Small Press History 2: Steven Hirsch/Heaven Bone/1980s-2000

 BE:  When did you begin Heaven Bone and what/who inspired you to do it?

SH: I wanted to continue my education after having left the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute while I ran the family business and raised a family of my own. My professional life was complimentary to my literary publishing side-line as I became an expert in 4-color magazine publishing and color management, having managed workflows and technology for magazines such as Elle, Woman’s Day, Cycle World, Car & Driver, Food & Wine, Travel and Leisure, and Departures magazines. I wanted to publish spiritual and surreal work to keep my own writing practice vital. It became much more and opened doors to many wonderful relationships and memorable reading events.

BE:  Who were some of the people you published?  My memory is wonky but I recall having a poem in an issue that also included Alan Ginsberg.  Am I dreaming?

Found it!

SH:  No, I don’t believe I ever published Allen ironically. It might have been Charles Bukowski, or Diane DiPrima, I need to look at my archives. Over the years we published some really great work from poets and fiction writers such as Anne Waldman, Gerard Malanga, Keith Abbott, Jonathan Brannen, Jack Foley, Janine Pommy Vega, Michael McClure, Jake Berry, Ivan Arguelles, David Chorlton, Mikhail Horowitz, Lyn LIfshin, Jack Collom, Reed Bye, David Cope, Antler, Richard Kostelanetz, as well as Diane and ‘Buk’. So many I can’t list them all here but our criteria was always to select work that moved us in some way at the heart. Hyper-Intellectual or overly academic poetry bores me.

BE:  What were your greatest accomplishments or rewards both as editor and multi-dimensional artist in the 80s?

SH: I think when Anne Waldman won our chapbook competition with her manuscript “Dark Arcana” and we published it with a cover photo by Patti Smith. I was really proud of that production and I think the book stands up as a powerful and timely multimedia collaboration as well as a potent political statement.

I used the prevailing software at the time (Quark, Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator) to feed my daytime career skills in publishing and to create as beautiful and interesting a literary journal as possible. I think straddling 2 worlds like this was an accomplishment; one hand washed the other so to speak. Most small press concerns are maintained in parallel to gainful employment; I tried to make the best of it. The 80s was surreal enough as it was so it was easy to ask poets for experimental, yet heart-grounded work. I loved the rich balance Heaven Bone had with art, fiction, poetry, reviews, essays, visual poems and I used the tech of the time to enhance what I could. 

BE:  How long did you publish Heaven Bone  and what caused you to stop publishing it? Did you move into other publishing projects and what were/are they?

SH:  We started in 1986 as a mimeo mag with a stapled edge and our final issue was our millennium issue #12 in 2000, done with full 4 color covers, perfect bound, filled with hi-res art and graphics. 

We stopped publishing for the same reasons so many independent publishers stopped. No money. The distributors like Ubiquity and others destroyed more copies than they sold. Unless you had a grant or an angel with deep pockets, it was not sustainable.

Last issue

Recently, I have been helping poets self-publish on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. My friend Kirpal Gordon and I are putting out books under the collaborative marketing imprint Giant Steps Press. We find grants and other funding sources to cover the book prep and cover design, then I show the poet how to upload their mss and cover to the KDP platform. This way the poet gets all the profit from their work and the GSP website maintains an author’s page for each poet as well as a blog, interviews and videos. It’s working well; I just published a book of letters between David Cope and Allen Ginsberg titled The CORRESPONDENCE of DAVID COPE & ALLEN GINSBERG 1976 – 1996   Available on Amazon.

Next book is Poet's Apprentice a book by Randy Roark. It is a memoir of being Allen Ginsberg’s apprentice at Naropa Institute in Boulder, CO, starting in 1980.

BE:  Any advice or musings about editing/publishing in today’s electronic age?

Digital mags can be fun but there’s nothing like having paper and ink in your hands. Short attention span browsing is a pandemic of psychic attrition. A books’ colors are reflective instead of transmissive; the paper has weight and tone and texture. The experience of digital poetry is far less tactile. There’s nothing like holding a beautiful magazine or journal in your hands and carrying it around with you to share, watching it get worn with study. Virtual reality holds promise for immersive poetry experiences and I am looking to see how that evolves. Thin money for arts in general has slowed down innovation in digital creative media for artists and writers. 

