Shout out from Sharon Doubiago on the publication of Hard Country

I wasn’t expecting a Facebook shout-out from poet Sharon Doubiago, for triggering the events for the publication of Hard Country. But, thanks.

Sharon Doubiago wrote to John Crawford:

“In 1980 two poet friends, Maureen Hurley and I think Leonard Cirino took my manuscript Hard Country, to Meridel LeSueur who was teaching at the annual 2-week poetry symposium in Port Townsend Washington. Copper Canyon Press of Pt. Townsend had enthusiastically accepted it but now was making sexual demands "or no publication." I took my ms from him. Meridel said "I've waited all my life for this book and before I die I'm going to get it published." And she did by taking the ms. to John Crawford of West End Press. Upon reading it he accepted it. Thus began my publishing career (which, as with some of my longtime poet friends as good as any of the superstars, might not have ever happened—writing poetry and getting published are 2 entirely different—in many ways contradictory—endeavors). West End was in Minneapolis as was Meridel. John was wonderful. He founded his press in the West End bar across the street from Columbia University in New York where Jack Kerouac, et al, had hung out and subsequently poets, writers and students. John was a great human being of great integrity and subsequently a great publisher. He never, not even slight hints, demanded what Copper Canyon had. Nor did he require extensive rewriting, changes or cuts to my 264-page poem. Instead he created a 6 female poets committee as editors. An issue rose about the Native American poems in Hard Country, whether a poem about the history of the U.S. by a "white woman" was politically incorrect. It was the great poet, the Native American Joy Harjo, who gave the okay. While in the publication process John came to San Francisco to meet with me, took me to the Basque Hotel/Restaurant in the alley across from what is now the Beatnik Museum, and over dinner educated me in the contemporary political Basque situation. Most awesomely he took me to the Marina apartment of the great poet George Oppen and wife. At least twice he brought me to Minneapolis, for final proofing and readings. He shared with me in several visits and letters his disastrous marriage with a Southern California woman named Sharon. He warned me to never take personally any confusion he might make with my name! He told me this several times! When published he made great connections and readings for Hard Country. When West End moved to Albuquerque he published a second edition. I last saw him there. He picked me up at Margaret Randall’s house and took me to his house which was packed with boxes of West End’s other publications. When he retired West End he sent me the remaining Hard Country copies at no cost to me. In publishing Hard Country he made possible all the rest of my life, all my further publications.  He made possible my poet’s life. He made possible the hope of a great America.  Thank you, mucho gracias, merci beaucoup, shukrin  John Crawford, Love Sharon (the one who loves you).”

https://www.facebook.com/547040818/posts/10156315981285819/

Preserving the past: Centrum in the early 1980s (photo)

In the process of using old Facebook Memories to flush out the gaps in my blog, I discovered that I had met Meridel LeSueur, not in 1981, but according to the Centrum site, it was 1980. I will need to readjust many (undated) poem dates...

Not only that, as I attempted to fill in the gaps on this timeline, I discovered that I've been misspelling Meridel's last name for decades. It's LeSueur, not LeSeuer!!! Got that. Awg, egg on face. Blame it on dyslexia. (True—I had a hard time unraveling it—even now, when I knew it was wrong and I had to resort to a snapshot of her name to keep it right in my head.)

As to fluffing out this blog, the trouble is, my Facebook Memories only date back to 2009. So it doesn't help flush out those impoverished writing years. I'm still sorting old papers, so more work is coming, but the bulk of the poetry has been scanned and posted (a huge task). Now it's come down to transcribing old journal entries. (Not the highest on my priorities list, of sorting all my old papers, filing them, and eventually dispatching them.)

The year 1980 is particularly dicey in that I didn't seem to keep a proper journal. Napkins, paper place-mats and menus were pressed into service, along with carbon paper separator tissue, as well as the backs of old posters and poem revisions—an odd sleuthy way to date my many undated old poems.
 
So, I must've gone to Centrum three times. I know we were personae non gratae for crashing the gates of the kingdom when Meridel was there. Carol Jane Bangs in particular had it out for me. She actually chased me out of a poetry reading, screaming bloody murder, the only thing missing in that lunatic chase, was a cleaver in her hand. No matter that it was free and open to the public. Luckily she never knew my name. The nerve. Crashing a poetry reading/reception like that. I was an alley cat, hungry for poetry. Perhaps the free wine and hors d'oeuvres were involved as well. 

