Seattle / Outside Seattle

A Lady Writing a Letter

How bright it seems: cadmium on ochre,
glint on pearl and stud and satin.
I too would turn from correspondence
with such a heavy coat, though set
lightly upon me, layer by translucent layer.
Who says that attention must be cast
from the eye? The lip, the feather—
Of course it isn’t bright in a room
of paint. Of course it isn’t perfect.

The worn gaze is wearing: look at the hot veneer:
it sizzles under our weight. It casts a shadow.
Certainly the painter can’t be bothered,
but the painting can. It cracks as blacks are crackling
music into their shaded sockets—
Look at the corners, look at the shattered wall.
How can a person say they aren’t there too,
in there with the dead, with meat long lost
from the bone. The tempered hood, its facets.

Look at the artifact that is the frame, look at the wall
holding the artifact. Look at the beams and the broad
shoulders of the painter—Wait. The exacting image
isn’t so exact. We stare as if through a window,
though there is no window. Not into the next life,
not back from another’s. Yet the funerals begin
in the closed rooms around her. She’s ready to go—
and yet this afterlife: sawdust on the studio floor,
paint in the margins—on the hay against the canvas.

Impressions of Jack Spicer

~

Born in Hollywood in 1925 but claimed he was born in 1946, the year he met Robert Duncan (with whom I share a birthday) and Robin Blaser—they were later called the “museum poets” for their bookishness.

~
Roughly four hundred pages of poetry. Both irreverent and to the point. California. Incipient alcoholism. Prehepatic coma. Noticeably intoxicated. Researcher in linguistics, Berkeley. Alcohol poisoning. Product of the 1950s. White. Masculinist. Post-war America. With all its “honor” and disappointment. Racial tendencies. Not beatnik but bohemian. “Funk” or “junk.” Turbulent humanity.

~
Died. Poeverty ward of San Francisco General Hospital. August 17, 1965.

~
From “Fifteen False Propositions Against God”:

Trees in their youth look younger
Than almost anything
I mean
In the spring
When they put forth green leaves and try
To look like real trees
Honest to God my heart aches when I see them trying.

~
Jack Spicer, in a letter to Graham Mackintosh, 1954:

“There’s a big difference between talking as a teacher, which is easy, and talking as a poet, which is heartbreakingly difficult if you want to talk honestly.”

~
Jack Spicer, in a letter to Robert Duncan, 1955:

“… the best way to get a method for a new description of poetics is to look at the failures and successes of such things in other arts. Color theory for painting gives, I think, the most exact analogy. What we need is a color wheel for sounds.”

~
Jack Spicer on New York, 1955:

“No sense of abandon here. No head-talk even among heads. People smoke their pot sadly. Nobody loves anybody. Nobody speaks Martian.”

~
North Beach bars. San Francisco parks. “Several Years’ Love”:
…
I’m not certain of their faces
Or which I kissed or which I didn’t
Or which of them I hadn’t.

~
“Dictated” poems.

~
Thomas Parkinson, characterizing Spicer while introducing his last public reading at the Berkeley Conference:

“I was trying to think of what it was that Jack does for people who’ve known him long and rather deeply. I think that one of the things that he always does for us is to ask that we do our better work. In this sense, I suppose that Jack has been a conscience for many of us at points when we might have done our better work and we might have settled for something less. And I think this is a very important thing that he does for all of us. And seeing his own work, which is always his better work, and which becomes, to my sense at least, better as he goes on, is a constant rebuke to those of us who are likely to do less than we should.”

~
People smoke their pot sadly.


Lecture 4: “Poetry and Politics”:

“The point is then, if you’re poets—not too many flashbulbs, huh?—you out to figure out what the power system is within your own community. Your enemy is simply something which is going to try to stop you from writing poetry.”

…

“People will exploit poets. They’ll exploit the old ones for the knowledge they have, and they’ll exploit the younger ones for the promise they have … Stay absolutely loose, and don’t accept any offers whatsoever… But you’re not just a poet. You’re also a human being who wants to be recognized and everything else… What I’m saying is that you’re going to sell out eventually. You have to, just for economic reasons. But when you [do] … know exactly what is the price you can sell out for.”

…

“The writing of poetry, essentially, is something which you really can’t say anything about except that if you violate something deep inside you – maybe even something that you didn’t know was deep inside you – you’re lost. You don’t write, or you write bad poetry.”

~
Nobody loves anybody.

Gravity Knows What It Is

I never thought I would be enough for him.
Sometimes, complaining, I would forget about his mistakes
and feel awful—like I was the one who’d messed up again.

