Intro Bill Pearlman Stephen Rodefer Poetry Reading – 1973

Bill Pearlman, Lennie Silverberg (hidden), Stephen Rodefer

FERVENT VALLEY is old New Mexico Fruit Oriental Blue Streak Dr. Amer-Indian
Negro Woman Chicana Duende White Brother spelled backwards
& BILL PEARLMAN whose Age is Apparent
& STEVE RODEFER whose manner Takes the Cake
something to do with D.H. Lawrence & Robert Creeley Georgia O’Keefe
William Eastlake & the Indian on the Hill John Rechy Keith Wilson
& Others & Others & Space
which is under the subterranean reaches of Okies & this building —
Placitas Corrales & Beyond the Visionary Artaud Hirschman Kinetic in
Pearlman he drops down acid rhetoric in contrary planes
& Rodefer as Voices carries lovemaking the Sight which is inner Province
of Troubadore in spillage careful outward
these Two Gents of lore around this town — all part of a renewed
face of the Southwest in 1967 Zingdap! & I fell down the stairs by
the orchestra pit into the arms of six beautiful women — & I have nothing
better to urge on this evening but the entire possibility of Speech in
Dance of Reform of itself — friends & all — STEVE RODEFER & BILL PEARLMAN

/larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / 1973

Poems for Bill Pearlman & One By Him

Bill Pearlman, Lenore and Larry Goodell in Placitas a few years back . . .

Romance Cavalier

/for Bill Pearlman

As was as is as to be –
what are we going to do
without the Romance Cavalier?
You know as I do that we all should be permanent.
Those infrequent visits can’t simply come to a stop.
There’s too much hilarity when he’s at his best.
Questions that come from the fog of not knowing who he is
. . that are so funny,
as if we all know better who he is, who he was, who he is to be.
Bill never misspelled as I recall.
He wrote and acted in his own plays.
He wrote. He acted. He acted when he read what he wrote.
Sometimes the intensity and the furrowed brow drove his words in edgewise
where they weren’t wanted, but mostly
the electric absurdity bristled and a circus tent appeared out of nowhere
and he was the carnival barker. We all wondered
what was the carnival? What was it going to be?
or what will it be when we’ve taken down the tent & departed
and future thrill-seekers will have to make sense of what
we know so well. Well
your athletic spirit has sprinted from Majorca to L.A. from
L.A. to New Mexico, to all points West and South to San Miguel.
And, Romance Cavalier, there are chapters and volumes of memories
. . of the parade and the bands, the bars & the audience,
the verbal counterplay and amused company that continues to this day
and sends you on your way with all of us.

larry goodell / placitas, nm / 13aug2016

The Stars, Language & Love

for late friends Bill Pearlman & Larry Morris

Suns, star energy,
spark the universe

(et tu universum
genus humanum)

cluck tongues,
smack lips, in-

verse mumble
shuck ’n jive of

the highest order,
Heaven’s vulgar,

commonplace order where
all things change

save Bastards & Angles,
the ever expanding
Language of Love,

& the never expanding
Language of the Dead

 
  …it is my wish to enlighten to some little extent the discernment of those who walk through the streets like blind men, generally fancying that things which are in front of them are behind them, I will endeavor, the Word aiding me from Heaven, to be of service to the vernacular speech.   Dante, De vulgari eloquentia

Neil Nelson

Bill Pearlman, born in 1943, died in 2016 – in San Miguel – complications from a back operation.

Listen. From a cassette “letter” sent to me in the 90’s Bill reads “Wind.” 

some of our consorting

Kick Back

Death comes like a pearled shell
a nothing brocade
as energy saps out of itself
into something else
as the departed greet each other
the imagination hopes
there Bob, there Keith, there Kell, there Ken
there Steve, there Meredith, there Susan, there Bill,
they’re there with the larger world of the dead –
Earth absorbs them all
and our minds kick back to them.

(thinking of so many friends/poets gone . . . )

Love to all and all memories, real things,
larry

lots more to come to commemorate in this blog and others . . .
comments appreciated.

This is from Charlie Vermont, Dr. Vermont, former resident with Ann and family,
of Placitas.

Dear Larry
Glad you are still keeping at it. I would have liked to have seen Bill,Steve,
and Ken before they passed. Very ensconced in medicine and immediate family.
I recently reread that piece you did on me and realized it was as close as I ever
came to writing an artistic statement and sent it to one of the poets I admire.
Hope you and Lenore are doing well up on the hill looking into the vast West.

Charlie

Bill showed up June 20th in Placitas, 2015, at the 80th birthday party Lenore
put together for me and this is the last time these old friends got together.

Photographs here by Bob D’Allesandro, so grateful for . . .

