Liam Rector (1949-2007)

I just heard from Terry Winch that his good friend Liam Rector has committed suicide. Liam had had severe health problems about a decade ago, and his health had been detiorating recently. He shot himself.

Liam was very much connected to the DC poetry scene. He was involved in Mass Transit, and read in the Folio series with Ann Lauterbach.

Here is more information about him from the Academy of American poets.

Liam Rector was born in Washington, D.C. in 1949. He holds an M.A. from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and an M.P.A. from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

His books of poems include The Executive Director of the Fallen World (University of Chicago Press in 2006), American Prodigal (1994) and The Sorrow of Architecture (1984).

His poems have appeared in Agni, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The New Republic, Boston Review, Slate, Ploughshares, and elsewhere.

His reviews and essays have appeared in magazines and books that include American Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Boston Globe, Hudson Review, Bostonia, The Oxford Companion to Literature, and Contemporary Poets.

"Liam Rector is one of the most linguistically liquid and gifted poets of his generation," said poet Lucie Brock-Broido. "His is the oddest and most hallucinatory romance with Romance in American letters."

Rector's honors include fellowships in poetry from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he received the Friend to Writers Award from PEN New England. He has served as poetry editor of Harvard Magazine and as associate editor of Harvard Review and Agni.

Rector edited The Day I Was Older: On the Poetry of Donald Hall (1989), and co-edited On the Poetry of Frank Bidart: Fastening the Voice to the Page (University of Michigan Press, 2007).

Rector has taught at Columbia University, The New School, Emerson College, George Mason University, and elsewhere. He founded and directs the graduate Writing Seminars at Bennington College, and has also administered literary programs at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets. He lives in New York City.

My condolences to his family and to his many friends.

Ahmos Zu-Bolton II

I did not know Ahmos Zu-Bolton. I heard him read one time, but I do not remember the context. We spoke a few times, and that was all. He was a man of enormous presence and charm, one of those people that you just liked and respected at first contact.

Ahmos was born Oct. 21, 1935, in Poplarville, Mississippi, and he died March 8, 2005, at Howard University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He was 69 years old.

Solo Press published A Niggered Amen: Poems, in California, 1975. Ain’t No Spring Chicken: Selected Poems, was issued by Voice Foundation, Inc. in New Orleans, 1998. He was co-editor, with E. Ethelbert Miller, of Synergy D.C. Anthology, published by Energy BlackSouth Press, 1975.

Ahmos ZuBolton II and Haryette Mullen

Here's a post from Ethelbert Miller's blog:

Tuesday, March 08, 2005


Miss Walker, Miss Walker, your true love is dead
He sent you a letter to turn back your head


Ahmos Zu-Bolton was the author of A NIGGERED AMEN (1978) and AIN'T NO SPRING CHICKEN (1998). Yep. Little Zu was born in 1935. So he leaves us in his 70th year.

Here is what I wrote about him in my memoir FATHERING WORDS:

"He carried a bag of magazines or maybe it was just a pouch filled with goober dust, cat eyes and rabbit feet. The man was southern in the way he walked, dressed, and spoke. If it were earlier in the century, it would be a perfect example of the Great Migration. Here was the type of guy Langston Hughes would meet while in high school in Cleveland, the guy who spoke in the rhythms poets wanted to capture on the page. Henderson had introduced me to the blues and African American folklore. Ahmos Zu-Bolton introduced me to himself."

And here are three pages at Chicken Bones: A Journal:

the first, about Ahmos

http://www.nathanielturner.com/zubolton.htm

the second, a poem by Ahmos

http://www.nathanielturner.com/zubolton3.htm

the third, announcing a candlelight vigil for Ahmos

http://www.nathanielturner.com/candelightvigilforahmoszubolton.htm

Ahmos was part of the Mass Transit scene, and was in a couple of the mags.

Here's a poem:

The Basketball Star

We define:

Livewire Davis. The one
with the million-dollar jump-shot.

Livewire as bebop star:
torn between his body's genius
for fast breaks
and a questionmark called rage. Stumbling
thru a lifetime of all-star games
(he never hit the winning points
but was always a frontpager.

Livewire's days
were lawless theater
(except for the 8 o'clock class,
except for the poetry of bullshitting
with the women,
except for the ritual of practice:
run jump "shoot their eyes out"
defense
defense
except for the terrible puzzle of books
he was free.

& here is another

into my final books of poems

this is to say that i am
coming round the bend. the darkness
inside your flashes of light know me,
i throw you curves because i wanted to be
a pitcher, a sidearming hero you could turn to
in the late innings. (i would save the game
before my wounded brother got to
the shower.

but this ain't no playground
they told me - that & the fact
that i never mastered
the screw-
ball
is the reason i am here.


I was always an admirer of open parentheses.
& I will always be an admirer of this poet.

I need to get another copy of the Synergy D.C. Anthology, as well as copies of the two books by Ahmos.

