To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: satene cat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:09:08 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 16:04:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mel Weisburd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: THREE-POET READING REMINDER
To: Roni Silver <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Readings from the works of Thomas McGrath, Bert
Meyers and Gene Frumkin at the Santa Monica
Library, Montana Branch, 1704 Montana Ave. September 27, 7:00 PM.
Dear Friends,
I thought it useful to send you background
information as an introduction to the readings to
maximize the time for the poetry itself, and as a reminder.
In contrast to the Beat Generation which emerged
in San Francisco and New York and to Venice West
in Southern California under the influence of
Lawrence Lipton in the 50's, there was another
viable group of writers which grew from the
mentoring of Thomas McGrath at the then Los
Angeles State College. Most were students, like
Bert Meyers, Gene Frumkin, Thomas Viertel, Hank
Coulette, Mel Weisburd. Others were friends of
McGrath such as Naomi Replansky, Alvaro
Cardona-Hine, Stanley Kiesel, Sid and Estelle
Gershgoren, Ed Rolfe, Curtis Zahn and others.
They came to be called "The Marsh Street
Regulars" because they often met at the home of
Tom and Alice McGrath on Marsh Street, and later
"Coastliners," because of their close association
with Coastlines Literary Magazine, the literary
journal Frumkin and I founded after McGrath was
called before a subcommittee of HUAC and fired
from his teaching position. See "Coastliners ,
the Other Generation." (www.eskimopie.net/weisburd.htm )
Each of these poets developed in his/her own
direction, as to style and content, while
continuing the traditions of socially conscious
poetry. There were no dictates of life style and
technique as outlined in Lawrence Liptons Holy
Barbarians for Venice West. I suggest we can
learn much from the coastliners about treating
the ruinous events of our own times in our own
poetry and different approaches to give them
greater impact: e.g., McGrath's multi-dimensional
vocabulary, every bit as rich as James Joyce:
The banks collapsed, the depositors
Were folded away like flowers in the nights cold book ...
When the belly-down poor, their noses flat on the roof
Of the stiffened river glared at the solitary gar;
When the mayor, taking his stand, walked all one day
Crossing the frictionless intersection of Hope and Truth:
Failed to arrive...
...And in the ice ranches of the maverick intellect
Deep underground down there, I say,
Among man-eating horses and the antipodean bears
Who wear their assholes preludant like the open eye
Of a Dechard rifle (in the blind-storm, in the thick
Of the mine gasand me with that damn dead bird,
Chaffinch, canary, or a white mouse maybe, stuck in my pocket
Where Id hoped to find a chocolate bar)....
OR
the long rolling prairie six beat lines of much
of the poetry of McGrath loaded with brilliant
images and multi-dimensional vocabulary, for
example from his long poem Trinc: in which he praises beer:
the lacy and feminine elegance of the hops
Raising into the sun their herbal essence, medicinal,
Of the scent of the righttime rain fallen on rich earth.
They lift their tiny skirts--of Linnean Latin made!
Like those great nudes of hte barrooms: souls of the newborn beer1
And we praise also Yeast: the tireless marine motors
Of its enigmatic enzymes, and its esters: like the submarine stars
Of astral rivers and horoscopic estuaries shining...
Or
in his direct attack against war:
ODE FOR THE AMERICAN (WAR) DEAD ...
God love you now, if no one else will ever,
Corpse in the paddy, or dead on a high hill
In the fine and ruinous summer of a war
You never wanted. All your false flags were
Of bravery and ignorance, like grade school maps:
Colors of countries you would never see --
Until that weekend in eternity
When, laughing, well armed, perfectly ready to kill
The world and your brother, the safe commanders sent
You into the future. Oh, dead on a hill,
Dead in a paddy, leeched and tumbled to
A tomb of footnotes. We mourn a changeling: you:
Handselled to poverty and drummed to war
By distinguished masters whom you never knew...
In contrast, Bert Meyers adhered to shorter
chiseled lines in simple but trenchant direct
language and formal frameworks. The poems are
minimalist, near-Haiku like, deceptively simple.
With a few words of domestic or gardening details
he is able to suggest large meanings, environments and sometimes cosmologies.
AFTER THE MEAL
1.
A suburb of cofee cups;
napkins, those crumpled hills;
silverware, freeways
sotted with grease, with flesh ...
and the ash tray,
a ghetto full of charred men
with grizzled heads
who wasted their flame;
where ever breath
scatters its bones
and small gray mounds
accumulate, then crumble,
like nations
or the knees of elephants.
2.
Like a cleaning plant, steam
comes through a hole in your face.
Your exhaust is the last
wild horse that gallops away.
3.
Smoke waters the flowers
that grow in the lungs.
The cigarette, like your life,
is a piece of chalk
that shrinks as it tries to explain.
EICHMAN
This familiar form
displayed in the glass
is a sample of man
who can live
before he's born
Because such creatures
read and write
without compassion,
your little time
and even your teeth
aren't safe.
You, when you see him,
should be frightened.
He comes from a large family
whose business prospers.
-- Bert Meyers
Gene Frumkin's poetry has grown steadily
throughout his career via an extraordinary range
of subject matter and experimentation. His poems
are logically discursive in an existential
borderline between poetry and prose. Here's a
case where he has opened up a form as if his voice were a broken field runner:
THE NATURE OF MY SEXUAL PROBLEM
Wind,
you are a member
of my body
the breath itself
Mountains, you are my face
Rivers, my blood
Earth, my skin
Sun, you are my eyes
Without the thunder I cannot hear
Without a doorknob there is nothing to touch
The savor of rainbows is in my mouth
There is nothing outside of me that is not within me
I travel day after day across the world
to
open one woman's eyelids
When she sees me
I see myself
Then dream myself to sleep again back in my hovel
Always
the feathers of some woman's love
drifting drifting
through the sky
which
is my heart
I see myself continually reaching for one blue feather
to
kiss it forever
The sky so huge, my eart so small
--- Gene Frumkin
Poems about these three poets will be read in the
last segment of the program. If you have comments
or poems about these writers or the 50's please bring them for this segment.
Estelle and I look forward to seeeing you
there.
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