Too many R.I.P.s lately. So it's nice to acknowledge someone still around.
Mucho thanks to my good old friend Tom Wilson and his COOL BIRTH blog for reminding me of how much I should get some Freddie Hubbard on my iTunes. This clip his post links to you have to watch (actually you don't have to watch, just LISTEN to) all the way to the end to dig some beautiful playing (and he's doing this with essentially a house band, not his own tried and true musical compatriots etc.—though they're certainly up to the task, but still).
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
GB READING BY SIMON PETTET & ME
The reading with Simon Pettet at Geoff Young's gallery in Great Barrington on Saturday was a delight, if I do say so myself.
Geoff had the bright idea that Simon and I alternate poems, a format I've done in the past, but hadn't taken part in nor seen in many years. Very old style. More like a poetry jam than a poetry reading.
It's a little risky, because each individual poet can't take the time to stretch out in any one poem (like many of mine which are often longer than Simon's) or to follow a poem that possibly falls a little flat with one you know will pick things up, etc.
Plus, the other guy could get in several hits in a row while your choices (as responses) miss and the whole reading will begin to sag.
Or one poet could just so dominate the other that it's too one-sided to even watch, like some of the early Mike Tyson fights (or exciting to watch, depending on your nature, to witness such quick and efficient devastation of an opponent).
But fortunately for Simon and me, and I think the audience would agree (and a very smart and attractive group it was), it really swung. Partly because I think we are enough alike in sensibility and even sentiment (a bit romantic but capable of being cold eyed about it), especially since I had to read short poems or short excerpts from long ones.
After we did the one poem back and forth thing for a few poems, Simon hesitated and suggested we go back to a more normal format but many in the audience made it clear they wanted us to continue the back and forth formula.
That's when we really had to dig down, or at least I know I had to, and grab a poem that I felt would resonate with what Simon just read and carry the reading forward and hopefully to an even higher level.
It was a gas. Felt like the days when I was a young jazz musician and would jam with people who were in my range of ability and so there was a security in letting the instincts and inspiration take the music to wherever it wanted to lead me.
(When Simon suggested we go back to a normal format and some in the crowd insisted we not, someone, I think it was Phil, made a comment comparing it to a jazz jam, citing two saxophonists that I knew but can't remember which ones (if you're out there Phil remind me please) but do remember feeling very jazzed just by the flattering comparison.)
We cooked that way until it felt like close to finishing when Simon made a brilliant suggestion, but again a risky one, that for an ending we each read a poem by the other poet.
I picked a poem of Simon's that he wrote during the onset of the Iraq War (that begins "There is a cruel, messianic, dim, tribal intransigence") that's been my favorite poem of his ever since. Then he, seeming at a loss as to which of mine to choose since I had a stack of books from over the years sitting on the table on either side of which each of us was standing, read one I chose for him that I wrote back in '75 on April Fool's day.
As I read Simon's, I noticed I couldn't help but read it slower than I usually do, more like Simon reads his poems, only still sounding like me, ending up with a combination of both our styles that made the poem new for me and moved me even more than it already had.
The same thing seemed to happen when Simon ended the reading with my April Fools Day 1975 poem. I was as surprised at where it took him, and me, and I hope the audience, as Simon seemed to be. And he read it quite a bit faster than he usually reads his own poems, more like I read mine.
I think it worked because all of us had gotten used to the rhythms and strategies of each poet, and our voices, and then to switch off and resonate each other's voices and poetic approaches in each other's voice was just kind of delightfully fresh.
Anyway, that's the way I experienced it. Wish you'd been there, and if you were, hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
Geoff had the bright idea that Simon and I alternate poems, a format I've done in the past, but hadn't taken part in nor seen in many years. Very old style. More like a poetry jam than a poetry reading.
It's a little risky, because each individual poet can't take the time to stretch out in any one poem (like many of mine which are often longer than Simon's) or to follow a poem that possibly falls a little flat with one you know will pick things up, etc.
Plus, the other guy could get in several hits in a row while your choices (as responses) miss and the whole reading will begin to sag.
Or one poet could just so dominate the other that it's too one-sided to even watch, like some of the early Mike Tyson fights (or exciting to watch, depending on your nature, to witness such quick and efficient devastation of an opponent).
