I recorded on my little Zoom H2 the Saturday Morning and Afternoon sessions and put them on Bandcamp. I decided to persist to the end in spite of all the terrible chair scrapings and obliterative mic booms. I’m a novice (always) and can only do so much to clean up audio. But now it is available for anyone who is truly interested. So much of this has not been heard together, but only in pieces far and wide, if heard or read at all!
It was an amazing weekend topped off by poetry readings by Bobby Byrd of El Paso and Joseph Somoza of Las Cruces on Sunday. Host was Jim Fish of the Anasazi Fields Winery in Placitas, New Mexico. The schedule, set up by Bruce Holsapple of Magdalena, NM
Duende Celebration: Poetry Readings, Art, New Mexico
Small Press Exhibit, Talks and Panel Discussions
Bobby and Lee Byrd, Joseph and Jill Somoza, Larry and Lenore Goodell, Margaret Randall and Barbara Byers, Barrett Price, Heloise Wilson, John Crawford and Anne MacNaughton
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June 11, Saturday, 9:30 to 12:00 “Local Legends,” Short Talks
John Tritica on Mary Rising Higgins and Gene Frumkin, John Roche on Janine Pommy
Vega, John Macker on Todd Moore, Lawrence Welsh on Keith Wilson and Jim Sagel,
Anne Valley-Fox on Stan Noyes, Jim Clarke Burbank on Carol Bergé, Joe Somoza on
Robert Burlingame and Drum Hadley, Bobby Byrd on Ricardo Sanchez, John Crawford
and Bobby Byrd on Patricia Clark Smith, John Crawford on Tony Mares, Pamela Hirst
on Beatlick Joe Speer, Larry Goodell on Bill Pearlman, Stephen Rodefer and Ken Irby,
Anne MacNaughton on Peter Douthit, Bill Nevins and Kendall McCook on Kell Robertson
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June 11, Saturday, 2:00 to 4:00 Roundtable Discussion, “Person and Place”: the art of poetry in New Mexico
Bobby and Lee Byrd, Joseph Somoza, Larry Goodell, Margaret Randall, Barrett Price,
Heloise Wilson, John Crawford, and Anne MacNaughton.
June 12, Sunday 3:00 to 4:30 Poetry Reading
Joseph Somoza (Las Cruces) and Bobby Byrd (El Paso)
Host: Jim Fish, Vintner and Poet, The Anasazi Fields Winery in Placitas, NM
On Display: New Mexico Small Press and Magazine Exhibition 1965-2015
Art Exhibit: Jill Somoza, Lenore Goodell, and Barbara Byers
New Mexico Small Press and Magazine Exhibition 1965-2015
Larry Goodell, Duende and Fervent Valley
Margaret Randall, El Corno Emplumado
Bobby Byrd, From a Window
Joe Somoza Sin Fronteras and Puerto del Sol
Jim Koller, Coyoye’s Journal
Ward Abbot, Desert Review
Rio Grande Writers Conference, Voices from the Rio Grande
Ernest Tedlock, San Marcos Review
Gene Frumkin and Stanley Noyes, The Indian Rio Grande
Todd Dickson, Southwest Discoveries
Carl Mayfield, Margarine Maple Orangoutang Express
Glenna Luschei, Solo Café
William Oandasan, A: A Journal of Contemporary Literature
Annah Sobelman, The Taos Review
Colleen Mariah Rae, Santa Fe Literary Review
Kell Robertson, Desperado
Peter White and Lee Bartlett, American Poetry
Robert and Suzi Winson, Fish Drum
Jeanne Shannon, Blackberry
S.O.M.O.S. Chokecherries
Phillip Foss, Tyuonyi
David Johnson, Blue Mesa Review
Dale Harris, Central Avenue and Willow Street
Lisa Gill, Carol Lewis, Merimee Moffitt, Elaine Schwartz, and Karin Bradberry, The Rag
Jim Burbank and Sharon Niederman, Tarasque I, II
Gregory Smith, Atom Mind
John Macker, Desert Shovel
Jonathan Skinner, Ecopoetics
Gary Brower, Malpais Review
Kenneth Gurney, Adobe Walls
Billy Brown, Fixed and Free Poetry
Kathleen Johnson, New Mexico Poetry Review
Representative titles from the following presses:
La Alameda Press, Jeff and Cirrelda Bryan
West End Press, John Crawford
Cinco Puntos Press, Lee and Bobby Byrd
Wildflower Press, Jeanne Shannon
