Bob Dylan: The Poet's Poet

The poet Michael McClure on Dylan in 1965: "I absolutely did NOT want to hear Dylan. I imagined, without admitting it to myself, that Dylan was a threat to poetry — or to my poetry. I sensed that a new mode of poetry, or rebirth of an old one, might replace my mode…. Joanna sat me down in front of the speaker and told me to listen to the words. I began to hear what the words were saying, not just the jangling of the guitar and the harmonica and the whining nasal voice. The next thing I knew I was crying. It was "Gates Of Eden.”… I had the idea that I was hallucinating, that it was William Blake's voice coming out of the walls and I stood up and put my hands on the walls and they were vibrating.

Then I went back to those people who had tried to get me to listen and I told them that I thought the revolution had begun."

Michael McClure's 1974 Rolling Stone article captures some of the profound excitement and revolutionary change Dylan represented in the mid-1960s.

Kill Your Darlings (2013)

6.5/10 – Kill Your Darlings is a coming of age story about a young, somewhat awkward kid from New Jersey in his first year at Columbia University and the circle of friends he becomes involved with. They get into mischief, they have intense discussions, they’re exploring boundaries, exploring their sexuality, exploring their own self-identity, not unlike many young people going off to college for the first time. It just happens that the Jersey kid is Allen Ginsberg, and his friends include Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. Interestingly, though, they’re not really the center of the story. That would be Lucien Carr, who dazzles the young Ginsberg with his literary knowledge, vibrant energy and desire to live life big. But Lucien is involved in an unhealthy relationship with an older man who’s part mentor, part lover, and part stalker. Things deteriorate until there is a murder that winds up involving everyone in this happy-crazy little circle. Based on real events, Kill Your Darlings does a good job of showing Ginsberg’s transformation from a shy, somewhat innocent kid into the young, more experienced and interesting man who would go on to become one of the most important poets of the 20th century. Though there’s plenty of potential for joking about Harry Potter playing Allen Ginsberg (Columbia=Hogwarts, Burroughs=Weasley, etc.), I thought Daniel Radcliffe was actually very good. He certainly nails the look of young Ginsberg, and he brings an Everyman quality to the role which makes it easy to like and relate to the poet, which I think is important. Dane DeHaan is mesmerizing as Lucien Carr, looking like a young David Bowie and definitely conveying the kind of charismatic intensity that would attract young impressionable poets to him. Ben Foster has a fun turn as Burroughs. There are some amusing scenes with the three of them, especially one at a jazz club when Ginsberg is super-wired on one of the multitudinous drug offerings that Burroughs carries around in his suitcase. The film never reaches any great heights, especially considering the subject matter. It’s a rather traditional Hollywood movie about the Beats, and it has the feel at times of a young adult novel, but that didn’t seem to bother me very much for some reason. I thought it was an interesting story and that it was told well and with care. It’s fun seeing Ginsberg & Co. in their youth, but it also brought a wry smile to my face as I thought about the excitement of that time in my own life, when the world seemed so fascinating and it was possible to start a literary revolution. Those dopey college kids actually managed to do it.

Ten Books That Have Stayed With Me

Well, since everyone else is doing it...

List 10 books that have stayed with you in some way. Don't take more than a few minutes and don't think too hard-- they don't have to be "right" or "great", just ones that have touched you. (In no particular order...)

The Voice That Is Great Within Us: American Poetry in the Twentieth Century – Edited by Hayden Carruth. This book has literally “stayed with me” since I was 16 years old and stole it from my high school library*. It has been with me everywhere I’ve lived since leaving home more than 30 years ago, as well as on numerous trips. My introduction to poetry. And still possibly the best anthology of poetry ever produced. In terms of great work by many different great poets in such a portable size, I’ve never encountered another anthology like it.

The Bible – Despite a bad rep from being misused and abused by a lot of uptight people, it’s an amazing collection of wisdom, beauty, horror, sex, violence, poetry, literature, mystery and, frankly, a lot of freaky and dark, weird-ass shit. Existentialism didn't start with Kierkegaard, it started with Ecclesiastes. I read it every now and then to remind myself of what's really going on here.

Herzog / Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow. They both stay with me, as does most of Bellow’s work. His deep humanity and intelligence, and his mastery of writing... He’s meant a lot to me in my life.

The Sun Also Rises / For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway. Again, I don’t know how to separate them. I read TSAR first, while sunning on an incredible rock in Arches National Park and listening to Mozart. It probably started my interest in Spain. "Isn’t it pretty to think so?" On the other hand, the ending of FWTBT made me stand up out of my chair and feel the presence of God and/or Death or Love. That’s the way I want to go out. "There’s no one thing that’s true. It’s all true."

The Park of Upside-Down Chairs - Alexandra van de Kamp. I lived with this book before it even existed. I experienced its long and painful birthing process. And it’s all around me every day. Plus, heck, I took the author’s photo. The work inside still moves me and makes me love the person who wrote it. And she’s only gotten better. At poetry and everything else.

Cutting through Spiritual Materialism - Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. I always think of Trungpa as the Brooklyn-Take-No-Shit Buddhist. This book should be read by anyone who thinks they’re on any kind of spiritual path (or not), because it will kick your ass and expose every trick and trap you invent for yourself to pretend you’re “spiritual.” Sandal slap in the face x 100.

A People’s History of the United States (Howard Zinn) / Memory of Fire Trilogy (Eduardo Galeano.) I also think of these together, as they opened my eyes to another aspect of my spiritual path. Gracias a mi padre Guillermo Glenn for laying them on me and changing my life.

Danny Dunn and the Voice from Space - Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams. This could be any of the Danny Dunn books I read as a young boy. I re-read most of them in the last year and still loved them. Such a wonderful series about a boy who wants to be a scientist and gets into lots of trouble. The marvel of the childhood imagination. May we never lose that.

Confieso que he vivido [Memoirs] - Pablo Neruda. The life I would like to have lived and never will.

Sixty Stories - Donald Barthelme. This one has been through several moves as well. So much creativity and imagination. So funny. So dark. So weirdly wonderful and poetic. Alexandra says she can always tell when I’m reading Barthelme because I laugh a certain way. She calls it, “The Barthelme laugh.” It’s genuine joy mixed with the pain and sadness of being alive.