Bill even had a poem for the occasion – here reading it . . . . what a blessing

To Larry Goodell on His 80th

Quick trips blames a negotiated High
and all our Geminis have wandered –
But no telling where you’ll be heading
out in the great desert of song
wandering wondering pen in mind
come see the world as remarkably free
so long the song continues to bubble up
and sheer mastery loom across the sky

Residual heritage blinks on & off
in homeland of ongoing dream:
What amazed us was the indivisible world
of color – the mesa grande & beyond –
the Sandias & the Sangre de Cristos,
elemental earth stations under a vast sky

Love was never far removed.
Whether in grandstand cosmos or bookstore
the sound of the human voice concurrent
structure of infinite molecule and brain connected
living in a flash of gorgeous ascent
that keeps us all hovering in perfect whirl –

for Larry – Love, Bill -Bill Pearlman 20June2015

the rounds of magical fires that keep our hearts alive and alive in our hearts . . .

and something from 1967 for Meredith Rice and Bill Pearlman, married in Bernalillo/Placitas . . .

 

Duende Celebration June 11 & 12, 2016: Some Afterthoughts

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

*

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

*

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:

Morning session

Afternoon session

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.”

 *

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.”

 *

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?”

 *

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”

*
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?”

 *

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”

*

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”

 *

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”

 *

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.

See y’all soon.

Bruce”

 *

More comments coming in. Add yours!

larry goodell

Duende Celebration: Poetry Readings, Art, New Mexico
Small Press Exhibit, Talks and Panel Discussions, 2016

Warren Tallman: “Poets in Vancouver” (1963)

Vancouver Poetry Festival of 1963 was a Shindig of the first sort, a Conference if you will, a life saver and changer.

Aaron Vidaver

Introduction and Notes by Aaron Vidaver

In light of new interest in the 1963 Vancouver Poetry Conference and Robert McTavish’s forthcoming film The Line Has Shattered, I’ve reviewed my research from 1997-1999 and started to dig around again. Below is what I believe to be an unpublished essay by Warren Tallman written in the fall after the conference. It was prepared for an international audience (an editorial note in a margin of the typescript asks him to explain who Margaret Avison is: “who’s she? (This to be read by readers in several countries)”) although there is no indication of the venue. Since there are only passing descriptions of the conference in his two books—as “month-long poetry klatsch” (1976: 183) [1973], “month long Götterdämmerung poetry klatsch” (1992: 205) [1985] and “gathering of the Romantic clan” (1992: 230) [1986]—this piece provides a missing account.

Tallman leaves out mention of local…

View original post 3,509 more words

Poets In Placitas – links – March 12, 2016

 

Bob Creeley, Bobbie Creeley (Louise Hawkins), Ron Bayes (visiting), Sara & Kate Creeley, neighbor kid and me (1964)

Robert Creeley    https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/robert-creeley Start anywhere, go everywhere . . .

Bobbie Louise Hawkins took these home movies from 1962 to 1965. http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Hawkins-Creeley.html

Allen Ginsberg at the Thunderbird
https://larrygoodell.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/allen-ginsberg-in-albuquerque-at-the-thunderbird-bar-at-the-san-felipe-feast-day-corn-dance-1967-2/

Charlie Vermont, a poet from New York
https://larrygoodell.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/charlier-vermont-heres-the-story/

Thunderbird Bar Intimate History https://larrygoodell.wordpress.com/2015/05/12/thunderbird-bar-intimate-history-2/ Notice that there are 3 links at the end of this blog post to 3 interviews I did with the friends who were integral to the Thunderbird in its heyday (it went through several stages). Some of the interviews are chaotic, some repetitious but I did the best I could preserving what was on tape.

Thunderbird Flight http://larrygoodell.blogspot.com/2012/02/thunderbird-flight-for-t-bird-show.html Just a poem of mine. And a song I wrote about remember the T-Bird. http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=1014013&songID=12311636&showPlayer=true

Ann Quin https://www.facebook.com/Ann-Quin-372495999441/?ref=hl This is Ann’s own blog which she continues long after her death. Ann was a pal and continued to be a pal to me and Lenore for as long as she lived.

Ken Irby, A Memento https://larrygoodell.wordpress.com/2015/11/03/ken-irby-a-memento-by-larry-goodell/ A great mind, a great poet with music always in his writing.

John Moritz Broadside for Ken Irby 1976 https://larrygoodell.wordpress.com/2015/12/16/john-moritz-broadside-for-ken-irby-1976/

Judy Grahn http://www.judygrahn.org/ Judy brought light to us here in Placitas before she went to the West Coast and illuminated common women for everybody.

Bill Pearlman’s Inzorbital  https://larrygoodell.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/inzorbital-by-bill-pearlman-reviewed-by-john-brandi/  “In the ambiguous warmth of a Solar Dome, Inzorbital, condensing madness into fury, scrawled a blazing script under the towering influence of Fervent Mountain.” In Placitas 1967-72, then again from ’92 to 2003.

