JOE WHO?

Thanks to my friend Tom and his post on COOL BIRTH for this. My sentiments exactly.

HMMMMMMM...

In a few places over the years, including the poem I wrote to be read the night before our military invaded Iraq, MARCH 18, 2003, I point out the connection between illegal drugs and our secret agencies, especially the CIA:

"Don't the links between the CIA and
drug smuggling date back to its beginnings?
In fact, can't you track which country the CIA is trying
to get something from or do something to
by which drug is the latest 'epidemic'?"

So, is it just a coincidence that most of the heroin in the world now comes from Afghanistan, and that the corrupt government there—set up and maintained for the last several years by the Bush/Cheney rightwing Republican administration—includes the Afghan president's brother who is on the CIA payroll and also heavily involved in the heroin trade, and the story our media is just beginning to cover (e.g. on The CBS Evening News earlier tonight) that there's a new epidemic of heroin over here so strong that white suburban kids are o.d.ing from snorting it, including some as young as middle school?

"WE'RE NUMBER ... UH...NINE!"

See here.

POETRY & ART

It's been a great week for the kind of sustenance I get only from the creative work of others.

Last Wednesday evening poet and friend John Ashbery came to my hometown, South Orange, to give a reading at Seton Hall University. When I was a kid, it was a college with only a handful of buildings on a small campus. And one of those was a boys' prep school. The latter moved to another town, and the college became a university, and many more buildings were constructed, so that now it's a crowded little campus.

John read in a lecture auditorium in the science building. Somehow seemed appropriate. I hadn't seen him in a while, but he was as warm and gracious and funny as he always is with me, and was the same with the audience when he read. He was also, as he always is, straight forward, answering a question at the end about how he composes a poem as clearly and simply as I've ever heard any poet or other kind of artist do. Most don't want to give away their secrets or are superstitious about letting people in on their process, or can't articulate it, but John referred directly to some of the approaches he uses, including waking up in the morning with a phrase or line already in his head, or hearing something on the radio or TV and finding it, even if familiar, somehow newly distinctive, and so incorporating it into the poem he's writing or planning to.

He called his method of putting these kind of found phrases and inspired ones together "managed chance" (a phrase I found accurate and original, though he may have said he got it from John Cage).

He read from his last book, A WORLDLY COUNTRY, and from an upcoming book (the title of which eludes me at the moment, wait I think it's PLANISPHERE), poems that were at once mundane yet profound, accessible yet mysterious and illusive, hilarious yet deeply serious, or at least evocative of the kinds of serious thoughts that age and experience, with all its loss and disappointment as well as wonder and appreciation, can bring. But all in that uniquely John Ashbery voice and style.

Anyway, I can't do the reading or his poems justice, but it was a delight to experience them in the town where I grew up.

Then on Sunday, late afternoon, at the Bowery Poetry Club there was a reading to celebrate the publication of Michael O'Keefe's book of poems, SWIMMING FROM BENEATH MY FATHER, at which Michael had asked some friends to read a few poems from the book, as well as reading some himself.

The first friend to read was Mary Louise Parker, who I can report is even more beautiful in person. I got to sit beside her on stage and felt blessed to be illuminated by her radiance. I know that sounds over the top, but that's how I felt. She had to split after she read, but she was followed by Saul Rubinek (I remember him mostly for his terrific performance in Eastwood's UNFORGIVEN as the reporter) who read a poem ("His Thumb Hooked Me") with dialogue, including a "Romanian" accent, and turned it into a mini-play so alive and perfectly rendered it left you feeling fortunate to have experienced it. Portia, a terrific New York actress whose stage work I've seen and am totally impressed by (as was The New York Times), gave the few poems she read a unique voice, and then I read a poem about "love" that was a lot more.

Michael ended by reading several poems in the book about his difficult but rich relationship with his father and moved the audience to shouts and applause. Another great poetry experience at the Bowery Poetry Club, which included seeing some old friends and making some new ones.

Then today, meeting my old L.A. friend (though originally a New Yorker and still is despite her address) poet artist and screenwriter Eve Brandstein at the Met, catching up in one of the cafes in that vast institution, and then checking out the Robert Frank exhibit, including many original prints of the photos from THE AMERICANS that made his reputation (and plagued him for years with its success, much as his friend Jack Kerouac, who wrote the preface for that book, felt about the success of ON THE ROAD).