* By the way, do not steal books from libraries. Libraries have terrible budgets and lose thousands of dollars worth of books every year. The books belong to the community. They're not to be hoarded by one person! People who steal books from libraries can wind up working in a library! Don't let it happen to you!

To a Solider-Poet on Memorial Day: George Trakl

In August 1914, the Austrian poet Georg Trakl was sent with his unit to Poland to meet the Russian advance.

“The armies met in the battle of Grodek, and the Austrians were routed. In the aftermath, they found themselves in such disarray that Trakl, although nominally a pharmacist, was commanded to care for ninety severely wounded men, who had been hospitalized in a barn. Lacking all means to alleviate their distress, Trakl was driven to a state of frenzy by their suffering…. One of the wounded, unable to bear his pain any longer, shot himself in the head, and Trakl, rushing in at the sound of gunfire, was greeted by the sight of pieces of the victim’s brain sticking to the wall. Distraught, he rushed back outside, only to be confronted by the apparition of corpses dangling from a row of bare trees—local peasants, hanged on suspicion of disloyalty to the Austrians. He stormed in upon a group of officers at lunch, declared his intention to shoot himself, and was finally restrained only by physical force. He was soon sent to Krakow for psychological evaluation, where he was placed in a prison cell.”

On November 4, 1914, he committed suicide in prison.

In The East

The wild organs of the winter storm
Are like the dark wrath of the tribesmen,
Like the crimson surge of battle,
Of defoliated stars.

With shattered brows and silver arms
The night beckons dying soldiers.
In the shadow of autumnal ashtrees,
Sigh the spirits of the slain.

Thorny wilderness girdles the city.
The moon drives frightened women
From the bleeding steps.
Wild wolves broke through the gate.

[From Song of the West: Selected Poems of Georg Trakl. Translated with an introduction by Robert Firmage]

Dear Jean Seberg

Alexandra's new collection of poetry, Dear Jean Seberg, has now made its way into the world. Winner of the 2010 Burnside Review Chapbook Contest, as selected by Matthew Dickman, the book features a wonderful cover by the artist Robert Edwin. Inside and out, it's a beautiful work of art - and a steal at $6.

Here's what Alexandra has to say about the book on her blog:

This collection of poems really came out of sitting on the couch--I mean sitting on the couch watching films: black and white films, Technicolor at its most Technicolor, Steve McQueen car chases, French films (thanks to my librarian husband's knack for discovering obscure, and then not-so-obscure, directors and actors and then being very good at using the local library system to get access to sometimes hard-to-find DVD or video copies of these films). We found ourselves coming up with our own homespun versions of film cycles: William Holden Month, or Yves Montand Week, or, a Jean-Luc-Godard film cycle. Thus, I re-watched "Breathless" and discovered a new interest in the cherub-faced, blond American from Iowa, Jean Seberg, who found herself (via a rather circuitous route) in a Jean Luc Godard film in the 1960's.

Hence, the title poem of this collection. This chapbook is really a journey onto a fuller, longer collection, but I believe it stands on its own as a verbal stamp of some of the images, films, words and sounds that have influenced me over the last few years since moving out to the eastern end of Long Island. I don't consider Dear Jean Seberg to be about film; I consider it a collection of poems infused with the atmosphere of some films I watched and how images and moments in those films flickered in and out of my life long after watching them. . . .

Jean Seberg led an enigmatic, hard-to-categorize life, and my only hope is that these
poems begin to capture some of the wistful strangeness that was the backdrop to her life and the surreal collisions that can occur, at times, in anyone's life.

Here's a sample poem from the collection that was published last year on Verse Daily:

Dear B—

Dear Babaushka, dear
ba-ba-ba-boom, dear oh-my-God
don’t broil me alive. The world
is a percussive instrument
we strum until we die—hum, hum
go the car wheels over the drive;
pluck, pluck the rain sings
for the one-millionth,
bloody time. The feet
earn their calloused soles
and are the saintliest
body part of all—stomp,
stomping along. Dear
Bang on a Can, I like the way
you slap the sunken-eye
of the hollow drum. I like your
New York band’s underwater,
booming sound. I like the sea’s
surface as well—how it’s
hard or soft depending
on the distance from which
you choose to approach. Just try
jumping from the Brooklyn Bridge
towards that ruffling,
dark scarf of water
purring beneath. A kiss can be
the softest slap of all, but
I admire the snow, its soft-shoe
shuffle, its Fred-Astaire
panache, as it debonairly dresses
the trees in white, while slickening
the pavement towards
tuxedo black. Blah, blah, blah,
people do go on about whatever
it is they think they know. Bruno
was my mother’s maiden name—
a brood of Italians from Sicily
settling in a small, sea-side,
Rhode Island town,
near the prosperous,
budding, rubber factory.
That factory’s been converted
into high-brow, assisted living now—
with pale sconces in the hall
and a recreation
room—a place we almost,
but never did,
send my grandmother to.
Beached-whale, barracuda
sunrise: the world vacillates
between environmental
documentary and James Bond
thriller, but the clouds burst
and explode between genres;
some evenings, splitting the sky
into lavender, melon
and a wintry vanilla.

In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr

By June Jordan

I

honey people murder mercy U.S.A.
the milkland turn to monsters teach
to kill to violate pull down destroy
the weakly freedom growing fruit
from being born

America

tomorrow yesterday rip rape
exacerbate despoil disfigure
crazy running threat the
deadly thrall
appall belief dispel
the wildlife burn the breast
the onward tongue
the outward hand
deform the normal rainy
riot sunshine shelter wreck
of darkness derogate
delimit blank
explode deprive
assassinate and batten up
like bullets fatten up
the raving greed
reactivate a springtime
terrorizing

death by men by more
than you or I can

STOP

II

They sleep who know a regulated place
or pulse or tide or changing sky
according to some universal
stage direction obvious
like shorewashed shells

we share an afternoon of mourning
in between no next predictable
except for wild reversal hearse rehearsal
bleach the blacklong lunging
ritual of fright insanity and more
deplorable abortion
more and
more


June Jordan, “In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr.” from Directed By Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2005).