Red Mountain Press, Susan Gardener and R.D. Ross
Tres Chicas Press, Joan Logghe, Miriam Sagan, Renée Gregororio
Lightning Tree Press, Jene Lyon
Red Crane Books, Marianne and Michael O’Shaughnessy
Pennywhistle Press, Victor Di Suvero
Tooth of Time Books, John Brandi
Weaselsleeves Press, Janet Rodney
Grasshopper Press, Pat Bolles
Automatic Press, Jon Gill Bentley
San Marcos Press, Ernest Tedlock
Red Earth Press, Jane and Karl Kopp
Anonymous Owl Press, Carl Mayfield
Hawk Press, Jim Harris
Living Batch Press, Gus Blaisdel
Zerx Press, Mark Weber
Beatlick Press, Pamela Hirst
Swimming with Elephants, Katrina Guarascio
Vox Audio, Bruce Holsapple
University of New Mexico Press
“Tradition is an aspect of what anyone is now thinking—not what someone once thought. We make with what we have, and in this way anything is worth looking at.” Robert Creeley
The entire session is available now on Bandcamp:
Comments and Afterthoughts
Note from Steve Clay of Granary Books. “Have a wonderful weekend justly celebrating the great duende and the tradition of the poet/publisher in nm and beyond. I met Margaret Randall a couple of times in NYC — she gave a wonderful talk on El Corno.”
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Some reactions to the Duende Celebration.
First right before the event I wrote to Bruce Holsapple, “To me the mimeo revolution was a crucial and exciting launch.”
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Bruce Holsapple. “I think you’re correct about the mimeo revolution, and the community it fostered. I’d add to that Don Allen’s anthology. That community would be a great onversation in and of itself, don’t you think? But the press legacy, as will be evident when the exhibit is up, would be everything spread out there, how everything changed as a result of those events. Or that’s the way I had thought about it. It’s really quite a stack of publications, if you follow me, generated largely in New Mexico, as being a kind of regional center: La Alameda and Malpais, Red Crane Press, Red Mountain, Puerto del Sol, Tres Chicas, Tooth of Time, San Marcos Press, early issues of Blue Mesa, then add in Cinco Puntos, West End, Pennywhistle and the six or seven anthologies of New Mexicans. It’s intriguing that this once also had a national scope, that the same writers, yourself included, appeared in national publications. Something shifted in the 1980s, didn’t it?”
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After the Celebration, a note from Neil Nelson with the Ferlinghetti quote he’d noticed mentioning Kell Robertson.“Re: Kell: Ferlinghetti’s Time of Useful Consciousness 2012, p. 45 .
‘An adobe sun paints Route 66
Easy Riders over the asphalt
roar stoned into the sunset
.
Past Kell Robertson
beat cowboy poet drifter
with his beat-up guitar
and his weather-beat songs
on his Horse Called Desperation…’
Thar’s further proof of authenticity. Later, Neil”
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John Roche, who spoke about Janine Pommy-Vega in the morning session. “Congratulations, Bruce, on organizing a historic gathering! And thanks, Larry and John, for all your contributions to same.
I was thinking a bit more about the complicated question of Place as it relates to Greater New Mexico (Taos, Santa Fe, Placitas, Albuquerque, Las Cruces, El Paso, Tucson, maybe throw in Southern Colorado given Durango Festival and Drop City).
First off, the different cultures and poetic traditions inhabiting this place:
1. Pueblos going back thousands of years, with Diné arrival between 14th and 16th centuries A.D. and Apache arrival perhaps as early as 1200. Oral culture and then literature in English.
