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 . . .
I’m as 80 as you’re going to get. I couldn’t be eightier.
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