Alternative Inaugural Poem

For those not impressed with Elizabeth Alexander's poem for the Inauguration of Barack Obama, an alternative:



Frank O' Hara
Having a Coke with You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look

at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience

which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it


Another excellent alternative:

Allen Ginsberg: America

thought dreams and new directions

Portrait prémonitoire de Guillaume Apollinaire (Premonitory Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire). Giorgio de Chirico, 1914.

A new year has started, and I've been in a reflective mood lately, wondering what I'm actually doing in/with my life.

Part of that has means mulling over what I'm doing - and not doing - with ZONE. After blogging for almost two and half years (hard to believe), I'm still not comfortable with the process or the results.

The name ZONE comes from the title of a long poem by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and the first post on the blog was "A Word from Guillaume." The subtitle of ZONE is "improvisations on literature, music, film. . ." Yet there has been very little literature on my blog. Mostly because there's been very little literature in my life.

Somewhere back down the road, I burned out on "literature." For 25 years or so, I had tried my best to live "the writer's life," which meant writing all the time, devouring literature constantly, editing literary journals, and participating to one degree or another in the poetry scenes of various cities. And, most importantly, living in an open and creative manner.

Then, suddenly, it just stopped.

For a while, I blamed too many bad submissions and dull poetry readings for making me jaded. Having to read or listen to a lot of crappy, self-indulgent "creative work" can do that. Especially when some of it's your own. The whole process seemed pointless and terribly narcissistic.

Luckily, I've been able to meet some excellent and genuinely creative writers whose work I really enjoy. Interestingly, the only "literature" I've been able to stomach during during this time has been that of my friends. Otherwise, I think I've finished one novel in the last three years, and only cracked open a few books of poetry. I write very little beyond the bits and pieces on this blog, and my journal, which I used to keep regularly, has gaps of several months.

So . . . what happens when the thing on which you've based most of your life suddenly vanishes?

And what if that thing was deeply intertwined with your spiritual journey? Or was the spiritual journey?

A time in the desert, one might say. Actually, that's not true. Having spent a lot of time in the deserts of the American West, I can tell you that a desert is filled with much more beauty, excitement and life. My experience has been more like sitting in the dark on the floor of a closet for two years. Just nothing happening.

(Except then there's not floor to the closet. You just have to learn how to stay afloat.)

In the end, it's not about "literature." It's not the endless mediocre submissions I had to read for Terra Incognita, or poets reciting dull, lifeless work. It's me. I've been struggling with a profound emptiness that lies within myself.

We have met the black hole, and it is us.

(And I wonder why blogging doesn't satisfy!)

What does all of this mean for ZONE? I'm not sure. But I think I'm going to try some new things this year.

Bob Dylan, circa 1965.

When I was younger, I used to write spontaneous pieces/poems on a regular basis, just as a warm-up exercise, or a way to let out whatever needed to come out. I called these "thought dreams," after one of my favorites lines from Bob Dylan: "And if my thought-dreams could be seen / They'd probably put my head in a guillotine / But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only."

Perhaps going back to my "thought dreams" will help prime the pump of a well that's been dry, dry, dry. I hate to inflict the world at large with these pieces, many of which can be downright awful. But my desire to jolt the blog into some new directions - and my own need to publicly express/embarrass myself - makes me want to give it a try.

Also, I've been inspired by Steve Caratzas at The Blog of Lewd Enlightenment, who's been publishing a poem a day for over four years now. Quite an accomplishment. Especially for someone like me who can't even raise a flabby, atrophied arm to the poetic page more than a few times a year.

I'm not going to try and duplicate Steve's heroic effort. I'd like to knock out a few of these a week, if at all possible. And even that may feel like too much. But I want to do something different, head in some new directions.

Don't worry - ZONE is not going to become all bad poetry from a perplexed, dried up writer. I'll continue with the other things I've been doing as well. And hopefully get back to doing more film reviews.

We'll see what happens. I need to open some new doors. Head down some new paths. That's really what I really wanted ZONE to be about.

That's what I still want my life to be about.

(Below this post, my first attempt at reviving the thought dreams...)

There Sat Down, Once, a Thing on Henry's Heart

Strolling these days through The Dream Songs by John Berryman. Here he is in Dublin, 1967, reciting Dream Song 29.

Only the Irish-American poet, Liam Moore, who used to performed several Dream Songs amidst a Velvet-Undergroundesque swirl of feedback, comes close to Berryman reading the original.



Dream Song 29
by John Berryman

There sat down, once, a thing on Henry's heart
só heavy, if he had a hundred years
& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time
Henry could not make good.
Starts again always in Henry's ears
the little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime.

And there is another thing he has in mind
like a grave Sienese face a thousand years
would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly,
with open eyes, he attends, blind.
All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears;
thinking.

But never did Henry, as he thought he did,
end anyone and hacks her body up
and hide the pieces, where they may be found.
He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody's missing.
Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.
Nobody is ever missing.

Sweet Homie El Obama

Mi amigo, y el gran poeta, Urayoán Noel, from Puerto Rico, and now up in Albany. Re-mixing Lynyrd Skynyrd, as only Ura can do, in benefit of Barack Obama.

Seems a good video for Election eve.

The Buddhist Third Class Junk Mail Oracle

I've been working on an indexing project of underground newspapers and magazines from 1963-1968.

A lot of the titles included one or more of the following terms: liberation, movement, militant, peace, and free/freedom. The most ubiquitous name was probably [Your Town/State/Country] Free Press.

But other titles were more literary, humorous and intriguing, including my favorite: The Buddhist Third Class Junk Mail Oracle.

As it turns out, TBTCJMC was one of the first underground papers in Cleveland, Ohio, founded by a poet, artist and alternative press publisher named d.a. levy. According to Wikipedia, Levy died in 1968 of a gunshot wound to the head. Given that it was 1968, some people think he was bumped off by the government for his radical views. Given that he was a poet, others think he just killed himself. No one really knows.

In 2003, Seven Stories Press (a contemporary "alternative" publisher) brought out The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle: the art and poetry of d.a. levy, a collection of Levy's creative work. It also includes "an investigative essay on Levy's life and mysterious death."