David Franks  https://larrygoodell.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/david-franks-in-memory-of-david-some-postcards/   Andrei Codrescu remembers David for NPR  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123747163
I want to say a prayer
For all that has been given
All that has been received, It is said
They are all the same.
100 bluebirds swarmed the back yard.
David Franks

Kell Robertson  http://kellrobertson.outlawpoetry.com/2012/03/14/larry-goodell-remembering-kell/  This appeared in Malpais Review.

A Few Notes Concerning My Friend Stephen Rodefer (1940-2015)
https://larrygoodell.wordpress.com/2015/11/09/a-few-notes-concerning-my-friend-stephen-rodefer/  Thanks to Steve we did a major reading/performance tour in the 70’s.

Latif Harris  https://larrygoodell.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/duende-press-resurfaces-with-barter-within-the-bark-of-trees-by-latif-harris/ Bill Harris edited my first book Cycles. The Berkeley Poetry Conference changed his life (1965) since he came out here to study with Bob Creeley and . . .

Laurie Macrae A very Placitasy poem: http://www.dukecityfix.com/profiles/blogs/the-sunday-poem-laurie-macrae-the-reason-we-wear-our-baseball
and
http://www.dukecityfix.com/profiles/blogs/the-sunday-poem-laurie-macrae-roosevelt-park-theory-and-practice

Zocalo Theater in Bernalillo
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150342943765735.348494.663255734&type=1&l=48513a203c

Gary Brower http://malpaisreview.com/Issues.html Utterly amazing ongoing journal of poetry only. From Placitas, yes.

Poet & Artist Friends – Part 1
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.377782895734.158454.663255734&type=1&l=20b2aab776

Poet & Artist Friends – Part 2
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153061028885735.1073741958.663255734&type=1&l=8eb1478378

Related: Flyers for events at the Living Batch Bookstore are mostly here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/larrygoodell/sets/72157637605719694/

Retrack, retrail in Placitas after Vancouver ’63 for me http://www.larrygoodell.com/#!untitled/masterpage_7

Artspace article about my works premiered at the Thunderbird and in Albuquerque: https://issuu.com/larrygoodell/docs/artspace_1976_larry/1

Note: From the 2009 Literary Heritage of Placitas event at Anasazi Fields Winery, part of the Duende Poetry Series there are so far two recordings available online: Lisa Gill reading from selections of Bobbie Louise Hawkins, and Art Goodtimes belting out Creeley’s Ballad of a Despairing Husband.

Please write me with suggestions, links, comments . . . larrynewmex@gmail.com and many thanks to John Roche and the Placitas Community Library for arranging the Poets In Placitas events on March 12, 2016.

Peggy Pond Church & Florence Hansen McCarty to Larry

Two women writers react to my sending them poems. First is the renowned Peggy Pond Church (1903-1986) in Santa Fe. I’d been sending her copies of duende magazine in the early 60’s . . .



What a fine letter with a big measure of absorbed truth. Her liking Creeley and Levertov convinced me she’s probably right. Is there a built in stricture of “communication” in the words that blew up in my face and became poems? Of course my wild daring-do is part of my nature and has been since reaching puberty in Roswell, New Mexico.

Now a letter from a part of the extended William and Luella McCarty family, true pioneers whose notable family origin was in Clyde, Kansas. Nine children including my grandmother. Florence McCarty was married to one of them and wrote stories and articles most of her life, and I’m the warmly appreciative possessor of her letters to my Grandma Goodell, Aunt Virginia and others in the family.

Two historical biographical books by Florence McCarty. The arrow on the right indicates where she lived in Creede, Colorado

From Florence McCarty, Writer, in Glendale, Arizona (married to my Grandmother Goodell’s brother Lorin McCarty)
July 7, 1988
Dear Larry & Lenore

Thanks for Seven Sonnets. I must admit it tries to introduce me to a kind of poetry I do not understand.

We, you and I, are 3 generations apart. Longfellow and I have always been good friends. His Evangeline is my style.

I have caught up to Haiku and Cinquains but yours is different.
I think I am too dense to grasp it. Surely “Even” indicates some thoughts I fail to grasp. [“Even” is one of the sonnets I sent. You can see all the sonnets (songnets) here.]

Don’t think I am criticizing. I have belonged to groups studying all kinds of writing. Poetry has been passed along to be read. Some people exclaim fervently. Others just stare and quickly pass the paper on. I dropped into a poetry class at the Univ. of Colo. and couldn’t understand a thing, so soon ducked out. Really, I’d like to know what I’m missing. My mind can’t seem to catch what to others may be a real find –

I wish I could have met you –

Sincerely,

Florence       (over)

(next page)
I have read other stuff* of yours – Placitas etc. and like it. I can tune in on it. I’d really like to see more. It’s thought-provoking, really meaty I’d say.