But fortunately for Simon and me, and I think the audience would agree (and a very smart and attractive group it was), it really swung. Partly because I think we are enough alike in sensibility and even sentiment (a bit romantic but capable of being cold eyed about it), especially since I had to read short poems or short excerpts from long ones.
After we did the one poem back and forth thing for a few poems, Simon hesitated and suggested we go back to a more normal format but many in the audience made it clear they wanted us to continue the back and forth formula.
That's when we really had to dig down, or at least I know I had to, and grab a poem that I felt would resonate with what Simon just read and carry the reading forward and hopefully to an even higher level.
It was a gas. Felt like the days when I was a young jazz musician and would jam with people who were in my range of ability and so there was a security in letting the instincts and inspiration take the music to wherever it wanted to lead me.
(When Simon suggested we go back to a normal format and some in the crowd insisted we not, someone, I think it was Phil, made a comment comparing it to a jazz jam, citing two saxophonists that I knew but can't remember which ones (if you're out there Phil remind me please) but do remember feeling very jazzed just by the flattering comparison.)
We cooked that way until it felt like close to finishing when Simon made a brilliant suggestion, but again a risky one, that for an ending we each read a poem by the other poet.
I picked a poem of Simon's that he wrote during the onset of the Iraq War (that begins "There is a cruel, messianic, dim, tribal intransigence") that's been my favorite poem of his ever since. Then he, seeming at a loss as to which of mine to choose since I had a stack of books from over the years sitting on the table on either side of which each of us was standing, read one I chose for him that I wrote back in '75 on April Fool's day.
As I read Simon's, I noticed I couldn't help but read it slower than I usually do, more like Simon reads his poems, only still sounding like me, ending up with a combination of both our styles that made the poem new for me and moved me even more than it already had.
The same thing seemed to happen when Simon ended the reading with my April Fools Day 1975 poem. I was as surprised at where it took him, and me, and I hope the audience, as Simon seemed to be. And he read it quite a bit faster than he usually reads his own poems, more like I read mine.
I think it worked because all of us had gotten used to the rhythms and strategies of each poet, and our voices, and then to switch off and resonate each other's voices and poetic approaches in each other's voice was just kind of delightfully fresh.
Anyway, that's the way I experienced it. Wish you'd been there, and if you were, hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
ANOTHER LIST (FAVORITE DIARY/JOURNAL/DAYBOOK BOOKS)
I’ve been reading a new book by my old friend poet Ray DiPalma every night before sleeping. It’s a collection of six “journals and daybooks” from 1998 to 2008 (or maybe I should say “selection” since there are days missing, though that might just mean there was no writing on those days).
I’m digging it and will write a post about it when I finish it, but it’s already one of my favorite books about writing (and reading). Most of it is not very personally revealing in ways most readers might expect from a journal. And there are only a handful of direct comments about writing, but they’re gems and go a long way to explaining Ray’s approach to it, (though all his writing is “about writing” it seems to me).
Anyway, I love journals and diaries and daybooks, even when they’re used as a literary device in fiction rather than a way of recording actual personal history, or some combination of the two. So the night before I left for the Berkshires, where I am now on a gorgeous almost Fall morning, when I was having some trouble falling asleep—my body just wasn’t ready to go there—I thought I should come up with a list that would really tax my mind enough to wear it out and help me snooze, and having just put down Ray’s new book it seemed obvious.
My favorite books that use the diary, journal and/or daybook form, whether fictional or not (though most aren’t). I had an ABC immediately with ANCIENT USE OF STONE topping the list, then Jim Carroll’s (on my mind since his recent passing) and then F. Scott Fitzgerald’s.
This is all I could come up with (I have a feeling I may have done this before, but obviously not with Ray’s book):
ACIENT USE OF STONE, THE by Ray DiPalma
BASKETBALL DIARIES, THE by Jim Carroll
CRACK UP, THE by F. Scott Fitzgerald (the bulk of which is from journal entries)
DIARIES OF A YOUNG POET by Ranier Maria Rilke; THE DIARY OF JAMES SCHUYLER and DOCUMENT FOR AN ANONYMOUS INDIAN by Arn Henderson (a unique book from the early ‘70s that’s a collection of poetic notations, overheard dialogue, facts and photographs about or of various places in Oklahoma, like a completely original trip journal)
EVA HESSE DATE BOOKS 1964/65 (this is what they call a “facsimile” edition, so it’s in her own hand etc.)