For those interested in actually perusing original copies of TBTCJMC, Cleveland State University Library has digitized them.

The underground papers of the 1960s, often student-run, were sort of the blogs of their day. Cheap, affordable printing was the hip technology of the day. I enjoyed strolling through the list of titles. Apart from the obviously political names (Liberation News Service), you see some of the cultural influences on the radical youth of that fascinating and vibrant time. It's an interesting mix of Greek mythology, romanticism, spirituality, Tolkien, William Morris, Lewis Carroll (a lot of Lewis Carroll) and, yes, marijuana.

Rat, from New York City. (Imagine that.)

I've left out well-known papers like The Berkeley Barb or The East Village Other. This is just a list of titles that caught my attention. Ones with asterisks after the name have Wikipedia explanations below. (The information may not be needed for people more literate than I am.)

If you're interested, The University of Connecticut Libraries have an online exhibit called "Voices from the Underground: Radical Protest and the Underground Press," which provided most of my images.

So here are some of the underground rags that radicals in the 1960s were reading and printing:

Alchemist
Alice
Argo***
Artisan
Asterisk
Astral Projection
Atlantis News
Avatar
Bandersnatch***
Black and Red
Black Cat
Blue Bus
Bohemia
Brown Shoes
The Buddhist Third Class Junk Mail Oracle
Buffalo Chip
Crocodile
Cuervo International
Deserted Times
Despite Everything
Eggman
Free Pagan Press
Free Venice Beachhead
Free You
Fresh Air
Fusion
Gambit
Gandalf's Garden
Georgia Straight
Good Morning Teaspoon
Graffiti
Granpa
Great Speckled Bird
Grinding Store
Hair
Hard Core
Helix
Hotcha
Huevos del plata
Humantis
Inferno
Iron Cage
The Great Speckled Bird, from Atlanta.

Kudzu
Liar
Looking GlassLoving Couch Press
Mega Middle Myth
Middle Earth
Miss Blanche
Mother of Voices
Needle
News from Nowhere
Octopus
Old Mole
Olvidate
Open City
Oscar's Underground Ghetto Press
Other Other
Other Scenes
Our Daily Bread
Oz
Paper Highway
Pop-See-Cul
Probe
Prospectus
Protean Radish
Provo
Pterodactyl
Rabid One / Enrage
Raisin Bread
Ramparts Wall Poster
Rat
Roach
Ryce Street Fysh Markete

Old Mole, from Cambridge, MA.

Sanity
Sansculottes***
Satyrday
ScimitarThe Screw
Seventy-Nine Cent Spread
Small Change
SomethingSon of Jabberwock
Speak Easy
The Sun Flower
Super Love
Swamp Erie Pipe Dream
Tablet
Teaspoon & the Door
Ungarbled Word
Le Voyage
Walrus
Weakly Citizen Harold
Where It's At
Wild Flowers
Witzend
Xanadu
Yankee Refuge
Yarrow Stalks
Yellow Dog
Zig Zag

Argo: The ship on which Jason and the Argonauts sailed from Iolcus to retrieve the Golden Fleece.

Bandersnatch: A fictional creature mentioned in Lewis Carroll's poems Jabberwocky and The Hunting of the Snark. The form or size of the creature is not described, nor is it clear whether Bandersnatch is singular, like the Phoenix.

Sansculottes: Sans-culottes (French for "without knee-breeches") was a term created around 1790 - 1792 by the French aristocracy to describe the poorer members of the Third Estate, according to the dominant theory because they usually wore pantaloons (full-length trousers or pants) instead of the silk knee-breeches then in fashion. The term came to refer to the ill-clad and ill-equipped volunteers of the Revolutionary army during the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars, but, above all, to the working class radicals of the Revolution. From this comes the now slightly archaic term sansculottism or sans-culottism, meaning extreme egalitarian republican principles.

Excerpts from The Abyss

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

1

Is the stair here?
Where's the stair?
'The stair's right there,
But it goes nowhere."

And the abyss? the abyss?
'The abyss you can't miss:
It's right where you are--
A step down the stair.'

* * *

2

I have been spoken to variously
But heard little.
My inward witness is dismayed
By my unguarded mouth.
I have taken, too often, the dangerous path,
The vague, the arid,
Neither in nor out of this life.

* * *

Be with me Whitman, maker of catalogues:
For the world invades me again,
And once more the tongues begin babbling. . . .

* * *

3

Too much reality can be dazzle, a surfeit;
Too close immediacy an exhaustion. . . .

So the abyss--
The slippery cold heights,
After the blinding misery,
The climbing, the endless turning. . . .

* * *

4

In this, my half-rest,
Knowing slows for a moment,
And not-knowing enters, silent. . . .

Do we move towards God, or merely another condition?
By the salt waves I hear a river's undersong,
In a place of mottled clouds, a thin mist morning and evening.
I rock between dark and dark,
My soul nearly my own,
My dead selves singing.
And I embrace this calm--


From "The Abyss"
Theodore Roethke

Ave Maria

Feeling Frank-ish this evening . . .

AVE MARIA

Mothers of America
let your kids go to the movies!
get them out of the house so they won't know what you're up to
it's true that fresh air is good for the body
but what about the soul
that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images
and when you grow old as grow old you must
they won't hate you
they won't criticize you they won't know
they'll be in some glamorous country
they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey

they may even be grateful to you
for their first sexual experience
which only cost you a quarter
and didn't upset the peaceful home
they will know where candy bars come from
and gratuitous bags of popcorn
as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it's over
with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg
near the Williamsburg Bridge
oh mothers you will have made the little tykes
so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies
they won't know the difference
and if somebody does it'll be sheer gravy
and they'll have been truly entertained either way
instead of hanging around the yard
or up in their room
hating you
prematurely since you won't have done anything horribly mean yet
except keeping them from the darker joys
it's unforgivable the latter
so don't blame me if you won't take this advice
and the family breaks up
and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set
seeing
movies you wouldn't let them see when they were young

From Lunch Poems. 1964. City Lights Books.

