Octopus | First Contact

I was delighted to get the following from the editors of Octopus Magazine:

I am a co-editor at the online poetry magazine, Octopus (www.octopusmagazine.com). My co-editor and I recently became aware of the series that you run, Poems-for-All, and are pretty psyched about it. We're hungry for more info, more insight into the series and you, etc, and we think our readers at Octopus might feel the same way. Anyway, what I am trying to get to: Could we interview you?

So far, we have interviewed the anonymous editor of Anon. books and Peter O'Leary, the literary executor to Ronald Johnson. We're interested in, as you can see, how poems get to the masses, the process, the philosophies, the motivations, the intricate little things, and I'm sure you could offer some intriguing insight. Check out our past interviews in issues #2 and #3 to see how we do things. We ask 8 sets of three questions. In each of the 8 sets, you can choose which of the three questions you'd most like to answer--that way, YOU can control the direction of the interview, and it is equally interesting to see which questions you choose not to answer. Please consider, and let us know what you think, either way.

Thanks,
Zachary Schomburg
co-editor, Octopus
www.octopusmagazine.com

At the funeral home; amid peacock feathers

Goodbye Phil. The funeral home crowded to overflowing as friends, fellow poets, fellow activists pushed in to pay respects. A car full of cardboard and other recycling from the bookstore, I circle the block, blue Taurus stationwagon looking for a place to park, catching glimpses of the tall peacock feathers of the Aztec dancers as I roll by the full parking lot. Later they will gently shuffle in, as Felicia McGee is singing, their leg shells clattering softly; luminous brown skin, vivid aztec costmes of gold, silver, red, black. Jose Montoya, new haircut, no hat, quips good-naturedly: "Guess I'm going to MC this thing..." and presents a euolgy that any would be lucky to have read about them; about great deeds and the friendships of many. Many eagle references, by all at the podium; how Phil soared now, like a white eagle.

Cut, fold, staple

Phil Goldvarg's service is tommorrow and Kevin Porter and I have spent the evening at the bookstore, cutting Phil's poems between swigs of Guiness left over from Bloomsday, getting the booklets ready for distribution. I feel fortunate that Phil was able to see all these little books of his poems, months before his death; that they served as a tribute to him as he was alive, just as they do now at his death. For what can I say, that can't be said better by others standing before his coffin, facing out to an audience of admirers of the man? My best tribute is to hand a person a handful of Phil's poems. More Guiness. Max Schwartz arrives; Buzzes around the place as we cut, fold, staple. Daughter Ru plays close by.

Phil Goldvarg Dies

Word spread like wildfire through this tiny, insular poetry scene that poet and friend Phil Goldvarg has died.

Phil Goldvarg – “Lengua del Filero” nuestro hermano, amigo, esposo, son, father, abuelo y padrino ascended into the heavens at 1pm today. He was so peaceful and radiant with love. His wife Helen, their family and friends were with him when he took flight. The family asks that you keep him in your positive thoughts and prayers as he transitions into the spirit world.
-- Trudy Robles

My, my miss Eskimo Pie...

Travelling to Placerville to attend the Ben Hiatt (PFAs #74, 75) tribute cost me all my "going-out" chits with the family for the weekend; and I did so want to go to hear Rebecca Morrison (PFAs #303, 340)read that very same night as part of a clandestine series located at a secret patio on the lower east side. Missing it wasn't a Breit idea and I'm likely to be taken off the invite list... But that's not the point. By way of small consolations, I present something of hers, swiped fresh from her own website. How's that for gratitude...

The Blue Mountain
And so he took her, at a moment's notice, away from the city--her small white car rolling through the dusty hills to the ocean. She, a startled nineteen; he, still learning at forty. It was hard to say who followed who. Together they unfolded each moment like the crumpled map they had forgotten in the bar. The radio died, the car ran out of gas, she swallowed her last birth control pill. They had heard of a place far in the hills, abandoned. That's what they both wanted more than anything--complete abandonment. Walking, climbing up through the primeval forest, carrying only what they needed--her youth and beauty, his words and wisdom, and a can opener. She trusted his knowledge of which mushrooms to eat and where to find them. He trusted her trust. He was used to making sweet delicacies such as Bunderness Torte for the tourists at Cactus Jacks, but now he served up sauteed spam ala frond over an open fire. She soon excelled at collecting firewood and tinder, gingerly snapping birch twigs to test their combustibility. "Green doesn't burn," he said as quietly as the night wind over the mountain. And when she returned from her forays, arms full of branches and scratches, he pulled nettles from his pouch, ground them up in an old pie pan, and rubbed them on her white arms, which, like her ankles and neck soon became permanently dirty, regardless of the frequency of cold spring baths. Their socks were the first casualties; and soon they abandoned all their clothing, arranging it into a little nest in the corner of the cabin opposite the window. They knew nothing of stars except that up here they shined as bright and clear as the air was thin and clean. And despite their tangled hair and mosquito welts, their eyes burned quick and hot as mesquite. He was Apollo, she was Diana. He felt his sense of self grow strong as an oak as he freed her innate wildness, watching her run off into the canopy every morning while he mined the sun and wind for words. She always returned with something, a heart-sized chunk of granite, a grip full of orange poppies, a golden leaf as broad as her hand, and once a dying chickadee which she held as carefully as he held her breasts full of the pulse of the blue mountain. He was the story line and she was the pictures. Her sand drawings, primitive and ephemeral; his black scratchings on synthetic paper, ageless, fodder for his solitary fires when they came down after the first frost into the raucous apartment complex crammed with dishes and radios and other men.

© Eskimo Pie Girl (published here in wanton violation of said copyrot.)

Ben Hiatt | Gun & Flag tribute

It saves my typing fingers when an Eskimo does all the work:

POETRY & GUITAR PICK - SUNDAY, JUNE 6 - 2 p.m., "A special [gun and flag] tribute to Ben L. Hiatt, poet, editor, and publisher. The event will take place in Placerville at 549 Main St. Poets reading include: Ben L. Hiatt, Dave Boles, Taylor Graham, Ann Menebroker, D.R. Wagner, Phil Weidman,and Gordon Kirkwood-Yeats. Music will be provided by 'A Tree Full of Owls,' original alternative country music. Take Highway 50 north to Placerville; turn right on Bedford, left on Main St. to town Hall. Great places for lunch: The Cozmic Cafe, Tortilla Flat, and Sweetie Pies [not to be confused with Eskimo Pies]."

PFA on TV

The guys from KVIE, the local public television station, came out today to shoot some shots of me making the poems-for-all, moving them in and-out of their boxed perchs in the bookstore window, and distributing them around midtown. Overall, and enjoyable experience thanks to the laid back approach of the camera man and producer. I was reminded of how much you have to get on tape even for a one minute segment. (That's the plan, a one minute segement on PFA to be shown during a half hour show on the Sacramento arts scene.)