2. Norteño Hispanic culture based on land grants (with water rights) going back three centuries.
3. Early 20th century art colonies in Taos and Santa Fe: Mabel Dodge Luhan, D.H. Lawrence, Haniel Long, etc.
4. The Creeley Invasion, circa 1960.
5. The Hippie Invasion, circa 1970.
6. The Chicano Literary Renaissance of the 1970s and following decades.
7. The Taos Poetry Circus, 1982-2003?
8. The Slam Revolution reaches Albuquerque, circa 1990.
Obviously a one-day symposium couldn’t be expected to cover it all, even in brief. My understanding was that it was that as a celebration of the Duende Series it would naturally be heavy on New American Poetry (re: Creeley/Olson/Ginsberg Invasion), with some attention to Chicano and Hispanic poets, Outlaw Poets, etc.
Larry joked afterwards that we’d had a Buffalo takeover, which might be rephrased as a Paterson/Mallorca/ Asheville/ New York/San Francisco/ Buffalo /Vancouver, Boulder takeover.
To what extent was N.A.P. a cultural invasion like the 1920s Art Colonies and to what extent was it a collaboration between local youths and transplants?
I’d like to see a day devoted more explicitly to the New American Poetry in New Mexico, its local transformations by Keith Wilson, Drum Hadley, Larry Goodell, Ed Dorn, etc., and its morphing into Ethnopoetics, Ecopoetics, etc. What is its relationship with Chicano Poetry, Slam, etc.? Where’s it headed? Are there young practitioners? Say, younger than Jonathan Skinner?”
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Bruce Holsapple, organizer of the Duende Celebration. “Did you want the short response, John, or the long response? 🙂 Just kidding! as the Navajo kids say.
I don’t quite share your orientation, as least yet! I come at it from this angle: People were correct today to mention D.H. Lawrence and Mabel Dodge as talking significantly about ‘place’ and New Mexico as a region, but I think it’s more useful to think of Black Mountain (Olson, Creeley, Dorn) and Williams, but also Marsden Hartley, whom I think was here before Dodge (1919), or maybe better, modernism, in terms of how we talk about place. There was even something called (I think) the New Regionalism in the 1930s, related obliquely to the Agrarians, the more curious if you read the Agrarians as Modernists.
What I’m curious about is the extent to which The New American Poetry and what Larry calls the mimeo revolution in effect created new poetry communities which then opened themselves to multi cultural approaches. Larry posts a key essay by Gene Frumkin in which Gene states the “accomplishment” of having a new multi cultural poetry in New Mexico (c. 1970), that was not there when he arrived, and he and Stan Noyes sort of document that in the Indian Rio Grande. Kendall McCook tossed out a comment on Ernest Tedlock–on whom Tedlock was reading at that time and so what influenced his decisions on San Marcos Press, which published the Indian Rio Grande–which supports this sort of modernist orientation. (My views of modernism are bigger than most people’s–I recognize Olson thought he was post-modern.) Larry talked about this same event today in terms of poetry festivals, if I understood him, when they became, in point of fact, multi cultural, and those festivals probably also were the outcome of that mimeo revolution.
There is almost never a single factor in cultural change, right? but I think it’s accurate to say the New American Poetry contributed significantly to these multi cultural poetries (re Simon Ortiz comment on the Beats and Margaret’s on Howl) and much of what has happened in New Mexico, at least up until the 1980s. Then something shifts.
Are we talking within the same general area?
Bruce”
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John Roche. “Quite helpful, Bruce! I meant to include the Mimeo Revolution. A whole panel might be devoted to the relationship between the New American Poetry and the Mimeo Revolution. Are they synonymous?
Interesting side note: a lot of the people who produced the Mimeo stuff also produced letter press and handmade art books. Which brings us back to the Arts and Crafts Movement as starting point for much of this, with Whitman’s disciples, free-thought advocates, anarchists, feminists, and various Bohemians going crazy between 1892 and 1917. Mabel’s in the thick of it in New York, Provincetown, and Santa Barbara, before moving to Taos in 1919, right around the time Kenneth Chapman and Edgar Hewitt and other ethnographers are teaching the Pueblos how to make merchandisable pots, etc.
