Center, a poem written in 1967

                   Center


the sea
(body of water, salt flats, briny water I walked out to
naked)
of singing to you

water of  voice
wanting you in it in here floating
desire
along
   the profile

the lake is my entry vision kind
heart
pumping
to touch

I follow you along the edge      forever
yr lines enough to be with   a few minutes of that
come home with
where the limbs of the body meet
water
water
liquid
diet
death of this looking looking over you

to where the piñons stop me
snow over the ground
the wind after two days    died away
here
all I pour    floats in the center of the page
pressed   wood pulp

the liquid is hope   I wont give up give up
you cd look from the center once
to the center skin against skin
of my soul

God is fulfilling
age over a tripod crapper
come to the sage

looking back over the years of     dry spots
the grave

& the wind with rain/snow comes     to you
I sing    to you
only
I enter
smoke in the wind over the house
& music in the air

that you will enter   of yr own tributary  & all
with me
tho over   & over & over & over again
you havent
where do I miss

  still
the center of me flows

waiting  .



larry goodell / placitas, new mexico /15Dec1967

photograph is from early in 2014 at las huertas creek in the sandias . . . 

Chorale, a poem written in 1967

hear the poem read          

                   

 

                                Come out in the daylight hours

                                let the union that is the voice on the tapes speak

                                mingle with the sunlight float out the room with

                       the incense

                       the unreadable label       it is my limitation I offer

                                          come out in the daylight hours

                                    let us love with our silence in the air

                              record the voices

                              spread them thru us      waking time

                              the day

                          is ours     to make or break

                                    I live up here where you can see the steps of this

                                    country

                              up to the largest volcanic crater      extinct

                          alive in extinction        listening to the tapes

                          whatever enters the mind        or blows it

                          exhaustion of the voices of the earth

                          renews

                                          come out

                                    meet we meet

                              when the sun comes down from zenith

                              tilt the world

                              mingle our landscapes

                         the beauties float up like muses encountered

                         the smoke into our lungs

                         out floats out over the voice

                         what gift there is        this tape

                    night is for sleeping      messages and miasma

                    trivia & concord in the folds       interruption & hard drinking

                              day breaks

                           for friendship

                        & the working       out the orders of the voice

                 
                  va ya ba ya  the rocks say

                  we listen to      va ya ba-a-a-a-a ya

                  when the pleasing lights    fall leaves fall       strike

                  the fires outside our galaxy     or wherever the X falls

                  to speak to us

            -tongue     the daylight hours        our fall is golden

              this state shines thru       come out       sun casts & tilts the walls

              we follow        speech ba-a-a ya  our humans given

              from outside       revelation revolution-

                        to learn        come twining from the spirals

                  not to learn

                  to love        sage      inhale what cant be read

                  cottonwood for the sacred fire

            & drums

                                                  make it blow it up       make it

                                            it is fall leaves fall

                                    the tender reach       that catches

                              catch me in friendship        over & over

                              the renewing     is the stalk of my soul

                        come out in the daylight hours

                        this is the only sentiment that breaks the machine:

                  the voice of those who love the most        it reaches

                                                                                                                                       /16Oct67

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico

a poem from 1967 when we were recording poetry on tape and sharing it, so you hear "tapes" mentioned. hey, the message is the same: let's get together and celebrate poetry! written in the fall on the north shoulder of the Sandias just overlooking the village of Placitas, at the Hertfords' where I was caretaker  . . . and I did a mimeo broadside of this but I don't seem to have more than one copy . . .  I notice in my notebook from then that the next day I "listened to Spicer's lecture on dictated Poetry" which like all my tapes were 7 inch reel to reel, many of which I dubbed from Creeley or recorded myself.

me in those 60's

I linked to my new recording of this on Facebook and Bill Pearlman responded: "That effortless hopefulness is in the air in this. What a rare point in time, still a celebration not to be missed."

Thanks, Bill! and thanks David Chorlton for this: "Sounds fresh today, with verbal energy on tape!"

