Kenneth Irby Letter With Poems In Response to My "Path To" Broadside

Broadside sent to Ken Irby and other friends at end of 1994 . . .

duende press broadside december 1994

PATH TO

May this be an opening, a revolution of the Sandoval
           CD-Rom slowed to one cycle per second
A see thru discovery that is yet to appear before Coronado’s eyes
           that slows down into myth of the rocking Corn Maiden, yes!
A stirring of Zia Santa Ana Corrales Tejon San Felipe
      the Old Placitas in a dust-devil vision of the now in
      the now on the side of the Mercantile a twister
      carrying on into the night
     drink up read poetry at the Wine Festival
      and the he & she of the words of art creations are on velvet of silver & iron
tortillas of gospels of the new post-multi-sequential
post-big bang theory realized in Buddhist actuality
      of now, what lovers on
the sides of the mercantile walk in
      flowers of graces towards the front doors.
We have vacated the land of too many people &
      the land can come back again to lead instead of follow
      lead Earth instead of follow, vitamin pills
      of the future contain dirt &
      getting our hands back down into the orchids we grow
           again
the everything we did we did again
affordable housing & affordable
      people again
The he & she of the new presence never ignored again
      rocking/walking in the doors and off the walls
           forever,
into the room of the computer garden turned back into earth
I am you & he & she
      stepping down the ladder of the economy
back into the helping older community
      who are we to deface
      all that came before us?
      Who are we to change
      the rock art of all that came so slow before
      purposeful steady & alert & possibly fast
      dancing flute players with rock hard
           hardons &
soft mounds of the oceans & mountains of breasts
in the corn/oats/all-vegetables especially tomatoes
      & chile & butternut squash maidens just
our wives our husbands
all our children deserve a flowering of the arts
that interject reality with the fantasy of truth.

The gods & goddesses are now those people
           who connect with their past.
The Gods & Goddesses are now those people
           who connect with their path.

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / 11Dec94

Letter with Poems (7) from Ken Irby sent back in response . . . click on anything to enlarge . . .

Pieces of writing sent with Ken's letter.

These 7 pages can be found on pages 537-541 of The Intent On, Collected Poems, 1962-2006, Kenneth Irby, North Atlantic Books 2009

Love to all on this end of the year 2015 . . . just an item posted here in warm memory of Ken  . . .

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico

Did You Get My Last _____?

Did you get my last letter. I guess it was a bit long for email. I miss the letters I used to get and their prompting the letters I used to write. Somehow email shortens everything and hides it away. When I don’t get letters I don’t get the inward mobility of soul. In fact the soul can only be revealed in personal penning. At least in my stationary world it’s the only evidence I get of a soul. That personal writing to me, handwritten or typed, immediately opens up a presence which contains more than itself. That direct focused involvement, with me involved, can only be a joy, a renewing, an expansion of his or her intellect with mine, the ongoing revelation and opening of self that can even be more personal than sitting next to each other and talking.

Talking is like sports. You can do it walking, or even running as well as sitting or standing. It’s delicious in its own right. It’s batting the ball back and forth, or tossing the ball. It can be accumulative and lead to a win but usually not, it’s a tied game and everyone goes home satisfied, unlike real sports.

But in a letter written and sent in the US mail there’s not banter, there’s an expression of depth. True you can get involved with writing writing but you will come back to the focus on who you are addressing. The immediacy of now commands the tone. There’s a filling in of spaces of shared friendship. An amplification of a relationship possible in a letter. The friendly letter. The expression of where the mind has been and where it is, what reading, what books, what findings, what reflections, what pains what relationships, what anguish what loves, what travels what goings on, what elements of life. It’s the best way to keep alive a friendship when there’s distance. It defies distance and renews everything again. Or that’s what I’ve experienced and that’s been a major component of my life.

But time goes by and technological hazards reveal themselves in the frenzy of change. The instant secretive aspect of the computer, the chip in phone and tablet, rushes us to complete things quickly and get on with other things. So I guess I let the old idea of letter invade the digital premises of email and let myself go a bit as if I was writing a letter. I went on more than the usual email snippet limit. So if you got my last email I’d like to hear back from you, however short. That’s the demand of the technology it seems, leaving me at least with the nostalgia of the former days of writing and sending, waiting and receiving, and after awhile, sending back in the mail sincerely or best wishes or abrazos or with love, Larry.