As far as advice to writers goes: Don’t try and write to satisfy an editor’s stated needs or target a specific magazine or contest. Write ‘yourself’ and then find an editor that gets you. Give up on any idea of money, fame and notoriety, just write and give yourself completely to it.

Advice to poetry publishers: Community…Community…Community. This is where the digital landscape excels, building community among artists in various medias. Note that a poet won a major talent competition (AGT?) recently so the opportunity is present for poetry to become more relevant (and more profitable). When things get tough, the poets get heard.

Steve Hirsch is a poet, musician, electronic publishing guru, and former editor/publisher of the literary magazine Heaven Bone. He studied writing and drama at Naropa Institute in Boulder, CO, where he was a student and apprentice of Allen Ginsberg and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche as well as at Bard College where he studied with Robert Kelly. In recent years he has been riding his Harley all over the Northeast, studying buddhism, poetry and writing, and playing latin and african hand drums as a founding member of the drum circle "Spirithawk". Steve is the author of Ramapo 500 Affirmations (Flower Thief, 1998) and he has had poems appear in Hunger, Napalm Health Spa Report, Pudding, Big Scream, Hazmat Review, Muse Apprentice Guild, and Etcetera among others.

THE MYTH OF TALENT AND INSPIRATION by Sylvia Van Nooten

It gives me a lot of pleasure to encourage people to be creative. I want others to find the freedom and joy in expression that I’ve found.  As I have always been fascinated by art, music and writing, I’ve tried them all.  This has allowed me to experience reading, listening to music, looking at art on a deeper level.  Want to know how hard it is to write a novel?  Write one yourself, the same for playing an instrument and the visual arts.  

I think anyone can do this, we’re just not allowed to be bad at something long enough to get good at it.  As a child I loved drawing and painting but—I couldn’t draw a house or a person like the kids who were ‘good’ at art—so I gave it up.  It was imprinted on me, “You are not an artist.” I repeated that for years until I hit my late thirties and was writing my novel.  When I got writer’s block, I started doing art, not caring if I was any good because, “I’m a writer, not an artist.” The art inspired the writing, as did playing the piano.  Creativity is not limited to one genre, just check out Margaret Atwood and Joni Mitchell for genius level examples.  

One thing I hear from many people is, “I don’t have any inspiration.”  I’ve said it myself but now it’s not an excuse.  Inspiration isn’t a Magic Fairy who appears and illuminates one.  Inspiration requires suspension of that culturally programmed brain that’s always telling you what you can’t do.  Inspiration requires work.

Whenever I sit down to work on my Clyde series, I’m not experiencing inspiration.  My internal dialogue goes like this, every single time.  “I don’t want to do another Clyde.  I have no ideas. I can’t.” But I pick up the pen and start drawing.  Eventually a shape takes form, then an idea for the writing and suddenly I’m excited and joyful.  I push through doubt and find....INSPIRATION. 

Here is a painting I did titled, “Creating Neural Pathways”.

This is how I feel about inspiration, it must be created, the neural pathways formed, the doubts and anxiety about being good enough eliminated.  We are all creators conditioned to doubt ourselves.  One might as well try.  

Sylvia Van Nooten is an asemic artist and visual poet but once she was a writer of fiction.  Way back in the late nineties she wrote a novel and it almost made it.  Jonathan Franzen’s agent read it and expressed interest, she sent some ideas for a rewrite.  But that novel-- titled Brain Music--which today sits in a cardboard box in Sylvia’s basement, got her started doing art because of writer’s block. Writer’s block, particularly for writer’s of fiction-without-a-strong-plot, heavy on the beautiful sentences, light on structure---well it’s exhausting.  Sylvia took time away from her novel to start playing with oil paints and pastels.  Eventually the writer’s block became permanent but the art continues, twenty plus years later.  

"i saw god cooking children / paint their bones" by John Compton, reviewed by Hex'm Jai

Greetings and salutations bibliophiles!