If any of the Mass Transit folk would like to add more about Ahmos in a comment, that would be a big plus.

& here is more from Ethelbert Miller: some notes for an article on Ahmos Zu Bolton that was published in Eugene Redmond's Drumvoices Revue a few months after Ahmos died:

Spacedream Struggle

In his poem “Spacedream Struggle” one will find the use of Zu-Bolton’s favorite word- that word is “struggle.” One would have to look at other Zu-Bolton’s poems as well as his life to understand how he defines struggle.
Is it simply a racial one? It is an inner struggle to better define oneself?
Is it similar to the Muslim concept of Jihad, a struggle in which righteousness is a goal or objective.

Zu-Bolton’s three part poem begins after the conflict. If the first stanza we notice immediately that narrator of the poem is on a space ship. And he is heading home. One must ask the question – where is he coming from, and where is home? Is it earth? In the literature of many African American writers, the concept of home is a very important one. It can be a way of talking about the South as well as Africa. I think Zu-Bolton’s poem forces us to look at home in a much larger sense.

We find the narrator not in control of the ship and relying on music to determine its definition. Notice the reference the general reference to music in the poem and not to jazz or blues.

In the fourth stanza of the first section of “Spacedream Struggle” Zu-Bolton make one of those “Zu” leaps in his poems. A twist that defines logic and opens the door to his creative imagination.

“I am in the memorybanks/of the ship’s psychiatrist”

Why a psychiatrist? Why a person who treats mental disorders? Is this the person responsible for the care of everyone on the space ship? Why is there a psychiatrist on board in the first place?

And now one might wonder if this is a poem about inner space instead of outer space. We find the narrator becoming linked to the psychiatrist.
A joining of doctor/and patient; someone sick with someone well.

“He goes to sleep mumbling
and my voice takes-up
where he left off

In the second section of “Spacedream struggle” we find the narrator/psychiatrist fighting the Christians. So here it seems as if the use of the word “jihad” would not be out of place, in describing the conflict. What we find in Zu-Bolton’s poem is that Jesus is on his side fighting the Christians too. The narrator seems to have a kinship with Jesus, even as he rejects Jesus’ suggestion of turning the other cheek. Here Zu-Bolton places the words turn the other cheek in italics, as if spoken by Jesus. These words seem to be punctuated by the use of the word nigger.

The narrator and Jesus team up like a dynamic duo. They are fighting inside the spaceship and not outside. Jesus is fighting while standing on the narrator’s desk. It seems an interesting place to do battle.

If one was to look at the some of the larger questions raised by “Space Dream Struggle” one would find that Zu-Bolton is critical of the church and organized religion:

“I /had my back to the wall/sidekicking their preacher.

As Zu-Bolton describes the conflict taking place he relies on the visual use of white space on the page. He pulls in the folkloric reference to John Henry.
Along with a word like struggle, Ahmos would also frequently use the word dance, here we find “the ghetto in my eyes/was a firedance .” Dance must be viewed as ritual, as a term of engagement. Dancing underscores the movement of life as well as the language of the poem.

In the third and final section of “Space Dream Struggle” one finds the psychiatrist waking up, screaming and turning the narrator’s voice off.
It is the psychiatrist who gets up to leave and not the narrator. Payment is a bible. Why is payment a bible? What is the psychiatrist doing with a bible
in the first place? It’s also obvious that it is the psychiatrist who is not well.
Ahmos Zu-Bolton’s poem raises a number of philosophical questions about
religion as well as Jesus, and the role they play in political struggle.

Now,what follows the third section of Zu-Bolton’s poem is nothing but white space; about 2/3 of the rest of the page is blank. The absence of words seems to lead the reader back to the “weightlessness” mentioned at the beginning of the poem.

What one finds missing from the end of Zu-Bolton’s poem is a reference to the space ship. The narrator seems to be lost in space. One wonders if and when the music will lead him to his destination.

Spacedream Struggle

1.

It has been a long day
and I am on a spaceship
going home.

I am not
at the controls, so I lean back
in my weightlessness
and let the music
carry me.

Sleep
will disarm me, but
I surrender to it, being
the direction of the music
that the ship
chose.
I am in the memorybanks
of the ship's psychiatrist.
He is on the couch
spilling his life
to me.
I take it all down
in a shorthand that I can't read.
He goes to sleep mumbling
and my voice takes-up
where he left off.

2.

I fought the christians today.
Me an my man Jesus, who is
on the mission with me.
and who would have me
turn the other cheek
nigger.
But
we teamed up this morning, with
love in his heart and rage in mine
we turned the sky of this ship
into a battleground.

Jesus stood on my deck
turning both cheeks
at once. I

had my back to the wall
sidekicking their
preacher.

We fought the good fight.

The heat of battle
dripping
down
my body
like sweat,

the ghetto in my eyes
was a firedance
while
my fist
became John Henry's hammer
and the side of my feet
became the switch --
blade
they say we all
carry.

3.