FAIT ACCOMPLI by Nick Piombino (poet and friend Piombino culled earlier journals for blog entries, so this is like notebooks within notebooks within etc.)
G?
H?
I’M NOT STILLER by Max Frisch (the bulk of this novel is supposedly the notebooks of the imprisoned Stiller)
JOURNAL OF ALBION MOONLIGHT by Kenneth Patchen (another fictional—considered surreal at the time—“novel” in the form of a journal)
K?
L?
MOMENTS OF THE ITALIAN SUN by James Wright (mainly short prose pieces that read and most likely are entries in a travel journal and one of my favorite Wright books)
NOTEBOOKS OF JOSEPH JOUBERT (edited and translated by Paul Auster, Joubert started his journals when he was in his twenties in the 1770s and wrote them until his death I think, but Auster’s selection covers from the 1780s to the 1820s) and the fictionalized autobiographical novel written partially as notebook entries: THE NOTEBOOKS OF MALTE LAURIDS BRIGGE by Ranier Maria Rilke
OBITUARIES by William Saroyan (a book of daily contemplations on Variety’s list of those who died in 1976, with an entry for each one, a kind of journal of the year’s deaths); OF by me (a book-length poem written as poetic journal and travel diary entries in one notebook from Jan. to May in 1990) and OBSIDIAN POINT by Ken McCullough (a poetic journal by another old poet friend, written as poetry and prose covering a mountain trip in tha Fall of ’75 and a masterpiece in every way for my taste)
PILLOW BOOK OF SEI SHONAGON, THE (or at least that’s the way the English translation has it, though back then the Japanese didn’t have “pillows” (more like a small hard cloth log) and it’s a journal in retrospect the way it’s translated, but it’s definitely the oldest one on this list, written around the year 1000)
QUINCY HISTORY, A by James Haining (another great book about writing, poetry, and being a small press publisher in the 1970s)
ROLLING THUNDER LOGBOOK, THE by Sam Sheperd; REUNIONS by Harry E. Northup (another kind of poetic journal, short poems relating the daily routines and struggles and facts and feelings etc. of this friend and poet covering the years 1995 to 2000—and beautifully done for my taste)
SPECIMEN DAYS by Walt Whitman (the first book to turn me on to this quasi genre back when I was a teenage autodidact) and THE SECULAR JOURNAL OF THOMAS MERTON (his later religious journals are equally engaging, to me)
TRAIN RIDE by Ted Berrigan (a delightful one day poetic journal written during a train ride)
U?
VERMONT NOTEBOOK, THE by John Ashbery and Joe Brainard (Joe’s drawings etc. and John’s sort-of, journal-entry-like, prose entries written during a summer vacation in Vermont)
WINDBLOWN WORDS by Jack Kerouac (early journals ’47 to ’54)
X?
Y?
Z?
I’m digging it and will write a post about it when I finish it, but it’s already one of my favorite books about writing (and reading). Most of it is not very personally revealing in ways most readers might expect from a journal. And there are only a handful of direct comments about writing, but they’re gems and go a long way to explaining Ray’s approach to it, (though all his writing is “about writing” it seems to me).
Anyway, I love journals and diaries and daybooks, even when they’re used as a literary device in fiction rather than a way of recording actual personal history, or some combination of the two. So the night before I left for the Berkshires, where I am now on a gorgeous almost Fall morning, when I was having some trouble falling asleep—my body just wasn’t ready to go there—I thought I should come up with a list that would really tax my mind enough to wear it out and help me snooze, and having just put down Ray’s new book it seemed obvious.
My favorite books that use the diary, journal and/or daybook form, whether fictional or not (though most aren’t). I had an ABC immediately with ANCIENT USE OF STONE topping the list, then Jim Carroll’s (on my mind since his recent passing) and then F. Scott Fitzgerald’s.
This is all I could come up with (I have a feeling I may have done this before, but obviously not with Ray’s book):
ACIENT USE OF STONE, THE by Ray DiPalma
BASKETBALL DIARIES, THE by Jim Carroll
CRACK UP, THE by F. Scott Fitzgerald (the bulk of which is from journal entries)
DIARIES OF A YOUNG POET by Ranier Maria Rilke; THE DIARY OF JAMES SCHUYLER and DOCUMENT FOR AN ANONYMOUS INDIAN by Arn Henderson (a unique book from the early ‘70s that’s a collection of poetic notations, overheard dialogue, facts and photographs about or of various places in Oklahoma, like a completely original trip journal)
EVA HESSE DATE BOOKS 1964/65 (this is what they call a “facsimile” edition, so it’s in her own hand etc.)