This is a small and powerful collection.  I make it no secret that I am sucker for well crafted imagery.  If poetry or the literary canon were an organized religion, I would be a devout zealot of the deities Rimbaud and Baudelaire.  That said, there is imagery and then there is IMAGERY.  IMAGERY being beyond the aesthetically pleasing window dressing of ‘imagery’ which, unfortunately, is the more prevalent of the two.  ‘Imagery’ is decorative, it is filagree, form without function and therefore, though beautiful like a floral arrangement, ultimately free of substance.  IMAGERY on the other hand is a fantastic delivery system.  It provides the same aesthetic nature of ‘imagery’ but with function and purpose.  It’s not just ‘pretty,’ it is engaging and transportive; it can be beatific / horrific but always has an effect beyond two dimensions.  IMAGERY is visceral.

Reading this collection is like being emersed in barrage of film shorts…each image or scene carefully crafted and delivered to your core.  Through his concise use of IMAGERY, John paints images into your eye that you can feel, taste, hear and smell as well as see.  Through this delivery system you are provided with both emotion and meaning that you can experience.  These are not longwinded, verbose bouquets of language.  You will not become lost in impressionistic imagery and texture.  You will BECOME the imagery and texture and therefore experience it.

Sample poem from i saw god cooking children / paint their bones:

like & but & &

i went into the room

collapsing

a song bleeds from my ears

i am deaf

i lie on my back

floating          the river

is dense

saltwater like

the dead sea

like the salt

flats

somewhere in utah

like a log like a

dead fish like a leaf

i drift

in my current

unharmed but

harmed

but screaming

but somewhere there is an old lady

crying

swimming to me

paddling & clawing

through the liquid substance

digging at my eyes

my mouth my chest

clotting my ears

with her fingers

with cotton

breathing into my lungs

her oxygen her carbon

dioxide her meager life

When you have finished this collection, you can put it on the shelf right next to “Les Fleurs du Mal”. 

]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]

i saw god cooking children / paint their bones

is available at Etsy via Blood Pudding Press

john compton (b. 1987) is gay poet who lives in kentucky. his poetry resides in his chest like many hearts & they bloom like vigorously infectious wild flowers. he lives in a tiny town, with his husband josh and their 14 dogs and 3 cats. he feels his head is an auditorium filled with the dead poets from the past. poems are written and edited constantly. his poetry is a personal journey. he reaches for things close and far, trying to give them life: growing up gay; having mental health issues; a journey into his childhood; the world that surrounds us. he writes to be alive, to learn and to grow. he loves imagery, metaphor, simile, abstract language, sounds, when one word can drift you into another direction. he loves playing with vocabulary, creating texture and emotions. he has published 1 book and 5 chapbooks published and forthcoming: trainride elsewhere (august 2016) from Pressed Wafer/tba; that moan like a saxophone (december 2016) from kindle; ampersand (march 2018) from Plan B Press; a child growing wild inside the mothering womb (june 2020) from ghost city press; i saw god cooking children / paint their bones (oct 2020) from blood pudding press; to wash all the pretty things off my skin (sept 2021) from ethel zine & micro-press. he has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies.

Small Press History: Michael Hathaway/Chiron Review 1980s-Present

 

BE: It is my recollection that I was in Germany and I had already produced at least one perfect bound issue of Gypsy, some chapbooks and cassette collections of original poetry and music from many countries when I received a letter from you asking advice about starting a new magazine. Is that in your recollection too and what are a few other small mags you were following at the time and what did you like about them?

MH: I do remember writing you a fanboy letter and asking for advice after seeing Gypsy for the first time! I fell in love with it. Gypsy was among the publications that introduced me to the “small press,” when anyone asks about my favorite literary magazines, Gypsy is always on the list, you’re a publisher and poet I’ve always respected and looked up to.

I remember asking you once for Bukowski’s address, as he had poems in Gypsy, and I wanted to invite him to send some poems, which he did several times. I do believe publishing him put us on “the radar,” so I have you to thank for that!

I also remember a compilation issue that Gypsy did, which I thought was just brilliant and gorgeous. (When it’s my turn to host Poetry Rendezvous, that’s how we do our anthologies.)