Jim Heynen, one of the other Centrum coordinators, apologized to me later. He didn't mind at all that I was there as a freeloader. We spiced up the conference. Jim read a hysterical poem about someone using false teeth to make the scallops on a pie crust, and hog farmer David Lee read from The Porcine Legacy. Worth the gate crashing entrance fee.

Writing at Centrum

1980 (I remember meeting Lisel Mueller, and Bill Knott as well as Donald Hall; I think this is the year I met Bill Root and Pan Uschek, and Rusty North.) 

FACULTY: Galway Kinnell, Meridel LeSueur, Richard Shelton, Ann Standork, James Bertolino, Madeline DeFrees, Donald Hall, Sam Hamill, Bill Ransom, Lisel Mueller, Bill Knot.

1981 (I'm pretty certain I went to this one too as I have a journal entry on Jack Cady; and I spent time with Tree Swenson and Kathleene over at Copper Canyon Press. Kathleene West (what was her last name back then. I adored her. I found out that Linnerson was her maiden name, she said she was always reinventing herself. Anyway, she got me to apply to teach poetry to kids in Montana.) 

FACULTY: Margaret Atwood, Robert Haas, William Matthews, Sam Hamill, Tree Swenson, Leslie Marmon Silko, William Stafford, Jack Cady, Jane Yolen. 

 

1982  (I know that I went to this one too, I remember singing and drinking with Tess and Ray at the Town Tavern (note to self: don't try to keep up with them drinking); I fell head over heels in love with Thomas McGrath. I remember him reading from his imaginary letters, wow, and his talking about coal mines.)

FACULTY: Olga Broumas, Henry Carlile, Sandra McPherson, Carolyn Forché, Tess Gallagher, Sam Hamill, Paul Hansen, Jim Heynen, Thomas McGrath, Richard Shelton, James Laughlin, Raymond Carver, Gordon Lish.

This photo engendered an interesting conversation on June, 2013, which was worth preserving in situ.
Facebook conversation (photo) Lyle Daggett & me on Bukowski, Black Sparrow Press, Doubiago

And another much shorter version of this post was filed July 10, 1980, for continuity's sake.
Port Townsend Poetry Conference 1980 (photo)

Why I Teach, or Why I am a Writer, final draft

WHY I TEACH, OR WHY I AM A WRITER   MANIFESTO   —Maureen Hurley

due 12/13 SAT  5 min presentation/performance.

It's hard to choose between teaching and writing

each process informs the other.

See, I was an artist before I became a poet.

I was a poet before I started teaching kids art,

but I was also literary jailbait. It was a bootstrap affair.

 I arrived late to poetry all out of breath,

with things to say and nowhere to channel them.

I was a bad student in high school and college.

Least likely to succeed. I couldn't keep what I learned.

It was like a hive of bees swarming inside my head.

Stinging my tongue so I couldn't speak.

Why I Teach, or Why I am a Writer. 1st draft

WHY I TEACH, OR WHY I AM A WRITER

It's hard for me to choose or to make a distinction between teaching and writing as each process informs the other.

I was a poet before I became interested in teaching for California Poets in the schools, but just barely. The two events were nearly twinned. I arrived to poetry all out of breath, with things to say and nowhere to channel them. I wasn't a writer and I was a below average student in high school and college. I couldn't retain or access the information I learned in school. It was like a hive of bees swarming inside my head.

Poet Leonard Cirino (1943-2012)

         Most of my life I’ve been poor,

          I never lived in a house with gables.

          This year I’ll grow flowers.

          The movements change hour by hour.

                  —from The Moments Change, Leonard Cirino

I found out via a small Facebook comment posted by Crawdad Nelson that poet Leonard Cirino had died. I had no idea that Leonard was even ill. I was out of the loop and I'm completely stunned. No one thought to contact me—not Lee Perron, Claire Josefine, nor Crawdad Nelson. Donna Champion, who was in constant contact with Leonard, knew he was sick, but not the dying part. No Leonard-flavored instruction manual. He didn't tell Donna the news either—and we were among the ones who knew him the longest.

Apparently it was a quick diagnosis on January 23, Leonard's liver cancer had spread like wildfire. Leonard was given six months to wrap it up. Instead, he got only six weeks. Barely enough time to say hello to death, let alone, goodbye to life. According to his Facebook page, he said he wanted another 15-20 years more. He literally ran out of time.

So I am gleaning the web for links to Leonard in case others too didn't get the news. It may be a bit of a chaotic collection here but at least it's a start.

