All
Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2001
Richard Denner
No
part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
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or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in
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information, please contact:
Comrades
Press
23 George Street
Stockton, Southam
Warwickshire, England
CV47 8JS
Website: www.comrades.org.uk
email: editor@comrades.org.uk
Quotation
from Kora In Hell © by William Carlos
Williams,
reprinted
with permission of City Lights Books.
“D Press: Jewel in the
Net”
originally
published in The Temple #16
Tsunami,
Inc., 2000
Front
cover collage: Kim Secunda
Back
cover photo: Jessica Framer
Linoleum
block prints by the author
ISBN:
0-7388-6318-1
for my mother, Helen
and in memory of my father
Samuel Denner
1900-1998
Here’s splotchy velvet set to hide a door
in a wall and there— there’s the man himself
praying.
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Berkeley, Aptos & San Luis Obispo: 1961-1968
Letter to Sito in Time of War
ABCs
Poem on My Birthday
Commitment
Tabula Rasa
Poem on My Return
Captain of Poetry
Song
Patterns
Tale
A Book Entitled
Vision
Spaced
Yes
My Poems
Calculated Lion
Cogito Ergo Shazam
Split Pe-rsonality Soup
Ode to Graham Crackers
27½ Before 3
Taxman
Line Drive
Augustus Turns in His Tomb
Sermon on the Mound
Flower Poem
Putting Down Roots
Oakland Should Be
Langtree
Tantrik Tune-up
Detail
Scorpio, Scorpio Rising
Happy Climes
All The Heads of the Town Lit Up
Ketchikan & Deep Bay: 1968-1970
Feather
Evidence
Poems
Woodnotes
Fairbanks & Preston: 1970-1974
The Beast
Poloot
Big Foot
Islam Bomb
Headwater
Truckin’ the Alkan
Dirt
On the Beach
Seascape
Atman
Sea Change
Steppin’ Out
Printer’s Devil
Hell/Life
Funk of the F Word
Ellensburg: 1974-1995
Traveler’s Blues
Scat Song
Get Down
Burger Productions
Gold Leaf
Chilling Out with The Eclogues
Relax
At Iambic Feet
Diamond Hanging J Floating I
Variables of Existing Choices
Canis Latrans
Om Om on the Range
Critics Aren’t Agreed
Right Livelihood
Notes on the Back of a Feed Bill
Washington Swine Seminar
Green Pastures
Duke’s Mix in Winter
Living Well
Evolved and Eclipsed
Ecological Hazard
Beeper
Learning New Words
Tortureland
Calf Graft
Now Is Like That
A Tumbleweed Carries It’s Shadow
Tucked Within
New Gravity
Convalescent Conversation
Robbers’ Roost
Ordinary Adventures
Leaps and Bounds
Andy the Mechanic
Ancestors
Flake on Flake
Now There Then
Am I Repressed
Rodeo of the Equinox
It’s a Mess
After the Volcano
Old Growth
Slash
Synthesis
What Are You Up To?
All Mimsy Were the Borogoves
A Hill Called Bringer of Luck
Night Deluge
By the Numbers
Love’s Way
Chances
Hermit and Trout
As Above, So Below
Secret Spots
We Love Each Other
Ordinance
By Dint
Beryl
Red Light, Blue Light
Beryl on the Rocks
Erewon
Winter Forest
Slowly
Curve of Wind
Angel
Birthday
Nature Has No Memory
Sure Sign
Astray
Heart, How Close You Are
Interior Rose
Box
Elemental
Gifts
Maid of Mist
Vista
Dark Order
Soul Light
In First Light
Waterdownstone
Green Feeling
Afternoon Feeling
Dandelion Wishes
All Ways
Fourwinds
So
Moonrider
Cookin’
Everything
Two Roses
Two Friends
Walking
Do I Hear Trumpets?