If you haven't been to frankohara.org yet, go pay a visit. They have some cool video clips, including Frank reading "Having a Coke With You."

And then there's the Frank O'Hara Exhibit.

If You Don't Vote for This Poet, We'll Kill This Dog

Steve Caratzas has been nominated for The 2008 Poet Laureate Of The Blogosphere.

Go vote for him . . . NOW. HERE.

It's deserved recognition for a man who's been producing a poem a day on his blog for over three years now.

The Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere Nominee sent out an email this week:

Subject: Pardon the SPAM - I'm a Poet, Not the widow of a Nigerian millionaire!

Dear Sir/Madam/Friend/Enemy:

If you've enjoyed even 7 words of one of my 8-word poems, slaked your thirst for snark with one of my Slipshod Sonnets, or found yourself thinking "That's possibly deep - though I'm not entirely sure!" after pondering one of my long form poetic extravaganzas, well now you can share the love and give something back.

Imagine: fame, fortune, a steaming hot cup of jack squat. These can all be mine, with your help!

Thank you in advance for your vote(s).

Now, you can ask yourself, "Who, exactly, chooses the Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere?"

You can ask yourself "How could anyone possibly locate and read all of the poetry produced in that strange suburban sprawl called the blogosphere? And why would anyone want to?"

You can even ask yourself, "Just who is this Caratzas person and why should I vote for him? I'm already confused enough by the Hillary/Obama dialectic."

All good questions. But they are inconsequential. Go vote for Steve. VOTE HERE.

And do not dawdle or the doggie doesn't go for walkies. Ever. Again.

Online Poetry Reading

More shameless self-promotion. . . .

I'm featured this week at poetryvlog.com, an online journal with videos of poets reading their work.

I read three poems: two from my recent chapbook, A Brief Guide to American Poetry, and a short, newer piece. It's about six minutes in all. You'll need an updated version of QuickTime or Windows Media Player.

poetryvlog.com has a nice archive of all the poets who've been featured, including La Reina, Alexandra van de Kamp. Look for her work as well.

Peace!

The ZONE Primary

Forget Wisconsin and all that talk about Texas and Ohio. The only Primary that matters is the ZONE Primary. Vote NOW. (Look over on the right.)

THE CANDIDATES:

Tom Waits (Rain Dog Party)

Has consistently done well with returning vets and Salvation Army Band girls.

Tom discusses his economic policy with some . . . emus?



Thelonious Monk (Epistrophy Party)

Has garnered early support from younger voters, older voters, minimalists, and hep cats.

What is Epistrophy? Monk lays out his platform.



Yma Súmac (Inca Princess Party)

Has a devoted base that consists of fans of obscure music, lovers of kitsch, and young men who haven't realized yet that they're homosexual. Can she attract soccer moms?

In this town hall meeting, Yma shows her ability to communicate with both the educated upper class and poor indigenous people with funny hats.

Harpo Marx (Harpo Party)

Does surprisingly well with women. Also has strong support among older New York Jews nostalgic for their childhood. Completely dominates the amateur harpist vote.

Harpo speaks! Surprising views on gun control.

T.S. Eliot (J. Alfred Prufrock Party)

A sexy, charismatic "rock star" who delivers impassioned speeches that critics claim are vague and filled with fluff. It's still unclear how voters will respond to his friendship with an American-born Fascist who made treasonous radio broadcasts against the United States during World War II.

Eliot delivers one of his fiery stump speeches.
(Warning: Do not watch this while drunk or on drugs. Something's not quite right.)

UPDATE: Results of the ZONE Primary . . .

A higher turnout than expected, with 17 votes cast. This was due mainly to superior organizing on the part of the Tom Waits campaign, specifically a link from a Tom Waits blog.

One crucial advantage Waits had over the other 4 challengers: he was the only living candidate. Though I'd argue that a dead Yma Sumac still would've done less damage to the planet than a living George W. Bush.

Tom Waits for President. Doesn't sound bad at all.

Tom Waits: 7 (41%)
Harpo Marx: 4 (23%)
Thelonious Monk: 3 (17%)
Yma Sumac: 2 (11%)
T.S. Eliot: 1 (5%)

Charles Cros

Charles Cros (1842-1888) was a French poet, scientist and inventor. According to William Rees, in French Poetry 1820-1950 (Penguin 1990), Cros was "a pioneering researcher in electricity, colour photography, acoustics and telegraphy, and even envisaged interplanetary communication."

In the 1870s, he conceived of a device that would mechanically record sound by tracing oscillations on a cylinder with a screw. He called his invention the Paleophone and submitted it to the Academy of Sciences in Paris, who scoffed at him. A year later, the better- funded Thomas Edison demonstrated a working model of the device, which came to be known as the phonograph. In the end, Cros had the last laugh at the French scientists who snubbed him: The French equivalent of our own National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (responsible for the Grammy Awards) is called L'Académie Charles Cros, and their annual award is named Le Prix Charles Cros.

But Cros' inventions and scientific pursuits were only one part of his life. He spent much of his time with artists and poets such as Manet and Verlaine, drinking absinthe and living the Bohemian life in Paris. When Rimbaud first broke off his volatile relationship with Verlaine, Cros let the young poet stay in his small laboratory. According to Howard Sutton, in "Charles Cros, the Outsider," (The French Review, 1966), "Rimbaud repaid his generosity by wantonly breaking pieces of equipment and destroying a copy of L'Artiste that contained several of Cros' poems."

Cros was a regular at Le Chat Noir, the famous cabaret in Montmarte whose clientele included Debussy, Satie, Strindberg and others. Cros played a key role in Les Hydropathes, an important Parisian literary group at the end of the 19th century. This famous club littéraire met at Le Chat Noir to celebrate literature and - yes, drink a bit. Other members included Sarah Bernhardt, Jules Laforgue, and Guy de Maupassant. Les Hydropathes published a journal of the same name, which included poetry by its members, along with humorous pieces, artwork, etc.

Cros' creative work was overshadowed in his own day by that of Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud and Mallarmé. Because of his reputation as a humorous poet and a writer of nonsense verse, he wasn't taken seriously by many critics.