We have 6 small books of poetry written by women poets in Sun City. They are tops – in Who’s Who in several categories. Rarely a day passes that I do not open one of these books. Poetry is indeed the highest art. A few words can often change my day. These gals write sonnets, haikus, cinquains and odes – probably passé to you.

I think you and I are much alike – full of words, and bursting at the seams. I just have to write! For 6 years I ghost wrote boys’ books, for another author. We wrote together from outlines he made. Used same characters. It was a series. He paid by the word (not much). When he died in 1947 my contract still had 3 years to go. His heirs weren’t interested so contract was canceled. He had made a fortune in the English Text Book field, retired and started the series as a hobby project. Most colleges in U.S. used his textbooks in the twenties. I don’t know what happened to books we wrote together. It doesn’t matter. He paid me per contract, and I did enjoy writing. His pen names was Steve Jones.

Florence
*Steve Jones and I always called our writing “stuff.” Most writers do.

Dear Florence.

Yes we could have had, we could have had . . . such enriching conversations at least for me, but the spaces of the West can spread people out, spread families out.

My love and appreciation goes out to the memory of these women and I do take to heart what is expressed in these two personal items.

Here is a review of To Catch a Star.

Larry Goodell / Placitas, New Mexico / December 28, 2015

Zimbabwe Nkenya Bass Artist – a bit about collaboration

Photo: David Clemmer

“Zimbabwe Nkenya is a St. Louis native and a highly regarded and creative bass player.  Zimbabwe has appeared on several New Music Circle events recently and is one of our beloved performers. Sadly, he experienced a stroke earlier this past fall [2009] . . .” Note: He recovered to perform since then.

His living and performing in Albuquerque was legendary, luminarily rich. He expanded the true bass in ranges and sonic levels rarely, if ever, heard. It was a blessing in my life in the 90’s to collaborate with him a couple times at the Outpost Performance Space.

Information (not as current as I’d like): New Music Circle – 2010 – Listen

From HYPE, Volume One, Issue One, March 1991, Albuquerque, David Clemmer, Editor. INTERVIEW: Larry Goodell, Zimbabwe N’Kenya

Bassist Zimbabwe N’Kenya and poet Larry Goodell are two mainstays of the arts in north central New Mexico. Zimbabwe is known to radio audiences as the host of KUNM’s Sunday night jazz program, “The House That Jazz Built,” and to audiences around the state as the bassist both for his own group, Jazz Culture, and for the Tom Guralnick Trio. Larry Goodell is a noted performance artist and poet-in-residence at the Living Batch Bookstore. Larry has published a book of his poetry (Firecracker Soup) and has released a tape – The Mad New Mexican – on the Ubik label. HYPE talked to Larry and Zimbabwe shortly after a recent collaborative performance at the Outpost Performance Space.

Zimbabwe. When I look at Larry I see him as an artist– and he has a certain presence, a certain thing that is his. When I first saw him at gigs at the Living Batch he wasn’t like a lot of academic poets, they got this stiff neck and attitude type thing. I’d played with poets before back in St. Louis and New York, and my wife Deborah is a published poet and I get a lot of inspiration through her. When we first met in St. Louis she was part of this poetry workshop that included Shirley LaFleur, who is a well-known poet in the Midwest. There’s a difference between just writing poetry and performing it creatively and Larry is just excellent at that: theatre, motion. Our collaboration was a natural thing.

Larry Goodell. I think collaborations are very tricky. You can want to collaborate and it may never happen because it depends on how collaborate-able you are. You need to plant the seed for it or perhaps it can just happen naturally. I’ve admired Zimbabwe’s bass playing for a long time and it crossed my mind several times that we might work together, and after time you experience each other’s work and if it seems that it might be a new experience, something exciting, that some spark might come out of it, well then, it can happen. During the San Francisco renaissance, the Beat generation, it was very common for jazz to be going on with poetry. Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Denise Levertov, Kenneth Rexroth- a lot of poets read with jazz, so there’ s a history to that kind of collaboration. I’d been thinking about that a lot lately and I wanted to get directly involved– my voice as an instrument. And today, through rap music, the media (and I mean MTV) has discovered that poetry does exist in America. It took rap to make that happen.

HYPE. How do you conceive of yourself as an artist operating in, and influenced by, this environment, having your creativity shaped by this place and these times and the circumstances that you find yourself in?

