Allen Ginsberg in Albuquerque, Thunderbird Bar, San Felipe Corn Dance 1967

from a letter to poet Robert Peterson . . .

poems on cards, shuffle or no, gifts, amulets, mementos . . .

Thunderbird Flight for T-Bird Show reception 11Feb2012

outside the Thunderbird, lead singer of Oriental Blue Streak being serenaded, arts & craft fair, photo: Bob D'Alessandro

Thunderbird Flight

when wonder worlds and worlds wonder

 what time gone by

 what turning of the hour of energy

  into the hour of reflection

   where is everybody who got lost in those times

   beaming health turned to sickness even death for some

   and for all of us eventually, but the music

    and above all dance, dance, dance

    you know what it’s like to dance your heart out?

                                             shaking wonder

holding up the world you thought each to each

 would never come crashing down or burn up

                                                    in bitter rage . . .

what would keep the war off and spirit up

             but a tender heart, a circus atmosphere

 protests walking down Central in Albuquerque

      and dancing in Placitas, the Thunderbird taking off

                   like a ship with no course but enjoyment

 or dancing in Rosa’s Cantina in Algodones or Raphael’s Silver Cloud

             where they cut your tie off and stuck it to the ceiling

                                if you dared to wear one

  but here at home a friendly realtor or mutual enterprise

      caused that bit of land to be bought and round house, domes

             zomes or friends piling adobes

  as all kinds of bitterness and questioning of what is going on

              with all the noise, the invasion, the place become

                                a mecca

   kids arriving in spangles & big city hippy togs

      but immediately getting into the dirt of real subsistence living –

             who didn’t know how to get their own truck going

      if they had one, but there was always a platform, sound equipment,

and Fourth of July or birthdays, music līve, Cadillac Bob

      Oriental Blue Streak and an enormous potluck

                   dope and dancing, beer and forever

                                       and the Thunderbird

 the centerpiece being a place for performance, for pool

      for locals, for visitors, for poets to read

 for musicians, the venue, the support, a real gig

      famous or not, too loud or not, the drama

             of an evening building to a cooking climax

             whatever that was, if even remembered,

   it would all take its toll as war seems to determine

         everything in America, and time, ruthless thief,

      turns dancing into reflection, but music again

             survives and those who stayed stayed

and the golden dream many had, turned gray,

   and the help-each-other-out-and-live-on-almost-nothing

      faded away into the selfish and more wealthy . . .

when wonder worlds and worlds wonder

 what time gone by

 what turning of the hour of energy

  into the hour of reflection

                                                                              larry goodell 11Feb2012 

for the Thunderbird Bar Show Placitas Community Library

a duende press broadside

an opening night in the Thunderbird Bar, Placitas, New Mexico, ca 1970

Shaman of the Desert, Keith Wilson's Collected Poems

Keith Wilson’s Shaman of the Desert, Collected Poems (1965-2001) is a massive volume of over 1100 pages containing works from at least a couple dozen of his published books . . .

I can’t begin to be in any way comprehensive about this incredibly moving and extensive achievement, but I can bring together here two reviews I did of two of his books, Lion’s Gate, 1986 and Graves Registry, 1992.

Here also are a couple short statements about the importance of Keith’s work to me. We were born about a hundred miles apart and he was only eight years older than me but he was always my New Mexican elder. Finally I include the poem I wrote after his death: Keith.

I’ve had this fragment of a poem on my study wall, now almost unreadable from paper disintegration, the last three lines central in many ways:

. . .

“& all the time,

Nuestro Senor,

there was this song

all about me

it had only to open

my mouth to sing.”

                                    Keith Wilson

And from last line of “New Mexico: Paso Por Aqui”

            “All men are visitors here.”

Lion’s Gate, Selected Poems 1963-1986, Keith Wilson, 1986,
86 pages. Cinco Puntos Press, El Paso: here is the back cover of the book followed by my youthful review.

Keith Wilson: New Mexico's Leading Poet 1988

Lion’s Gate, Selected Poems 1963-1986, Keith Wilson, 1986, 86 pages, Cinco Puntos Press, El Paso.

This review first appeared in Southwstern Discoveries, June-August 1988, Todd G. Dickson, editor, Albuquerque, NM, in Larry Goodell’s column Backfire.

