Have Poems, Will Travel

 
Depending on your time frame, this could be either 1) an announcement for an upcoming poetry reading, or more plausibly 2) a souvenir from my one and only poetry reading  32 years ago when I returned to the Pacific Northwest for three months during the summer of 1979. John Levy was living in Seattle at that time and was instrumental in setting up the reading. I think there must have been about thirty people in attendance.

The flier announcing the event is from the cover of my first book, Sentences, and most of the poems I read that night were from that collection, though I did read some translations I had done of Seferis' Mythistorema.

If anybody out there wants to pay my travel expenses, I'd be more than willing to return to the US for my second poetry reading! I'd even be willing to dispense with the honorarium. If interested, please submit your proposal within the next 32 years. 

 

 

Urban Indian Legend

No place

on any white

man’s map—

red

abstract

rib

like

tracks

treading

a

cross an end

less pale

concrete

tract.

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Levity in Poetry

Levity does have a place in poetry—

It has to be somewhere 

Between having your head stuck 

In the ground and your feet 

Ascending in air.

Moderator’s comments: I felt so giddy while reading this poem that at first I thought Cinquor had written “feat” instead of “feet”—but then again, I’ve always been a sucker for puns—like John Donne—or should that be “did?”

Stillborn

that

we

could

be

whatever

we

wish

what

a

wish

that

could

be

Charles Baudelaire , The Exterminator

My latest offering over at Weekly Hubris shows how you can dispose of work written by pestiferous, pretentious pseudo-artistic poseurs by employing Monsieur Fleurs du Mal as a hit man. While you’re on the premises, check out what the other columnists have to offer!