Drowning Like Li Po in a River Of Red Wine: A D Winans Selected Poetry


This is a career spanning book of poetry from A.D. Winans, 398 pages. This book covers the period from 1970 - 2010 and contains a selection of poems from all of his 51 books over a period of 40 years. Paperback edition, limited to 100 copies in wraps. Perfect bound. $20.00. Contact the publisher Bottle of Smoke Press HERE.

Below are a few excerpts:


from North Beach Poems (1977)

FOR PADDY O’SULLIVAN

Paddy O’Sullivan
home again wearing
the scars of the past
like an engraved bracelet
passed on from one lover to another
walking the streets of north beach
in search of old visions now only
memories in the nightmare mirror
of madness—swapping tales
with obscene priests hung over in
the drunkenness of eternal failure.

Paddy O’Sullivan of Kerouac tales
and Cassady visions
Paddy O’Sullivan walking
Washington Square
the bulldozer death lurking everywhere.

Paddy O’Sullivan does your typewriter
still talk to you in
the lonely hours of the night?

Paddy O’Sullivan alone in
San Francisco
city of suicides past and present
waiting for that lady poet
who will forgive you in the morning
for forgetting her name in
the hour of dawn when our needs are soothed
with the power of the written word
that stirs moves inside us
like a runaway express train stalled
on the freeway
like the haunting breath
of a hound dog closing in for
the kill.

Paddy O’Sullivan where
have all the poets gone walking
straightjackets trapped by time
the sun is not as you see it now
everything changes and yet remains the same
the streets are no more or less intense
the lines on your face are the lines
on my face as we move back into
the body into the inner flesh measured by
the amnesia of yesterday.

this town coughs up its dead most rudely
the raw nerves of time returning to haunt me
oblivious to the thirst lying still at
the edge of the river.

the blueprint of our life etched in
the dark shadows of
the soul.
















from It Serves You Right To Suffer (1997)

FOR DINO

The Beach is dead
The blood thin red
Dino the bartender lives
In a graveyard
Chief undertaker
Dispensing pain
Like low grade cocaine

There was a time when
I might have invited him outside
Only the tough guy image
Long ago died

The Beach is dead
The poets have left
Dino the bartender
Walks with spade and shovel
Having found his niche in life

The Beach is dead
The ghosts cry in despair
Mad cowboys rope my visions
Hog tie my poems

The curse of Kerouac serenades
The demons of sleep
The Beach is dead
from Sleeping With Demons (2003)

EARLY MORNING INSOMNIA

sitting here alone with
a perpetual hard-on
4 in the morning
insomnia tearing at my guts
can’t sleep, can’t write
pussy on my mind
and people keep writing
and telling me I’m a legend
so why am I sitting here alone
staring into the dark
like a sniper fingering
a hair trigger
restless, unheroic
waiting on words that
won’t come

 
Photo of A.D. Winans by Alexsey Dayen 2010




















POEM FOR MY FATHER

It took me decades after his death
Before I could write a poem about him
It was as if a small part of him
Had entered my heart
And remained behind the barbed-
Wire fence he so carefully constructed
Over those long years
Stayed there all that time
Building an invisible umbilical cord
Reaching out for un unseen love connection
Sending signals carried on the sealed lips
Of blackbirds circling invisible graveyards
Finding in death
What we had never known in life
Those ghostly white hands scratching upward
From the grave
Desperately trying to cup the tiny flame
Flickering inside the valve of my heart

Robert Branaman Exhibit in Los Angeles


Virtual Slights copyright Branaman 2008

Bob Branaman is a film maker, printmaker and artist. He was an integral part of the Wichita Hipsters back in the Vortex of the 1950.., whose number included Bruce Connor, Charles Plymell, Roxie Powell, Michael McClure, Dave Haselwood and more. His art and films have been shown world wide. He lives in Los Angeles and is still being true to his school creating experimental and challenging art.


