her presence on screen is so strong, sometimes all she has to do is be still and I’m moved.
And she has the capacity to convey a look I don’t see in women on screen, that “thousand yard stare” people are always talking about war veterans and city cops and others having, who have faced death and seen horrible things, but always men. They should watch Shue sometime.
She had it almost throughout LEAVING LAS VEGAS and it devastated me watching her move through her character’s life with that look in her eyes. And she has it, when necessary, in GRACIE.
Her husband’s direction is terrific, like Shue keeping it simple for the most part, allowing a lot of things raised by the film to not be resolved by the end, not even explained, trusting us to understand them anyway, because we’ve all experienced similar no-need-to-explain relatives or family situations or relationships with family members.
The central issue is resolved in a way that made the tears really flow. But in between the opening scene and the end of the movie there was plenty of what some might describe as “small moments” in which the actors made me feel the emotional baggage they were dealing with, but without the need for the usual “small” movie irony or dark humor or “quirkiness.”
The film is set in my hometown, South Orange, New Jersey, in 1978, almost 20 years after I left, and shot mostly in the town next door, where I live now, a lot of it in the recently refurbished to look old-style, little village center. Not much like South Orange in the ‘70s.
The story is an altered version of Elizabeth Shue’s story, as the younger sister of a local soccer star who died young but obviously was a deep and gifted boy, after which she became one of the first girls to make it onto a boys soccer team, before Title IX kicked in and girls soccer became relatively common.
The movie was produced by her brother Andrew, who came up with the idea for it, based on the loss of his big brother and his sister’s struggle to honor that brother’s death by overcoming the then prevalent prejudice against girls in “contact” sports.
Andrew has a small part in the movie, as the assistant soccer coach and history teacher. He too was moved by his older brother to take soccer seriously, becoming a professional player for the Los Angeles team at the same time he was making a name as an actor on MELROSE PLACE.
So, this movie is a family affair. And it has that feel to it. It’s like if you or me were able to turn our home movies and family photos into a feature film. Only they actually did it.
This is a movie about a real family with real problems. What I liked best about it was that there were things in the movie that you couldn’t miss but were never explained, and didn’t need to be, because most of us can recognize them from our own family histories, and like I said, the moviemakers trust us to.
Carly Shroeder as the young Elisabeth Shue is particularly a standout in the film, since she is the star of it and without her excellent performance it wouldn’t work. But the best thing about this film for me—is Elisabeth Shue, playing a character based on her own mother.
What a wonderful thing movies are, and how happy I am that this talented family got to make this one.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
MORE TRINITY (BOOK) LISTS
My last post—on Nick Piombino’s new book FAIT ACCOMPLI and my love of “incidental” writing or “secondary sources” etc.—generated more trinity lists, not necessarily all related to the above, but mostly:
3 favorite Walt Whitman biographies (I’m almost always reading or re-reading something by or about Whitman):
1. WALT WHITMAN’S AMERICA by David S. Reynolds
2. WALT WHITMAN/A LIFE by Justin Kaplan
3. WALT WHITMAN by Jerome Loving
3 favorite “Beat” biographies (in many ways Whtiman’s heirs):
1. MEMORY BABE: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac by Gerald Nicosia
2. GENESIS ANGELS The Saga of Lew Welch and the Beat Generation by Aram Saroyan
3. OFF THE ROAD, My Years with Kerouac, Cassady and Ginsberg by Carolyn Cassady
3 favorite “memoirs” by poets:
1. SKY by Blaise Cendrars translated by Nina Rootes
2. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
3. RECOLLECTIONS OF MY LIFE AS A WOMAN The New York Years by Diane DiPrima
3 favorite “diaries” by poets:
1. SPECIMEN DAYS by Walt Whitman
2. DIARIES OF A YOUNG POET by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Edward Snow and Michael Winkler
3. THE DIARY OF JAMES SCHUYLER
3 favorite non-fiction prose collections by poets:
1. A QUINCY HISTORY by James Haining
2. EARTH HOUSE HOLD by Gary Snyder
3. SCRATCHING THE BEAT SURFACE by Michael McClure
(and I suspect by the time I finish Nick Piombino’s FAIT ACCOMPLI it will replace one of the above)
3 favorite book-length poems
1. PATERSON by William Carlos Williams