To name a handful, other mags that I enjoyed back then were Calliope’s Corner, Fire!, Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, Poetry Motel, Raw Bone, Wyoming: Hub of the Wheel, Forum for Universal Spokesmen, Raw Dog Press, Yellow Butterfly, Newsletter Inago, Mockersatz, The Devil’s Millhopper, Bogg, Impetus, Abbey, Gargoyle, Psychopoetica, Tears in the Fence, Atom Mind.

I liked them because they were all so individual, so different from each other in style, tone, subject matter, life experience, and voice. They didn’t censor, didn’t hold back. They were a refreshing antidote to mainstream literature. Some were intense, some profound, some irreverent, some funny AF (Mockersatz). The artwork was always interesting, all the different mediums of presentation fascinated me. And they came from all over the place! To a country bumpkin stuck in rural Kansas, all the return addresses on the envelopes were exotic places.

BE: What were some of the deciding factors to begin Chiron?

MH: I’ve told the story before, but history doesn’t change. My cousin Connie showed me a sheaf of poems she’d written. I thought they were wonderful, and tried getting publishers interested. Of course, being 19, I had no idea how such things worked and encountered one slammed door after another. (Two of Connie’s poems appear in the forthcoming All the Colors of Life: An Anthology coming very soon from Ruth Moon Kempher’s Kings Estate Press.)

A year after graduating high school, I took a job working as a typesetter at a nearby daily paper. After a year of working there, I realized I could publish Connie’s poems myself. And anything else I wanted! I wrote to a few friends and pen pals and asked for poems, stories, art and photographs, and that’s how the first issue was born. My supervisor, Jim, let me use the composing room to put the issue together, the guys in the press room printed it. I paid for the printing.

At one point, my supervisor told me I could use the photocopier and any of the machines in the composing room as much as I wanted at night, if I would stay as a typesetter until he retired. I typed 126 wpm, and he said I typed the cleanest copy he’d ever seen since he started in the newspaper business (1961). Whether that was true or not, I don’t know, but the praise did wonders for me at that young age. (And believe me, I took Jim at his word and gave that photocopier a workout!)

But I was extremely restless (still am). I quit work there and returned four times in 13 years. Even though I was immature and could be a pain in the ass, I think my work actually was good enough that he wanted to keep me on anyway. He (and his successor) would always hire me back. I did enjoy and take pride in the work, and had great respect for the role a free press plays in society.

My longest stint was three years. The last one saw me promoted from the composing room to society editor. That lasted six months. Chiron was actually the reason for that job ending permanently, but that’s another tempest in a teacup for another day …

BE: When did you first publish Chiron and how was it received? I remember most of us reviewed or mentioned other small mags in our publications. 

It was first published Feb. 19, 1982. I was oblivious to the small press world then. The first issue went to friends and family. It got mixed reactions. My great-aunt Goldia, was scandalized as was my elderly piano teacher, Mrs. Budge, and her sister. But a lot of people had positive reactions. Many readers liked Connie’s poems as much as I did; and there was experimental fiction and poetry that was fascinating and fun. I especially loved the work by my friend (now Rev.) Maggie Duval, who also created the beautiful unicorn that graced the cover of the first six issues. Robert O’Hara’s photography page was perfect and beautiful.

Then browsing at the Great Bend [KS] Public Library, I found a copy of Len Fulton’s International Directory of Small Presses and Little Magazines. That opened up the world to me and the magazine. I sent copies to them, got listed in that directory (“the Bible of the business”) and Small Press Directory. And ordered a few “sample copies” of the other mags, and sent copies of my magazine to them. I had no clue that was the beginning of the most amazing, far-flung, life-long network of writers, editors, publishers, and friends that I could have ever dreamed up.

I was totally enamored of other alternative/underground/small press publications, all of them. From the traditional to the experimental, to the hand-made stapled booklets with rubber stamp art, and collages, to the high-end glossy journals. I exchanged with other publishers frequently, was honored to promote them in Kindred Spirit/Chiron Review. We helped each other with “exchange subscriptions” and “exchange ads”. I wrote a column titled, “News, Etc.,” in which I tried to mention and quote from every single publication that crossed my desk. I didn’t live up to that, but tried.