March of Reds
Silent Language
Real
Strained Sunrise
Eyes That Cry
At the Blackhawk
F You C K
Up Before Four
Space Out
Dream
Clouds
Shifted
Insured
Below the Rad Lab
Home
Ok
Pagosa Springs: 1994-1997
Too Many Horses, Not Enough Saddles
Right to the Point
Clear
What Where Is Here
Method in My Madness
Post-Dogmatist Puddle
Painting Clouds
Once
Transition
Africa
Whatever It Takes
Samsara and Nirvana
Furniture Poem
Shrine for Jimi Hendrix
Deja Voodoo
Too Little Too Late
Warm Light
Our Natural View
Turn Beauty Turn
Party Down, Anasazi
Santa Rosa & Sebastopol: 1998-2000
Pebbles
On This Side of the Pass
Beating Against the Rock
Head Start
Eco Biz
Sky Line
Painpoint
Intrusions
Moving Finger
Come onto Dry Land
Stake Out
Cold Fountains
Blue Notes
Poetics
Tara
Endangered
Follow the Instructions
Heavy Artillery
Once I’m up to Speed on Quark
Flatline
Man-eater
Back to the Real World
Morning
Noon
And Night
And the Tree of Life Also
Five Abstracts Inspired by Mark
Rothko
Vacuumgenesis
Telecosmos
Nutcracker
Cutting a Swath
More Light
Picture from Williams
At East West Café
Diminishing Options
Fresh Flavor
Compassion
Cowboy
Angels
Duet at Sunset
Que Petite Sirah, Sirah
Constructive Rest
Xitro
Singing to the Cows
Singin’ Dixie
Rising from the River
Omni-spatial Matrix
Mandala
I Voted for Ike When I Was Eight
History on Her Hands and Knees
11:55 a.m. on This Planet
Turning and Mirroring
Full Moon
Music of Her Face
Yes, Repeat, No
Across No Divides
Song at Midnight
Eye Roving Over Blue Hills
Trace-tones and After-dots
Approachable But Out of Reach
When My Work Is Done I’ll
Look for the Seven-headed Beast
Heart’s Love & Yearning Misery
Flying White
Luminous Form
At the Center Is Fire
Fully Awake in Your Look
Found Poem
Tapestry
The 12:02
Bear Dance
Following Salvador Dali
Excruciating Beauty
Dicey
Lovers Lain
Coyote Meets Bodhidharma
Israel 33½
Buddha’s Last Words
Bunkhouse at 6 a.m.
Cold Out There
Fable
Clotho, Lachesis & Atropos
Pleides
A Way She Walks
So Sudden
A Lovers Are
Another Day
Wipe Out
Keep Moving
Nestled in the Rose in the Meadow of
Midnight
Instructions to My Apprentice
So High You Kissed the Sky
Minaret
Mother Muse
Calendar of the Moon
No O Zone
Time Space Language
Being Just As We Are
Just As It Is
Spit in the Ocean
Pasta Is Fasta Ordered By Phone
Encounter
A Leaf Ready to Fall
For Breakfast
Fragments
Freight
Believe Me, Laura
Timberline
Green Fire
Heart’s Timber
Stubborn Lumber
Where On the Paper Chain Are You?
Planting the Blast
On to the Next Unit
Whip or Will
Vacuum Plus
Flash an Ogham
Five Is the Key
Cold Mountain
Suspicious
Go Song
Zero Tolerance
Napoleon Without a Bone
Irresolute
Open on All Levels
Automorph
Calendar Art
Do or Dot
There There
The Wart Cannot Be Coerced
Space Control
Way Through
Crazy As Possible
Stress in the Field
B Is for Reflection
Interchange of Tinctures
Why2K
Adventures of Psyche on The Astral
Plane
How to Proceed
Things Change Yet Are One
President Buchanan Slept Here
Your Bones Know You Can
Calculus
Just When Phoebe Decided Life Held No More Interest
Rules
Space & Longing & a Few
Flashes of Light
Sunshine within Sunlight
Flowers Inside the Present
Mutiny Is Fate
Galatic Addressing Code
Give Me Fag Vomit
O, the Hells Ring Out
Trains That Could
Apocyyylove
War Saw
Weapons of Mass Destruction
No Visible Means of Support
General MacThuselah
Terror Angel
Errata
Worn to A Phrasl
Flashburn
Ideogram
The Color White
Geraniums
Gwen
Percy
I Know a Place
Weary Elves
Maddening
Forest Perilous
Billy Meets the Canyon Spirit
Boogie Knight
Maybe a Maiden
Not Anything Real
Merlin Creeping About
Stars and Time
Hear Them Buzzz
Risking the Boundary
Persephone’s Mirror
Hermes on His Rounds
Holographic Paradigm
Phantom’s of the Fayum
Numbed by the Rays
He Who Lists to Hunt
Nectar
Late Knight on the Golden Gate
Perfect
For Jennifer
Seeing Angels with the Inner Eye
In Ketchikan
Marilyn Manson on the Rag
This Script Has a Butt Shot
Sunflower Kitchen
Of Suns and Worlds
High Pressure Center
Box of Nerves
At Every Level of Montezuma’s
Consciousness
Love’s Garden
Visionary Designs
At the Game Reserve
Joy in All the Little Things
Wavetwisters
I Am Virgin to My Poem
Soul of the Anti-poet
My Escape Forward
I Know Nothing
Page of Wands
What Is Mind?