It wasn't until the 1920s that Cros' poetry started to receive greater recognition, thanks in large part to André Breton and the Surrealists. The very qualities of humor and nonsense that earlier critics had dismissed were viewed by Breton and others as crucial to their own work. He was hailed as a precursor to Surrealism and revered by modern French poets such as Aragon, Eluard and René Char. By the 1950s, his complete works began to appear in various editions, and his reputation in France now seems solid.

Unfortunately, Cros' work remains almost completely unknown in the United States. After a fair amount of research, I could only locate a handful of translations in various anthologies and across the internet. American poet Kenneth Rexroth translated eight poems by Cros in One Hundred Poems from the French (Pym-Randall, Cambridge 1972), which, sadly, seems to be out of print. And William Rees includes five other Cros poems in the Penguin anthology. Beyond that, there's very little available.

Hopefully, someone will begin translating more of his work from the French, enough to at least put together a Selected Poems. Cros' work deserves that much. He's an interesting transition figure between Baudelaire and the Surrealists, and his work ranges from lush poems on erotic love (and its aftermath) to the more abstract nonsense pieces.

As Rees said of him:

"Cros has been acknowledged more recently as a significant poet, whose rather fin-de-siècle blend of emotion and self-mocking, suspicious irony prefigures Corbière and especially Laforgue, who recognized the influence. Passionate and analytical, self-dramatizing and sardonic, this philologist has a taste for crisp, laconic, unpretentious lines of verse where lyricism interacts with wit. He experiments with a wide range of metres and stanza forms, and is adept at coining original and delightful combinations of noun and adjective, often drawing together the naive and refined. His sound associations and rhythmic control show a dynamic mastery of his feelings, leaving us often with a mixed sense of exhilaration and anti-climax."

More importantly, Cros writes about absinthe. Maybe that will make him cool enough to young American poets to spark some interest in his work, now that absinthe is legal again in the United States and becoming trendy, enough for Stepehen Colbert to cover it in his WORD this week: absinthetinence. I wish Liam and I had known about Cros in our absinthe phase back in Spain! We would've easily crowned Cros the poet laureate of La Fée Verte.

Sadly, Cros died at age 45, most likely from all the absinthe and other alcohol he had consumed. But hey, "Those whom the gods love die young" and all that, right?

Anyway, Charles Cros . . . a fascinating poet, inventor and scientist.

Since it's hard finding his work in English, here are three translations - two by Rees and one by Rexroth. The French originals are included.

UPDATE: The Rexroth translation is also available at the BUREAU OF PUBLIC SECRETS website, which has another poem by Cros, "The Future," as well as Rexroth translations of Artaud, Desnos, Prévert, Queaneau, Reverdy and other Frecnh poets. The Bureau also has an extensive archive of Rexroth critical essays, some of his poetry, translations, and other writings. It's an impressive collection. And that's only one part of the overall website, which has many other fascinating artifacts. Definitely worth investigating.

LENDERMAIN

A Henri Mercier.

Avec les fleurs, avec les femmes,
Avec l’absinthe, avec le feu,
On peut se divertir un peu,
Jouer son rôle en quelque drame.

L’absinthe bue un soir d’hiver
Éclaire en vert l’âme enfumée,
Et les fleurs, sur la bien-aimée
Embaument devant le feu clair.

Puis les baisers perdent leurs charmes,
Ayant duré quelques saisons.
Les réciproques trahisons
Font qu’on se quitte un jour, sans larmes.

On brûle lettres et bouquets
Et le feu se met à l’alcôve.
Et, si la triste vie est sauve,
Restent l’absinthe et ses hoquets.

Les portraits sont mangés des flammes:
Les doigts crispés sont tremblotants...
On meurt d’avoir dormi longtemps
Avec les fleurs, avec les femmes.

MORROW (trans. by Rees)

With flowers, with women,
With absinthe, with fire,
One can have a little entertainment,
Play one's role in some drama.

Absinthe drunk on a winter evening
Enlightens in green the smoky soul,
And flowers on the loved one
Give off fragrance before the shining fire.

Then kisses lose their charms,
Having lasted a few seasons.
Mutual betrayals
One day bring separation, without tears.

HIÉROGLYPHE

J'ai trois fenêtres à ma chambre:
L'amour, la mer, la mort,
Sang vif, vert calme, violet.

O femme, doux et lourd trésor!

Froids vitraux, cloches, odeurs d'ambre.
La mer, la mort, l'amour,
Ne sentir que ce qui me plaît ...

Femme, plus claire que le jour!

Par ce soir doré de septembre,
La mort, l'amour, la mer,
Me noyer dans l'oubli complet.

Femme! femme! cercueil de chair!

HIEROGLYPH (trans. by Rees)

I have three windows in my room:
Love, sea, death,
Living blood, calm green, violet.

O woman, sweet and heavy treasure!

Cold stained glass, bells, scents of amber.
Sea, death, love,
To feel only what gives me pleasure ...

Woman, brighter than daylight!

On this gilded September evening,
Death, love, sea,
To drown myself in entire oblivion.

Woman! woman! coffin of flesh!

LE HARENG SAUR

Il était un grand mur blanc - nu, nu, nu,
Contre le mur une échelle - haute, haute, haute,
Et, par terre, un hareng saur - sec, sec, sec.

Il vient, tenant dans ses mains - sales, sales, sales,
Un marteau lourd, un grand clou - pointu, pointu, pointu,
Un peloton de ficelle - gros, gros, gros.

Alors il monte à l’échelle - haute, haute, haute,
Et plante le clou pointu - toc, toc, toc,
Tout en haut du grand mur blanc - nu, nu, nu.

Il laisse aller le marteau - qui tombe, qui tombe, qui tombe,
Attache au clou la ficelle - longue, longue, longue,
Et, au bout, le hareng saur - sec, sec, sec.

Il redescend de l’échelle - haute, haute, haute,
L’emporte avec le marteau - lourd, lourd, lourd,
Et puis, il s’en va ailleurs, - loin, loin, loin.

Et, depuis, le hareng saur - sec, sec, sec,
Au bout de cette ficelle - longue, longue, longue,
Très lentement se balance - toujours, toujours, toujours.