An Italian-American native of the San Gabriel Valley, east of LA, Leonard John Cirino was born 11 September 1943 and died 9 March 2012, in Springfield, OR. During the early 1960s, Leonard was a state champion pole vaulter in high school and in college. Leonard attended UC Berkeley during the FSM days—where he said his real education began. He tuned in, turned on and dropped out and did the Timothy Leary thing. Moved back to the land. Tried to clean up. Speed took its mordida. Went crazy. Was institutionalized for a horrific, violent crime. I remember the sun stood still the day he told me the news. It was a litmus test of faith. A watershed of loyalty.

Leonard was paroled in 1975. Rehabilitated, then repatriated. He reenrolled in college, and picked up where he left off. Leonard graduated from Sonona State University in 1978 and moved to Albion Ridge, in Mendocino, where he earned his keep as a jack-of-all-trades: landscape laborer, carpenter, solar specialist, a news reporter, and dishwasher. Writing all the while.

About that same time Leonard was at Sonoma State (circa 1976-78) I met him through Lee Perron and Donna Champion. I was organizing readings at Sonoma State. We hit it off like long-lost kin. Maybe it was an Irish-Italian thing, We had the same saints queued up along the portico. We knew when to genuflect.

Letter to Michael Kettner, Catalyst

Dear Michael Kettner,

I noticed that you're selling a book I'm published in, under Abebooks.com. I'd completely forgotten about it...and AD Wynans...Migawd! How did you obtain a copy of the book? Would you like me to sign it to increase its value? Hahah. Um, what poem DO I have in it?

Maureen Hurley

CATALYST #17: 3nd ANNUAL EROTICA ISSUE
Bookseller: M. Kettner and Son, Booksellers
Contact: Michael Kettner
Address: M. Kettner and Son, Booksellers, 1501 NE 68th, Seattle, WA, U.S.A., 98115
E-mail: mkettnerbooks@juno.com
Phone #: 206-323-7268

Dear Maureen, 

How nice to hear from you again. Lest you have forgotten, i was the publisher of said CATALYST. Have taken a few years off writing to insure i have retirement income - to set up an on-line book biz specializing in poetry and sm. pr. stuff. Only have a few dozen of Catalyst 19 left, and since so popular, am selling them one by one on line;

Your contribution to #19 was a graphic, "self-portrait". thanks for offering to sign a copy. however with periodicals, there is little value enhancement with signatures unless multiple contributors do so or if signed by editor or famous person. in the case of erotica, the mere fact it is erotica, is usually enough. 

You did receive a copy or two of #19, did you not? don't remember you being on list of copies returned with no forwarding address. check out my list on ABE by clicking on booksellers. have over 1500 sm. pr. titles on line with at least as many to go. also have large list of general titles since it's hard to make a living on poetry alone. if you ever want to sell off part of your poetry collection, let me know. 

Take Care, M.

In a message dated 8/28/04 12:24:34 PM, mkettnerbooks@juno.com writes:
<< if you ever want to sell off part of your poetry collection, >>

Hi Michael,

I've been thinking about it for ages, the books just sitting in my cabin in Forestville, some rare ones at that. And correspondence. Robert Bly/ Calliope Press...I put on that event at SSU. Lotta work & little gratis from himself.

Lee Perron--do you know him? also got into the rare book business--along with John McBride...who, if I have the story right, was laif off after 25 years from Moe's Books on Telegraph--recession, a sign of the times. As our friend Ken Bullock said, hell of a time to try & sell books. How are you doing with it? Are you still publishing journals? I did look at my resume and Catalyst is indeed listed--way back in the 1980s.

Ach, the book signing, It was merely a ploy to say hi via cyberspace...your name rang a bell, and certainly, Seattle....I'm trying to put a face/event/place to your name as I'm certain that we met...in SF? Or Port Townsend? I'm excellent with faces, even after 20 years...when & where? Obviously you've got my drawing, it must be a self portrait...

Gawd it's been a right long while since that epic journey we took north from Mendocino: Sharon Doubiago, Leonard Cirino, Tobey Kaplan, myself and Moonlight the Alsatian shepherd, in a white station wagon named Roses. An anarchy of northern California poets crashed the Port Townsend Writers' Conference...Carol Jane Banks was having apoplexy right, left & center.

We were all sleeping on the beach, one full moon night, the tide came in and nearly swept us away. Leonard was floating around in his down bag like a cork. Bill Knott was living in a big Victorian on the bluff with Pamela Uschuk (sp)?, we spent a couple of nights on the porch. We later found some barracks that were open after that. CJ Bangs was trying to get us bounced out of the conference but we were like bad pennies. Meridel LeSueur took to us, said we stayed or else and that was that.