Night of Mystic Rain
Magician’s Apprentice
Flowing
All This Inside Me
Vision Quest: So Many Rainbows
Samsara Is an Airport Surrounded by
a Delayed Flight
Hookeena Village
Aloha Means Don’t Crash on the
Rocks
At Mahukona Beach Park
Wind Blows East, Then West
Pointless Poem about the Existence
of Non-existence
Story My Mother Tells
Cord Cutting
Refuge
Juxt Pose
Postcard from the State of Disaster
Sit Like a Mountain
Lost in Tongass Forest
Nima’s First Sweat
Mother of All Sweats
Poised
November Mist
Discovery
Dream
Along the Cutbank
New Forms
Dharma Talk
Building a Fire for the Medicine Man
Eurydice Awaits Orpheus in Hell
Installation
Friends
FOREWARD
At
Comrades Press, we have a vision—this book is part of that vision.
Comrades Press was founded in 2000 as a direct result of its on line magazine. The amount and the quality of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction that we received was staggering, much of it from previously unpublished writers. We decided to rectify this by becoming publishers ourselves and, with no funding whatsoever, set about the task of bringing the work of the misplaced poets of the world to the world. The first step in this rather grand and impossible plan (the higher the goals, the higher you can climb) was to be the publication of the first of our yearly anthologies. However, the possibility of publishing the work of Richard Denner arose, and a race began to see which book we would publish first. As both the horses were in the Comrades stable, the race was a foregone conclusion, and I am proud to say that you are holding the winner in your hands right now.
By
utilizing print on demand technology and on line stores, we are able to produce
quality books without many of the overhead costs associated with traditional
methods. This means that we are prepared to take risks that would probably have
other publishers waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. Rather
than publishing what we know will sell, our goal is to publish work that we
like, work that we believe in, which should be the only reason for anybody to
publish anything. Comrades Press works on a non-profit basis. If we make any
money from our publications, it sits in the bank account just long enough for
us to make the red numbers a little smaller before it is channeled straight
into our next publication.
This
also allows us to produce short-run chapbooks from brand new authors whose work
grabs you by the throat and demands to be read or picks away at the back of
your brain until there is no choice but to go for it.
If
this all sounds like a good idea to you, then please do visit our web site at
www.comrade.org.uk where you will find details of our other upcoming
publications.
Verian Thomas
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
The muse is not necessarily
embodied in a single person. My first contact with this spirit of inspiration
was Juanita Miller, the daughter of the flamboyant, 19th century California
poet, Joaquin Miller. She lived in a vine-covered castle among her father’s
monuments to Moses, John Frémont, and the Brownings, nestled in the Oakland
hills, in what is now Joaquin Miller Park. In our neighborhood, she was
unusual. On a foggy Halloween night, some friends and I spotted her in a white
nightgown walking barefoot through the eucalyptus. We were sure her house was
haunted and dared not go to her doorstep to trick or treat. She rode with my
family to church on Sunday, and on one occasion she signed a copy of a
collection of her father’s poems and presented it to my mother. I revered this
book. I would open it and gently touch her signature. It amazed me that we knew
someone who was associated with the arts.
I
memorized a poem from Miller’s book, a poem to Lily Langtree, a popular singer
of his day. I recited this poem in the 4th grade, and the next year in Mr. Shriner’s
5th grade class, when asked to memorize a poem, I recited the same poem to
fulfill the assignment, and the class jeered me, saying they had heard this
poem before. A red-headed girl came to my defense and said she still thought
the poem beautiful. A muse can be old
or young, peaceful, joyful or wrathful, and sometimes they are teachers. In the
6th grade, Mrs. Latimore whacked the back of my hand with a yardstick for
passing a scatological note when I was supposed to be diagramming
sentences. Professor Traugot
reprimanded me in front of a freshman comp class at Cal for plagiarizing Alfred
Kazan’s essay on Blake, and Professor Parkinson proclaimed my essay, “My Home,”
the worst thing he had ever read. I may be forever re-writing “My Home,” but I have
learned to disguise my sources with more craft.
Kenneth
Rexroth was the first poet I heard read. Ernest Blank opened my eyes to hidden
beauty in poetry by explicating Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress.” Mike
Sneed critiqued my first poem, a parody of Poe’s “The Raven,” and he pointed
out that poems are not Freudian soap-operas. While guarding the balcony of the
Campanile on the U.C. campus, Don Bratman taught me how to scan a poem’s lines.
Dennis Wier fired my interest in printing by showing me how to burn plates with
a light bulb in an orange crate in his closet. Vic Jowers promoted my first
chapbook at the Sticky Wicket near Aptos. Up to this point, I was dabbling, but
I was primed for allegiance to this art when the 1965 Berkeley Poetry Conference
was announced. My English teacher said he knew Robert Creeley and that I would
learn more in one day at this conference than I would in a whole year at Cal
Poly, so I turned in my journal,
accepted a C for the semester, and
thumbed my way back to Berkeley.
