Ron Mann's 'Poetry in Motion II' (1982)

The Poetry in Motion dvd contains a whole alternate set of performances and interview clips under the rubric Poetry in Motion II: a mixture of dithyrambic proto-slam poetry and reflective poetic observation. 

Poets in this order:

Anne Waldman
Amiri Baraka including a chat with Anne Waldman
Jim Carroll chat with Ed Sanders and John Giorno re: following John O'Hara, support from Patti Smith
Michael Ondaatje
Allen Ginsberg with bells and electric guitarist: "the older you are, the better you relate"
Peter Orlovsky on acoustic guitar doing weird, awful mimicry
Diane DiPrima re: Revolutionary Letters
Helen Adam "Apartment on Twin Peaks" - energetic and strange 
Spalding Gray (d. 2004) -- mentions suicide
Jerome Rothenberg "For Hugo Ball" 
Ted Berrigan
Charles Bukowski (see below) 
Robert Creeley
Gary Snyder "the joys of Dharma scholarship," calmness, fixing a pickup truck with help, "tough-handed men of the past"
John Giorno "you spent most of your life just trying to stay afloat"
Michael McClure "Everything lives . . ."

A snippet of Bukowski's observations:

I've always felt embarrassed walking to a movie house because I kind of make my own movies: I meet bad women, I have fights, I go to jail, I go crazy, I drink. I make my own movies . . . 

I improve upon life a little bit. Life needs improving upon. It's not as interesting as what I write. Because it's condensed and it's visible . . . so fiction is an improvement upon life. It jazzes it up a little, it puts it together, it makes it sensible, even if it's horrible it makes it logical . . . it makes something you can see. You can light up something, you can drink something that's there . . . I'm as valuable as a good plummer. 

Amiri Baraka in Poetry in Motion (1982)

Today's Rune: Initiation. 

Ron Mann's 'Poetry in Motion' (1982)

Ron Mann's Poetry in Motion is a fun documentary sampler of poets, poetry, readings and music. As one might suspect, it's a mixed bag -- I fast forwarded through a couple performances  -- but overall a groovy experience (no joke).

Bukowski opens the ball, drinking, smoking and musing at home: 

Reading the poets has been the dullest of things. Even reading the great novelists . . . I said Tolstoy is supposed to be special? . . . I really try to understand. I mean, and many of the great poets of the past, I've read their stuff, I've read it -- all's I get is a goddamned headache and boredom; I really feel sickness in the pit of my stomach. I say, there's some trick going on here . . . this is not true; this is not real; it's not good.

Bukowski's quips are interwoven throughout the film, providing comic relief.

The performers:

Amiri Baraka (who just died in 2014) with sax and drums
Anne Waldman 
Ted Berrigan (who died in 1983)
Kenward Elmslie
Ed Sanders (also of The Fugs)
Helen Adam (utterly strange and interesting)
Tom Waits (early on)
William S. Burroughs
Christopher Dewdney
Michael Mcclure (who co-wrote "Mercedes Benz" with Janis Joplin and Bob Neuwirth)
Ted Milton
Robert Creeley (died in 2005)
John Cage
Four Horseman (a poem made of noises)
Michael Ondaatje
Jayne Cortez (died in 2012) with  guitar, bass and drums
Diane DiPrima with piano and slides
John Giorno
Ntozake Shange with piano and dancers
Gary Snyder
Allen Ginsberg with Canadian band The Ceedees (guitar, bass and drums)
Jim Carroll (died in 2009)
Miguel Algarin

One of the surprising highlights is Ginsberg singing, off-key, an outraged and joyous punk-like catalog of global injustices that feels completely contemporary. Let's just say that he would not have been too surprised by recent developments.

DVD extras include an interview with the director and Poetry in Motion II (more on the latter soon).

Today's Rune: Protection. 
  

Charles Bukowski: Factotum (Reprise)

Factotum (2005), based on the 1975 novel of the same name by Los Angeles-based writer Charles "Buk" Bukowski and directed by Norwegian filmmaker Bent Hamer, began limited release in the USA on Friday, August 18, 2006.

Charles Bukowski (8/16/1920-3/9/1994) devoted most of his adult life to writing, women, drinking, smoking, gambling, and avoiding conventional jobs or responsibilities as much as possible. Before he died, he published forty-five books, mostly novels and poetry, and became a cult figure. Barfly (1987) and Crazy Love (1987) are earlier films based on Bukowski's work. There's also a documentary that came out two years ago, Bukowski: Born Into This, that is packed with good footage.

In Factotum, Matt Dillon plays Bukowski's fictional alter-ego, Hank Chinaski (played by Mickey Rourke in Barfly). Given that the real Bukowski was vaguely hideous in appearance, this is a merciful choice. The main women in the film are inspired choices, too: Lili Taylor and Marisa Tomei, among others. The film was actually shot in Minnesota, not L.A.