Goodell. Well, I’m a very dissatisfied person in many, many respects. I’m angry and dissatisfied by many things from the environmental situation to the government to the situation of poets in present day life. The way that I’m trying to deal with this dissatisfaction is to work with other people. I have a real concern about what other poets’ lives are like and helping people with readings and working with musicians and dancers when I can. A lot of my dissatisfaction has to do with the fact that being a poet is a pretty lonely situation: there’s you and your typewriter or you and your notepad. And then, on occasion, if you want to do it, there’s you and your audience, but I feel less isolated and less dissatisfied when I’m working with other people.

Zimbabwe. Yeah, well Larry has a valid point there– poets are pretty much a solo act. When I first came here I was stationed out here with the Air Force and I didn’t really like it. I was living at Kirtland and felt like I had been cheated– they sent me to Albuquerque as punishment (laughter). Yeah, yeah. But then what happened, it was going up in the mountains and such, and it was a gradual thing, so that by the time I left and went back to St. Louis I had this thing about New Mexico, something pulling me back– there’s this environment, this sky. Even in New York, we were getting kind of fed up with it and I told my family that we should go to New Mexico, because it was this thing out here– I can’t put my finger on it– but most of the songs that I’ve written and most of my creativity has happened here.

Living Batch Flyer by Jeff Bryan

Goodell. I was in the Army in Southern California and I went to school at USC in Los Angeles, but other than those six years I’ve spent all of my 55 years in New Mexico. Since I’ve lived so little in other places I really don’t have too much to compare it to, to think what kind of poet I’d be if I was in New York or in Los Angeles. There is a certain sparseness to the landscape here, in spite of the fact that more and more people are moving here, so that you’re more aware of the specific artists– in all of the arts– that you particularly like and feel compatible with or who are doing interesting things. There may not be that many, but it’s as if they stand out on the landscape a little more clearly. When somebody major comes to town you really feel it, you pick up the vibes. But it’s getting less so. Albuquerque has always been verging verging verging on being a city, but without ever really becoming a metropolis.

Zimbabwe. When I came back here in 1988 it was because my daughter had been in the second grade in New York, in Manhattan, and I didn’ t like what was going on. I was starting to notice happening, things on a child’s level, and remembered how things were here and thought it would be better for her, and I remembered the Jazz Workshop and how that used to be back in ’79 and ’80 and I just took it for granted that we could come out here and it’d be okay. And it’s good, there’s this certain vibration here that allows me to create.

HYPE. You’ve got this concert coming up and it happens that this is Black History Month. How about the concept of Black History Month?

Zimbabwe. Well, on my flyer and in the press releases for the gig I made a point not to put “Black History Month”, because this country has a lot of problems, a lot of racial problems, and the things that are said during Black History Month should be said every day of the year. So, on the poster it’s Black History – period! There’s truths that have got to be spoken, and not just during Black History Month. I mean, when I was a kid, my parents were coming out of East St. Louis, which is in Illinois, you know– the Land of Lincoln– and I was writing this paper on Abraham Lincoln. I was doing some research, reading his speeches, and the things he was saying about us, about Black people, it really opened my eyes: he wasn’t the man that history has painted him to be. He hated Black people! You can’t build anything from lies, man, and people wonder why we have these problems- you got to just tell the truth!

Please leave any current information so I can pass it on. Thank you! For my collaborations with dancers please see The Dance Book. Larry Goodell / Placitas, New Mexico

John Moritz Broadside for Ken Irby 1976

What a lovely poem-broadside to rediscover going through my collection now. Irby was very distressed over John Moritz’ death. Moritz (1946-2007) produced beautiful publications of Ken’s work and was a dear friend. More here from Pierre Joris.

Larry Goodell / Placitas, New Mexico

A Few Notes Concerning My Friend Stephen Rodefer

Stephen Rodefer sitting between me and Pancho Elliston (co-owner of the Living Batch Bookstore in Albuquerque). In Placitas at Alice and Lee Johnson’s house. Photo by Bob D’Alessandro. 1970’s.

Stephen Rodefer (1940-2015)

Stephen Rodefer was a poet and dear friend to many here in New Mexico and California and Paris and points beyond. He taught at UNM before moving to Berkeley. A Memorial Reading has occurred at the Geoffrey Young Gallery in Great Barrington MA on October 24th. Upcoming in Berkeley is a memorial tribute November 21st at 6 pm at the Berkeley Arts Festival. And in Paris on December 5th at 5:00 pm at La Guillotine, 24 rue Robespierre.

From an Interview by Bruce Holsapple and John Tritica, concerning Stephen Rodefer:

Holsapple: In 1972 you began Fervent Valley, can you talk about your involvement with that group, you, Bill Pearlman, Charlie Vermont, Stephen Rodefer.

Goodell: Bill Pearlman named it; Fervent Valley referred to Placitas. There were four editors, fighting all the time. But each issue was a little different. Lenore was the art editor. Pat Bolles [of Grasshopper Press] sold me his Davidson offset press for a dollar and we moved it to an off room of the Thunderbird Bar and I printed there. Stephen Rodefer did [a Fervent Valley] primarily on his own. Then he started doing the Pick Pocket series. Steve was teaching at UNM.