Interesting you mention the 1930s New Regionalism. There was that tendency at Black Mountain College in the 50s, too, adherents of Mumford and Ralph Borsodi (like my good friend Martha Treichler and her late husband Bill, who ran the farm work program at BMC. They later taught organic farming in Colorado, Iowa, Vermont, became friends with the Nearings, etc.). There were a number of Quaker woodworkers and potters on the faculty, too, who came in after the Bauhaus Germans left and brought in a folk aesthetic.
The folk aesthetic versus the experimental aesthetic. Always in tension. Think of the initial disdain between jazz poets and folksingers often sharing the same coffeehouse venues. But the tremendous syntheses, too: Dylan, Hendrix, The Fugs.
And we only touched today on the connection between the Socialist Realist writers (Meridel Le Sueur, Woody Guthrie, Langston Hughes, Tom McGrath, Muriel Rukeyser, Lola Ridge, the early Vincent Ferrini, etc.) and the New American Poetry.
Agreed about the multi-cultural shift in SW poetry. Were there similar shifts in other places the New American Poetry took root?
John”
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Larry Goodell. “name me poets who are not in-fluxed and influenced by ‘place’ . . .
in fact all artists are to varying degrees . . . they talked about it at the Vancouver Poetry Festival ’63 [and I was obsessed by it afterward . . . especially driving back to New Mexico from Vancouver.]
I think the Projective Verse Essay (1950) and New American Poetry (1960) are convenient ground breakers (speaking of ‘place’) . . .
(plus San Francisco Renaissance namely Howl in 1955) there’s yr 100 year mark . . .
so 100 years after Leaves of Grass (1855) we have the big shift that breaks the academic ice of the Eliot freeze . . .
of course there are lots of writers before but none as much of an American cur as (in our area) Judson Crews (Waco-Taos) for instance . . .
our natives like Ortiz (top of my list) Wilson (2 tops of the list) McCord (El Paso), Baca (later) Littlebird, Leo Romero, Luci Tapohanso they come rushing on and gather importance . . .
as some directly connected to Creeley and Friends or at least beat to their senses by Beats . . .
The first half of the duende celebration is ready to upload tomorrow morning on Bandcamp . . .
love to all, larry”
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Bruce Holsapple. “I concede all poems are influenced by place, but they certainly don’t speak of (or to) place in the same way. And I think I’d eventually separate in my mind where I distinguish place from context. I’m entwined by Williams (still, the book is fresh in my head) and he approached place as a deliberate project, pen in hand. So he was talking about attention and intention. I suspect Creeley’s comments (in the Allen anthology) and Dorn’s essay (“What I See in the Maximus Poems”) are talking about place as involving relationship, rethinking place and making the relation deliberate. With Keith’s work, what I was trying to get at yesterday, he starts out talking about the Korean War and writes as if he was from Maryland or wherever (Graves Registry), but at a special point in time it begins to matter to Keith that he is living in New Mexico with very specific references or points of ‘contact’ (Williams’ word). I suspect that becomes the way he thinks about the poem.
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More comments coming in. Add yours!
larry goodell
Duende Celebration: Poetry Readings, Art, New Mexico
Small Press Exhibit, Talks and Panel Discussions, 2016
I’m as 80 as you’re going to get. I couldn’t be eightier.
larry goodell
Robert Creeley Handouts UNM 1962
It was that Wollensak (and I do believe wire) recorder he brought to class from which we heard his interviews with Duncan, Dorn, Olson, McClure, Zukofsky, Levertov? and, by way of the visiting Jonathan Williams, Basil Bunting . . . I think some of the tapes he had came from his interview program on KHFM “The Single Ear,” the Albuquerque classical station, where they were aired. But then in his home in the Village we listened to all the way from Kurt Schwitters to an interview with Ezra Pound to Frank Zappa. I have cassette dubs of a few of these still at home since I haven’t yet arranged to send my media stuff to Yale.
Addendum:
Bob Creeley saved my life. The WCW-Olson-Creeley-etc. voices broke through my word glut, and as embarrassing as it is, here’s a bit of how he helped . . .
Gratefully,
larry goodell / placitas, new mexico