Bukowski was quite a character. He retained a strong belief in his writing abilities and has inspired many in his wake. He has also inspired a number of people, mostly men, to think they can laze or roam aimlessly about and somehow become cult figures themselves, without having to actually write much or make any effort on their own. In that sense, Bukowski's life is also a cautionary tale.

Bukowski's titles alone are usually worth the price of admission. Five examples: Poems Written Before Jumping Out of an 8 Story Window (1968), Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969), Love is a Dog from Hell (1977), Ham on Rye (1982), and If You Let Them Kill You They Will (1989).

Today's Rune: Flow.  [Originally posted on August 10, 2006, slightly tweaked].

A Follow-up with Mark C. Durfee

As a sequel to the September 6 post on Stink: Poetry and Prose of Detroit, here's a little more information about the poet/author, Mark C. Durfee, quoting him directly:

Durfee is thought to be an Americanized version of the French, Dupris. The family left France in the 16th century during the Huguenot oppression and found itself a hundred or so years later in New England via Old England as Durfys' and Durfees' The Durfees are still a large family in New England with banks and streets, schools and trash bins carrying on the name. My particular branch moved through the upper mid-west with a Durfee settling in MI doing what Durfees do best which apparently is; reproduce. My father Donal* B. Durfee married My mother Mary Elizabeth Stewart not long after they met. The old man was working at a Cunningham's drug store as a pharmacist and mom was just out of college. Mom was first generation American (Scots-Canadian) while pop's family had been here since the Mayflower or thereabouts. The marriage which lasted all of their lives spawned 5 kids of which I was the fourth. Born in 1954 I was not quite at the head of the Boomer generation and not quite the tail end of it. Not quite a hippie and not quite a disco dancer. I went to the same Catholic school from 1st grade to 11th grade when it closed. I had failed 9th grade Algebra twice and was not allowed to graduate early so I went to another HS and was politely asked to leave as soon as I had the 1/2 credit I needed. I have since then dropped basic algebra 5 more times, (my proudest failure).

I entered the US Navy in April of '72 and became a radar operator on a WWII era Destroyer. My sea duty lasted about 2 years and didn't take me any further afield than the Atlantic Ocean, Halifax NS to Jacksonville FL. In mid-74 the ship was running in hurricane seas and I was foolishly outside heading to my duty station when I took a rogue wave off the starboard side. I almost, but not quite got, to meet Poseidon that day and in return for not going over the side to see the old god, I took a fracture to the left elbow instead.Three days later I was off loaded in Newport RI and that was the last time I saw the ship. I went to Philadelphia Naval Medical Center and became drug addicted over the next year. I left Philadelphia in May of '75 in the midst of an extreme drug psychosis, I was 20. July 28th, 1975, the day I turned 21 I left Detroit and spent the next four years walking, hitchhiking and generally avoiding capture. I have seen North America from Cape North NS to San Diego, Chilliwak BC to Key West FL, Moose Factory Ont to New Orleans LA and points between. I've spent fair amounts of time in Philadelphia, New York City, Berkeley, Chicago, and came back to Detroit permanently in 1979.

While the tribe of heathens I was spawned from is well educated, rife with advanced degrees, I myself never completed any formal schooling beyond a for profit trade school that taught me fundamental auto mechanics, which I eventually excelled at as a Master Auto *ahem* Technician. The above paragraph is my Majoris Curriculum Vitae. I began, much to the shame & chagrin of my father, to write poetry when I was 14. I don't remember writing pining teenage love drivel because I am my mothers son. She fought for the rights of people in Detroit's worst neighborhoods as a social worker and she brought me on board at about 11 years old. We'll never know though because when I went in the navy someone burnt my journals. I didn't care but I didn't stop either. I just never kept anything I wrote after wards. That is until I met community college where I found some encouragement in the endeavor. In 2002 I began to keep, in a loose fashion, everything I wrote. I have seven completed full length manuscripts that need editing, over a hundred essays on various matters of social and political interests of mine and as of this writing somewhere between 2000 and 3000 pieces of verse. I used to be humble about the writing, giving the pat answer of "I write because I have to." Bullshit; I write because I can. God within me allowed me this talent, shows me ways to develop it and, I use it unashamedly. My grandmother Mary Stewart started me off in this poetic ideation. She was a housewife who had a professional life before marriage. She encouraged me with Frost, Sandburg, Dickens, Browning and Guest, among others. My personal favorites are Clemens, Crane, Bukowski (of course), Brautigan, with some of the Russians thrown in for measure Solzhenitsyn & Chekhov and some of my struggling contemporaries I read on the Internet.

