Rebecca Morrison & Bill Carr : Sideways

Sacramento poets Rebecca Morrison (PFAs #303, 340) and Bill Carr celebrated ten years of friendship with a reading tonight at The Book Collector titled Sideways: Looking at Poetry from all angles. Both took turns reading each others poetry as well as the work of poets who've inspired them.

493 : Meditation : Variation

I was fortunate to receive some rather helpful feed back from poet Do Gentry as I worked on the covers her poems in the PFA Series -- #492 visiting June on a rainy evening and #493 Meditation. I was intrigued by her reaction to the cover I had designed (pictured above) for Meditation:

"Meditation" gave me more thought ~ and a very good thing that is. I always picture the little engraving from "The Book of Lambspring" ("Be warned and understand truly that two fishes are swimming in our sea.") If you don't know the BofL, I will bring a copy of the engravings for you to look at one day (I hesitate to introduce you to the online alchemical library since it is most addictive!). Your cover is beautiful, but at first, I thought ~ it's not my poem. Then I went home and re-read the poem and realized that it is very much my poem ~ a very fine reflection of my poem. I think of the poem as a "chapter" (if you will) within the larger alchemical manuscript ~ but on its own, of course, it's just a poem with no particular alchemical references. Viewed that way, the moon faces floating in the water is absolutely wonderful ~ and that vestigal fish image on the back! I wouldn't change a thing ~ it's quite wonderful.

Taking Do's comments to heart, I developed the following variation (not replacement) cover for poem #493:

s.a. griffin : apes of wrath

On Sun, 12 Jun 2005, S. A. Griffin wrote:

hey richard,
did you ever get around to putting together apes? just curious...
really looking forward to seeing it as a part of the poems for all
series.

sincerely hope that this finds you and yours doing well.

always,
s.a.

S.A.


A delayed reply, my friend. Apologies.
June has been a month of madness as we
throw ourselves into looking for a new
home. The outrageous housing market here
in Sacramento has prompted our landlords
to sell the duplex we've lived in for
ten years. Naively we asked if we could
buy it. Alas, we couldn't afford the
asking price of over $500,000. (it's
a nice enough place, but not that nice.
Irrelevant, it seems, in this market
of cash-thick-suckers.)

And my mom is visiting from Scotland
for a month.

All this to say that, sadly, I've been
distracted from the Poems-For-All project.
And your Apes of Wrath sits there on
the production floor, gleaming like a half-
finished cadillac. I'm pleased with the
cover montage as its been developed so
far, but its still going to be a bit
before finished copies are piled into
your hands. My apologies for that. Kind
of the nature of the project; that it
unfolds in the narrow confines of my
busy life.

I never mind reminder emails, however.
So I'm glad you mailed me, checking in.

Hope all is well in Post-New Word Order
L.A. and new literary projects are finding
there way from skull to page.

When the dust settles, the move is made
and the backlog of promised PFAs is cleared,
I want to focus on my little vending machines;
old medical dispensers that will find a
new role for dispersing special packets of
Poems-For-All. I say special because the
machine requires coins to work and I want
to develop something special for those
willing to sink 50 cents -- it can't just
be the available list of PFAs since they're
supposed to be free.

I was thinking small packets with PFAs AND
special very miniature broadsides and other
one-of-a-kinds. Locally, I'd like the money
made in the vendies to go to the homeless
and/or local lit projects.

And while this is a year away, most likely,
wondered if you'd like to see one of these
machines in the LA area. It would be great
to collaborate, create interesting packages
of LA poets for the machine, etc.

Anyway, planting seeds early for later
flowers.

For now, we'll get the APEs done.

Tonight at Luna's LOB is performing with
Gene Avery. Lob's been setting down roots
quickly in the Capitol.

My best to Lorraine, another wonderful person
met thanks to the NWO road-show experience!

Regards,

Richard
poems-for-all

Fifteen minutes with Donald Sidney-Fryer

It's always a pleasure when Donald Sidney-Fryer comes to town. Alas, tonight's reading at the South Natomas Libarary (as part of the Urban Voices reading series) didn't go as planned. Suffering from Laryngitis, the Plan B was to play a cd recording of Donald's reading of the epic poem The Hashish Eater by Clark Ashton Smith. But event organizer's couldn't find the cd. The poem, Donald told me, is quite a vocal exercise to be done properly. But faced with the gloomy option of cancelling the event outright, Donald decided to read (briefly) anyway, breathing in the poem from a thick scroll that slowly unfolded over the edge of the podium like a parchment flag, and exhaling the lines with passion and force. It was hard to detect the Laryngitis as he pushed on, through the opening section, into the second and third, finally stopping with the fourth. A rather intense and provocative fifteen minutes. Enough to whet the appetite for a complete reading of the poem on a return visit by Donald to Sacramento.

Donald Sidney-Fryer reads Clark Ashton Smith

Octopus : 2b

#2b. What change in the landscape, particularly Sacramento's, have you seen that you've made?

I'm just one of many people who play a role in the Sacramento "literary" landscape. It is a vibrant scene, swollen with reading venues and ongoing readings. It has a rich history, which precedes my involvement. And it will continue to exist when I leave it. I've done little to change it, but I am proud of the contributions I've made.

I served on the Board of the Sacramento Poetry Center (SPC) until recently. I've helped get a new arts space underway --HQ: Headquarters for the Arts -- a collaborative project involving groups doing visual art, poetry, film and theatre. My wife and I have made our little used bookstore a place where local poets can sell their chapbooks. And for three years now we've hosted the Poems-For-All Second Saturday Series of readings.

And given that this is homebase for Poems-For-All, it's no surprise that a large number of Sacramento poets are represented in the Series. They're a great way to make introductions.