Goodell / Placitas, New Mexico /19Sep2015

Beauty of Broadsides

The Lodestar Broadsides, 1974, Editors: John Moulder, Marc Campbell and John Gierach, Printed by letter press at Lodestar Press in Boulder, Colorado * This is number 35 of an editon of 150

(Carol Berge and Larry Eigner pages)

I have been going through my small press collection - 60's, 70's, some 80's most of which I received in generous exchanges with other small presses when I was actively involved with duende press including Fervent Valley. I hope to add to this post when I get into the broadsides.

*

Illuminations 1, sheet eight sent to me by Norm Moser from San Francisco includes a poem by August Plinth which is a rare instance since Bill Bingham (his real name) published his own work and secretly placed his books on bookstore shelves. His big book is Pope Art, a curiosity. He lived here during Albuquerque's Beat period, late 50's & on. And there's a poem by David Sandberg and my friend Gino Clays (Sky).

(top part)

Love to all, especially poets as publishers and small press and poetry aficionados.
Larry Goodell / Placitas, New Mexico

Part Of A Revealing Joy

For many readings I've water-colored the backs of cut out poems
and put them on a clothesline so I can just reach up for a poem and read it.
Here are three.

Pull

(back of poem)

(poem)

Pulling myself out of the doldrums, the fair-weather surprise
comes when it comes, but I want it now,
where is it? Dawn of dawns, are you coming?
The beginning pinhole explosion, no explosion please, that’s happened
just light, clear skies except for some beautiful rosy-lit clouds
as the gods step out of the gods.....

 / from Escape At Home, poems 2005


Here's a larger one.

Panguage Loets

(back of poem)

(poem)

Barles Churnstein
Warret Batten
Beve Stenson
Hyn Lejinian
Yoeff Gung
Bavid Denedetti
Harla Carryman
Pob Berelman
Floria Grym
McCave Staffery
Aruce Bandrews
Reeve Stodefer
Cark Cloolidge
Pichael Malmer
Bei Bei Mersenbrugge
& Sonn Rilliman
all of them coming out of the ghost of
Stertrude Gein. 

 /from Remembering the Present, poems 2008

(one more of many, usually spontaneously done in preparing for a reading)

Strings

(back of poem)

(poem)

I never knew the difference between a thousand years & a string on my chest.

 String theory, hiccup therapy. Does time go by?

  What is therapy? Does whatever you did to make it better

do any good?

   Have you finally contracted an enigmatical pause?

   How can a higher power be involved in little squijits

so teeny nobody can ever see them?

   The building blocks of everything whizzing around

all energy, no intelligence at all?

   All is a useful word if you don=t use it at all,

   I give up, scientists, you=ve got me broken up into little

whizzing pieces, no solidity ever.

   Solidity has disappeared. I have nothing to stand on.

  String theory destroys meaning & presents us with surprise,

 Only the Buddhists were right. Catch on to the now

with talons

 Which I=m sure you have.

 Glide & hold on to Aletting go.@ Creative intelligence?

Stenciled madness. Peace & serenity broken up into energy.

 The secret of the universe flying.

/ from Remembering the Present, poems 2005

The clothes-line which I can stretch out and hang poems from.

Poetry Can Be a Revealing Joy

A life devoted to poetry and its creations is an ever evolving life full of almost daily surprises when a poem appears, when a drawing appears, when a musical improvisation appears, as it is all generated from the core of being a poem, in my sense, as in Louis Zukofsky's, "Poetry if anything has a sense of everything."

And since whoever's listening is usually looking, the back of the poem, or the folder, or the binder or the book, is visible to them, as well as the poet (what he looks like), how he makes himself up, if he or she does, the lighting of the room, and on occasion, the manifestation of any object that might go with the poem or at the time of inflatus, come out of the poem.