A
major turning point—an injection of rocket fuel. I want to thank Gary Snyder
for telling me Berkeley didn’t need another bookstore and to take the nuts and
bolts of what I had learned and move to the hinterlands where I was needed. Thanks to Allen Ginsberg for revealing that
I could be both a good poet and a good businessman. “Just be good,” he said, and I took the meaning
of this to apply to both esthetics and ethics. As a bookseller, I always tried
to find the right book for the right person at the right time. As a poet, well,
you really can’t be called a poet unless your poems survive a couple hundred
years. Thanks to Charles Olson for showing me the meaning of epic scale. It was a mind transmission
watching him bebop through the universe fusing Gilgamesh and quantum mechanics.
To Robert Creeley, who laid down two laws: William Carlos Williams’s No ideas but in things and Ezra Pound’s Make it new! To Jack Spicer, who
admonished, “Poet, Be Like God,” and to Robert Duncan for pointing out I could
write with or against the sun. To Kirby Doyle for showing me that we are all
connected; we just need to hold hands. To Ed Dorn for including me among The
New Poets. To Max Scheer for making me The Poet of the Berkeley Barb. To
Richard Kretch for inviting me to read at Shakespeare & Co. and publishing
my early poems in avalanche. To
Wesley Tanner for teaching me to thump type. To Philip Whalen for his blessing.
To Moe Macowitz for my initiation into bookselling. To Jon Springer for giving
me shelter in New York. To Luis Garcia for giving me his tattered thesis
binder, so I could organize my poems. To Belle Randall, Gail Chiarello,
Marianne Baskin, Kate Coleman, David Cole, Jim Whelage, Patrick Gord, William
Boardman, Don and Alice Schenker, Carry McWilliams, Patricia Turrigiano, Price
Charlston, Grant Risdon, Bob Allen, and Cheri Bader for their encouragment. To
John and Karen Bader for their patronage. To John Oliver Simon for building an
anthology, City of Buds and Flowers,
around a few of my poems. I flitted through Charles Pott’s Valga Krusa. I became a Berkeley Street Poet and a Poet of Peace
and Gladness.
Many
of the names above are famous, and I do not mean to imply I have been on
intimate terms with all of them, but it was during these days many lifelong friendships
started, and all of these people have in one way or another been instrumental
in my development as a poet. Luis Garcia, my closest friend and collaborator,
has been my greatest mentor, always present with insights and humorous twists
of perspective. I met Lu right after the Berkeley Poetry Conference, and we
continued meeting with other poets for weeks to come. Lu’s style of writing is
unique—playing with the words within the words, he directed me to meditate on
the morning light and helped me understand that it was important to discover my
own voice, to forge a blade, as he put it. Lu’s poems sizzle. They move so
fast, if you aren’t ready, you miss them. By imitating Lu’s use of jazz rhythms
and breath notation, I began to read my poems aloud. Just like Leadbelly
learned to play the 12-string, I learned my craft by putting my spine against
the piano.
The
choice of poems here is mine. Mainly, I have arranged them in chronological
order, except where they seem better situated in the thematic contexts of later
D Press chapbooks. I usually self-publish my writing, developing the arts of
collage and printing along side the poetry. The printing of my poems is a way
of editing my work, bringing what I say into better focus. Some of my poems
appear in more than one book and in more than one version. It has never been my
intent that any of them be the final version; I am not writing the poeme supreme. Words and phrases, which
have bothered me after reading them for years, have here been changed or
dropped. Due to format limitations, I have included only a selection of the
early poemebooks with linoleum block illustrations. The cyberbooks, Wavetwisters and Another Artaud, are absent from this collection because they
require elaborate typography and photographs to be fully appreciated.
Many
events have affected my view. Many collaborations have enriched my life. I am
especially grateful to my family and the many friends of my life. Also, thanks
to my publisher, Verian Thomas. My poetry is my experience. This is my secret
autobiography.
Richard Denner
Santa Rosa
December 4, 2000
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Some of the poems and art have
appeared in these journals and anthologies:
Tangents, Cabrillo College, Aptos, 1962
Breastbeaters, Berkeley
Pamphlets, Berkeley, 1963.
Poly Syllables, California
State Polytechnic College, San Luis Obispo, 1965.
America Sings, National Poetry Press, Los
Angeles, 1965.
Berkeley Barb, Berkeley
Barb, Berkeley, 1965-1967.
avalanche, undermine press, Berkeley,
1966.
Polar Star Art-Lit Supplement, University
of Alaska, Fairbanks, 1970-1972.
Vagabond Anthology, Vagabond
Press, Ellensburg, 1976.
City of Buds & Flowers, Alderaran
Review, Berkeley, 1977.
Heart in Utter Confusion, The Dog
Ear Press, Hulls Cove, 1980.
Ellensburg Anthology, Ellensburg
Arts Commission & D Press, 1980-1987.