- - -
The question was posed during an interview for Octopus #4 .

Daniil Kharms

I was pleased to see that the Octopus Magazine #5 features, among other fine offerings, a selection by the Russian absurdist Daniil Kharms titled from THE BLUE NOTEBOOK.

The suggestion to investigate Kharms' work came some years ago from marks s kuhar (PFAs #276-281), publisher of the deep cleveland oracle (d.a. levy lives!) . When Kimberly White (PFAs #244-45, 433, 478)invited me to participate last December (2004) at a reading where we each selected a favorite dead poet, Kharms seemed a perfect choice.

I was drawn to Kharms for two reasons: His sense of absurdity (which inspired me to shoot rubber bands at the audience as I read his work); and, the thick overcoat of tragedy that he wore through his life and work as a writer and poet. To say that he couldn't catch a break in 1930s Russia would be an understatement. His worked banned, he was eventually "committed" to a mental hospital. One story of his death suggests that he died in such a hospital of starvation during the German seige of Leningrad during World War II.

Octopus : 2a

#2a. Are a majority of your poems reprints, solicited material, unsolicited? If a mix, what are the rough ratios? Do you have a preference in this matter?

I first began the series in March 2001. That year I published about 100 poems, about half of which were reprints of poets that I admired or thought would be well received. These included d.a. levy, Ted Joans, Robert Creeley, Roque Dalton, Peter Kropotkin ("poem" book no. 4 and already the prose was slipping in), Charles Bukowksi, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Jack Spicer, Bertolt Brecht and Anne Waldman. I had also just befriended Arthur and Kit Knight, who had edited the Unspeakable Visions of the Individual Journals which included poetry and prose from a number of Beat writers. When they both gave me poems for the series, it set off a kind of brushfire of interest. Poems-For-All No. 15, Butch Cassidy: Vanished by Arthur and No. 16, That Clean Sun Smell by Kit were their first in the series. They would send out these little book's to other poets they knew which generated additional submissions to the series.

The ratio would turn dramatically in 2002 when Poets & Writers magazine did a 2,000 word story on the series. I was simultaneously delighted and mortified with the attention that article delivered. Within days, the submissions rolled in. And since then, the series has been more the 85% unsolicited material to 10% solicited and 5% reprints.

It isn't how I expected it to happen, but I am pleased with the present ratio. I enjoy the mix of styles and perspectives I receive in the submissions to the series. And I continue to be flattered that poets, both professional and kitchen-table practitioners, want to send me their work. I still feel compelled to reprint poets who I feel the need to recognize or honor. When I read about Puerto Rican poet Julia de Burgos, for example, I wanted to add some of her poems to the series.

- - -
The question was posed during an interview for Octopus #4 .

poems for Patchen

Major PFA Checklist updates

Hit the checklist tab above and you'll find that the Poems-For-All checklist has had a major update. It now gives a good sense of poems and poets who have -- or will be -- published within the series. You'll note some references to Pending. In the perfect, hyper-organized world that is someone else's reality (and not mine), this checklist would show 500+ PFA's all ready to go. Instead, this is a list of some published, several half-finished, and a number that haven't been started. In some cases the poet has been chosen but the poems have not -- thus: Pending.

Octopus : 1c

#1c. What does it take to run Poems-for-All (time, money [not specifically], energy, people)?

It takes very little to do Poems-For-All. It will take as much time, energy, people and money as you want to feed it, but it will also work in a starker reality. I Choose to print many of the covers in color, for example, which is more expensive then, say, using a black and white copier to make the covers. So I suggest that doing something like PFA doesn't have to be elaborate or expensive.

money
As the PFA project has evolved, I have spent more on things like color printing. Color ink for our in-house Xerox is costly. Black and white printing, however, remains incredibly cheap even factoring in paper and ink costs.

people
One person, with a little practice, can easily make hundreds of booklets in an hour. Help, of course, speeds the pace. A production crew of three, for example, where one is cutting, another folding, the last putting in a staple and the process really hustles!

space
It certainly doesn't require a lot of production space. I often cut, fold and staple booklets on the counter at the bookstore or at the coffee shop. They can even be done while a passenger in a car.

time
The most luxurious of ingredients for creating PFA booklets is presently time. I have less of it as various obligations, like family and work, press in, demanding attention. And while this impacts the number of booklets made, it also impacts the large and growing list of pending publications. There continues to be a large backlist of poems-to-be-published.

- - -
The question was posed during an interview for Octopus #4 .

di Prima : boxed : image

Octopus : 1b

#1b. What specific models, if any, did you have for Poems-for-All?

I didn't seek out other efforts at miniature, if that's what you mean. I could just see, in my head, these horded little scraps of stiff business-card-sized-cardstock folded to make covers. I was delighted when I printed out the first inside pages (guts) and realized that you could read text at this size.

Since the Series has begun, a number of other miniature projects have been revealed to me. Many of them began before Poems-For-All and I just hadn't seen them until someone sent me or presented me with examples.

There is an excellent miniature series published by Sacramento poet Joyce Odam (PFAs #444,445,446) that pre-dates my little books by several years. They're called Brevities. I had heard of them but hadn't actually seen them until I met Joyce last year when she came to the bookstore for a poetry reading. A little larger than PFAs, they have these wonderful front free end papers made of different styles of textured paper.

Another miniature imprint from Sacramento was the Haiku Journal Blue Fur put out by Starr Vaughn (Her haiku will be published soon in the PFA series). Larger than even Joyce's Brevities, they were still small, with handmade covers; a size that teased the notion of miniature.

- - -
The question was posed during an interview for Octopus #4 .