Robert R. Branaman aka Rapid Ronnie/Barbital Bob


Presents

Barbital Bites

Opening Reception November 6th 6-9pm

ART COYOTE GALLERY
640 Venice blvd.
Venice CA 90291



by appointment : info@artcoyote.com

Catching Up with Ngawang Choephel about "Tibet in Song": Re-posted from AVSTV




Posted by: E. Nina Rothe from http://www.avstv.com September 17, 2010



Catching Up with Ngawang Choephel about ‘Tibet in Song’
Tibet in Song is a lyrical new film that will open in NYC, at the Cinema Village Theater, on September 24th and will play in the Big Apple for a week, before taking off for the rest of the world. I was privileged to see an advance screening of the film and was absolutely mesmerized by Tibet’s breathtaking views, its people’s courage and beauty and Tibet in Song filmmaker Ngawang Choephel’s strength and resilience in the face of adversity. I know that after seeing this film I’ll never complain about a rainy day I have to spend inside and I’ll respect my Tibetan brothers and sisters only that much more! I recently caught up with Choephel and he shared some of his insight into this very personal journey of a film.

AVS: What made you go back to Tibet? And what happened while you were there, if you could explain it to our readers?

ngawang_hires_tibetinsong 


Ngawang Choephel: While growing up in India as a Tibetan refugee there was always this feeling that we would one day go back to Tibet. But years went by, Tibet alive only in our imagination and Tibetans in India kept demonstrating against China’s invasion of our country. It seemed more and more unlikely that all the Tibetans in India would go back to Tibet soon. Of course I wanted to feel that sense of belonging in a place that you can call your own, but most importantly it was Tibetan music and culture that drove me to go back to there. I had so many questions, curiosity, excitement and emotions that I simply couldn’t wait any longer to see Tibet. When I arrived there, the first impression I got came from the warmth of the people, the intensity of our culture and raw beauty of our landscape. I never thought in my life that I would be one of the first Tibetans from outside Tibet to film Tibetan music. I was proud of myself to be on that mission and it was a prime time in my life to have most of the Tibetans I met share their music and their stories with me. They went through so much yet they shared their music with me in a most intimate way. I never thought my life would be so valuable to experience this journey and moment with them in Tibet. I found joy, as they do, in everything they did and the way they live.

AVS: During your visit there, you were then arrested and most of your work was confiscated. How did you manage to keep all the footage that you have in your film?

NC: Yes, after two months of traveling and recording music I was arrested. After one year of interrogation I was sentenced to 18 years in prison, accused of spying. They confiscated 7 tapes, but I was able to send 9 tapes to India through a friend of mine, before I was arrested.

AVS: Were there ever moments of doubt in your mind during your incarceration. Thoughts of ‘Why did I do this, why did I come here?’
ngawang2_hires 
NC: There were a few times I was thinking “If I had not done this or done that” but I never questioned that coming to Tibet was the wrong idea. I don’t remember ever feeling like that. Most of the time I was thinking and contemplating  how my work could be a crime or why was I being held in prison and eventually I could feel the same pain and injustice of humanity for what all my fellow Tibetan political prisoners went through. I was in a way proud to be one among many who have sacrificed their lives and who were in prison at that time. I would forget to worry about myself most of the time and my main worry was for my mom and uncle. But then again as one of my closest friend, a late political prisoner said “What you are talking about? The only difference is you are inside and she is outside. That’s it”.

AVS: How were you finally freed?

NC: I was finally released in January of 2002, after my mother’s relentlessly solitary campaign, with the help 0f the US government, many international artist, the Tibetan government in exile and many other organizations that fought hard for my release.

AVS: You grew up in India, but then what made you move the US after you were finally freed from jail in Tibet?

ngawang_filmmaker 
NC: I was released to India via the USA in 2002. Since there is a strong philanthropic sense and interest in independent work in the US, I decided to resume my work here, continuing where I left off before my incarceration. I didn’t know it would  take this long, but the entire process of making this film and meeting hundreds people in the business, sharing my story and getting their help was a journey that I believe would not have happened anywhere else except here in the USA.