Meridel took Sharon under her wing, and that was the start of something, all right. I kept out of the way, feeling like a poetry impostor, and years later, Meridel was asking me why I stayed away so long, was I mad at her...by then it was too late for a prodigal daughter.

I remember Ray Carver, a long cool drink of, er...uisge beatha, chainsmoking and we were all singing Irish songs at some bar with Tess Gallagher... and Michael Daley. Empty Bowl. And Marina Albert...putting us up. All these names bubbling up. it was a spur of the moment event that irrevocably changed my life, somehow I always thought it would continue like that, mad confabs of poets...but then long distances of time and isolation set in.

After finally breaking it off w / John Oliver Simon, I wound up in the USSR doing a poetry & art exchange. It was there I began to translate the Soviet poets. I ran into Marina in Moscow, we were both living in Leningrad with crazy Soviet singers. We'd hoard our dimes and meet at the Seagull Cafe on Nyevsky Prospect, we'd pay an outrageous sum (a week's wages for some) for lattes, worth every penny. 

One time we met Mendelstahm's publisher, it was Glasnost and there was hope. He brought his samizdat publications out of hiding and we held a piece of history. For that one publication he could've been killed. In Moscow, I saw Akhmatova's frail sister feeding pigeons in the snow. But I had to let go of Russia in order to survive. I came back to the States.

I did get to Poetry International in Rotterdam a couple of times, and was in on the Breytenbach translation project...with the likes of Holub, Heaney, Dove...I was onto something, in that I loved the process of translation, then I was nearly killed in 1997, a car accident, and with the shock and healing and all that, poetry sort of left me. I still write, but not with the fervor of the past. Dabbling in prose too, but what's a dyslexic to do with linear thought? After the accident I went back to school and got a MA/MFA at SFSU, w/ a side of Celtic studies at UC Berkekey. Did some playwriting too. But I blather on...

Maureen

Hey Maureen, 

no, 12 years of publishing was enough for me. still writing. on-line is the way to go with book biz these days. more one has on line, the more you make. been learning on-line biz from a couple of the masters here in seattle. left Kathleen after 23 years a couple revolutions about the sun ago. tough at first but had to be done. 

quit job of 16 years and decided to set myself up so i'd never have to work for someone again. just write and sell books. if your poetry collection is anything like mine, i'm very interested if you truly want to sell. i'm just getting past initial years of set-up and debt management it takes to get going and could probably work something out as autumn progresses. 

glad to hear you've recovered. the writing impulse is fragile. been observing it in others for years, studying, if you will, how to maintain it and have it thrive. not easy to do, especially as one ages and life's vicissitudes work on one. have to get ready for work (at Horizon Books). talk to you again soon. -M. P.S. No, we have never met. You were in town once but we didn't hook-up, if i remember correctly.

Take Care, M.

LETTER TO MERIDEL

LETTER TO MERIDEL LESUEUER

In the sacred circle of Pachamama

time itself is transparent.

Temporary islands of whales

rise and fall like tectonic plates

or reed houses on Lake Titicaca.

At Machu Picchu the wind says

we're connected on a deeper level

than this earthly plane.

You say one doesn't recover from old age

but we are on that great cosmic curve the double helix.

The intihuacana is thirsty for chicha and flowers.

I dream of one rubber boot to cross the water,

and eyes painted on the bedroom of the sky.

Out of the debris, transformation.

Basements of the dead

turned into statements of the living.

Something is brewing in the five corners of the world.

Pachamama is crying but we are listening

for translations of wind in the ceiba trees.

The Cold War is ending with the children

reaching across borders and singing.

A golden eagle keens in the wind.

How quickly the night comes.

1989? 

1990 Green Fuse

1993 Mother Earth Journal

LETTER TO MERIDEL, l
this is a completely different poem

Lately, I’ve been touching the spines of your books
something speaking to me from afar
The wind says, the night sighs
we’re connected on a deeper level
than this earthly plane.
This thing called love
we never said in my family.
That the man killing me with his blue eyes
the way the glacier pulverizes stone
in its undertow of blue light called it love.

I am a mover of small rocks. 

I prefer the way of sky.
Is there nothing but emptiness ahead?

Outside of this grammar I write patriarchal nouns, verbs.
I don’t know how to pull the circle around me.
You say one doesn’t recover from old age.
It’s nymph cancer we all have
but we are on that great cosmic curve the double helix.
Invisible worms eat the rose at noon.
I don’t know how to crawl inside the structure of language.
The phallus I write with. 