2. HUMAN LANDSCAPES FROM MY COUNTRY by Nazim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blessing and Mutlu Konuk—billed as “an epic novel in verse”)
3. OF by Michael Lally (gotta be honest, and despite some embarrassment over the first few pages and their self-conscious and/or over simplified “clevernesses” and deliberate “awkwardnesses”—I dig it a lot, what can I say)
3 favorite spiritual texts:
1. THE TAO TE CHING by Lao Tzu (I like Stephen Mitchell’s translation, but I’ve read many and find something unique in each one, so I just keep reading whatever new translations I discover)
2. THE ENLIGHTENED MIND edited by Stephen Mitchell (a comprehensive selection of spiritual writing throughout the ages)
3. THE SCRIPTURE OF THE GOLDEN ETERNITY by Jack Kerouac
3 favorite Walt Whitman biographies (I’m almost always reading or re-reading something by or about Whitman):
1. WALT WHITMAN’S AMERICA by David S. Reynolds
2. WALT WHITMAN/A LIFE by Justin Kaplan
3. WALT WHITMAN by Jerome Loving
3 favorite “Beat” biographies (in many ways Whtiman’s heirs):
1. MEMORY BABE: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac by Gerald Nicosia
2. GENESIS ANGELS The Saga of Lew Welch and the Beat Generation by Aram Saroyan
3. OFF THE ROAD, My Years with Kerouac, Cassady and Ginsberg by Carolyn Cassady
3 favorite “memoirs” by poets:
1. SKY by Blaise Cendrars translated by Nina Rootes
2. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
3. RECOLLECTIONS OF MY LIFE AS A WOMAN The New York Years by Diane DiPrima
3 favorite “diaries” by poets:
1. SPECIMEN DAYS by Walt Whitman
2. DIARIES OF A YOUNG POET by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Edward Snow and Michael Winkler
3. THE DIARY OF JAMES SCHUYLER
3 favorite non-fiction prose collections by poets:
1. A QUINCY HISTORY by James Haining
2. EARTH HOUSE HOLD by Gary Snyder
3. SCRATCHING THE BEAT SURFACE by Michael McClure
(and I suspect by the time I finish Nick Piombino’s FAIT ACCOMPLI it will replace one of the above)
3 favorite book-length poems
1. PATERSON by William Carlos Williams
2. HUMAN LANDSCAPES FROM MY COUNTRY by Nazim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blessing and Mutlu Konuk—billed as “an epic novel in verse”)
3. OF by Michael Lally (gotta be honest, and despite some embarrassment over the first few pages and their self-conscious and/or over simplified “clevernesses” and deliberate “awkwardnesses”—I dig it a lot, what can I say)
3 favorite spiritual texts:
1. THE TAO TE CHING by Lao Tzu (I like Stephen Mitchell’s translation, but I’ve read many and find something unique in each one, so I just keep reading whatever new translations I discover)
2. THE ENLIGHTENED MIND edited by Stephen Mitchell (a comprehensive selection of spiritual writing throughout the ages)
3. THE SCRIPTURE OF THE GOLDEN ETERNITY by Jack Kerouac
Saturday, June 2, 2007
NICK PIOMBINO, POETS’ JOURNALS, READINGS, ETC.
I was e mailing a friend today and wrote the following lines:
“As a print junkie, who is and has always been reading books and
mags and newspapers etc. it was always what the critics and academics thought of as the secondary writing and the "incidental" writing or "occasional" writing (meaning written for a specific occasion) that I dug most, the journals and letters, the essays about some obscure obsession etc. So blogs and e mails and such are very appealing to me, but only if I dig the person's perspective or way of articulating it.”
And then the mail came, and in it was a great book (I’ve only just begun reading it, several pages in, but it is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about that I dig so much [and having now read even more pages in I really really dig it]) by poet Nick Piombino called FAIT ACCOMPLI, which, as he says in his “Note to the Reader” is a “journal within a journal,” a selection of posts from his blog (see my recommended list to the right where I have just added his—nick piombino) in which are also embedded selections from his handwritten journals going as far back as the 1970s.
I ran into him the other day at poet Bob Holman’s Bowery Poetry Club, and Nick asked for my address so he could send me the book, because somewhere in it, he said, he mentioned my first reading of my long anti-invasion-of-Iraq poem, written to be read on the eve of the invasion, and titled after that date: MARCH 18, 2003.
I was at the Bowery Poetry Club, when I ran into Nick, to see poets Elaine Equi and Rae Armantrout read. I hadn’t seen Rae or heard her read in decades, but had recently seen Elaine read in a group reading for poet Vincent Katz’s magazine VERITAS, that reading also being at The Bowery Poetry Club.
At that earlier reading, I remember thinking, as I listened to and watched poets like Elaine and Lewis Warsh and Elaine’s husband Jerome Sala and others, how I felt I had found a home, a community, when I first encountered fellow poets, and on this occasion that feeling was renewed in me.