AVS: What is the most important lesson you learned while making this film?

postertibet 
NC: I have learned so many things from making the film but the most important lesson was how important it is to collaborate with others. You can make films by yourself but working with others who really believe in the subject makes a film complete.

AVS: What do you think will be your next project, after this film it will have a tough act to follow…

NC: I am a very passionate person and my life is dedicated to what I can best do for the Tibetan cause and our story. I will most likely work on another Tibet related documentary.



AVS: What are some of the plans for this film, in the next couple of months?

NC: We are opening Tibet in Song in NYC at Cinema Village on Sept 24th for a one-week run and it will be in 12 different cities after that. I plan to attend most of opening nights to help promote the film.

AVS: Before you started filming in Tibet, before you were captured, what had you hoped to accomplish with your work? Did you know you would eventually make a film out of it?
sundance09_tibetinsong 

NC: My mission was to go to Tibet to find the right location and people for our next crew which I was planning to bring during my next trip. I was collecting info and doing some short field research while filming in Tibet, but my main goal was to do pre-production work. I had already conceived the idea of making the film and I had made a presentation cut -  to raise funds etc. - before I went to Tibet.

AVS: And finally, if you had to describe your Tibet to a person who knows nothing about your country, how would you do that?
street-musicians 

NC: I would say that Tibet is highest country in world, a beautiful land with beautiful people. It has its own unique civilization, history and culture, but since the Chinese invasion in 1949, Tibetans have been victims of the longest cultural genocide, with the highest number of imprisonments, torture and deaths in this world. It’s like its climate is controlled by China’s totalitarian regime: Sometimes it’s sunny, sometimes it rains, but most of the time it’s dark and cloudy in Tibet.

All images above, courtesy of the filmmaker

The article above was originally posted on the AVSTV website AT THIS LINK by E. Nina Rothe. I have re-posted it above with hopes of making information about Ngawang and his film, "Tibet in Song" even more widely available to the public.
 

The Eve of Fluxus: Review by Hammond Guthrie


Eve of Fluxus by Billie MaciunasThe Eve of Fluxus: A Fluxmemoir by Billie Maciunas
Arbiter Press, Orlando, Florida  ISBN 978-0-615-35216-9

Fluxus is a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"— often described as "intermedia," a term coined by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins in 1966. Fluxus as an artistic group was named and organized by George Maciunas, a Lithuanian-born American artist and founding member of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers, and designers - among them, George Brecht and Nam June Paik, Dick Higgins, Wolf Vostell, La Monte Young, Jonas Mekas, and Yoko Ono. Fluxus is an attitude ~ not a movement or a style.

"Fluxus is a Latin word George Maciunas dug up. I never studied Latin. If it hadn't been for Maciunas nobody might have ever called it anything. We would all have gone our own ways, like the man crossing his street with his umbrella, and a woman walking a dog in another direction. We would have gone our own ways and done our own things: the only reference point for any of this bunch of people who liked each other's works, and each other, more or less, was Maciunas. So Fluxus, as far as I'm concerned, is Maciunas."  --George Brecht

Three months before his death, George Maciunas married his friend and companion, the poet Billie Hutching in a "Fluxwedding" held in a friend's loft in SoHo, February 25, 1978. Among the participants were artists Alison Knowles, La Monte Young, Jackson MacLow, and Louise Bourgeois.

Life as therapeutic fetish, the marriage of Billie and George was equal to the concept of Fluxus, and their union became the essence of the 'Fluxus perspective' ~ an exchange of deep-rooted intentions along with their clothing and characters, as bride and groom both wore white wedding dresses for the ceremony. Gender role playing and more, at George's request, would continue in private. George in drag acting as Severin von Kusiemski tied to the nuptial bed by Billie, his Wanda von Dunajew. "I'll beat you again," I say, "then I'll let you go." "You're wonderful," he breathes as she leaves.