As a matter of taste I do not struggle for rhyme or specifically defined meter but a simple flow in the patois of a certain piece. I believe that everything written should not only be readable but it also must be presentable in a spoken word venue. It is that balance I am working on now.

Here's a link to Mark C. Durfee aka Walking Man's blog:

http://themanwhowalksalonewalksfaster.blogspot.com/

Today's Rune: Flow. *This is correct.

Toussaint

Angela Bassett turned 49 today. As of now, she will play Suzanne Louverture in Toussaint, Danny Glover's biopic about Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture (Don Cheadle). Already controversial, the film will be shot in Venezuela and is supported by Hugo Chávez (Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías).

Iggy Pop's "Zombie Birdhouse" (1982) was recorded in Haiti. "No synthesizers were used on this record."

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.

Birthdays: Emilie Juliane of Barby-Mühlingen, Jean de La Bruyère, Jules Laforgue, T. E. Lawrence, Henry Charles Bukowski, Fess Parker, Bill Evans, Robert Culp, Eydie Gormé (b. Edith Gormezano), Julie Newmar (b. Julie Chalene Newmeyer), Carol Moseley Braun, Angela Bassett, Madonna (b. Madonna Louise Ciccone), Timothy Hutton, Emily Robison.

Bon voyage!

Hang On Sloopy

I don't write much poetry, so it's fun to see one of my poems in print from time to time. Old school publishing is slow, but when Pearl 37 arrived in my mailbox a few days ago, I was glad to see it even though it was a year-long process, because it includes "Lines from William Blake," my take on the breakdown of a traditional marriage. The journal Pearl started up in 1974 and has included, over the years, a lot of Charles Bukowski, among others. I particularly like the name for its association with Janis Joplin. Editors: Joan Jobe Smith (since 1974), Marilyn Johnson, and Barbara Hauk.

Today, it's Guy de Maupassant's birthday. One of his protagonists gives her take on how a progressive marriage ought to work, just the kind of thing that might scandalize a formal ceremony, even in 2007. Seems like a good deal to me when both parties are treated equally.

Now listen carefully: Marriage, to me, is not a chain but an association. I must be free, entirely unfettered, in all my actions -- my coming and my going; I can tolerate neither control, jealousy, nor criticism as to my conduct. I pledge my word, however, never to compromise the name of the man I marry, nor to render him ridiculous in the eyes of the world. But that man must promise to look upon me as an equal, an ally, and not as an inferior, or as an obedient, submissive wife. My ideas, I know, are not like those of other people, but I shall never change them. (~~Bel Ami, 1885)

Today's Rune: Harvest.

Birthdays: Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant, Conrad Aiken, John Huston, Neil Armstrong, Wendell Berry, John Saxon (b. Carmine Orrico), Ron Silliman, Rick Derringer (b. Richard Zehringer).

Ciao!

Journey to the End of the Night

Today, besides Memorial Day for the war dead, there are many birthdays to honor. Given the climate of the times, I'll briefly showcase Louis-Ferdinand Céline (b. Destouches, 5/27/1894–7/1/1961). When I teach the Great War and the 1920s every so often, students are assigned Journey to the End of the Night (1934) / Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932), Céline's seminal autobiographical novel set during WWI and the 1920s, and ranging from France to Africa, New York City to Detroit, and finally back again to France. To me, it is a key work of art. Céline observes and questions everything, yet soldiers on despite a very dark outlook. The novel remains vibrant and relevant; after all, not much has essentially changed in human behavior, despite scientific and technological changes since its publication. The question is: how does a person build and maintain a meaningful, satisfying life in this world?

Journey to the End of the Night has had a tremendous impact on other writers. Charles Bukowski reportedly declared it the best book written in the past 2,000 years. Existentialists like Sartre and Camus loved it, Henry Miller absorbed it, the Beats read it, and any writer skeptical of the Iraq War and the so-called "War on Terror" would probably like it, too -- or at least those who enjoy following a dispeptic iconoclastic anti-hero on his picaresque way though life, griping and carping all the way.

The sequel is Death on the Installment Plan (1938) / Mort à crédit (1936).


At some point I'll write more about the Detroit section of Journey, Céline's main character Bardamu's work at the Ford factory and romance with a prostitute.

Birthdays: Amelia Bloomer, Wild Bill Hickok, Louis-Ferdinand Céline (Destouches), Dashiell Hammett, Vincent Price, John Cheever, Christopher Lee, John Barth, Harlan Ellison, Lee Meriwether, Siouxsie Sioux (Susan Janet Ballion).