One publisher told me back in the 90s, that a mention in my column would bring “$60-$100 in sales” (for publications that were 50 cents-$5 each back then). That made me happy. We ran lots of book and magazine reviews, I had a nice staff of writers who would review books I sent them, or books they obtained other ways. And we accepted unsolicited reviews. Being part of, and helping to foster the small press community was a marvelous joy. (I didn’t realize that’s what we were doing back then, I was just making friends, “participating in the dialogue,” having fun.)

BE: What were some of the high points in your publishing history, both Chiron and personally?

MH: High points were publishing great poets such as Bukowski, Wanda Coleman, William Stafford, Lorri Jackson, Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, Marge Piercy, Lyn Lifshin, Gerald Locklin, Robert Peters, Felice Picano, Charles Plymell … Lorri Jackson’s poem, “A Prima Donna Poet Replies” was selected by Robert Peters for Morty Sklar’s Editor’s Choice III anthology, back in the 1990s. That was the highest “award” we ever received. But we had lots of good reviews in various places, including Library Journal, and one by Merritt Clifton in the final issue of Samisdat. I was on Cloud 9 for weeks after that. Judson Jerome named us one of the “Top 100 Poetry Markets” in the USA in Writer’s Digest.

Other high points include making such amazing friends, and the poetry gatherings and parties, such as our Poetry Rendezvous, which started in 1988. It brings in poets from many other states, and since 1998, sometimes happens in other states. I’ve likened Rendezvous to seeing the pages of Chiron Review “come alive.” If you look on a map and see where St. John, Kansas is, you’ll see how isolated we are from civilization. Where they were a nightly, weekly or monthly occasion in the big cities, poetry readings here were nonexistent. These gatherings meant the world to Mom and me. She’s one of the reasons I kept doing them, to bring all these wonderful folks to central Kansas so we could meet them, hear them read, and enjoy their company.

And there were the cross-country travel centered around poetry readings/parties, meeting such wonderful poets, artists, musicians, and publishers all over the USA. 

BE: I remember how every small mag editor/publisher sent a contributor’s copy to each contributor as a matter of honor and respect and it was quite expensive. In the new era of POD the expense is now on the contributor to buy a copy and the editor/publisher makes a little money from the contributors by charging a couple more bucks over the print price. Many book and mag “mills” have popped up. While POD gives everybody a chance to publish whatever and EVERYBODY (who wants to) has books and POD is here to stay, I don’t see how they would ever be collectible and the vanity stench still lingers a little, to me. Any musings on the subject?

MH: I don’t think I can add anything new to that, you said it all, rather perfectly. But have a few thoughts on it. I only began noticing what you’ve described as “book and mag mills” in the last couple of years, the glut of publications due to Internet and POD. This won’t be a very popular opinion, but it somehow does make being published seem less special.

I recently saw a Facebook thread that discussed “contributor copies.” A poet was upset because he didn’t get a free contributor’s copy. The publisher was insulted and explosively hostile about the concept, which shocked me.

Like you say, contributor’s copies were always a matter of honor and respect. It was simply the custom, the unwritten rule. Since I couldn’t pay writers with cash, I figured the very least I could do is give a contributor’s copy. It was a matter of integrity, the mark of a credible publisher.

It is expensive to send contributor copies. But I never published Chiron for the money. With Chiron, it always balanced out. Writers frequently bought extra copies and subscribed when they could. I’ve always sent free or discounted copies to readers/writers who can’t afford it. Patrons who can give more support, do. If you let it, it will balance out. (And just for the record, I’ve never been rich. I work for our local history museum for $10.64 an hour.)

My thought is that if one can’t afford contributor’s copies, one maybe shouldn’t be publishing? It seems exploitive to give a poet nothing in return for use of their work, to make them pay to see their work in print. As you said, there’s a “stench of vanity press” to it.

But then again, things are changing, and I’m just an old dinosaur who will soon lumber off into the sunset, so what do I know?! haha

DRIVING W/ CRAZY by Jack Henry, reviewed by Belinda Subraman

 

This book begins with multi-layered poems and stories/essays recalling Jack's relationship and memories of his father.  It rings true with no sugar coating. Anyone who has sat with or attended a dying parent will identify strongly.  Even if you’ve never sat with a loved one dying you will find the writing beautiful, moving and deep.  Below I will give excerpts from a few pieces.  Hopefully you will buy the book, Driving W/Crazy to gather a full experience and appreciation of Jack Henry's writing.