DADA LIVES

Larry Goodell presenting "The Fool" in the Kiva at UNM Aluquerque, New Mexico, 1968

hear this here (mp3) or here (wav)

Dada lives by plucking out a toilet
and parading it in the Louvre
next to the Venus of Badlands.
Dada dissolves the duende and
enters the blood of the poet
who ought to know better but never does
as he utters beauties to inspire painters
to make money off their paintings.
Dada is dead so must live on art
by destroying its critics and then wondering
were any of them good looking.
Being dead so long dada
sticks out on all fronts
and imposes itself on all movements
laughing at the hypocrisy of ego
and sticking its tongue out from
every subway poster.
Dada cannot be because being dead
it’s not heard of by any but a few
who pass their art courses
then go out to force people
to look at art as if it’s better
than "wall art," doodads for the happy couple
fighting in the next room.
Every publication depends on
the cremated remains of dada.
Every musical composition
is strained through dada’s ears
and sets people’s feet dancing
in drunken dives by the sea shore.
Every painting & sculpture
gets extruded from the backside of dada
before being praised by know-nothings
in the art world.
Every critic writing about
the post-modern marbles in
his empty brain
depends on being dead from dada’s
act of savage love.
Every general & admiral &
military maggot
depends on dada’s rotting corpse
to give them life and vitality.
Dada lives by history’s denial
it can still be alive,
giving birth to absurdity, blood to hypocrisy,
meat & flesh to greed,
its bones to the drumming ego of the human race
carrying on vainly
as dada laughs its last laugh’s laugh.
　

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / 29Dec2012

the photograph from the "Daily Lobo" is by Mel Buffington.

Summer Rains & Newly Fallen Snow

front

back

2 poem/sheets glued back to back

so you can flip it over to read

the other poem --

lines cut out for borders

(so you can see thru)

an extended haiku for John Brandi

larry goodell

1975



Firecracker Soup (original Introduction)

INTRO

(original)

        Writing is an act of life for a poet. His improvised airs are page breaths. It's not for me to know what not writing is since I'm always being written with. The pauses are that: pauses, and then I write, my right place and time only once for that esteemed occasion. What a relief to surprise myself -- only the makeup of myself with all my severe limitations screens the joy. Or perhaps makes me ordinary. A release into semi-guided fun of my own essential one and only tongue, wagging a new tune that goes till done and not to be mangled with rehashing but is the sacred text of my Goddamned condition. It's always a score a reading aloud at time of writing, a recital – no, a concert of words--hell no, sentences, scores, a going high, a take, a progression, an undulating song, with tips: they say performance. In front of an audience it repeats. And now a book.

        The farther from the left margin a line or word begins the higher the pitch in delivery. The bigger the space inside a line, the slightly longer the pause. The word with a single underlined letter is emphatic of course. Line endings are a pause, however slight. And any directions, usually italicized, to the right of the poem is part of it: what needs to be done or donned, a fact arisen at the time of the poem-writing.

         I am writing to get to a different place from where I began, where it feels better, some kind of musical word clarification through pun and performance of the airs laid down. Mysterious muse-ic cycle of the Earth, what little bit of it I know: think only of gifts someone might enjoy and even read aloud a time or two. /2May89

*

                 "Writing is an act of life for a poet            whose improvised airs are a page breath. For me the words

      speak through pores"

We didn't use this introduction in the publication of the book in 1990, but now in reflection it may have some value for those interested in my poems. I remember Philip Whalen telling me that he was surprised that others would value his "scribbles" since it would do him just fine if someone someday would read a poem of his and get something from it.

"The trouble with poetry is, there are too many tap dancers," I remember his saying . .

*

Well, gosh, I was a tap dancer in my early teens, but I value the pure breath of poetry that knows few boundaries and the freshness of ever new dance continues to engage and intrigue . . .

love to all, and I'm ever grateful to Cinco Puntos Press for publishing this book.






larry goodell
/24nov2012

A Lead In To The Middle Ages (class notes)

Please see A Lead In To The Middle Ages  for the end product of all these little class "notes" . . . the intense reading did jar me a bit and altho it was mostly a gathering of quotes it was a fruitful thing for me . . . thanks for looking . . . (added this note 24nov12) . . .
-   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -
as interested as I was in Dr. Joseph Zavadil's class in Medieval Studies, June-July 1969 at the University of New Mexico, most of what I did was draw (doodle) draw draw and evidently it occupied a few other students' minds too . . . 

this led to delaying my paper and working on intensive full-time reading August 7th to the 9th of September and handing in a bizarre compilation of quotes from my studies which included a big share of Jung and became a "volume" called "A Lead In To The Middle Ages" . 

. .  Dr. Zavadil was not impressed saying that the academic world was more of an advanced degree "factory" (my word) and so I got a (deserved I guess) low B in that class . . . these are simply the class notes that lead to "A Lead In . . ." .

the subsequent studies entitled A Lead In To the Middle Ages simply absorbed me to the point of defeatest obsession . . . but was like a foundation in my mind, no matter what Dr. Zavadil thought, and was just what I needed, to take off from . . .