With this first publication of The Eve of Fluxus, Billie Maciunas writes/sings of their brief yet intensely personal relationship in an expressive voice not unlike the late diarist Anais Nin. Perpetually ill, George developed cancer of the pancreas and liver in 1977, and their all too brief time together was to a large extent dominated by George's painful illness and fear of abandonment. In the most evocative passages Billie describes her attempts to help George with his significant discomforts by employing relaxing "immobilization" techniques, while at the same time working to preserve his place in the greater pantheon of Art.

George Maciunas died on May 9, 1978, and astride her significant grief following George's death, Billie was almost immediately confronted by adversaries over how to distribute her husband's estate, which included the artist's significant Fluxus archive.

Billie Maciunas' journey is indeed a road less traveled, yet one I encourage you to take in this intriguing, well composed, and deeply moving memoir.    © 2010 Hammond Guthrie

My heart has outgrown, like magic,
the clamor of painful things...
Beneath the burnt heather are newborn roses...
I've put an end to my tears.
—from the poem: "Desert In Flower" © Billie Maciunas


Buy the Book:
Mail orders for "The Eve of Fluxus" (signed by the author):
Billie J. Maciunas
10152 Berry Field Ct.
Orlando, FL 32821
The Eve of Fluxus (web site)
 

Hammond Guthrie is the author of "AsEverWas..Memoirs of a Beat Survivor" and editor of The 3rd Page Journal of Ongrowing Natures.

© 2010 Hammond Guthrie


A.D. Winans on A.D. Winans

This was first published in a longer version by the Gale Research Autobiography Series.

A. D. Winans on A. D. Winans
photo by Aleksey Dayen 2010

I was born in San Francisco, and have lived here almost my entire life. I was born at home, premature. My mother said the doctor told her I would not live a long life. Now I’m 71 and the doctor is long dead.

My father was seventeen years older than my mother, and they fought constantly... When my mother wasn’t yelling at my father, she was yelling at me. This left deep scars which is reflected in my book Scar Tissue.

My mother was born in Canada and was smuggled illegally into the U.S. when she was three years old. When she later tried to become a U.S. citizen, she was told by immigration officials that there were no records of her entry into the country, and was advised not to pursue the matter or she might face deportation. She died a woman without a country.

My father had a difficult time expressing himself. It was my mother who took me for walks in the park and to the movies. My father didn’t like his job as a grip man on the Municipal Railway and frequently called in sick. The fondest memories I have of my childhood were the times we gathered in the living room to listen to our favorite radio shows.  (The Green Hornet and The Lone Ranger) and the occasional weekend trips to Alum Park and the Russian River. However, the good times were few and far between, in what can only be described as a dysfunctional family.

I was a misfit in both grammar and high school. I was shy and largely kept to myself. I spent time at the public library, where I discovered the works of Jack London and day dreamed of shipping off to sea and writing of my own adventures.

I joined the Air Force in 1954 and was assigned to an Air Base Defense Unit, which doubled in peacetime as an Air Police Unit. I spent three years in Panama, where I saw the President of Panama assassinated and a dictatorship supported by the U.S.

There were three classes in Panama: The rich people who frequented the gambling casino at the Hilton Hotel; the middle class comprised mainly of Chinese immigrants who owned the shops and small restaurants, and the lower class who lived in squalor and poverty in the downtown area.

It was while serving in Panama that I became disillusioned with the American system. Panamanian canal workers, who performed the same work as their American counterparts, were paid less than half the going pay. In the American controlled Canal Zone, the U.S. Governor refused to allow the Panamanian flag to fly alongside the flag of the United States. Elections were rigged and ballot boxes were found floating in the canal.

The Joseph McCarthy era, the struggle for civil rights, the treatment of the American Indian, and the Vietnam War all became fodder for later rebellion, which resulted in the many scathing political poems I have written. I was honorably discharged from the military in February 1958, and returned home to discover the Beat generation.

I found a part-time job working at the post office and attended day classes at City College of San Francisco, graduating in 1962 from San Francisco State College (now University).

I began reading the works of Camus, Steinbeck, F.Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and later became interested in poetry after discovering Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Corso and other Beat poets and writers.