J’ai composé cette histoire, - simple, simple, simple,
Pour mettre en fureur les gens - graves, graves, graves,
Et amuser les enfants - petits, petits, petits.

UPDATE 2: Never underestimate the power of YouTube. I found this delightful animated version of "LE HARENG SAUR" [THE SMOKED HERRING]. Watch and listen as you read the poem. . . .



THE SMOKED HERRING (trans. by Rexroth)

Once upon a time there was a big white wall — bare, bare, bare,
Against the wall there stood a ladder — high, high, high,
And on the ground a smoked herring — dry, dry, dry,

He comes, holding in his hands — dirty, dirty, dirty,
A heavy hammer and a big nail — sharp, sharp, sharp,
A ball of string — big, big, big,

Then he climbs the ladder — high, high, high,
And drives the sharp nail — tock, tock, tock,
Way up on the big white wall — bare, bare, bare,

He drops the hammer — down, down, down,
To the nail he fastens a string — long, long, long,
And, at the end, the smoked herring — dry, dry, dry,

He comes down the ladder — high, high, high,
He picks up the hammer — heavy, heavy, heavy,
And goes off somewhere — far, far, far,

And ever afterwards the smoked herring — dry, dry, dry,
At the end of that string — long, long, long,
Very slowly sways — forever and ever and ever.

I made up this story — silly, silly, silly,
To infuriate the squares — solemn, solemn, solemn,
And to amuse the children — little, little, little.

A Brief Guide to American Poetry

And now . . . a journey into shameless self-promotion.

My first chapbook of poems has come out. It's called A Brief Guide to American Poetry and includes five pieces selected by editor Michele Cooper for her Premier Poets Chapbook Series.

I want to thank Michele for believing in my work enough to publish me in her fine series of chapbooks, which also features titles by Janet Kaplan, Les Lopes and Alexandra van de Kamp, among others. It's truly an honor.

How weird and exciting to see this little creature come into the world. . . .

If you're interested, you can order a copy online. See the sidebar on the right.

In the meantime, here's the title poem. It's a slightly revised version from the one in the chapbook. (You know poets - always fiddling with their work.)

-----------------------------

A Brief Guide to American Poetry

The doorknob is not a part of the floorshow.

The floorshow, while still engaged in a peripheral attempt at
cultural revolution, has been downgraded to a niche market.

There is now a cable channel selling facsimiles
of the first-edition ice box.

If you visit the web site,
you can make the virtual poet recite in Yiddish
or set herself on fire in the lobby of corporate headquarters.

The beaches are nice, but sewage is a problem
after heavy rain.

Members of the Academy have installed an interactive
guillotine for those who want to ask questions.

When you enter the Hall of Mirrors, please remember
to extinguish your signal flares.

Post-war poets can be divided into two camps:
the horseradish-eaters and the smoke detectors.

Class distinction is muted, inasmuch as “class”
as a concept has been transformed into
a porcelain poodle.

Cultural politics play an increasingly important role,
generally that of the sexy bureaucrat in the musical version
of No Exit.

Sexual orientation is often confused and frequently
alone on a Saturday night.

There has been discussion among the thesis committee
about which war is actually being referred to
in the term “post-war.”

The doorknobs are largely symbolic.

The organic zeitgeist you left rotting in the shoebox
has been analyzed and deleted.

Women outnumber men in most areas,
except, of course, in upper management.

If you don’t know the secret handshake, don’t worry.
They weren’t going to let you into the club anyway.

Many pre-war poets, once full of vim and vigor,
have vanished from the post-war catalogue.

The proletariat giraffe-handler is no longer an accurate
guide for trope distribution.

The flag has been surgically sewn into your ass,
so make the best of it when choosing a theme
for your new work.

FYI: The rain is no longer fashionable.

Heroin abuse still elicits a few fervent nods at open mics,
but alienation has been dropped from the List
of Recommended Subject Matter.

Suggested alternatives include: yoga, cats, free
market democracy, and liberal angst at being rejected
by the jocks in charge of the dance committee.

Brechtian tendencies can be treated easily at any writers’ workshop.

Translations of foreign poetry have steadily decreased
since the President sprayed jism on the hired-help’s dress.

This is offset by the growing number of dissertations
on the post-modern significance of
Madonna’s marketing techniques.

Suicide is still an option, though it lost
some of its luster after that Sylvia Plath movie.

The drugs are helping for the most part, but I keep seeing
the horse go up in flames. On bad nights, he sings
a little lullaby while his eyeballs melt.

Be careful reading Baudelaire or Gregory Corso
on the subway. The doorknob in your handbag may explode.

ZONE - Year One

I just realized this afternoon that I've been blogging for over a year now. My first post was dated August 29, 2006. (No one left a comment. . . . It's so cold out in cyberspace sometimes.)

At the time, I thought I would write about all kinds of things, and came up with the ambitious subtitle: "improvisations on literature : music : film : the spiritual : the political : the ridiculous." Looking back over the previous year, I see very little about literature, some on music, a lot on film, not much about the spiritual, some on the political and . . . well, the whole thing is rather "ridiculous," isn't it?

It's strange that I haven't written much on literature and spirituality, considering that these have been the two most important journeys of my life. Maybe, to quote 10CC, "it's just a silly phase I'm going through."

Maybe not. It's been a while since I've finished a novel. I read a bit of poetry here and there, but not nearly as much as I used to. Haven't been writing much of my own work. I do, however, have a poetry reading coming up this Sunday in Manhattan, with jazz musicians (!) - a longtime dream fulfilled. I'm looking forward to that. I even managed to come up with a new piece. But, all in all, literature seems to have fallen off my radar a bit. Perhaps I burned out after spending most of my energy over the previous seven years editing an international bilingual literary magazine, putting readings together, translating, writing grants, hosting events, etc. Je ne sais pas.

It's not like blogging has been easy and caused me to forsake the sweat and toil of poetry. I still find this the hardest writing I've ever done in some ways. My respect for good journalists, bloggers, and film reviewers has gone up immensely in the last year.

Anyway, just some musings. . . .