FAIT ACCOMPLI by Nick Piombino (poet and friend Piombino culled earlier journals for blog entries, so this is like notebooks within notebooks within etc.)
G?
H?
I’M NOT STILLER by Max Frisch (the bulk of this novel is supposedly the notebooks of the imprisoned Stiller)
JOURNAL OF ALBION MOONLIGHT by Kenneth Patchen (another fictional—considered surreal at the time—“novel” in the form of a journal)
K?
L?
MOMENTS OF THE ITALIAN SUN by James Wright (mainly short prose pieces that read and most likely are entries in a travel journal and one of my favorite Wright books)
NOTEBOOKS OF JOSEPH JOUBERT (edited and translated by Paul Auster, Joubert started his journals when he was in his twenties in the 1770s and wrote them until his death I think, but Auster’s selection covers from the 1780s to the 1820s) and the fictionalized autobiographical novel written partially as notebook entries: THE NOTEBOOKS OF MALTE LAURIDS BRIGGE by Ranier Maria Rilke
OBITUARIES by William Saroyan (a book of daily contemplations on Variety’s list of those who died in 1976, with an entry for each one, a kind of journal of the year’s deaths); OF by me (a book-length poem written as poetic journal and travel diary entries in one notebook from Jan. to May in 1990) and OBSIDIAN POINT by Ken McCullough (a poetic journal by another old poet friend, written as poetry and prose covering a mountain trip in tha Fall of ’75 and a masterpiece in every way for my taste)
PILLOW BOOK OF SEI SHONAGON, THE (or at least that’s the way the English translation has it, though back then the Japanese didn’t have “pillows” (more like a small hard cloth log) and it’s a journal in retrospect the way it’s translated, but it’s definitely the oldest one on this list, written around the year 1000)
QUINCY HISTORY, A by James Haining (another great book about writing, poetry, and being a small press publisher in the 1970s)
ROLLING THUNDER LOGBOOK, THE by Sam Sheperd; REUNIONS by Harry E. Northup (another kind of poetic journal, short poems relating the daily routines and struggles and facts and feelings etc. of this friend and poet covering the years 1995 to 2000—and beautifully done for my taste)
SPECIMEN DAYS by Walt Whitman (the first book to turn me on to this quasi genre back when I was a teenage autodidact) and THE SECULAR JOURNAL OF THOMAS MERTON (his later religious journals are equally engaging, to me)
TRAIN RIDE by Ted Berrigan (a delightful one day poetic journal written during a train ride)
U?
VERMONT NOTEBOOK, THE by John Ashbery and Joe Brainard (Joe’s drawings etc. and John’s sort-of, journal-entry-like, prose entries written during a summer vacation in Vermont)
WINDBLOWN WORDS by Jack Kerouac (early journals ’47 to ’54)
X?
Y?
Z?
Thursday, September 17, 2009
ANDERSON COOPER STEPS UP
Okay, I take back some of my criticism of Anderson Cooper on CNN allowing rightwingers to vent without challenge since he finally did force one to show his true "colors"—see it here. Though he could have followed up more forcefully. And Carville shouldn't have laughingly dismissed the guy.
APRES THEM LE DELUGE
Film director/screenwriter John Hughes drops dead on a New York sidewalk of a heart attack at 59. Poet/songwriter Jim Carroll working at his desk from a heart attack at 60. Carter presidential Press Secretary Jodie Powell from a heart attack at 67. Movie star and dancer Patrick Swayze from cancer at 57 (here's a sweet appreciation of Swayze on Cool Birth). Political activist and union heroine Crystal Lee Sutton aka "Norma Rae" dead of cancer at 68. Actor and poet Henry Gibson from cancer at 73. Now singer Mary Travers of Peter, Paul & Mary fame dead from leukemia at 72.
