The Intricate Evasions of As, Selected Poems, 1985-2010

In between swimming and relaxing, most of my creative energies these past five days were spent trying to come to terms with a manuscript (see photo above, courtesy of Eleni) that I’ve been wrestling with over the past 25 years and which has burgeoned from a chapbook of about 40 poems to a monster ms. now comprised of approximately 120. I don’t even want to think about how many times I’ve inserted new poems into the ms. or taken old ones out, or how often I’ve juggled the poems in a vain attempt to find the best possible arrangement or how the much smaller original manuscript was accepted by a publisher in England back in the 90s but who later informed me that he couldn’t do it owing to a lack of funds or that about ten years ago, I sent a longer version to a small-press publisher in the western US who rejected it after two years or that five years after that, I sent another even longer version to a small-press publisher on the east coast who also rejected it after two years—all of which leads me to what Joe Hutchison has to say about Bill Knott’s post re publishing one’s work: Do you DIY or keep sending it out in hopes that some publisher will mercifully DI4U—perhaps even before you die?

A Way from It All

For five days. At a villa overlooking the Ionian, courtesy of a dear friend.

An Oral-Visual Presentation of Aural (Second Attempt)

Yeah, I know the visual quality’s bad but after all, the sequence is called Aural! However, do not despair— if you open another window

here, you’ll be able to see the poet’s actual words, while his voice mellifluously takes you down an imaginary stream of oral emissions.

How I Became a Heartless Gourmand

It’s easy. Let’s say you find yourself hungry enough to eat a horse in the charming seaside village of Marathoupoli on the Ionian coast of Messenias, so you decide to bogue at a leisurely gait up and down the promenade looking for something to eat and you come across this inviting(!) menu board. Entering the establishment and not seeing any aproned squids frying elegant pieces of chopped chintz lampshade, nor any succulent sarcodines surreptitiously lying low beyond the reach of your pseudopodal taste sensors, you choose to go for the piglet that has somehow miraculously escaped from a fate worse than death and is now—lo and behold—glaring at you (probably feeling piggy arrogant and haughty) from a vantage point high on top of a red-hot oven! Before you can make your move however, the well-oiled porker accidently slips from the oven straight down into a waiting pot and finally surrenders to his fate, becoming a roast etc. Too flabbergasted by all the surreal gastronomic goings on, you finally resign yourself to settling for something more commonplace—today’s plate, for example—and eat your heart out.

Your Just Desserts--Just What the Doctor Ordered!

My dear Elsie, this is just

To say you better

Keep it between you

And me and no

One else—especially

Flossie or else—

You’ll plum get yours too if you

Know what I mean?