And it only got worse: once, sleeping, I forgot where
I was: in the morning, I’d forgotten where I’d slept:
all the next night I’d fall apart with envy

for how I was before he’d sunk his hooks in me.
It isn’t comfortable, sleeping with the weight of dusk on your back.
And all that comes with it: waiting for arguments, juggling blame,

the choices you had that you gave up—the simple syrup.
He loves me like I’d never trusted he would.
He carries me home in his arms; he trusts me.

When the bottle breaks it’s always empty.
Choruses of nuns, crates of spoiled wine.
Why, when the wind weeps, does she begin—

Maestro, Mi Bravado, I can’t begin to know how to take this—
when we sleep together all night and there isn’t a sound like loneliness.
When the ghosts walk out on us, when our children

walk also, when a pleasant valve releases it’s pleasant head…
It isn’t fair to think we too are lonely, I know. When there’s so much
loneliness in the world. Still, the way we fold our arms, together,

and roll away, the way we don’t look up when we pass in the hall.
A lonely body may think that isn’t love. Only one whose
own lust is burnt out could know how cold a hand can get

when it isn’t held reasonably. My touch warms only me some nights.
Others, he’s at the other end. And kneading me as I need him to,
he reminds me of my body. Pleasantly, so that I can sleep.

Learning Hand Eye Pad

Last Night's Reading

Last night was wonderful! Thanks to David and his uncle Bobby (who volunteers with Friends in Deed), the crowd donated $1677. I was amazed (and quite pleased, obviously).

Thank you all who were able to attend, and for the supportive text messages, emails, etc. of those who couldn't.

PS. Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Eve Reading Extravaganza

Billy Merrell & David Levithan
Valentine's Eve Reading Extravaganza
Monday, February 13th, 7pm
Friend in Deed, 594 Broadway (between Prince and Houston), Suite 706

This is a fundraiser for a very amazing organization called Friends in Deed, which is a crisis center for people dealing with life-threatening illness. (It was the inspiration for the AIDS support group in 'RENT', among other things). Suggested donation: ten bucks (if you make more, give more; if you make less, give what you can). If a donation would keep you from coming to a reading, don't feel pressured to donate. Just come for the work!

DAVID LEVITHAN will read from his newest novel, Marly's Ghost, a valentine’s day recasting of A Christmas Carol. RACHEL COHN will also be joining him to read from their joint novel Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist.

BILLY MERRELL will be reading new work as well as a small selection from his poetry memoir Talking in the Dark.

The Heroic Couple

Heroical love causeth Melancholy. His Pedigree, Power, and Extent.
- Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy



I find it hard to answer, happily,
your happy questions: Would you like to see

my underwear? How long before we’re kissing?
So why do you insist on lace? You’re missing

the point. We’re in my parents’ house—well, yes,
I love that marks I’ve left haven’t left your breast,

but Honey, let me introduce my mother.
She’s charmed, I’m sure, I’ve finally found a lover,

but doesn’t need to know the games we play
with vegetables. No, please don’t cry. I’ll say

you’re gardening. She doesn’t have to know.
Just be careful. Next time, let it go:

when Father asks you if you like to cook,
just tell him Yes, don’t offer him a look

inside your goodie drawer. Of course he laughed!
He’s seen such things before; he isn’t daft.

But have some tact. He won’t stop asking where
I found you, if I picked you up. He stared

all evening down your blouse, winking each time
I caught him. Sugar, see? I’ll try to find

a way to put this nicely: he things you’re easy.
So if I say to be a lady, please be.

I know it’s hard to hide our lovely passions,
but Dear, my folks are tied to tamer fashions.

Portrait 001

detail

Singing the McDonald's "Menu Song" With My Brother

My brother learned the "Menu Song"
when we were nine and ten.
He sang it on our way to school
and taught it to his friends.

One evening as our father drove
us to those Golden Gates,
I begged, Please teach me. But he laughed
and said, Give me a break!

Just teach him or he’ll whine all night,
my father said, then parked.
I shrugged my shoulders and he sighed.
But only once! he barked.

He sang: Big Mac®, a BLT,
a Quarter Pounder® with some cheese,
then paused for me to say it back.
I sang it two times happily.

Filet-O-Fish®, a hamburger,
he sang at once and laughed.
A cheeseburger. A Happy Meal!
But I sang back, and just as fast.

That’s when he smiled and sang it all
without one pause or breath
and, finished, looked at Dad, who grinned.
Okay, give it a rest.

And though I begged them, though I cried,
he wouldn’t sing again.
I guess he knew if he'd taught me,
I’d think I was his friend.

Sing-songy by assignment:
Prosody Assignment 1: A Ballad of 5 or more 4 x 4 stanzas (limited to 4343, 4444, or 3343 beats, rhyming abab or abcb). Pardon my variations.