I started reading my poetry in the late 1950s in the many coffee shops that sprung up seemingly overnight with the sudden notoriety of “the Beat” writers. I didn’t, and still don’t, always feel at home around poets, because there are very few rewards in the poetry world and in some poetry scenes the competition is so intense that it can feel worse than show business.
One of the reasons I left Manhattan in 1982 for Hollywood was a feeling that if people were going to be out for themselves and not care who they hurt to get what they wanted, then I might as well be in a place where that behavior was not only accepted, but up front, as opposed to some of the New York literary scene back then where there was the pretense of community but the envy and competitiveness was often so thick and heavy it sometimes felt like a shroud.
Anyway, I’ve been back East for several years now, and am old enough to not give a shit about any of that any more, and to realize that the spirit of community I was looking for among poets and other artists was often a reality and still is, if I can get my own ego out of the way. I dig almost everyone now, for who they are and what they do, with the occasional old resentment toward someone, usually in the poetry world, cropping up to take me by surprise now and then (after the reading the other day, having dinner with some younger poets, one of those resentments popped up and out of my mouth before I could stop it, and one of the younger poets said: “Wasn’t that like back in the 1970s?” and I realized it was probably before she was born and I certainly should have let go of it by now!).
But back to my point, at that earlier reading, I felt a sudden warmth flood my heart with love for the poets that were reading, and in the audience, and the entire community represented there, not just by the poets but also by the artists and musicians and actors in the audience, and others who just appreciated the work of these poets.
What occurred to me strongly in that moment was that all these people had individual quirks and eccentricities that most people would either try to suppress or be ostracized for, but among poets, and other artists, they could transform these traits into unique voices in their work and present that work with their equally unique personalities, that were an honest reflection of who they really are. And the poets did just that, seemingly with very little fear or self-consciousness, and even their nerves and self-consciousness was communicated as part of what made their poetry and their reading of it unique.
I’m not articulating that as well as I‘d like to (I should always write these things in the morning not the evening or night) but the feeling was one of, “Oh, of course, that’s why I always felt at home in this kind of poetry scene"—in this case downtown New York—because I too am a quirky character who is not ashamed of that or to express it in my work, and these are the people I can share that with, even when they have criticisms of the way I do it, or of who I seem to be projecting through the work, they still accept not only my “right” to do it, but understand the impulse, the necessity, for me, of doing it.
Does that make sense? At any rate, that’s why I always loved the incidental writing of poets and others, because it revealed that quirkiness, that unique voice and experience everyone has but so many get slapped out of them so young they forget how to express it or only feel comfortable expressing it through product preferences (sneakers, chain coffee—Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks, etc.—or on the “art” side, favorite music, TV shows, etc.).
Most poets feel free to express their unique perspective, from their unique consciousness and experience, through their work, most obviously their poems, but more interestingly to me, through their diaries and journals and letters and other artistic expressions.
For instance a lot of poets, including me, seem comfortable making collages as a more tactile—and traditionally “modern”—way of making art. Nick Piombino in fact has one of his collages reproduced on the cover of FAIT ACCOMPLI, and a great piece of art it is, exactly the kind of thing I would buy and frame and stick on my wall if there were any more space to do that and if I had the money and if it were for sale.
FAIT ACCOMPLI is published by an interesting sounding group—Factory School—“a learning and production collective engaged in action research, multiple-media arts, publishing, and community service” (see factoryschool.org). It sounds like they dig the same kinds of things I do. I’ll have to check them out.
Meanwhile, thanks Nick for the book and for provoking these thoughts. Life sure is full of possibilities.
[PS: have since read the page that refers to me and it is highly flattering, but though some might think that infleunced the above, I wrote all that before I read what he had to say about me and would love this book even if he had trashed me in it!]
“As a print junkie, who is and has always been reading books and
mags and newspapers etc. it was always what the critics and academics thought of as the secondary writing and the "incidental" writing or "occasional" writing (meaning written for a specific occasion) that I dug most, the journals and letters, the essays about some obscure obsession etc. So blogs and e mails and such are very appealing to me, but only if I dig the person's perspective or way of articulating it.”
And then the mail came, and in it was a great book (I’ve only just begun reading it, several pages in, but it is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about that I dig so much [and having now read even more pages in I really really dig it]) by poet Nick Piombino called FAIT ACCOMPLI, which, as he says in his “Note to the Reader” is a “journal within a journal,” a selection of posts from his blog (see my recommended list to the right where I have just added his—nick piombino) in which are also embedded selections from his handwritten journals going as far back as the 1970s.
I ran into him the other day at poet Bob Holman’s Bowery Poetry Club, and Nick asked for my address so he could send me the book, because somewhere in it, he said, he mentioned my first reading of my long anti-invasion-of-Iraq poem, written to be read on the eve of the invasion, and titled after that date: MARCH 18, 2003.