From My Father

as my father grows older / i watch intently / knowing one-day i will be in the same place / the same space / the same chair / fighting against and losing against / time itself / 

at 80 he's lived a while /
at 55 i am not sure i will make it that far / 

From Finding the Strength to Lead my Father Home

for a moment. 

we share the same eyes,
same nose,
same giant head that could be used as advertising space. 

we share everything. 

my reflection is 80. his is 55.
he is dying.
i am barely here. 

Last paragraph from The Time I Remember Best

"We probably got home late and I probably fell asleep in the car. But I know I couldn’t wait for the next game, and there was a next game, but not like that one. That game was the best, the kind of baseball game that becomes a memory, not because of the game, but because of a father that stood up for his kid, and lost his voice in the process." 

By page 30 poems appear with tales from youth which sometimes involve fist fights, kicks, knives, guns and bullies woven in among poems about his father’s bi polar behavior.

From Lemons and Oranges

on the day i took
lemons and oranges
to the crossing guard,
the big kids,
the bullies,
quickly cornered me
and my friends, trying to tear the bag away from me. 

my mom always
told me not to fight, she thought i
would hurt someone. even in 4th grade. 

turns out, she was right. 

Sweet and tough, like life, this book will resonate with all.

From My Father's Eyes

we all dance in front of a mirror 

and only stop when they take 

the mirror away, 

and blue eyes slowly close. 

Jack Henry is a writer/publisher/editor based in Southeastern California and has been an announcer on the Blogtalk Radio show Rob&Jack America, publisher of Heroin Love Songs, and editor in charge at d/e/a/d/b/e/a/t press. In late 2009 Jack started to gain acceptance with a variety of on-line and print lit zines. Several chapbooks followed as well as two full-length collections, With the Patience of Monuments (NeoPoesis Press) and Crunked (Epic Rites Press).

After a 9-year hiatus from all things writing Jack returned in late 2019 to the small press world.

Driving w/Crazy, from PUNK HOSTAGE PRESS, is Jack’s first full length publication in 12 years.

GAS Featured Poet: Glen Armstrong

 

Glen Armstrong (he/him) holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. He has three current books of poems: Invisible Histories, The New Vaudeville, and Midsummer. His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit, and The Cream City Review.

 

Year of the Sea Monkey CLI

 

 

Body postpones head. 

Today is about late summer

and its soft rumble.

 

Head will have to wait.

A second head approaches

cautiously, lips

 

tightening their loops.

This is still about the head.

No one knows the exact

 

moment that the weather

arrives, but it’s late.

It builds slowly and “is

 

what it is” as my sweetheart

says when she’s tired

enough and wants to disengage

 

from a conversation.

Sleep is another season.

Leaves turn color

 

as do the teenagers

necking under the Chinese

restaurant’s neon Buddha. 

 

Interview with Featured Poet, Carlo Parcelli

 

Carlo Parcelli is a poet living in the Washington DC area. He has six books of poetry including ‘The Canaanite Gospel’, ‘Newton’s Scalder Prophesies the End of the World and Other Poems’ and ‘Canis Ictus in Exsilium’. His work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. But mostly he loves to perform. 

 

BE: On your website you referred to yourself as a “Poet Vaudevillian”. Are you primarily a satirist, entertainer or poet?

CP:  All three as regards the Canaanite Gospel.  The website is my vain attempt to get gigs – readings. But I’ve never been very astute at promoting myself. Witness – Vaudeville is dead.

(Sample Canaanite Gospel here.)

For the first 35 years of my poetic life, I wrote in Ezra Pound’s Canto style where the balance was tenuous between Phanopoeia, Logopoeia and Melopoeia. I wrote thousands of lines in the Canto style. The poems are long and referentially and intellectually ambitious. I had a strong reputation as one who could write in this difficult style. Roxana Prada, President of the Ezra Pound Society and editor of Make It New, wrote that I was like a “shark” in that I and my poetry seemed to never rest. Another critic compared it to John Coltrane’s ‘sheets of sound’ always probing.  