Unlike paintings, which sometimes don't live up to the images I fell in love with when first encountering them in art books or art magazines, photographs almost always look even better in person, which was true in this case as well. Stunning. And the memories they evoke, of a different time and ways of being in the world. A great great show, well worth it if you can catch it.

And before we saw the Robert Frank photos, we checked out the Vermeer on loan to the Met of "The Milkmaid"—a surprisingly small painting so delicately and precisely crafted it was like a match to Frank's photographs of a moment in time captured so perfectly you feel like you're there. And in this case much more impressive in person than any reprint or photo, especially getting close enough to see the way the paint was applied to create the effect Vermeer obviously was striving for (that light!) and accomplished.

That was more than enough, as has been this whole week, an antidote to the loss of my niece and so many others this past year or so. Poetry and art, they continue to not just bring me pleasure and satisfaction, on every level, and so much more, but ultimately, they continue to save my life.

MICHAEL O'KEEFE: SWIMMING FROM UNDER MY FATHER

Speaking of actors who also become poets, Michael O'Keefe (who you might remember as the "caddy" in CADDYSHACK, or for his Oscar nominated role as the eldest son in THE GREAT SANTINI, or the brother-in-law on ROSEANNE, or most recently the state trooper in FROZEN RIVER, or the Oscar worthy performance as the judge in AMERICAN VIOLET) has a book of poems out, his first, called SWIMMING FROM UNDER MY FATHER.

I wrote the preface, and for further full disclosure, he's an old and dear friend, but even if neither of those things were true I could still highly recommend this book.

First of all, it contains a collection of poems that will give you insights into an actor's perspective (mostly the stage version, which Michael started out as and has done a lot of over the years, on and off-Broadway, and having seen many of those performances I can attest to the consistency of his talent in that arena as well) both on and off stage, of a middle aged man dealing with the accumulation of life's triumphs and struggles, of the grown boy still addressing and perhaps finally transcending childhood trauma, of a zen priest's (yep, he's that too) take on the spiritual in the every day, or maybe the word "spiritual" isn't appropriate for Zen, more like the search for peace in reality, and more...

Here's an example of a Zen koan-like poem, not typical of what's mostly in this book (the center of which is a series of emotionally potent and poignant narrative poems about his relationship with his late father, along with several poems more lyrical but equally realistic about "love"—a word he writes has "been bandied about so often/it's the iceberg lettuce of the vocabulary"), but in many ways sums up the attitude that makes this particular group of poems uniquely Michael O'Keefe's:

"Put up your dukes! If your opponent
throws lefts or rights, take the punch.
A knockout won't do. You've got to let him
kill both of you."

HARRY NORTHUP INTERVIEW

My friend, the poet Harry E. Northup, is interviewed on the web site Cult Film Freak, and it's well worth reading every word of.

Harry is one of the few other poets I know who've made their living acting in films and on TV. But unlike me, Harry was originally a film actor and then became a poet.

His book REUNIONS, which I've mentioned many times, including in lists, on this blog, remains one of my favorite books of poems.

It's a poetic journal turning the daily life of a working film actor and poet into exquisitely rendered lyrical takes that capture better than anything else I've ever read what it's like to live the life of any kind of freelance artist, filled with the daily creative and financial challenges and struggles, but also with sometimes small but precious creative rewards and insights. And all taking place on movie sets or in his L.A. neighborhood, a maybe less fashionable part of L.A. than we usually encounter in movies and books but a vibrant and vital one that is as unique as any great neighborhood can be. I highly recommend it (here's a link).

But this interview is mainly about his roles in films and what it was like working with Martin Scorcese and Jonathan Demme among the handful of great directors Harry's worked with almost exclusively (unlike me who made most of my rent payments with checks from playing bad guys on TV, and not classic TV either—I'm planning on trying to get any tapes I have of some of these performances onto DVDs so my grandkids can check them out someday, and in doing the first one, a JAG I played a hardcase detective turned psycho on, I had to not only laugh but was impressed with how grounded and real my performance was, thinking if I'd done the same turn on THE SOPRANOS I'd have probably gotten offers from some of these same great directors or at least had a shot at some more classic films than the ones I mostly appeared in).