Poetry when allowed to open up all avenues to the poet is a broader more 3-dimensional or multi-dimensional phenomenon that will continually bring great joy to a poet as well as conveying intense articulation of anxious depths of exasperation from the full palette of human life.

love to all,
larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / 27jul2015

I Pray From The Foundation Of The Steps Of Heaven - a shuffle & read poem

(shuffle cards & read - here's today's layout)

I pray from the foundation of the steps of Heaven - a shuffle & read poem

   

     She is the foundation,
     the steps are in my heart.
     When we walk together
     gratitude swells about her in every way.
     We are slow together
     always is always
     in love together.
     I pray from the foundation of the steps of Heaven
     She is the foundation
     Heaven is here
     that she be lifted up.

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico

Speech! a shuffle & read poem . . .

envelope for Speech! I just discovered it by the window splashed by a little rain.

(this is one chance layout)
people can read a slip in the order they've been given it. especially in a circle
it seems to work.

I've done several shuffle and read poems, probably starting with "Making It" which is a 7 boxed definition of poetry (making it) . . . one poem is called "Pope" - - - who's the Pope, are you the Pope? etc. But for public school classes I changed Pope to Poet and it works just as well, or better.

Here are some! See Poems On Cards 

Larry Goodell / Placitas, New Mexico

Hymn To Wealth - Manuscript and Typed Copy 1977

Hymn To Wealth


0h wealth can you be hymned in 
I have none –  no wealth, no hymn. 
No him no her, wealth interred.
   Give me pocket samples of your P bombs 
    oh wealthy oil-destruction magnates. 
    Isnt the P Bomb succeeding the Cobalt.
All the combined black bags of
         millionaire astronauts 
         & nautical scientists 
         oil drudgers & 
         uranium poly-glots 
         All the combined excreta of Amer-Eurasian multiblllionaires
         in one black bag 
         descends over our heads 
         drops down on all the ministers of the Lord
         asking for wealthy tithing, 
Oh excreta of the myth monsters 
robbing us of our dreams. 
We poor people ask 
for our considered decency again 
Christian money-makers' outhouse the church of their dreams.

I sing the hymn to wealth —
I love you for the art work you gave to museums. 
I love you for museums.
But I sing no hymn to you for the personal deprivation 
Of my daily life.
And I refuse you my dead body over which you will descend 
like vultures of critics, English & art departments 
over the dead carcases of poets & artists.

Hymn to no hymn. Merry Christless Christmas 
Hymn to no wealth. We 
are happy here on earth with our sprouts & poverty
as well as we can be.
Hymn to ourselves alive in the struggle of loving, without jet trips or 
flights to the Moon     or Mars     or Mataztlan.

Hymn to the center of the dollar, the hole. 
All holes are holy 
& see clear light.

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / 15Dec77 
from Sun In The Mountain, poems 1977.

Hymn To Wealth, 1st writing on 3 by 5 card and napkin, then typed poem with sketch for performance . . . 15 Dec 1977 . . . forgot to do it at performance with Coyote Dance Collective in Santa Fe's Center for Performing Arts so the hanging stuffed garbage bag "headdress" simply hung there on stage, unused . . . (just a memory). The 1st writing almost always takes precedence in my way of working, so I'll probably revert "Mataztlan" to "Juarez."

My dad came over from the N.M. State Legislature to hear my reading, probably the only time he ever heard me do my poetry. His comment was, "You certainly gave the establishment hell!" Love to all, Larry Goodell / Placitas, New Mexico

DUENDE Magazine: An Early Review by Ron Caplan

DUENDE: editor Larry Goodell: $1.00 each 

Ronald Bayes, History of the Turtle, Bk.1, cover by Bobbie Creeley duende #1

           from an article in trace: "those who would demand of a review of anything that it can be anything more than an advertisement, a statement of the existence of that thing; who would demand of a reviewer outline, portions of poems, any fragmentary description — are those who too often take the review for the thing, take it and too easily talk of it, having never come to battle with the actual work." SO to whom it may concern: neither him-null nor you'll-ogy, surely not as placement historically, that sort of thing —  but to do what a 

a. fredrick franklyn, Virgules and Deja Vu, cover by Bobbie Creeley duende #2

something is avail-able, & in the saying to speak as much of it as i care, to say, then, that larry goodell is doing a job, one he considers sufficiently important to do, & one i review (& thereby sufficiently reveal how important i think it is) to the extent that i speak of it here. the concern is with the making within the limits of WHAT IS POSSIBLE, there is a point, say, where form becomes easy: anyone today can get hold of a mimeo machine, stencils, a typewriter, paper (just as anyone can find a pencil, paint brush, clay, etc) — but the concerns here are in the making of a book, that as larry goodell's form, the work received as much materials as paper ink, staples, etc: & so, finally, his job. he has taken it as his job, his choice, to make certain things possible; & it may be said of him he has taken (staken, which is to say given) care, as, say, we make our own lives within precisely those limits: what food is obtainable, what