As I’ve said elsewhere, my mentor at the University of Maryland was Rudd Fleming who translated Greek drama with Pound when the poet was incarcerated at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital here in Washington DC. Rudd thought my early style was suited to the Cantos. Working in such a highly referential form, I read widely.

Though I had some initial success, my first book, Three Antiphonies appeared in 1976, few publishers were interested in long ‘intellectually transgressive’ works. Cultural transgression as exemplified by the Beats or the Confessional movements was in vogue in poetry. But, for all the rhetoric to the contrary, the iconoclastic ‘intellect’ was held in disrepute in America, a line of thinking fostered both by the materialism of corporate culture and the forces that combated it. America just had to loosen up. It didn’t have to die.

The Canto style was indeed most amenable to my poetic project of exploring western philosophy and poetics spearheaded by philosophical approaches to experimental quantum paradoxes. The poetics of Charles Olson was aphoristically central in this regard. For example, his ‘field theory resembled the quantum conundrums found in ‘position/momentum’ paradox in sub-atomic physics.

But I quickly became concerned with the ‘scientific method’ itself specifically the mathematization/quantification of ‘reality’ especially the late Renaissance/Enlightenment acceleration of it.

My concern from the beginning veered toward the apocalyptic. The most obvious development was nuclear weapons. But gradually other scientific technologies, ones associated with ‘progress’ and progressive thinking began to ratchet up my concerns. Now, we have global climate change. Why bother about the mechanism destroying the planet if that mechanism is so rooted in the dominant, western epistemology that no matter the operator’s intentions the resultant solution will be inherently Apocalyptic.  

So I was looking to move on even though it was obvious if that canard Jesus ever did dare come back, he’d be playing to an empty house. 

I was the poetry editor of a literary magazine called FlashPoint . One of our favorite poets was the Welsh/English poet/engraver David Jones. One of our staff members, the 20^thcentury poetry scholar, Professor Brad Haas was a member of the David Jones Society.

It just so happened that Georgetown University here in Washington DC was bequeathed a huge collection of Jones material. The Jones scholars gathered here in DC for a 3 day symposium where it was decided that we would publish the papers being delivered.

In the process of  ‘editing’ the papers, I was energized to re-read much of Jones’ poetry. In a collection of ‘fragments’ called ‘Sleeping Lord’ Jones’ speaker is a Roman principalis. I always loved that voice. So I wrote a monologue along its style. It’s the first Severenus monologue in the Canaanite Gospels.

Eventually the work became the Canaanite Gospel with its 67 or so ‘voices’ all dealing with events surrounding Judea/Perea in 33AD. 

BE: What was your primary reason for writing the “Canaanite Gospel” and how are people reacting to it?

CP: The primary reason for writing the Canaanite Gospel was to abandon the Canto style which I had exhausted and had exhausted me. Also, there was the opportunity to utilize the voice Jones established in his two poems, ‘The Fatigue” and ‘The Wall’. But more importantly, I wanted the monologues to serve as an allegory for all empires especially the US imperialist empire which heavily resembles the brutal Roman version and its denouement.

This is where the swearing and the racist slang come in – both intimate facts of the language of empire and the clash of cultures it heightens. Empire ain’t pretty and neither are the Canaanite Gospels. This also helps to keep my readership down for as T.S. Eliot says in the Four Quartets, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality” -especially, poetry’s ‘humankind’.

As for reaction, I sent out about 200 invitations when I premiered the CG monologues. About 17 people, mostly old friends, came. After my hour and a half performance of 12 of the monologues, Gene Rosenthal who owns Adelphi Records offered me a recording contract. Now Gene is also the guy who released Patrick Skye’s “Songs That Made America Famous”. I was proud that Gene liked the monos after all he had had the guts to record Skye’s Luang Prabang. It seemed like good fit.

Another friend in publishing wanted to publish the CG. But nothing came of either project and Mark Kuniya and his Country Valley Press ended up publishing them in 2012.

Rosalie and I went to at least 100 open mics flogging the Gospels. Generally they were very well received especially by people who despised poetry. No one dosed off. No one was bored. Bars were the best. Patrons felt entertained by the humor AND the pathos – read Gesmas. The characters are real, not sentimentalized puppets rushing toward a two line sentimental bathos. 