Photo by Wayne Jones on road by the Thunderbird Bar in Placitas.

Fervent Valley 1-4. Stephen was an editor of #1 and #2 and sole editor of #4 (1972-1974)

Editors of Fervent Valley #1, 1972: Lenore Goodell, me, Stephen Rodefer, Charlie Vermont and Bill Pearlman, Press was in the Thunderbird Bar (background).

This photo we used on the back of FV #1.

About this time [1974], Steve and I went on tour. I took my medicine bag—my circus trunk—and we went off in a Datsun station wagon, Steve and Lenore and my 4-year old son, Joel. We had a National Rifle Association credit card. We went all over the country, even Canada, thanks to Steve’s organizing. We read in Chicago. We went to Connecticut where the Olson archives are now. We read at St. Mark’s in New York; we went to Buffalo and Toronto. Each place I’d do a rather elaborate set up of the Ometèotl poems.

Holsapple: There was, I take it, an active poetry scene at the national level, so you could set up readings?

Steve wrote this crazy blurb for me signed “Wolfman Jack” expanding on something Charlie Vermont said . . .

Goodell: Yeah, again, this is by way of friends. Steve knew a lot of people. He went to graduate school at Buffalo and we visited friends of his there who were involved with Olson.”

Stephen Rodefer’s books are One or Two Love Poems from the White World, The Bell Clerk’s Tears Keep Flowing, Villon (duende press), Four Lectures (which was a winner of the American Poetry Center’s Annual Book Award), Oriflamme Day (with poet Benjamin Friedlander), Emergency Measures, Passing Duration, Erasers, Left Under A Cloud, Call It Thought, and Mon Canard.

Bill Pearlman, Leni Silverbird (behind) and Stephen Rodefer, Albuquerque, I believe.

Stephen in Berkeley and I think the beard was rare . . . (I don’t remember seeing it)

Broadside with Rodefer poem and artwork by Michelle Bourque Sewards, put out by the Yale Street Grasshopper Bookstore (later transmogrifying into the Living Batch) . . . . incredibly beautiful poem and drawing . . .

First of the “PickPocket Series” modeled after City Lights Pocket Series . . . 1976, duende press a la Rodefer.

Rousing poetry / music / dance at the Central Torta run by the Bill Rane family . . . Albuquerque

At the shoot for Oriental Blue Streak Stephen is carrying Olivia and a genuine New Mexico tumbleweed.

Oriental Blue Streak photo shoot by Carl Michener-Rodin. The one-shot magazine came out in 1968 – Stephen in the doorway . . . l to r Gene Frumkin, Betsy and little Amy and Kell Robertson, Mel and Beverly Buffington sitting, Lora Linsley, me, Steve, Olivia, Charlie Potts, Bill Pearlman and Joe Bottone foreground . . .

A message from Katrine Le Gallou suggests that I “might like to share this small report on the ceremony for Stephen. It was written by Felix Brenner, one of Stephen’s sons. Rae Armantrout, Laird Hunt, Jonathan Skinner, Josh Robinson also attended the ceremony. The cause of his death is unknown, he was found in his studio by our son Dewey (18 yrs old). . . .”

From Felix Brenner (son of Summer Brenner and Stephen Rodefer):
“Stephen’s funeral took place today at Père Lachaise with about 40 people – family, friends and poets from Paris and England – joining us to mourn and celebrate.

On this shining and cooler September day, Dewey, Ben, Katrine and I met his casketed body at 10:00 AM at the Medical Institute along the Seine across from the Jardin des Plantes. We had some moments with him, to be together and say some words, before moving with him by car to the cemetery. During this time, Jackie retrieved a word painting by Stephen (Moet et Moi, Ashes to Ashes, Art to Art) and some of his decorative dresses (those he hung on his walls) from his studio and set the scene of our tribute, actually wearing one of those dresses herself as she had plucked it off his wall in the prior days.

The tribute program and readings were as follows:
Show a Little Emotion for the granite – Felix
Welcome in English and French – Felix & Katrine
Cy Gist in French and English – Katrine & Jackie
A Selection of Poems – Dewey
– De poverté, Poem, To A Reader, Electrified World, and an original poem by Dewey that he had never shared with Stephen
– A tribute and reading of a portion of Love Thirty – Benjamin Rodefer

Felix, Benjamin, Dewey . . . in Paris at this time of the Memorial for their father Stephen Rodefer . . . . what a wonderful picture. Love to you all.