Lion's Gate roars in the face of the Yuppie invasion of New Mexico as the Peugeots and Saabs pull up to the Post Office and people lock their cars there for the first time in history. The wind hits the coiffures and business suits and that, simply, in Spring, is New Mexico reclaiming its history. The wind hits hard: death, the odd, the tough, the ghosts, the desert is hard.

These are "stories." Call them "poems" if you like. Stories make up the history of this man's art which is poetry. You can theorize poetry to death, break it up into compartments and whisk it away. Or make an icon of it and install it in the University to assure you and your buddies of a job. You can be a non-language poet, a langoiterage poet, a New American Regionalist poet: all these things are a crock, because anything with strength and individuality transcends borders, definitions, crocks.

Lion's Gate is real, real-ler than a dozen Milagro Beanfield Wars in substance and song and authenticity. Would that Keith Wilson could be touted and read as much, but not adored beyond reason and eaten up in the American Video Machine.

A poem is an utterance of a new-old: the language older, the voice of the poet the newer. And to read Lion's Gate from cover to cover is hearing a man revealed. There's the mother, the father, the relatives. “The Arrival of My Mother" is the archetypal Western Expansion poem to me. And there is in Wilson the place in a way that stomps through Western reruns and strangles everything to get to the source: that is, the immaterial, the second rate, the bullshit falls off like dross: the Western in original dressing is revealed.

There's an encounter with deja vu, more than that, reincarnation actuallized as we travel instantly back in “The Minaret At Constanta" to a lion's gate in Rumania– the Western Expansion retraced through the intense darkness and voice of the Poet Deluxe.

There is the reinvigorated power of the revealed poet. Layers come off and I don't mean clothes, the history sings through verse, through the energy that mouths sing and have sung, told, laid down and storyized, where all is never all told: gaps create the poem’s imagination, the reader/listener is vitalized in reenacting the real poet, as Keith Wilson is.

Among the many works as "Midwatch," “Seacaptain,” and "Chantey," there are perhaps the best Korean War poems that have come to light: the section from Graves Registry.They make you think of Wilfred Owen’s First World War atrocities, and Viet Nam revealed by Larry Rottman in Winning Hearts and Minds, and the many that have followed him. But the sea and war travel return to "know that my desert is a condition of soul / not topography. It is where one wrestles with devils / and knows they are oneself."

                                                            – from "Chantey”

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico

In 1988 I added this to “Teachers,” a series of short poems

Keith Wilson–

he was the old voice

the bear voice in newest everyday now,

he taught me to bear with it and it

will tell the story.

Note:  you can see all of these here: Portraits & Teachers


Graves Registry, Keith Wilson. Clark City Press
Post Office Box 1358, Livingston, Montana 59047, cloth $23.95, paper $13.95, 1992.

This review appeared in Blue Mesa Review, Number Five, Spring 1993, University of New Mexico.

            This collection, a Keith Wilson magnum opus, brings together what Grove Press did in 1969 (Graves Registry and Other Poems) and what Sumac Press did in 1972 (Midwatch), and adds about 50 pieces to make up a handsome 216 page edition from Clark City Press in Montana. Things have been clarified: poems that were just numbered before are now entitled, there are certain additions and restorations, but the major parts have remained as Keith Wilson wrote them, in high heat. You have the obvious proportions of an epic on war, a book poem that allows the poet to play out the human species' obsession with war. You could say it's Keith Wilson's obsession, but when you reach the end and pass through "the battlefields of galaxies" you realize the truth of his hammering and the shield of this book becomes timeless, Homeric, and present. Look at what's happening, now, 1993: war is part of us.

            Graves Registry is a poem. (The cover of this beautiful publication erringly refers to the work as "poems.") The most graphic parts come at the very beginning in "Korea-Japan, 1950-53," and echo the much earlier poet Wilfred Owen in their depictions of death. Subsequent sections are like shock waves recalling those things experienced in action. The Young Lieutenant seems to be the poet's persona, antipathetic to the Sea Captain, who figures strongly as the poem progresses.

            I think of Dante's Inferno, but more of the conversations through space of Milton's Paradise Lost. I think of Wilfred Owen, and especially Benjamin Britten's War Requiem: I can hear it backing Owen's genius depiction of death & that lie "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." These are evoked in me, reading Graves Registry. But mostly, I think of the great Charles Olson's Maximus Poems. For instance here is the beginning of Olson's "Maximus, to Himself,"

            I have had to learn the simplest things

            last. Which made for difficulties.