I got to do my ‘intellectual transgression’ thing in an atmosphere that was entertaining for much of the audience and me. And I loved performing.

The ‘heavy’ accent as you call it, is my version of East End cockney. David Jones uses it in his epic poem ‘In Parenthesis’. This is all explained in the introduction to mark Kuniya’s publication of the Gospels. Also, I’ve tried to train my ear to Elizabethan prosody. It’s so much richer than any of the shit we spout now. 

Of course, with such ‘controversial material’ there are back stories galore; the city councilman who a decade after still raves about a performance of mine he attended.    

 

There’s the crowd that stared at me with grim hostility when I performed ‘Lazarus’. Turns out the jazz guitarist I was billed with was also a Deacon in his Baltimore church. So when Jesus says to his Uncle Lazarus “Don’ talks ta me maw like that, you fuckin’ lushy’ or ‘If he’s resurrect where the fuck is he’ for a moment things got tense. But it was a great experience. I got to feel what Lenny Bruce or Dick Gregory felt when they did their more risky bits.  

Sometimes I was flat out banned. A Christian biker bar outside of Annapolis proved inappropriate. I also was blocked from the stage at the Bossa Bistro round robin performance in the Adams Morgan neighborhood in Washington DC. I did the ‘Gesmas’ mono and then was physically blocked from retaking the stage.

This is notable because the MC was Shahid Bhuttar, the same who ran against Nancy Pelosi for the democratic nomination for Congress and is one of the country’s premier FIRST AMENDMENT, FREE SPEECH attorneys. 

Now, I know it wasn’t the government suppressing my speech, but still I couldn’t help feel that I was on to something when I got the bum’s rush from that bar with Bhuttar just letting it happen. No hard feelings. Shahid is a good man. 

There are dozens of other stories arising from experiences around the Canaanite Gospels and the more recent monologues of which there are legion with titles like ‘Henry Colburn Writes His Solicitor Concerning the True Authorship of ‘The Vampyre’’ or ‘Satan’s Imp in Milton’s Ear’ or ‘Jonathan Swift’s Letter to his Friend. Alexander Pope, Upon Lady Montagu’s Rejection of the Latter’s Protestations of Love’ which left a crowd of amateur poets slack jawed in a motel conference room in Darnestown Maryland. 

BE: Who are some of the poets who have influenced you?

CP:  Homer, Dante, James Joyce, Virgil, Hipponax, Sophocles, Ovid, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Pope, Swift, John Wilmot, Holderlin, Catullus, John Milton, Villon, Blake, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Yeats, Eliot, Pound, Mel Tolson, Charles Olson, David Jones.

But since my work, especially my earlier work is so heavily referential other influences include Adorno and Horkheimer, Hans Blumenberg, Bruno, Hegel, Kant, Hume, Schopenhauer, Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Turing, Godels. Bohr, Heisenberg, Paul Feyerabend, Smedley Butler, Francis Jennings, Richard Drinnon, Noam Chomsky, Lenny Bruce.

Negative influences include John von Neumann, Nietzsche, Willard van Orman Quine, La Mettrie, Leibniz, Descartes, Karl Popper, Edward Bernays, Philip Larkin, Walt Whitman, Allen Dulles, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Nobert Wiener, Marvin Minsky etc. ad nauseam.

BE: What bugs you about the poetry/poets of today?

CP: Their lack of ambition in and for the work itself. No interest in keeping an audience awake. Poetry that looks for nothing more than self-affirmation. Reliance on feeling, sentimentality. 

Dominant poetic paradigms that exclude outsider work. The CG flies in the face of current literary thought that the best poetry is written at elite institutions. There, I just made the ghosts of Pound, Eliot and Byron laugh.    

BE: What are some of your greatest accomplishments?

CP:  Predicting the global apocalypse of climate change THROUGH POETRY. Being on the right side of history when it came to the Vietnam War, Iran Contra, the Gulf Wars etc., Seeing America for the murderous, imperialist, bloody shithole that it is. Turning down an invitation to meet the Dali Lama. Being named Beat Poet Laureate for Maryland.

BE: Any advice for young aspiring poets?

CP:  Don’t let your resume be your best poem.