With the five of us having lived as this insular family for the last ten days, so focused on the emotion and affairs of Stephen’s death, it was hard to know what to expect. We overran our allotted time (as Stephen was always one to close down a party). Not a group to go quietly, as guests were invited up to the casket, many took the chance to utter verse, share a story, and give thanks. John and Val (friends of his from London) provided Fuck Death (another word painting by Stephen) pins for guests to wear. Even our Père Lachaise attendant asked for one afterwards and was seen wearing it as she walked the grounds and met with other funeral parties. Another friend Ian Hunt brought copies of Left Under a Cloud to give. The warmth, balance and love brought by those that joined made for a beautiful day and a fitting Parisian goodbye.
We retired to a cafe nearby to continue the celebration, eating and drinking. With the crowd shrunk to 15 or so, we meandered back through Pere Lachaise in the afternoon light, on our way to Stephen’s favorite cafe – La Fée Verte above Bastille – for additional food and beverage.”
– Felix Brenner, Wednesday, September 2nd. 2015.

Stephen there’s so much more to say but it’s late . . . . love to you always and love to your extended family . . . from Larry and Lenore and Joel . . .

/A few notes compiled by Larry Goodell, concerning Stephen. Some of this may appear in the upcoming issue of the Malpais Review.

Ken Irby, a Memento, by Larry Goodell

Kenneth Irby (1936-2015)
a Memento

(a bit of this will appear in the forthcoming Malpais Review, November, 2015,                thanks to Gary Brower, Editor)

Sam Spencer, Ken Irby and Larry Goodell on Las Huertas Canyon Road, New Mexico
ca 1964

“It is impossible to write of what one has written or lived except as this day is, out the window, now, explicit.” This quote is from Ken Irby’s The Roadrunner Poem, written in Albuquerque, his first book, which Duende Press published in Placitas, April of 1964. And in 1965 I was very happy to publish a larger bunch of his poems called Movements/Sequences.

He’d been in the Army but in 1963 he was working at Sandia Laboratories. I went to see Ken at Robert Creeley’s suggestion, after I got back from the Vancouver Poetry Conference. He lived on Gavilan Place off North Fourth Street, and he had built-in bookshelves and record shelves throughout to hold his enormous collection. The house was made up of books everywhere, a record player with a small speaker, a kitchen, a bathroom, a bed, a large desk and comfortable chairs.

I remember when I first knocked on the door and entered this remarkable sanctuary, it was an overwhelming sensual delight, a home for intriguing conversations of current poetic sensibility and everything culturally alive in the core of living literature. And there was a lot of good, extremely spicy food, good dope, good liquor, while we listened constantly to music by Delius, Scriabin, Busoni, Satie, Schütz, Coltrane, Chinese Classical, the Carter Family, on and on. And talking. And at that time there was the concourse of the Creeleys, Bill Pearlman, Kell Robertson and many other poets passing through on Route 66. I wrote once, “Ken Irby, he taught me all I cannot know, and then some . . . with warm impressions that last.”

Our friendship developed through many letters and visits to Berkeley when he was living there, including a confab at his house with Paul Blackburn, Robert Kelly, Clayton Eshleman, Harvey Bialy and my wife, Lenore, in 1969. All the time he was at Tufts, and in Denmark, and then in Lawrence, Kansas, we exchanged letters and poems frequently until tapering off in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.

Here is a poem of his from the beautiful A Set. This exquisite publication is large format 16″ by 20″ from Tansy Press in Lawrence, 1983. His friend John Moritz helped publish it.

From A Set. by Kenneth Irby, 1983

stars fall, dark dolls to earth, to the old songs dance, folk of the West of the West, brought                             back again
almost quickly digitations of the jugglers’ blindfold to bind up the hour before the dawn,                             before the dark

you do not sleep but subsequently translate that mime into a newer currency
to spend in the street and stand around to watch and sing along to those fast steps

here in the woods, hear in the woods, here in the woods
the cottonwood to the flute and the drum

who in the morning come to sacrifice to health for sake of safety’s speed
talking all the time about the in-laws and the pictures on the walls last week

the expectation to exemplify the dying of the old self to its age
the limitation to just one count of generation, one of revolution, made

Ken Irby reminded me of Charles Olson, such a pervasive mind, an incredible ability to read investigatively and remember and to be open to the creative, and to have a sense of music in his writing. I think of Ken as Olson’s successor. American poetry will probably never see a more thorough poetic mind. He enclosed infinitely the great realm of poets including Robert Duncan, Ed Dorn, Charles Olson, H.D., Mary Butts, Gerrit Lansing, Lyn Hejinian, Robert Kelly, Clayton Eshleman, and of course the Creeleys and many others and his searching musical mind discovered new inter-related realms always.