The psychiatrist woke up
and turned my voice off. He
left convinced that he
was not as sick
as me.

(unable to reproduce the spacing of the original poem).

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).

Dylan

Around 1960-1962, we used to go down to Laugharne to visit the boathouse and Dylan's grave. David Dooley, Ivor Curnock, Marie Farrow and I used to take the bus down there and stay at a B&B. Our friend Ray James came with us once, too.

Dylan was a cultural icon in Wales even before he died in 1953 at the age of 39. After his death, he was the cultural icon, especially in Swansea, his home town, where I lived. You'd meet all kinds of people who had had encounters with Dylan, or claimed to have had them, invariably in pubs, the bar at the Grand Hotel, or the Hanbury, or the No. 10, or The Three Lamps, or The Cross Keys.

We used to read the poems, listen to records of Dylan reading the poems, listen to a record of Richard Burton reading the poems, and listen to the record of the BBC's 1954 broadcast of Under Milk Wood, with Richard Burton as First Voice.

In 1964, Ivor Curnock was First Voice in the Swansea Little Theatre's procuction of Under Milk Wood. Ivor is dead now. David Dooley became an actor, and he has been First Voice in a number of productions of Under Milk Wood. He still lives in Swansea.

Dylan was everywhere, the ghost of Dylan was everywhere, and, if you were a poet from Swansea, well…
…but I've never been sorry to be asked to read "A Child's Christmas in Wales" at Christmas; I've done so many times.

After a reading I did in 1977, Tim Dlugos told me that the poet whose work my work reminded him the most was Dylan's. Tim had this great, mischievous grin on his face, as though he'd said something very perceptive that was going to make me uneasy, or embarrassed. I miss Tim. He had a great spirit.

(I've never understood the American pronunciation of "mischievous," as though the 'i' came after the 'v' and not before it. It's almost as bad as the case of "aluminium." Do people not see the second 'i'?)


Recently, I've taken to deconstructing some of Dylan's poems for readings, and that's been fun. I'd like to go back to his grave in Laugharne and read one of them there.

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

Michael Lally

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

25 poems

Tom Orange
25 poems
the interrupting cow dc 2004

25 poems consists of 25 poems
each 14 lines long
each line 3-5 syllables, unless I missed a variation

the last line of the last poem is
elegaic brilliance
each word qualifying the other
but the preceding lines
the stormy white
having spent its little
(elegaic brilliance)
leans more towards a brilliance that is elegaic
than towards an elegy that is brilliant
but we can have both and more
as bakhtin noticed
any word brings all its possible connotations into play
in this case
brilliance
made me think about the lightness of this text
how the lines shift through a lyric troposphere
so lightly
resisting the downward pull
towards this or that usually inevitable trope
found in the atmosphere of lyric poetry

your way with
dusk sprayed
at gentle feet
leaves the
minutes mortals
hear to curl
into gardens:
glare long
together and
lovely for the
horizon to soothe
the disaster you
too had never
unveiled first

this is finely deconstructed lyric poetry
more by way of reverdy than rilke
or eluard

a reformed napalm death or carcass
could give a nice rendition of this material

in lyric poetry there is always the risk of suffocation
these poems are open-ended
there are always multidirectional exits

here’s one of the poems restructured

pleasure, the
there and look
to pillow through
we till: hand me
through to some
loving you paler
the rivers and weeds
we would eat from
that little silence
ultimately in all
palpitating heads
long lineage of
& breathing hands
of what we want

there are 59,115 possible variations in the order of the 350 lines of 25 poems

here is a poem made from these poems

legs unleafing
you faked and
from that which
that you sound
to the bones
other that you
a numerous lover
far more than
imagine everything
legs unleafing
language flashing
phosphorescent
breathed the
loving honed out

because the line is the unit
because the line is inextricably within the nexus of the text
the movement between the lines within the text is diffused
because the line is inextricably within the nexus of the text
each line reflects the other
each line is all the other lines

I think I stole that from Merleau-Ponty

“Things explain each other, not themselves.
George Oppen

“In poems such as these, as in Apollinaire’s “Zone,” the elements, the primary data of the poetic construction, are narrative or at least informative wholes. In verse such as Reverdy’s, they are simple, sensory, emotional or primary informative objects capable of little or no further reduction. Eliot works in The Waste Land with fragmented and recombined arguments; Pierre Reverdy with dismembered propositions from which subject, operator and object have been wrenched free and restructured into an invisible or subliminal discourse which owes its cogency to its own strict, complex and secret logic.”

Kenneth Rexroth
“The Cubist Poetry of Pierre Reverdy”

in “Silence as Text Among the Works of George Oppen,”
Gwyn McVay quotes Edmond Jabès
"Why," he was asked, "is your book just a sequence of fragments?"
"Because the interdict does not smite a book that is broken," he replied.
(The Little Book of Unexpected Subversions)

no ideas except in things

the interrupting cow makes my life better

continue reading
continue thinking

the material nature of words

words as mysterious