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RULES
I learned from John Berrymanby way of W.S. Merwin that as a poetI should paper my walls with rejection letters.I thought this a good idea whenI lived in a small apartment, butall too soon the walls appearedto be growing ever smallerand I was papering over paper,like the latest in a too longline of tenants who…
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RULES
W. Somerset Maugham suggestedthat there are three rules for writinga novel, but no one knows what they are.I suppose the same could be saidfor writing poetry, with a twistfor there are three rules for thisas well, but everyone knowsprecisely what they are not.Writers and poets must be rebels,writing what must be saidand damning the consequencesfor…
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NEXT UP
Back in the day,that day being the last timeI attended an open mic,odd since most are intimate enoughthat no microphone is provided,I stood at the lecternand looked carefully at the audiencethat was mine for the next few minutes.I wanted to see their responseto me, my clothing choicesand then my words, trying to readthe indecipherable map…
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WORDS, WORDS, WORDS
They can have sharp edgesthat wound on contact, some cutsso deep they leave lasting scars. They can get stuck in the throatuntil you feel you can no longerbreathe, no longer cry out for help. They can lie there, anaggregate always acretingand yet rejecting any meaning. Or they can, carefully chosenpresent great beauty, offerhope, promise freedom.…
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POETS GATHER
One deep and abiding beauty of dreamsis that it is entirely logical forMarina Tsvetaeva to be engagedIn an animated discussion withCorso and Ginsberg where none willacknowledge that the world theywrote and imagined is a total mess. Over in the corner, Mandelstam andReznikoff have agreed that for eternityevery game of chess they play willresult in a…
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CHARLES
Bukowski, you old satyr when you croaked was there the great American novel locked away in your head. When you pickled yourself was it for fear that the words locked away inside would spew forth like your lunch so many nights as you verged on alcohol poisoning. When you read Burroughs could you picture the…
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CITY LIGHTS
It was a Tuesday in October or a Wednesday in March, hard to say which, but evening. We had taken a cab from the Hyatt Embarcadero or the Fairmont, it didn’t much matter, and sat in the Chinese restaurant on the edge of Chinatown, or a pasta and seafood joint in North Beach, and you…
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There will come a time in the not distant future when words will be rendered unnecessary, when thought will be freely transmissible, when distance will become a lost dimension. That day will be one of mourning, much as we mourned the death of the Underwood Champion, joined in death with the Royal Standard and a…
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WORDS, WORDS, WORDS
The room is awash in words, they pile up in corners, form untidy stacks that perpetually threaten collapse, strewing consonants like shards of ill broken glass. It might not be this way, for words need order, a rubric in which they are forced to operate. But here, in a room of poets, anarchy is the…
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TO ALLEN
Tell me more about death, I said put it into words, that’s your specialty so open your mouth from amid your black jungle of a beard now white, I want a noise, a howl. Why the hell do I hear only silence, I know it’s the sound of one hand clapping, but I demand more…
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an old writer and his words 