I am thankful for a lifelong encouragement and even praise from him and his exploratory and continual enrichment of American and World culture. My new book Broken Garden & The Unsaid Sings is dedicated “to the memory of my dear friend Kenneth Irby.” And I include here a poem which I wrote before I learned of his death, but shortly after receiving The Intent On, his 680 page collection of poems from North Atlantic Books.

Ken Irby

Ken Irby, the post-Olson mind
continues to teach and write
in Lawrence, Kansas,
186 miles from the geographical center
of the contiguous United States namely
Lebanon, Kansas.

A man of comprehensive sensibility
to the eons of place and
the histories of now, the voices
and stories
that fill the United States of movement
the languages that toss us back & forth
in the wind
and fill our ears in America,
the discipline of search
that leads to surprises
of our own self

is the teacher for the rest of us
to find and make
new connections.
The construction of our own selves
found in layered histories
often needs a guide —
“the intent on.”

(The Intent On, Collected Poems 1962-2006, by Kenneth Irby, North Atlantic Press)

Ever love and respect, abrazos, Mr. Irby. Larry Goodell /23Oct2015

Addenda: more poems for Ken and a postcard from him.

Arkansas Rose
/for Ken Irby

I picked “the flower of having passed through paradise in a dream.”
I took the risk of things seeming what they seemed.
It was a wild rose with 5 veined petals
probably the Arkansas rosa.
It smells so sweet in the tiny blue Mexican glass it’s in.
Miss Nowell gave me botany, Martha Sue Nowell
although we didnt get as far as angiosperms.
Miss Stole sold me the tiny blue pitcher — last of the Mexican glass I
          /got from her.
Augustine Stole.
Tne pricelessness of names that pass on into things.
The wild Hungarian rose
has cropped up here before
with the Kansas Gayfeather
but this is the Arkansas rose
grows by the Arkansas River
and by the irrigation ditches here
and rocky hillside
by the road.
That “wild Irish rose” the saddest dream did tell
you woke up for the best of all
to awaken
the dream you dreamed you couldnt bring the flower of paradise back from
          /the dream
was wrong
you woke up with it in your hand               snapped from the bush
you smell the rose here
fragrant             as in the dream
the dream you never had            except in waking

larry goodell / placitas / early June 1979

This postcard face and back with text from Ken Irby expresses the typical joy in his life of constant cultural discovery which of course enters his poetry and was infectiously communicative to friends. Jim here is his brother James Irby, Emeritas Professor, Princeton University.

“Irby, Bramshill Gardens, London i7July74
Larry — Ah my, what an incredible place the Prado truly is! This Bosch perhaps the greatest treasure there for me, but hardly the only one, not by far — Such a collection of 15th Century Flemish masterpieces! & then the Velasquez & the Goyas! Whew, & yet again! Only the Hermitage rivals it, and we hardly saw it except on the run — Oslo, Stockholm (one of the great cities of the world — where we finally saw that marvelous traveling Chinese show from Peking, with the jade burial suit, etc) Turin, Helsinki, Leningrad, back to Copenhagen, Paris, Barcelona (wondrous architecture, not just Gaudi but his compatriots & contemporaries) a couple of days in the countryside about 120 km West of Valencia at the summer house of an old Spanish colleague of Jim’s at Princeton — now Madrid — next Lisbon & N., Santiago de Compostela etc. before Paris again — Such food!! My lord a mercy! You’d flip at the seafood tapas available with drinks in the bars. Spain is much reminiscent of New Mexico terrain, but more tropical (palm trees) but definitely a kindred landscape — you must come here one day — Write me a note at least at the above address where I’ll be by 1 Aug. Hang loose & love  Ken”

Soar Heart (from Renew Anew, my poems from 1992-93)

for Ken Irby

I am going to get at it if it kills me.
I am going to intend it to death,
Direct the course not like but be that laser beam.
The very foundation stone, the directed focus.
The question that dissolves on looking at it, Yes
the Yes at the end of the tunnel, the yes that falls apart.
The very anal, naval, third-eye, orifice & cup that
          runneth over.
I see you, it, that and it is beyond me,
tiny, to the point an infinitesimal degree but
Nothing stops me, to blunder upon it or intuit
Rewinding the tape to see it again: you only see it once
And once it’s gone it will always be with you.
Books to the ceiling and beyond to the universe read with distinction.
Now remembered nothing, but on the streets my heart beats.

larry goodell / 20Apr93#3

(for K.I.)

The land
most
presumptuous of elements

because it is so
how should I say

lapped upon
quietly under

while Irby                 can stand upon
here where the drums’           affectation

fuse in the heart
beat.

larry goodell / 64Feb27#1 / written while working on Ken’s first books.

Ken Irby and Gino Sky and Ann Quin have been my triumvirate poet/writers in my life. My dearest friends. And Lenore, my very dearest. Love to all in memory of Ken.

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / 3Nov2015