While attending college, I spent my nights in North Beach, spending long hours at City Lights Bookstore browsing through underground magazines and books by established and emerging Beat poets and writers. I hung out at Mike’s Pool Hall and drank at the Coffee Gallery (now the Lost and Found Bar) and Gino and Carlo’s Bar. My favorite hangout was The Place, where “blabbermouth” night was presided over by Jack Spicer, an evening event where poets and philosophers could get up and speak their minds on any topic that came to their head.

I met Richard Brautigan at Gino and Carlo’s Bar and frequently saw Bob Kaufman at the “Co-existence Bagel Shop,” where he held court. I frequented the Anxious Asp, (a jazz establishment) and was the first feature poet at the Coffee Gallery, receiving five dollars and all the beer I could drink. Discovering North Beach opened up a new way of life for me. It was the training ground for my becoming a poet and writer.

In the sixties and into the early seventies I worked at a variety of jobs, none of which were to my liking. The lone exception was when I received a coveted CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) position with the San Francisco Art Commission, Neighborhood Arts program, where I worked from 1975 to 1980.

In the seventies, I started up Second Coming Magazine and Press, which began in 1972 and ended in 1989. I served three terms on the Board of Directors of COSMEP (Committee of Small Magazine Editors and Publishers), which later became the International Organization of Independent Publishers.

These were exciting times, with annual conferences bringing together poets, writers, editors and publishers from all across the country. Thanks to my CETA position, I was able to organize poetry and music events throughout the city, including the 1980 Poets and Music Festival, a three county, seven-day festival honoring the late poet Josephine Miles and the late Blues musician, John Lee Hooker.

I met a lot of poet and musician friends and engaged in conversations that lasted into the early morning hours, but the truth is that I find it difficult talking about myself. I prefer to let my poems do the talking for me. Too many poets perceive their craft as a “holy” mission, seeing themselves as prophets. That’s a hard message to sell to the homeless and downtrodden souls that walk the streets of our inner cities, or the working-class men and women struggling to make ends meet.

My poetry largely addresses issues of concern to millions of Americans who spend the majority of their lives struggling to survive in a society bankrupt in spirit and moral fiber, where money is the only common denominator.

Early in my life I was influenced by the writings of T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams, but my mentors were the late Jack Micheline and Charles Bukowski, and to some extent, the Beat poet John Weiners, whose book the Hotel Wentley Poems (1958) moved me deeply.

I have never worn the label of poet well. It’s not a word I’m comfortable with. It carries a connotation that somehow the poet walks on a higher ground than the average individual. Too many of today’s poets are more concerned with publication credits than the human condition they write about. The truth is that I would not be a poet if it were not for these strange voices camped inside my head; demon voices that confront me and demand that I write down their thoughts. The finished poem often bears little resemblance to whatever I initially had in mind.

The demons simply invade my thought process and take over. In this, I share Jack Spicer’s philosophy that “verse does not originate from within the poet's expressive will as a spontaneous gesture unmediated by formal constraints, but is a foreign agent, a parasite that invades the poet’s language and expresses what it wants to say.”

I have been both blessed and cursed by the inner voices (demons) that possess me. I’ve never kept a notebook or used a tape recorder for future reference and I seldom write in long hand, although this may be in part due to my poor handwriting. Many people have called me a “street” poet. I suppose this is because much of my subject matter has dealt with life on the streets. I don’t think this is an accurate label. I have been writing for over three decades and my style continues to evolve. The subject matter is as diverse as life itself. The form and technique I employ can and has changed from time to time. The one constant is that people remain my favorite subject matter. If John Weiners was a poet’s poet, I’d like to be remembered as a poet of the people. My poems and my life are one and the same. They simply can’t be separated.

Being a native San Francisco poet, I know the streets of this city like a gambler knows when to hold and when to fold. Jack Micheline wrote in a foreword for A Bastard Child With No Place To Go:

“A. D. Winans is a man in search of his soul His compassion and love for his native city San Francisco shows in his poems. A. D. takes us on a journey of lost souls in the cruelty of a large city. He writes of the people he loves: poets, musicians, and the ordinary souls who have moved him. He knows the wars, the lost hookers, the crazies, the victims, and the ones gone mad. The system and the tragedy of America.”