I have no idea idea where this blogging thing will go. I'm still struggling to find a certain voice in this somewhat strange format that demands both immediacy and thoughtfulness at the same time. My Dada Iraq post may have been the closest I've come to how I imagined this project. But that's life, no? Instead, I wind up writing weird reviews about obscure William Holden films. I didn't see that one coming.

The best part has been meeting and/or conversing with other people in the wide open spaces of our digital universe. My gift on this one-year blogging anniversary is all of you who've taken the time to read my posts and comment on them here or elsewhere. So thanks, Liam, Jeff, Crystal, Schertzer, Steve, Paul, Lawrence, and everyone else.

And most of all, to my muse (musette?) - Alexandra. La Reina de mi vida.

Meanwhile, here's a very profound and introspective song from my childhood to celebrate ONE. (OMG, I want those pants!)

Onward through the fog . . . .

Guillaume le fou

Good Bye, Lady Bird

Another one of the Grande Dames of Texas passed away yesterday. Lady Bird Johnson was 94.

Growing up in Austin, it was impossible not to hear of her. I watched her television station; listened to her radio station; rode my bike along the Hike and Bike Trail, which she helped create; visited her husband's Presidential Library countless times; saw all the wildflowers she helped plant along the roads of Texas; and even went to the Johnson Family Ranch, which she turned over to the nation in 1972 as a National Historic Site.

Her radio station, KLBJ, was a pretty damn good station, too. The only real rock and roll station in Austin in the 1970s. It embraced punk rock early and introduced me to groups such as the Clash, Sex Pistols and others.

She brought poetry and barbeque to the White House. Can't get much better than that.

There's going to be a public cortege on Sunday, starting at the Capitol in Austin, passing along Cesar Chavez Street, crossing Town Lake, and heading out of town all the way to Johnson City, where she'll be buried at the family cemetery.

Here's part of an obituary from the Austin American Statesman (free registration required):

Her marriage to a larger-than-life Texan thrust a shy, small-town girl named Lady Bird Johnson into the national spotlight. A love affair with the great outdoors kept her there.

And though nationally, she was best known as the wife of Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th president, Mrs. Johnson was very much a figure in her own right. She mixed Southern graciousness with a quiet, cast-iron fortitude that not only won admirers but allowed her to steer a large business enterprise and help forge a national environmental movement.

Mrs. Johnson was an author, a businesswoman, a champion of education and conservation efforts, a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother and, most of all, a supportive and loving wife. She was a tireless advocate who left her gentle fingerprints on America's history and helped shape its diverse landscape.

Her legacy includes the millions of daffodils that bloom every year in the nation's capital, that strip of serenity along Town Lake known as the hike-and-bike trail and the bursts of spring color that have made stretches of Texas highways nothing short of remarkable.

Mrs. Johnson was a true intellect who loved books and poetry and, above all, stimulating conversation. At home and on vacations, she surrounded herself with writers, academics, politicians and thoughtful people whose discourse was far from idle chit-chat.

Her love of nature didn't confine itself to boardrooms and committee work. The outdoors and natural environment were part of Mrs. Johnson's regular day, as her once-frequent walks along Town Lake made evident, along with her picnic/poetry readings on the lawn fronting the LBJ Library.

Her environmental work took her from the National Geographic Society board of trustees to the Advisory Board on National Parks. She also served on the board of the American Conservation Society.

Lady Bird and Lyndon, dancing at their daughter's wedding reception in the White House, 1967.


And from the New York Times obituary (free registration required):

Mrs. Johnson was a calm and steadying influence on her often moody and volatile husband as she quietly attended to the demands imposed by his career. Liz Carpenter, her press secretary during her years in the White House, once wrote that “if President Johnson was the long arm, Lady Bird Johnson was the gentle hand."

She softened hurts, mediated quarrels and won over many political opponents. Johnson often said his political ascent would have been inconceivable without his wife’s devotion and forbearance. Others shared that belief.

Mrs. Johnson developed her own public projects. She was an early supporter of the environment and, in championing highway beautification, worked to banish billboards and plant flowers and trees.

Mrs. Johnson financed her husband’s first campaign for Congress in 1937 with a $10,000 loan against a small inheritance from her mother. She began taking an active role in politics in 1941, after he lost his first bid for the Senate and returned to the House. While he was on active duty in the Navy during World War II, Mrs. Johnson managed his legislative office. From that point she shared his public life, representing him, speaking for him and answering questions with unusual candor.

Johnson openly expressed affection for his wife. He often planted a quick kiss on her forehead and held her hand when they were being driven somewhere. In public, Mrs. Johnson referred to her husband as Lyndon; when they were alone or with friends, he was Darling. She was always Bird.

Although she had attended many state dinners in the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, Mrs. Johnson made no effort to copy the style of previous first ladies. Her first state dinner, for the president of Italy and his wife, combined Italian opera and American hootenanny.

The Johnsons enjoyed entertaining official guests at the L.B.J. Ranch in Stonewall, Tex. Their Texas background inspired the menus and entertainment for many White House events. The South Lawn, which the president referred to as the backyard, became a setting for barbecues.

Mrs. Johnson was born Claudia Alta Taylor on Dec. 22, 1912 in a big red brick house in the East Texas town of Karnack (population 100). The youngest of three children and the only girl, she acquired the name Lady Bird as a toddler after a nursemaid described her as “purty as a lady bird.”

Her whirlwind romance with Lyndon Johnson began in the autumn of 1934 in the office of a friend in Austin. They met for breakfast the next morning. After pouring out his life history, financial status, how much insurance he carried and his prospects, Johnson asked her to marry him. When she reported the first-date proposal to her father, he showed no astonishment. “Some of the best bargains are made in a hurry,” he said.

It took a few more tries before Johnson’s persistence was rewarded.

“He was the most outspoken, straightforward, determined person I’d ever encountered,” Mrs. Johnson said of her suitor years later. “I knew I’d met something remarkable, but I didn’t know quite what.”

They were married on Nov. 17, 1934, two months after they met, in St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in San Antonio. The groom forgot the ring, and the best man was sent across the street to buy one at a Sears, Roebuck store for $2.98.

“It has been a wonderful life,” she told Ms. Carpenter in 1992. “I feel like a jug into which wine is poured until it overflows.”