THAT'S A POEM, from napkin to printed page . . .

I was invited to Shiprock at the Navajo Community College to talk to Robert Hurley's journalism class and read my poetry to a very responsive audience of mostly Diné . . . in the morning I had breakfast at the THATSABURGER and while sitting there entered the dreamy world of paradise (it seemed) and wrote this poem on napkins . . . (the typed text follows the napkins) . . . 

                       THAT'S A POEM



How do you write a poem. Poem on a napkin.
Think about the size of the paper you're writing on.
If you're doing it in your brain only, there's no limit to
     the length of the line you're going for
But on this here napkin they gave me at the Thatsaburger
I've got about 5 inches from left to right.
5 inches to write what my brain thinks &
      translates from brain language into American English
         and if my brain thots keep going in a long
            sentence I've got to wrap the writing of it
                back to the left margin, indenting
                   each time so I have a stepped
                      stack of words, diagonal
                         in until I've just
                            about run out of
                              space!

So I've got to wonder if this is a poem or not
What would any other language have for the word poem
or would there be no word at all in some tongues
for poem!
And then how would you write one: I guess you
     wdnt bother.
So why write a whatever it is.
      Well
I've got this napkin and I've got this Bic Micro Metal 
      ballpoint pen
And I've been called a poet for so damn long
I don't know what else to do in a situation like this.
I've finished my ham, egg, cheese on whole wheat toast
      sandwich,

2nd napkin!
By the way if you write on a napkin, put another napkin
      under it because the ink bleeds through the one
      you're writing on.
And I've finished a couple cups of coffee, refills free!
Got a little container of milk so I can have that in my coffee
instead of that damned non-dairy creamer. 

And I must say two-thirds the way through my breakfast sandwich
it was so good and the light was so clear
and the place seemed so open & spacious with its
      blue & white tile floors
      and the Navajo guys & gals & that little baby
      were all so enjoying their breakfast
      the infant was just sleeping
that somehow I felt like I was in heaven.
How could there be any more in life than
sitting here in perfect contentment.
But what is perfect
and is there any such thing as heaven & can it be attained
right here in this corner booth at the Thatsaburger
in Shiprock New Mexico.
If you want to know the truth the astounding presence
      of that gigantic volcanic core spectacular rock
      Shiprock, rock-with-wings,
      is so present in my thots tho I can't see it directly
      from where I sit
That I must get up: it is so overwhelmingly there.
I want to see it.
Is there perfection, is there any kind of heaven.
There is a kind of perfection, there is a kind of heaven.
I just experienced it.

3rd & final napkin!
But is there a poem. What is this thing.
Why did I write it.
      Well
maybe it's just a letter
like my Grandma Goodell used to write
to all her brothers & sisters
maybe it's just a way to bridge
the gap from me to you.

larry goodell / Shiprock, New Mexico 3Feb94

People really did laugh at my wordplay poems
and especially my poets reading spoofs . . . 
& nature & gardening . . . audience 
almost entirely Native American.

TumbleWords brought writers/poets to local communities in  Southwest states . . . this is University of Nevada Press, 1995 and "Thatsapoem" is included . . . 

Traveling the University of New Mexico Department of Art Faculty Show 1980 by Gaston La Plum

DOGFISH
A floating shield shape, or shovel head. Decorative art, progressing toward the edge 
with relentless uninterestingness.

OLDGUY
Dated duality  (2 canvases side by side).

ADILDO
"Butterfly Chair."  Illustration for Ms. Magazine done by the wrong sex.
"Kimono Series."  Illustration for Vogue Magazine with unfinished head.

EVEAPPLE
"Triad III & I."  Children's woodblock collage painting, but less spontaneous.

INEPT
Paper swallows the uninteresting flat rectangles that hover below in idea-less squalor.

INTRUSION
A master craftsman of other people's decorative ideas.

POKE
Pretentious useless plates, in a beautifully functional display case.

SMOTE
The token aspens painter.

PENIS
Stodgy, ill-painted pseudo realism– the worst painting in the show. 

FATBAG
Landscape lithographs with hairy skies—looking rather dirty, overdone & cloyingly ugly. An insult to Placitas.

"Interior spaces."  Lacks the large Bernard Buffet signature.

LAZYPRICK
S & M bondage images so popular now among jaded males. Picture area cluttered & totally contrived– except for Wedding Dance Fetish I– should have stopped there. Sequels even more artificial .