            Even at sea I was slow, to get the hand out, or to cross

            a wet deck.

                                    The sea was not, finally, my trade.

            But even my trade, at it, I stood estranged

            from that which was most familiar.

            Here is a piece from "A Masque for the Warriors, Home," the last part of Wilson's Graves Registry.

Antistrophe

All the voices spin down, lost

beyond whatever recall the memories

of lives lived and died, held briefly

to glints of moonlight, crowns that crumble.

There is left the counting of graves.

The slash of swordblade an epitaph

shudder of cannon in circling echoes

the bones rot within the ring,

boys’ faces kiss shadow girls

rings rings around Saturn or Mars

            Graves Registry is a grandiose work, unnerving, troubling, obsessive, powerful, relentless, visionary, comprehensive, bold and musical. It is an immense and tragic poem that both includes and transcends boundaries of space and time. It ultimately succeeds, and what a pleasure that New Mexico's greatest poet has not only received the Governor's Award for excellence in the arts, but now has this important work at last available from Clark City Press in Montana. What I and many others regret is that our own University of New Mexico Press stubbornly refuses to publish the rich store of New Mexico poets. What a miss! Keith Wilson is from Fort Sumner and is a resident of Las Cruces where he has taught and worked for years. His works should be fully available and in print, since this poet is a living treasure of our state and our country.

larry goodell

placitas, new mexico

From my notebook . . . in 2000 . . .

No poet writes with such gristle & grace as Keith Wilson who in Bosque Redondo excites again the pleasure of what it’s like to be a true New Mexican, a voice of this hard land that sings from the depths as well as the shallows. No poet so truthfully evokes the real world that includes the ancients in the gritty day-to-day living in our own home state.

Keith

                                                                                                

Who more than you opens doors to where we live?

and we live here whether Las Cruces, Albuquerque

                        Santa Fe Taos Roswell Fort Sumner,

                                    and where in this so-called Southwest,

who more than you breathes the past with the present?

Who tells the story more than you and

                        punctuates it with a laugh

  or brings the mystery out in the open

  to be pondered and wondered at?

where the multifaceted multi-ethnic trans-animal

            trans-person melt into the specifics

                        of the story of each act

            which is the reality of living here you get at

and release to us to see what is right before our eyes.

Your voice excites the present with place, places

            faces animal and plant and dry presence,

  story after story that comes up out of the arroyos

  and brings the past with it, the ancients

            the voices breaking out of caves

                        or from their graves

to face us in your family land, your love 

of this earth here you articulate father mother

son daughters wife friends strangers

to introduce us, amused, carried on in words

            your voice brings me face to face

                        with where I live.

for Keith Wilson 1927-2009

/25Mar from Foxhole Prayers, poems 2009.

Shaman of the Desert is available in hardback, $40, and in paper, $30. Add $5 postage.
Query Heloise Wilson kewilson@zianet.com or email me.   larrygood@comcast.net

Address for Wilson: 1500 South Locust, Las Cruces, NM 88001

larry goodell

placitas, new mexico

8Feb2012 . . . happy Valentine's day to all . . . 

photograph of Heloise and Keith Wilson by Margaret Randall

Here is Drum Hadley's Introduction (immediately preceding his poem) to Shaman of the Desert.

Drum Hadley

AS I have mentioned, this book is available in hardback, $40, and in paper, $30. Add $5 postage. 

Query Heloise Wilson kewilson@zianet.com or email me.   larrygood@comcast.net  

Address: Wilson, 1500 South Locust, Las Cruces, NM 88001

. . . . . .paso por aqui . . . . . .

Scout (between the digits), with a note . . . (from a 1967 notebook)

page typed on Twiltone (paper then used for mimeo) from NB in '67, larry goodell

(this followed the poem in the NB) . . .