So, here's the link to the interview, if your a film buff at all, I think you'll get a lot out of it, and you'll know who Harry is and the great contribution he's made to the art of film acting, as well as to the art of poetry.

WHEN FAMILY MATTERS MOST

For all our differences, and for all my youthful rebellion and rejection of so much I grew up with (while at the same time carrying with me so much, trying to make it only the parts I thought worthwhile or important or "good" etc.), I love my family, my extended family of cousins and nieces and nephews and my siblings' in-laws I've known since I was a boy...

Just back from my niece Cathy's funeral, I love them more than ever. To see nieces and nephews now grown with kids of their own and cousins once and twice removed and all the other designations most of us just shorten to "cousin" and then "cuz" etc., my niece's aunts and uncles from her mother's family I've know for decades, was so comforting.

To share our grief at the passing of someone so beloved the church she went to in Frederick, Maryland, was crowded with hundreds of people, some who flew in from great distances. To relieve, as much as possible, the deep loss of her sister Linda she talked with on the phone five times a day, by sharing stories that made us all laugh and remember the good times or turn the terrible times into stories whose sadness is trumped by humor and in turn become classics to be retold at future gatherings of the tribe, hopefully for reasons other than another death (as my a nephew said to my daughter he hadn't seen since his father's funeral: "We have to stop meeting like this."

So grateful for the Irish tradition, at least among my clan, of turning funerals into celebrations of the deceased, of family, of living connections and of life. There were tears, of course, but much laughter, and music—including group singing of Irish classics like my clan's anthem "The Fields of Athenry" (the town in County Galway my father's father came from, or a crossroads nearby actually).

PS: I didn't include in my earlier post on my niece's passing the fact she had battled breast cancer for fifteen years with humor, grace, determination, stoicism and an unbelievable capacity to not let it get in the way of her natural sweetness and drive to be of service to her family, her friends, and herself. She went back to school and earned a business degree that led to promotion after promotion in the corporation she worked for (Hallmark) that contributed to the well being of her family and served as an example as one of her sons and one of her nieces made clear in their elegies. Her niece Mary read a poem that was clear and direct, a litany of what "Cathy was" including"Cathy was a mother" and "Cathy was a goddess" and an example it was implied and more, and her son Steven read a eulogy that included another poem-like litany when he talked about how despite the cancer his mother still did so much—including getting that degree, going to work every day, being there for her family and friends every day, never losing her sense of humor or love of life—which he started with the admonition that "when you wake up with a frog in your throat and don't feel like going to work, just remember Cathy did" and went on with a list of more excuses most of us use every day to avoid responsibilities or following through on our ambitions and dreams or just being there for others, just remember despite the cancer she battled daily "Cathy did."

Happy to contribute, to respond to my sisters-in-law requests (all of our generation, what's left, there to represent) for me to play the piano, first with another dead brother's oldest son on guitar, a musical whiz since he was a kid, able to find whatever key anyone else is playing in and play foundation chords or beautiful licks over an improvisation, then with some old standards and family favorites (despite some problems with my usually better hand (my right)) then sing-alongs, one lead by one of my departed niece's sons' Irish-born girlfriend ("I'll Tell Me Ma" when I get home etc.), some hokey, most sentimental, a trait too many "intellectuals" I know disparage (see some of the critical reactions to BRIGHT STAR among some poets for instance), and even juvenile songs learned in elementary school, like that unicorn song where the chorus starts with "green alligators and long neck geese" and the adults were free enough (and some without any drink in them) to make the hand and arm figures of snapping alligators and long-necked geese and unicorns etc.) until everyone has ate enough and drank enough and cried and laughed and sang and hugged and talked enough to be exhausted enough to have gotten over the hurdle of one more day when a loss is still fresh, making it never okay but at least a little more acceptable.

In my niece Cathy's case, the gathering was in the late hours perhaps dominated by the Irish side of the family and its ways of dealing with loss, but the Italian side of her own heritage and the Portuguese side of her husband's were also duly represented. It was another good example of those times in life when family matters most. And I mean that to include the friends who become another branch of our personal families and in turn of the extended family I am grateful for.