RACQUET
Decorative womanhood, at least lower keyed, some color sophistication but top heavy.

LOCUST
"Blowing Sand, White Sands." Some sense of the old mystery in photographs.

JACKSPRAT
Energetic pencil landscapes perhaps overdone –  dancing V's set on the ground like restless lawn sprinklers.
"Corrido Blanco." Backpacking assemblage/ collages in chained & strapped cases. The medium is the interest.

WIDER
As usual,  artists taking on words as if they've just discovered them. The words irrelevant to the images, or at least dissipating possible image strengths. Drawings/words poorly done.

HERNIA
Again the mix of photo and drawing/lettering in unbalanced juxtaposition, but in this case, with no strength on either side. 

DIXON
Decorative sculpture at its pseudo art-deco worst.

COGWHEEL
Could be a nice child's boat except for the pretentiousness of its "art" — which turns it into a cumbersome expensive object to maintain in a gallery.

WINTERS
Lithographs of Bresdin forest floors.

CLINCHY
"Marsh Romance." A photo script into some strip of world where humor didnt die and art takes on some wings.

NEEDLER
"Inscapes." Mondrian/Cubist notecard series for a new Hallmark line.

ABORING
"Nightfish in the Garden." Exquisitely done wall-art appropriate for high level dining rooms.

Gaston La Plum



Gaston La Plum, International Roving Critic, left me this critical piece back in 1980 when he was in Albuquerque and viewed this faculty show. Since I just ran across it I'm making it available for the first time . . . I've run into La Plum several times in my life but I'm presently out of touch with him although Dr. Elmo Acadork has recently heard from him in Paris . . . I have no way of telling who "Bad Art" is but I include the drawing since it was clipped to La Plum's piece . . . All of the above artists were on the faculty at the time of this show. larry goodell

Family Portrait

drawing by Lenore Goodell

FAMILY PORTRAIT


in that Valley        a different colored string from each finger     

so that one of another      each knew the other      in Love's Dream  S 
stablished     higher lower firey icey headed     empty headed in 
come come the Serpent round the Sun the S’s       from seen Heaven 
Spillway Rainbow
Joel Ai Rainbow     Son Bird     holding Brewster Feline watching 
Clem Moonrider      the Pointer      still pup    
Full Hill landless Lord over Laughter       he saw him tricking the Sun     
the Father    Bird.    Yoked     Poet       holding     hidden Bowl of Ometéotl     
& Other times the Staff     or Book    or ME
under Whirl around the Sun in vacuum-headed       icey     quest     
Search out       find in leg of the Valley      the dip in Care for 
Fam i ly       Family  portion spread out from Her touch strung hair     
Fishless    Hair
Pisces      morning      sewing      drawing      whirl in birth of swimming
headdress      wood on wood birds flying to the star under many circles
serpents      all tied to the ends of rainbow strings from his fingers
passing as I say to her voice      passing thru his     wood on wood
knocking       the country is blind       & the land he needs for a house
to grow up on for the son    & all them her hand constant voices interrupted
tied together going out in seen thru eras    
March, June, November, & Soon     Seeing it it is all too sugary 
let them have Sight

a little bag of sugar     a   larger one of salt       
one of Chile & all earth's pleasures
one of bones to bang against each other & prayer 
one of winds, the thumb almighty 
one of little mudheads trying to emerge 
one of a stick pointing direction 
one of fertility red leaf lettuce 
one of awkward hesitation     an empty cradle
& the last the little finger from the rainbow string 
the center of the ear      & hearing what you see       

I  see my hands & the garbage on the wall 
owning the spaces    where the eyes can behold      her wonder & his there
where it is directed      & coming back in dreams     we oughtnt to cling to    
who knows?       "prefer the Unknown" where the colors come down in the Spring
December      burning & burning on the head      over the head    
into full light.

larry goodell / placitas, new mexico / 9Dec73

This was printed as a duende press broadside at the end of 1973, for a holiday hand out to friends . . . attaching strings with little objects hanging from my fingers proved to be impractical, although I made the 10 little charm-objects, but the strings tangled up immediately . . . but the poem remains as a further testament to 3 Dimensional Poetry in my life . . . things hanging on strings from my fingers appeared in my thoughts along with the poem . . .this wonderful pencil portrait of lenore as fish, me as sparrow hawk, our son as a younger bird . . . in a way generated the poem and was natural as the main part of it . . . love to all and to all depiction of families . . . larry