(now this is weird, I’m maybe tuning in more on galactic frequencies that my brain agency converts into words — “between the digits” came strongly. I walked outside, coming back in “told frequency. . .” came. & then the next groups down to“Scout. . .speaks” came. The rest was prompted by looking back to earlier things, came as if to make clear, bring a person, mask, character in to explain. ?? I read Keith Wilson’s poems from Graves Registry this afternoon – one, “Battle Scene,” has clear-cut description (in gd sense) then half-way thru, a “character,” the boy enters the poem. Just thinking in retrospect this may have been in my mind strongly)

To wit:

NB 4  june-oct '67 (a page)

(the following page)

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / 9-26-1967 from Notebook 4

 -- golly I've been reading Keith Wilson for over 40 years! 

On Barcelona: Larry Goodell

On Barcelona: Larry Goodell: American Stanza Don’t be a humble haiku stretch your feet out become an American stanza we still have something to do with art be one ...

For An Audience

 

"Club Progressions,"jazz musical written by Larry Goodell, Roswell Senior High School, 1952 - Lyman Lea, tenor sax, 
Larry, piano, Sal Gonzales, drums, on stage - lyrics by Arthur Gaddis - photo, Mr. Olson

Any perception of an "audience" interrupts the creative flow. After writing a poem it is a matter of selecting particular poems for a reading performance.

How do you perceive your audience?

As large, medium, small, drunken & loud or quiet & anticipatory.
A disappointingly small audience challenges me to fight despair & perform to them as well as I can.
"Loud" is a challenge to win them over. "Anticipatory & listening" is ideal.

Good audience response obviously encourages repeating that poem at the next performance. If a poem falls flat I probably won't try it again.

I like for an audience to enjoy the poem-reading, be moved, be amused, be exhilarated, and buy my books.

There are appropriate poems for every audience of any size or age on Earth where American English is understood. The challenge is entirely mine. I must select appropriately.

Selecting the best works for a particular audience is paramount, as well as trying out entirely new works to test the response.

I try not to conceive of any audience at the time of writing a poem. Once it is written I can figure out what kind of audience it would work best for.

Does the audience serve as a gauge for the success or failure of your work? Almost entirely. Otherwise the creating of the work is only very personal therapy.

Ideal audience: Relatively large. Mostly adult. Attuned to the intricacies of American English. Having access to a little booze. Willing to be transported anywhere the poetry goes. Willing to laugh loud at themselves & myself. Willing to become even more serious about giving Nature back to the Earth.

"The images may be true to an original or not; the public doesn't care. It has gone to look and listen, to laugh and cry - not to think." Henry James

Henry James' statement is too wordy, as is most of his work. Gertrude Stein has far more interesting quotes on the subject of audience. Your more intelligent audience of any age still values learning something as well as enjoying it. Entertain as well as instruct, or better yet, entertain as well as reinforce everyone's urge to better the world.

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / some notes from an audience questionaire 1993

 . . . audience, from  audire, to hear . . . . . present active infinitive of audiō . . . 

Some recent audiences, Duende Poetry Series, Anasazi Fields Winery, Placitas, New Mexico  . .

Accordion Fold Note Books

my current notebook (NB #71 spread out above) is this type and I made one back in the early 70's (#7) so I put together this parcel of photos and comments & a poem or two from these notebooks . . . Accordion Fold Note Books . . . kind of a little new year's project . . . this is on Issuu . . .  there is a recent poem from my newly assembled NB, Home Space with a link to my reading the poem aloud on Soundclick. 

This photograph is from last october when I needed a notebook and decided to make it out of long cutoff sheets left over from a printing project (probably when I was offset printing Fervent Valley #1 in '72 . . . 

notebook? journal? common-place book? diary? scrapbook? supplemental memory? planner? record book? jotter? absolutely essential tool for many poets including me for containing almost all first writings, the near sacred texts of first given words phrases poems everything part and parcel of life, the voice of authority when any question comes up in typing or checking original statements . . . in almost every instance the notebook writings take priority over later texts and avoid subsequent text-messing . . . again, see . Accordion Fold Note Books 

love to all and happy new year!
larry

wood poems

split wood poem

          um
          ╹
          um
          ╹
          um
          ╹
          um
          ╹
          om
          ╹
          ohm
          ╹
          home
          ╹
          hum

front view of split wood with some digging stick poems 

digging stick poem

   

                 stick stuck rainbow ~~   ~   ~~  ~







                 unstuck

digging stick poem

several wood word objects, acequia willow necklace, peace dildo, word blocks . . . by larry goodell

I've found it relaxing to paint wood digging sticks & other wood pieces found on the property
with water colors and I do put words on them when can . . . and on the blocks . . .
opposite "suggest" = "apoopoo"
opposite "stars" = "fuck"
opposite "calm" = blank

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / 3 dimensional poems

Space Helmet & a link to photographs of more "object" poems . . .

