Insert No. 7

Go here:

http://illuminatedmeat.blogspot.com/

Insert No. 6

In my post on Michael Lally there was a list of the 31 poets included in the anthology, None of the Above, edited by Michael. To my dismay, it was brought to my attention that the list contained only 30 names, and that Simon Schuchat's name had been omitted. Simon was the prodigy of the Mass Transit era. His first book, Svelte was published when he was seventeen, I believe, with an introduction by Lewis MacAdams. His second book, Blue Skies was one of my great favorites among the SOUP publications. The first poem in Blue Skies,
"To Mayakovsky," begins,

You are distant, boss.
Made beautiful by the advantages
of poverty war and injustice.

He had me right there. In fact, he had me with "To Mayakovsky." There were many mini-Ted-Berrigans around back in those days. What separated Simon from them was his audacity, impressive in one so young. Ted Berrigan was audacious, but Simon's audacity was not copied from Ted's, it was all his own. Here is the first of his poems from None of the Above:

THE MIRACLE OF SIMON SCHUCHAT

Howdy my names Simon
I'm almost twenty years old
I go to the University of Chicago

I take no shit from no one
Whatever that means
I'm trying out something new

When I was fourteen I won a poetry prize
Given by Scholastic Magazine
Honorable Mention Junior Division

I been writing ever since
My favorite poet is John Ashbery
Do you think I write as good as him?

You've got to love that. There was no poem in None of the Above that I liked or admired better. Simon went on to edit a terrific NYC mag, 432 Review, and later worked for the State Department in China and Hong Kong. There 's a poem in Svelte, "adapted from Tu Mu" --
coincidence?

This is by no means the last you'll read about Simon at this weblog. Meanwhile, here's a poem written in 1980 in Shanghai, taken from Jack Kimball's East Village Poetry Online:

The East Village

Belly

Staring at your lips so red
In black and white from 1947
A little before dawn -- the
Liberation, day of bright hope
Some children now have never seen
They live the same as their fathers
Families are separated the same
And hunger is ugly to just hear
About it, whether you blame it
On the big noses or bad eggs
And so long as they love their face
Like that their belly will be
A stone

http://www.theeastvillage.com/t/schuchat/a.htm

back cover of Blue Skies

Insert No. 5

I've nothing new to say here, I only wanted to show off this artwork that I just received from Tom Raworth:

Insert No. 5

I've nothing new to say here, I just wanted to show off this artwork that I just received from Tom Rawoth:

Insert No. 4

Michael Lally

I had not seen either of Michael's two Black Sparrow books when I did the post on him. Now I have them both, and I want to recomend them. It's Not Nostalgia (1999) is a perfect place to begin reading his work. It has two great introductory pieces of autobiography, "The South Orange Sonnets" and "Memoirs of a Revolutionary," a really excellent choice of work from Michael's DC period, 1970-1975, and from his New York period, 1975-1982. The DC section contains "The Swing Era", "My Life" and "Oomaloom," the New York section has "In the Mood," and there is just a whole lot of Michael's greatest writing. Besides, how can you not dig a book that begins with a quote from Sidney Bechet? It Takes One To Know One (2001) is packed with prime Michael, too. Here's one:

Sonnet for My 33rd

Brigitte Bardot
Abbot & Costello
Hound Dog
The Dickey Bird Song
The Girl Can't Help It
T.S. Eliot
Cassius Clay
JFK
Thelonious Sphere Monk
On the Waterfront
Bird
Pope John XXIII
Ezra Pound
Clifford Brown

Together, these two books serve as an ideal Michael Lally primer.

Acknowledgement:
In my post on Michael I neglected to credit George Mattingly of Blue Wind Press for Rocky Dies Yellow, while crediting other publishers.

The self-portrait of Miles & Michael Lally above was included in the Burt Britton collection, Self Portrait (Random House, 1976).

Insert No. 3

Lallypalooza

My Michael Lally post is pretty much done. There's a good bit more material than there was before (see below).

Insert No. 2

Typical autodidact, I've always got to be learning something. This blog is no exception. As well as remembering, researching, documenting, and so on, I'm learning. Maybe it's the same for everyblogger. I'm finding out exactly what I think, as opposed to kind of what I think, or what I think I think. And I'm gathering and organizing data. And I'm learning.

This blog has four threads.

History Project is my attempt to place what I "know" or may (re)discover in some kind of context. 1975 will be the next post in this thread.

Poets is a combination of portraiture and memoir, with some "literary" history and appreciation. I'm kind of anti-literary, hence the quotation marks. I have not completed my post on Michael Lally yet; the next one will be about Ahmos ZuBolton II.

Texts is all about reading. I don't want to write reviews. Not at all. It is a little bit tricky, because what I'm doing is going public with my own reading habits. I try to document my own thoughts regarding the text at hand. It's pretty much what I do in private, without concession to the fact that others will be reading it, to whatever extent that is possible. The next text up will be Heather Fuller's perhaps this is a resuce fantasy.

The Inserts thread is for material I don't want to put into other posts, announcements, explanations, asides, odds and ends, whatever.

There will be a fifth thread of autobiographical material.

So, like Dan Dare, in the old Eagle comics back in the UK, I'm going to explore the universe, and fight the Mekons…

http://www.dan-dare.org/Homepage.htm


Yes, that is where the Mekons got their name.

So Good It Hurts

Insert No. 1

I just wanted to say that my post on Andrea Wyatt (below) is now complete (9:40 pm Tuesday, August 7, 2007). There’s a new third paragraph of biographical data, plus photographs, a lot more material at the end, and more comments, including one by Andrea about Max Douglas.

Coming attractions

My first post on a text, 25 poems by Tom Orange (almost done)

History Project part 3 (1975). This may be in process for a while, as I sort through the detritus of my library and papers and the fuckwit theme-park of my psyche. I may post this while in progress and hope that that isn’t too annoying.

Michael Lally

1972, London

Plus

A little pre-American history of my own life as a poet, in the land of Raworth, Harwood, Mottram, Prynne and Fisher.