I was at the Bowery Poetry Club, when I ran into Nick, to see poets Elaine Equi and Rae Armantrout read. I hadn’t seen Rae or heard her read in decades, but had recently seen Elaine read in a group reading for poet Vincent Katz’s magazine VERITAS, that reading also being at The Bowery Poetry Club.
At that earlier reading, I remember thinking, as I listened to and watched poets like Elaine and Lewis Warsh and Elaine’s husband Jerome Sala and others, how I felt I had found a home, a community, when I first encountered fellow poets, and on this occasion that feeling was renewed in me.
I started reading my poetry in the late 1950s in the many coffee shops that sprung up seemingly overnight with the sudden notoriety of “the Beat” writers. I didn’t, and still don’t, always feel at home around poets, because there are very few rewards in the poetry world and in some poetry scenes the competition is so intense that it can feel worse than show business.
One of the reasons I left Manhattan in 1982 for Hollywood was a feeling that if people were going to be out for themselves and not care who they hurt to get what they wanted, then I might as well be in a place where that behavior was not only accepted, but up front, as opposed to some of the New York literary scene back then where there was the pretense of community but the envy and competitiveness was often so thick and heavy it sometimes felt like a shroud.
Anyway, I’ve been back East for several years now, and am old enough to not give a shit about any of that any more, and to realize that the spirit of community I was looking for among poets and other artists was often a reality and still is, if I can get my own ego out of the way. I dig almost everyone now, for who they are and what they do, with the occasional old resentment toward someone, usually in the poetry world, cropping up to take me by surprise now and then (after the reading the other day, having dinner with some younger poets, one of those resentments popped up and out of my mouth before I could stop it, and one of the younger poets said: “Wasn’t that like back in the 1970s?” and I realized it was probably before she was born and I certainly should have let go of it by now!).
But back to my point, at that earlier reading, I felt a sudden warmth flood my heart with love for the poets that were reading, and in the audience, and the entire community represented there, not just by the poets but also by the artists and musicians and actors in the audience, and others who just appreciated the work of these poets.
What occurred to me strongly in that moment was that all these people had individual quirks and eccentricities that most people would either try to suppress or be ostracized for, but among poets, and other artists, they could transform these traits into unique voices in their work and present that work with their equally unique personalities, that were an honest reflection of who they really are. And the poets did just that, seemingly with very little fear or self-consciousness, and even their nerves and self-consciousness was communicated as part of what made their poetry and their reading of it unique.
I’m not articulating that as well as I‘d like to (I should always write these things in the morning not the evening or night) but the feeling was one of, “Oh, of course, that’s why I always felt at home in this kind of poetry scene"—in this case downtown New York—because I too am a quirky character who is not ashamed of that or to express it in my work, and these are the people I can share that with, even when they have criticisms of the way I do it, or of who I seem to be projecting through the work, they still accept not only my “right” to do it, but understand the impulse, the necessity, for me, of doing it.
Does that make sense? At any rate, that’s why I always loved the incidental writing of poets and others, because it revealed that quirkiness, that unique voice and experience everyone has but so many get slapped out of them so young they forget how to express it or only feel comfortable expressing it through product preferences (sneakers, chain coffee—Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks, etc.—or on the “art” side, favorite music, TV shows, etc.).
Most poets feel free to express their unique perspective, from their unique consciousness and experience, through their work, most obviously their poems, but more interestingly to me, through their diaries and journals and letters and other artistic expressions.
For instance a lot of poets, including me, seem comfortable making collages as a more tactile—and traditionally “modern”—way of making art. Nick Piombino in fact has one of his collages reproduced on the cover of FAIT ACCOMPLI, and a great piece of art it is, exactly the kind of thing I would buy and frame and stick on my wall if there were any more space to do that and if I had the money and if it were for sale.
FAIT ACCOMPLI is published by an interesting sounding group—Factory School—“a learning and production collective engaged in action research, multiple-media arts, publishing, and community service” (see factoryschool.org). It sounds like they dig the same kinds of things I do. I’ll have to check them out.
Meanwhile, thanks Nick for the book and for provoking these thoughts. Life sure is full of possibilities.
[PS: have since read the page that refers to me and it is highly flattering, but though some might think that infleunced the above, I wrote all that before I read what he had to say about me and would love this book even if he had trashed me in it!]
Friday, June 1, 2007
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
“Keep mind like Mother’s kitchen:
clean enough to be healthy,
dirty enough to be happy.”
—Bill Deemer from the poem “Two Sermons”
clean enough to be healthy,
dirty enough to be happy.”
—Bill Deemer from the poem “Two Sermons”
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