(Put on mask with a cone on each side pointed out from the ears

hold left hand up palm out & move it from left point of left cone to

center, put right hand up same position & move to the right)

(read)

Right at that point where the Space Helmet
is indistinguishable from the Headdress
we will start on our long trek back
from whence we came ____ ____ ____ ____ ____


larry goodell / placitas, new mexico
/ this is from 21Jan1971 but I no longer have the double cone mask/headdress . . .

and here are photographs of "thing" poems, object poems & a mask, poems that come to life in at least 3 dimensions, their made parts conceived mostly at time of writing . . . http://on.fb.me/tNgSuy

Un-Poet

Unappreciated
unacknowledged
unappetizing
unresolved
uninhibited
unbent
unrepentant
unappealing
unadorned
unfulfilled
unapologetic
ungodly
unabashed
unhinged
unabridged
unacceptable
unbearable
unbalanced
unbecoming
unbelievable
uncommon
uncompromising
and every other word following
un –

– self-absorbed
and compassionate.

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / 18Oct2011

Doing What You Want (Mobius Strip Poem)

...nothing whatsoever to do with poetry or the crafting of it but that doesn’t stop you from doing what you want on your own time becoming a weekend poet or part-time poet or hobbyist poet with dreams that someone cares for crafting poetry that gets you lots of money if you charge a lot for products the American public wants which generally means you work for a very large company which has...

(or, for example, starting anywhere else and continuing)

...crafting poetry that gets you lots of money if you charge a lot for products the American public wants which generally means you work for a very large company which has nothing whatsoever to do with poetry or the crafting of it but that doesn’t stop you from doing what you want on your own time becoming a weekend poet or part-time poet or hobbyist poet with dreams that someone cares for...

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / from Creator Tricks, poems from 1996

A Dip Into Notebook #29 (1981 to '83)

. . .

F R O M I N S I D E O U T

to Gloria Frym

We are all different in our flaming innards.
We often forget about how different our insides are
— so concentrated on the cosmetics of our lives we
forget the inner turds, the concupiscent brain coils
and differing intertwining follicles of the innards —
all those differences those blown-up electron
microscope pictures show us of ourselves — with
things walking around or floating or just hanging
there — all of them different, therefore is it any
surprise our styles of writing differ each to each -
or should if we have a mote of honesty in us - since
that's where it all comes from — down deep in
the inner turnings, bags, glands, cells, coils, frame
and inner frame and gushing different paths all
contrary and aglow with life, the sparks off the fire
of different suns moving our inner beings, weights
pulled by moons each in a different place oozing up
and back meeting airwaves matriculating up voicing
out each in different voice. The views of my voice
from a different peak or valley or plain.

There are no schools of writing, only the
differing pulsating breaths of poets each singing
out if honest to the tune, what our very centers
say, what came up from me to you today.
/27Jun81

/ larry goodell / placitas, new mexico

. . .
. . .

N A I L D O W N

OH

TICKY

TACKY

NAIL

DOOR

FELL ON

MY LEFT

BIG TOE NAIL

DROVE IT

INTO

GROUND

TOMATO

WORMS

UNDER

THE COMPOST

PIT.

/ larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / added on blank last pages 10Jan89 /

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .
. . .
. . .



The Avant Garde Academy


Man in smart dress suit:
The Avant Garde Academy brings you the latest that’s news. The very latest news, nothing but the latest. We decide on every bit of information that leaks out. Now this morning it was pot-boilers in Canada. Artists determining the pop-wave farther and farther North. Everyone knows the Canadians depend on the Americans for their latest creative wave and we’re pushing them farther north. All of our major cities are now puking out sheer– creative energy– each as a local point for the arts, puking them out. Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Atlanta– each of them puking them out. The second "them" being art.

Voice 1: Dustin Hoffman eats sugar cane pussy.
Voice 2: Marlon Brando eats finger fairies.


/ larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / Aug81

. . .
. . .

(drawing extending from a rubber stamp print, by lenore)

Note: these just some random things in Notebook #29 which includes many much larger items . . . . larry