Recent Publications

Whereas it's true I'm a less than prolific blogger, that I endlessly rewrite my blogs until I'm right sick of them (Octopus blog was rewritten over the course of a month),

& that I didn't write a thing while I was in Hawaii bad—(but I did take 5000 photos—which serve as a remarkable memory aid),

& that I also didn't write a New Year's resolution, (but I'm a finicky bahumbuggerer affected by a lack of winter light),

nor did I write a blog on Haiti—tho I twittered endlessly, so much so that Tweetmeme picked up my tweets—as did CREDO, and many NGOs.

I now have more followers on Twitter than I have for this blog—unless you count the spammers—about the only mail I receive these days for this blog are from loyal spammers—it's gotten so bad, I've had to turn comments off under several blogs—something I am loath to do as I get little enough feedback as it is. Now my Literata comments are filed under Spam in my Gmail account. Is there no way to put a captcha under Blog Comments? I searched the Google Blog database, to no avail.

Then it dawned on me that I also haven't written about my latest publications either.

Though I must admit, with all the atrocities of Haiti, there's room for little else in my psyche. It's like what Meryl Streep said at the Golden Globes. How can I go out there? Put on a happy face, shove some money over to an NGO and go on...the show must go on. Yes.

So here's a bit of show and tell (I haven't been a total slaggard...).

1) My Beat poet pix* are featured in the just released "Life of Crime" the complete collection of newsletters from the Black Bart Poetry Society—for those who think poetry is a crime, about SF's Poetry Wars featuring NPR's Andrei Codrescu, Tom Clark, Dave Benedetti; and of course the editors themselves: Pat Nolan, Steve LaVoie, and Alastair Johnston... (Poltroon Press 2010) *Bob Kaufman, Joanne Kyger, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, etc. In Moe's and independent Berkeley bookstores now, trade copies at Small Press Distribution.

Hmm, Jack Crimmons gave me a headzup: "Life of Crime" made Ron Silliman rather cranky this morning! Alastair was pleased, said it'll stir up sales! The Poetry Wars do go on.... Andrei Codrescu dropped me a note: It's a wonderful book! What scurrilous characters! What grand times! Fine pics, too, made me nostalgic (a bit).

2) What the World Hears: California Poets in the Schools Statewide Anthology—45th Anniversary edition (with a foreword by Gary Soto). I've got a poem and two student poems in it.

3) Full Circle: Poems from the 2009 California Poets in the Schools Symposium, Santa Barbara, CA. Mary Lee Gowland & Holden Way-Williams, editors.

4) Changing Perceptions: California Poets in the Schools Conference Anthology, Kim Shuck, ed. (2008) just arrived in the mail nearly a year and a half late with no © or publisher imprint. I'm rather disappointed in the haphazardness of the whole thing and the two-year wait, well, that's anti-climatic. There were many blank pages at the end that could've been used to cover the gobbelygook. Even if my CPITS anthologies, with the pages designed by kids, are funky, I take pride in what I do and always include the © and the credits... Many valid excuses were given but why didn't Kim give a shout out for help? We would've gladly helped, had we known.

For the record, Blogger has "updated" the blog editor and it's now much worse than back in the day when we had to enter our own HTML codes. What You See Is NOT What You Get.
It's an utter and counterintuitive nightmare to format—and getting photos to align up is another cashmar in perseverance. I hate it and would happily go back to the last version—if only I could figure out how. Gratuitous white spaces and line breaks not only drive me crazy, it makes me psychotically irate. Who designed it, and for whom? Inmates

Scanning B&W negatives

At long last, I am able to begin scanning my B&W negatives from the 1980s. I just rescued my negatives from cold storage, and my first scans were of Bob Kaufman at the Black Bart poetry reading in San Francisco, May, 1983. Pat Nolan and Alastair Johnston of Poltroon Press in Berkeley, plan to scan all the old Black Bart Life of Crime newsletters and turn it into a book. Which led me to the negative resurrection thing. 

I honestly thought I wouldn't be able to find the Black Bart contact sheet and negatives, as most of my poet negatives had a slight mishap at a really good party (people wanted to see my photos so I brought my binder with contact sheets and negs—mistake). Later on in the evening, my negative binders met up with an overturned carton of half and half—which led to late night washing of thousands of negatives and separation from their contact sheets. A logistic nightmare.

Migod do I ever have photos of dead poets....Brodsky, cold fish that he was, was right on top of the pile. And all the kazillions of Poetry International poets I documented over the years. Hugo Klaus, Bert Schierrbeck. All the late great Dutch & Belgish poets. Bert's funeral was a veritable who's who of the poetry world. The UK Adrians of Yellow Submarine fame....so easy to get distracted.

But scanning on a borrowed Nikon Coolpix L1000 has its' crankies. For starters, it's SCSI. That means I have to use a G4 and boot in OS 9 as there hasn't been any SCSI support for 15 years.

Most of the time the scanner won't show up for work. Restarting the Mac usually doesn't resolve the problem, But it's my only hope. My last and best hope. Oh, how I do love that three chord Mac cresendo: BOOOOONNNNG. Over and over and over again until I wish for the solitude of Zyzzyx Road in the Mojave Desert. So when I do get the scanner up and working, it's an all day and into the night marathon....

The first photos I posted to this blog were of Padraigín MacGuillicuddy (see Nov-Dec 2008). I was wanting photos of her as I'd posted a first draft of my story on her... Maybe someday, I'll find the final version of her story among clippings. (Another waiting in the wings project. Where, exactly, does the time go?)

Her daughter found my blog and wrote to me.. .she was going to send photos as was Sean Folsom, but nada. I'm glad to say that if you'd like to see that classy lady, the photos are up. I didn't realize how drop-dead gorgeous she was...very Maureen O'Hara.

I may post a few of the Black Bart photos here as well as a sneak preview—just because I can (besides, I suspect that the photos will be printed old school—read tamizdat—so very Cold War)... and Bobby Kaufman, the father of all Beatniks (tho Herb Caen is credited with coining the word Beatnik, a dirty word in both the USA and the USSR, Herb heard it first from Bobby's lips before immortalizing it in print.) I'm so jazzed. Can you dig it, baby?