All these well known public figures and more seem to be dropping like flies in recent days and weeks. What I see happening is the same thing that happened back in the '50s with rock'n'roll and the '60s with radical politics and the spread of "recreational" drug use, and so on through the decades that the "Baby Boomers" have dominated demographically.
There are those who came just before them and pioneered some of the outstanding changes in politics and music and culture in general etc. Followed by that big population bump of the boomers who made the changes seemingly universal, at least for a while (as in "everybody's doing it" rather than the hip few among the pioneers etc.).
Now that the boomers run is heading toward the ultimate eclipse, it seems once again their immediate forerunners are paving the way for the deluge to come in the "famous deaths" department.
Gibson and Travers and Powell and Sutton were all part of the pioneer generation in culture and politics (though they weren't really trendsetters or cutting edge innovators in their fields, more like popularizers of what the innovators were doing) and Hughes, Carrol and Swazye belong to the first wave of baby boomers now heading into retirement and beyond.
So what I'm thinking is, as with everything else the boomers have had anything to do with, because of their vast numbers the number of "celebrity" deaths is going to become a trend before too long and this current run of sad departures is just the beginning.
All these well known public figures and more seem to be dropping like flies in recent days and weeks. What I see happening is the same thing that happened back in the '50s with rock'n'roll and the '60s with radical politics and the spread of "recreational" drug use, and so on through the decades that the "Baby Boomers" have dominated demographically.
There are those who came just before them and pioneered some of the outstanding changes in politics and music and culture in general etc. Followed by that big population bump of the boomers who made the changes seemingly universal, at least for a while (as in "everybody's doing it" rather than the hip few among the pioneers etc.).
Now that the boomers run is heading toward the ultimate eclipse, it seems once again their immediate forerunners are paving the way for the deluge to come in the "famous deaths" department.
Gibson and Travers and Powell and Sutton were all part of the pioneer generation in culture and politics (though they weren't really trendsetters or cutting edge innovators in their fields, more like popularizers of what the innovators were doing) and Hughes, Carrol and Swazye belong to the first wave of baby boomers now heading into retirement and beyond.
So what I'm thinking is, as with everything else the boomers have had anything to do with, because of their vast numbers the number of "celebrity" deaths is going to become a trend before too long and this current run of sad departures is just the beginning.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
HENRY GIBSON R.I.P.
I just heard the actor and poet Henry Gibson passed and it saddens me, even though he lived a good full life and was in his 70s, which is starting to seem not so old anymore.
It saddens me because he was one of the nicest persons I've ever known. He's best known, at least to those old enough, as a member of the ensemble that made LAUGH IN a hit in the 1960s. He was the little guy who played various characters, but most memorably for many, the silly poet. Or for the last regular TV gig he had as the boss on BOSTON LEGAL.
But a lot of us remember him more for the lead role in the seminal Robert Altman film NASHVILLE. Probably the only time Henry played the lead in a move or TV show. Which is a shame. He was a gifted actor with great range.
I met and became friends with him in the '80s. He was not just always gentle and kind but also enormously generous with his time and attention. He took part in the weekly reading series I co-founded and co-ran with Eve Brandstein, reading his own poetry, which yes sometimes was humorous, but always original in the same way Henry was. I've never known anyone else like him and he will be missed.
It saddens me because he was one of the nicest persons I've ever known. He's best known, at least to those old enough, as a member of the ensemble that made LAUGH IN a hit in the 1960s. He was the little guy who played various characters, but most memorably for many, the silly poet. Or for the last regular TV gig he had as the boss on BOSTON LEGAL.
But a lot of us remember him more for the lead role in the seminal Robert Altman film NASHVILLE. Probably the only time Henry played the lead in a move or TV show. Which is a shame. He was a gifted actor with great range.
I met and became friends with him in the '80s. He was not just always gentle and kind but also enormously generous with his time and attention. He took part in the weekly reading series I co-founded and co-ran with Eve Brandstein, reading his own poetry, which yes sometimes was humorous, but always original in the same way Henry was. I've never known anyone else like him and he will be missed.
CRYSTAL LEE "NORMA RAE" SUTTON R.I.P.
Crystal Lee Sutton, the North Carolina woman who inspired the movie NORMA RAE has passed away. According to her testimony, one of her last battles was with her health insurance company several years ago during the onset of the cancer that ultimately killed her! Once again her personal struggles coincide with the struggles of many others. You can read about it here and here.
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