On this earth we are the goddesses.
Man will destroy even himself for an idea.
Men lose their dreaming and forget why they’re live.

I dreamed that eyes were painted 

on the blue wall of the bedroom of the sky 

and the earth dam burst. The only way out was down.
I fill my house with food I don’t eat
and he hands me chocolate in a a broken bowl.
One rubber boot to cross the water.
Iguanas purring like cats.
Out of the debris, transformation.
The basements of the dead
are turned into into statements of the living.

I have been to Machu Picchu and left white stones.
On an island in Lake Titicaca
I lay in the sacred circle of Pacahmama
and understood time itself is transparent
Something is brewing in the five corners of the world.
Pachamama is crying but we are here listening
for translations of the wind.

I am on the brink, going back to Russia

to find something that was lost.
The Cold war is ending with the children
reaching across borders singing
We Are the World
We are the children on this coast.
Temporary islands of whales at Fort Ross
rise and fall like the tectonic plates.
No more otter. Just abalone and the salmon.
A golden eagle keens in the wind.
The coyotes howled.
How quickly the night comes.

RRWG flyer, Dec 1981, Garbo's, Guerneville, Maureen Hurley & Meridel LeSueur

SONG OF THE PRAIRIE

SONG OF THE PRAIRIE

         —for Meridel LeSueur & Sharon Doubiago

The mindful trust of this body is held

in the blind spots of the eye; a memory

of the prairie where Crazy Horse last

stood. Flowers grow naked on the graves

of those whose blood nourished the soil

a hundred years after the last buffalo

robe rotted into dust. The circling

sparrowhawk encompasses the souls

of those who were lost in anger, hatred, 

and in feat. A song of sorrow for those 

who walk alone.

July, 1981

Port Townsend, WA

The Child in the Bell, CPITS Statewide Anthology, 1981-82

Port Townsend Poetry Conference 1980 (photo)

Port Townsend Poetry Conference 1980. I was with Sharon Doubiago, Tobey Kaplan, and Leonard Cirino. I'm listening to Meridel LeSueur. Sitting on the floor at her feet, actually. Her daughter, Deborah took the photo with my camera. I found it decades later when I scanned my slides. We crashed the Centrum conference—they tried to bust us, and Meridel said, the California poets stay or I go. Sharon Doubiago read from her new manuscript, Hard Country. Meridel said,  This book needs to be published—and the rest is history.

Writing at Centrum

 Centrum’s literary program is a rigorous, craft-focused community for writers, editors, translators, and readers working in a variety of styles. It all began in 1974 with the founding of the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference by novelist Bill Ransom, who envisioned an egalitarian, non-hierarchical conference where the emphasis was on the craft of literary writing. Jim Heynen, Carol Jane Bangs, Sam Hamill, and many other writers continued the emphasis on the writing craft and the mid-July conference has become an annual pilgrimage for many.

1980 (I went to this one; I remember meeting Lisel Mueller, and Bill Knott as well as Donald Hall; I think this is the year I met Bill Root and Pan Uschek, and Rusty North.)

FACULTY: Galway Kinnell, Meridel LeSueur, Richard Shelton, Ann Standork, James Bertolino, Madeline DeFrees, Donald Hall, Sam Hamill, Bill Ransom, Lisel Mueller, Bill Knott.

 

1981 (I'm pretty certain I went to this one too as I have a journal entry on Jack Cady; and I spent time with Tree Swenson and Kathleene over at Copper Canyon Press. Kathleene West (what was her last name back then. I found out that Linnerson was her maiden name, she said she was always reinventing herself. Anyway, she got me to apply to teach poetry to kids in Montana.)

FACULTY: Margaret Atwood, Robert Haas, William Matthews, Sam Hamill, Tree Swenson, Leslie Marmon Silko, William Stafford, Jack Cady, Jane Yolen.

 

1982  (I know that I went to this one too, I remember singing and drinking with Tess and Ray (note to self: don't try to keep up with them drinking); I fell in love with Thomas McGrath. I remember his Imaginary Letters.)
FACULTY: Olga Broumas, Henry Carlile, Sandra McPherson, Carolyn Forché, Tess Gallagher, Sam Hamill, Paul Hansen, Jim Heynen, Thomas McGrath, Richard Shelton, James Laughlin, Raymond Carver, Gordon Lish.

 

added 2/2017

SHORT LOVE POEMS 1978-87 new file

Since I don’t have creation dates for most of these, I made a long file.

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