The Time of the Assassins

When William S. Burroughs, Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac were boys, Henry Miller was living in Paris, sleeping with Anaïs Nin, and writing Tropic of Cancer (1934), Black Spring (1936), and Tropic of Capricorn (1934). As the rest of these American characters slowly kicked into gear, Miller left Europe and its Nazi menace, returned to his native United States, and then painted and wrote many more books, including The Colossus of Maroussi (1941) and The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945), one of my favorite of his many skewerings of modern America.

Henry Miller doesn't quite fit into any categories. He wrote about whatever he felt compelled to write about, blending fiction, memoir, visual art, poésie and musings much like many of today's bloggers.

Married five times and doing mostly whatever he wanted to, it's no wonder one of his biographies is called The Happiest Man Alive (Mary V. Dearborn, 1991).

In addition to enjoying himself along the way, Miller and his work broke new ground in American letters and law. Though Tropic of Cancer had been published in France in the 1930s, it had been treated in the USA as underground literature; when Grove Press published it in 1961, it became a cause célèbre pitting obscenity laws vs. artistic value. In this case, literature won and Puritanism lost.

1964 loosened up the publishing industry and worked in tandem with the free speech movement, the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, and, subsequently the women's rights movement, the environmental movement, and the gay rights movement. I'm sure the editors of Playboy, etc., didn't cry over the results, either.

What Miller shared with Hank Bukowski was belief in himself and his abilities. Or as a Ukrainian friend of mine put it a couple of years ago about what other people thought of her or her writing, "Could give-shit." Or put yet another way: Write on. In the long run a wise philosophy, indeed.



Today's Rune: Growth.

Viva Henry Valentine Miller (12/26/1891-6/7/1980)!

Factotum: Writing Without a Net

Bent Hamer has made a fine independent film in Factotum, starring Matt Dillon as Henry Chinaski and based on Charles Bukowski's 1975 Black Sparrow novel. Dillon is perfectly understated and thereby effective and funny in a deadpan kind of way. Lili Taylor is superb, as well, and Marisa Tomei fans will not be disappointed, either. I highly recommend this flick for its take on Chinaski/Bukowski and his traditional male writer's addictions: writing, drinking, smoking, women, and the need for at least a feeling of independence. Hamer sets Factotum loosely in the present, though there are few references to modern technology and no cellphones, which gives it the feel of any time between the 1950s and early 2000s, a sound decision made, one may suspect, at least in part because of a small budget. The story follows Chinaski through a series of episodic events, from one job or experience to another, always concerned with writing and living hard and by the cheap while paying close attention to the complexities of his relationship with occasional intimate companion Jan (Taylor), plus an interesting time with Laura (Tomei) and her "associates."

Chinaski always keeps his eyes on the prize, and is repeatedly seen not only writing, but also dropping manuscripts off in mailboxes (also a nod to Bukowski's tedious job with the U.S. Postal Service). All of this reminds me of Henry Miller and, to a lesser extent, the Beats. For any adult who loves writing/reading and doesn't mind a walk on the rough side, you might very well enjoy Factotum -- both the novel and the movie.

Today's Rune: Harvest.

Charles Bukowski: Factotum

Factotum (2005), based on the 1975 novel of the same name by Los Angeles-based writer Charles "Buk" Bukowski and directed by Norwegian filmmaker Bent Hamer, will begin limited USA release on Friday, August 18, 2006. It's been traveling around Europe since last year.

Charles Bukowski (8/16/1920-3/9/1994) devoted most of his adult life to writing, women, drinking, smoking, gambling, and avoiding conventional jobs or responsibilities as much as possible. Before he died, he published forty-five books, mostly novels and poetry, and became a cult figure. Barfly (1987) and Crazy Love (1987) are earlier films based on Bukowski's work. There's also a documentary that came out two years ago, Bukowski: Born Into This, that is packed with good footage.

In Factotum, Matt Dillon plays Bukowski's fictional alter-ego, Hank Chinaski (played by Mickey Rourke in Barfly). Given that the real Bukowski was vaguely hideous in appearance, this is a merciful choice. The main women in the film are inspired choices, too: Lili Taylor and Marisa Tomei, among others. The film was actually shot in Minnesota, not L.A.

Bukowski was quite a character. He retained a strong belief in his writing abilities and has inspired many in his wake. He has also inspired a number of people, mostly men, to think they can laze or roam aimlessly about and somehow become cult figures themselves, without having to actually write much or make any effort on their own. In that sense, Bukowski's life is also a cautionary tale.

Bukoswki's titles alone are usually worth the price of admission. Five examples: Poems Written Before Jumping Out of an 8 Story Window (1968), Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969), Love is a Dog from Hell (1977), Ham on Rye (1982), and If You Let Them Kill You They Will (1989).

Today's Rune: Fertility.

Ciao!