Alan Catlin has been writing and publishing in the "littles" and not so "littles" since the days of the mimeo revolution. Mimeos are gone and the Internet is here and so is the poet after a demanding, but stimulating, in more ways than he cares to describe, career in the service industry, mostly as a professional barman. His many chapbooks and full length books deal with life experiences, which he considers on the job training, or as an advance degree in life studies. Since bailing from the job, you never retire from The Business, you get out while you can, he has indulged his lifelong interest in Art and Literature, branching out into different forms and subjects. While this departure may seem unusual, it was his barman profession he calls his, unchosen profession, the one that just sort of happened while pursuing his desired career as a scholar and a teacher in Graduate School.In recent years he has been the poetry editor of an online poetry journal: misfitmagazine.net. In keeping with his interest in preserving the obscure, the ephemeral and the unusual written word, he has been collecting and archiving a vast accumulation of rare printed material from well over thirty five years of publishing, with the State University of New York Buffalo.
Still Life Dreaming Five Times
1-
Dream remembered:
Man walking through
walls, outstretched hands
on fire
2-
In deserted hall,
ghost light on
piano keys
3-
Sterile eggs in
hollow nests; shells
for origami birds
4-
Colored sand falling
in inverted hourglass;
pyramids of dreams
5-
Chinese landscape painting
dream; falling water
Autumn Evenings on the Island Four Times
1-
Seascape motionless
as moonlight
in a mirror
2-
On the bluffs at sunset,
lighthouse beacon flares
3-
Life guard stands turned
face down; no one saved
today
4-
Gauze of fog covers
the horizon; no sunset
today
Static Landscapes Eight Times
1-
Ghost ranch vista;
even the clouds
have windows
2-
Field of white sand,
large black stone off-center;
rising, falling, or standing still?
3-
In the desert:
long horned steer skulls
replace the clouds
4-
Library copy of Stieglitz’s
late work; nude studies
of his wife torn out
5-
A waking dream
with holes in it;
clouds seeping out
6-
Tarnished mirror
in half-light, shadow
images staring back;
the ghost of a face
7-
Moonrise over the mountains,
drying laundry and prayer flags
in early evening breeze
8-
Valley shadows spread;
how the sun sets
Aspects of Rain Four Times
1-
Metal cans and half-
filled glass jars in downpour;
a found tone poem
2-
Rain falling on water-
color village, houses
dissolving into rivers,
rivers dissolving into nothing
3-
Cool rain on evergreen
trees, early morning
light harbors last
night’s shadow
4-
Rain drop poised
on bare branch
about to fall
Melancholia Four Times
1-
Dreaming Li Po:
a red moon over
a frozen sea; a drop
of wine falls,
red stain spreads
2-
Your face in
shattered mirror,
all the disconnected pieces,
something else now
3-
Estate settled,
house sold,
our son’s growth chart
still inside
4-
Frigid January night,
signature red beret
balanced slightly askew
on the statue of Robbie
Burns; a memorial for
a gone poet
( for Tom Natell)