Richard Watson, Cockcrossing, cover by Signe Nelson duende #3

must be done to get food, what has happened to food between seed & our mouths; as, also, what we read: at what point we stop using bookshops & turn to libraries, and from there, say, to the manuscripts of friends, what is possible to us becomes incredibly determined: what is published, what is available to use as food, clothing, etc. becomes more & more determined by what will sell, so, mediocrity. OR we're thrown back (forward?), if we can make it, on growing our own food, delivering our own children, making what books we ourselves want to have available, as, again, larry goodell's job. here is some of what he has done: #1 HISTORY OF THE TURTLE: Ronald Bayes #2 VIRGULES AND DEJA VU: Frederick Franklyn #3 COCKCROSSING: Richard Watson #4 THE ROADRUNNER POEM: Kenneth Irby

Kenneth Irby, The Roadrunner Poem, cover by Signe Nelson duende #4

-- Ronald Caplan from Kulchur 20, Winter 1965-6

Here is a recount of duende press history and production: Musing Backwards to Duende. Many thanks to Ron Caplan (one of the editors of Mother which came out of Pittsburgh) for this review.

Larry Goodell

Jaguar Seen In New Mexico

young jaguar in southern new mexico

Introduction

(poems written & performed with children in jaguar costumes, 

dance performance, Santa Fe, 1997)

Too many of us & not enough of them
Spotted cats endangered
from poaching
from our slashing & burning.
Recovery of
bald eagle
whooping crane
habitat protection
is supreme.
Too many of us & not enough of them.
Recovery is supreme.
Recovery of the earth and her ills healed.
Man, woman shrinking,
earth staying the same
blossoming into itself is my dream.
Habitat protection
is supreme
bald eagle
whooping crane —
the spotted cats endangered
because of poaching
slashing & burning.
Too many of us & not enough of them.
But man, woman shrinking our absurd population
earth staying the same
blossoming into itself
is supreme.
Oh glorious spotted cats!
Too many of us & not enough of them.

Jaguar Seen In New Mexico

Spot
eye

creep

pounce

float

feet

cat

sleep

ponder

pool

eye

see

rock

balance

act

taut

step

steep

growl

meow

wonder

weak

way

win

dash

leap

jump

bristle

power

gnash

slash

eat!

spot

eye

creep

bounce

slide

float

walk

seek

out

flash

sun

spot

coat

spotted

flash

sun

coat

gone

here

there

where

spot

creep

pounce

out

gone

where

what

when

why

hey

wow

power

Jag-

uar

what

power

Jag-

uar

beau-

ty

dreams

out

this

hour

beau-

ty

beams

out 

this

hour

Jag-

uar

beau-

ty

streams

out

this

hour

sun

spot

coat

spotted

flash

coat

fur

gone

out

this

hour

beau-

ty

Jag-

uar

Jag-

uar

Jag-

uar

Jag-

uar

teeth

growl

wow

bite!

15Dec97

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / from  A Jaguar Seen In New Mexico poems 1997

Diana Hadley is doing good work with the Northern Jaguar Project to help protect & encourage
the natural presence of these animals . . . http://www.northernjaguarproject.org/

3 Dimensional Poetry is up and free and going again after 7 blocked months!

Through no doing of my own, as far as I know, my blog was invaded and Google blocked it for me to clean up, which proved to be one of my most exasperating experiences ever in digital space . . . I am not a technical wizard with computerese for brains . . . finally after my complaining and asking and posting screenviews someone at Blogger took the time to expunge my blog of all unwanted foreign matter . . . this has been going on since October of 2014! Whoever finally helped me out at Google, thank you! (Finally.)

Now I will do the best I can to make this more interesting even if it's mostly my own exploratory work exploding the 2 dimensional poetry myth . . . welcome to all except mercenary invaders! Your friend in space,
Larry