There it is in a nutshell. I’m not a guru. I don’t go to the mountains looking for the Dalai Lama. I create largely in isolation. I write out of a sense of loneliness and sadness and anger, but also with love and humor, the latter for which I am indebted to the late Bob Kaufman

I write with the same observational intensity as Charles Bukowski, yet entirely unlike him. Like Bukowski, you will never have to search in a dictionary to understand my poems.

I try in the most direct manner possible to say the things I have felt and experienced in life, and hope that the reader will find the voyage a memorable one.

The noted writer Colin Wilson said: “Everything I read by A. D. Winans fills me with pleasure because of a beautiful natural and easy use of language—he seems to have an ability which should be common but which is in fact very rare to somehow allow his own pleasant personality to flow direct into the page.”

I believe this statement to be true, but acknowledge too that my personality is not always a pleasant one. Sometimes the anger cuts through and severs an artery, but I believe this only serves to make the poem stronger. In essence, I write about life, its ups and downs, the laughter and the tears, the real and the imagined, the good and the evil in man. I don’t pull any punches. I simply try to tell it the way it is, from the 9/11 tragedy to the homeless plight on the streets of America.

Poetry and writing have kept me going all these years. They have been the wife and children I’ve never had. I’ve had forty-five chapbooks and books of poetry and prose published and have appeared in several hundred literary magazines and anthologies. I’ve given countless readings and made lifelong friends. None of this would have been possible if I had not discovered the magic of poetry. I believe that in the long run my poems and prose will tell you most about who I am. As I said earlier there is no separating my poetry from my life.

I get up in the morning, have a cup of coffee and read the newspaper, spend a couple of hours at the computer, pick up the mail at the post office, take a forty five minute walk, return home, listen to my jazz records, put in a few hours of writing, and then it’s time to go to bed and get up in the morning and start all over again. That’s what life is pretty much about. The growing up, the learning, the wild years, the mellowing, the settling into a routine, and then one day it’s over. I’m satisfied with my life and the way I have lived. Writing poetry has helped keep lady death from my door. The demons are still there inside me, but I no longer let them control me.

I don’t think any one man’s life is really that important, but what he does with it and leaves behind is. I hope I have earned more good karma than bad karma points. I hope in the end I can look death in the face and say that I’ve played the game honestly and that I never sold my integrity. In the end integrity is all a writer has.

Sell your integrity and you’ve sold your soul to the devil.

Charles Plymell: GRIST

A rare issue of GRIST edited, designed and printed by Charles Plymell on the same Multlith in San Francisco as the first ZAP. Plymell was involved with other GRISTS in Lawrence, KS, where he was first to print the work of S.Clay Wilson.

This issue he did on his own with material sent him, from Allen Ginsberg's father, Louis, to Bookwork. Inside are lost photos of Charles with false beard and his wife, Pam seeing Neal CassAdy, Ken Kesey and Tom Wolfe off on their bus FURTHER where Tom's book, Kandy Kolored Kool aid Acid Test took shape. 

A.D. Winans: Love-Zero

A. D. Winans is a native San Francisco award-winning poet. His work has been
published in over a thousand literary magazines and anthologies, and translated into
nine languages. He was nominated this year for the next Poet Laureate Consultant at the
Library of Congress.

Other honors include:
Winning a 1984 San Francisco Arts and Letters Foundation award for his contribution
to the alternative press community, a 2006 PEN National Josephine Miles Award for
excellence in literature, and a 2009 PEN Oakland Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2004
a poem of his was set to music and performed at Alice Tully Hall in NYC.

It’s been a busy year for Mr. Winans. Cross-Cultural Communications just released a
new chapbook titled Love – Zero, which is Winan’s fiftieth book and chapbook of poetry.
The book is available from the publisher and can also be purchased at City Lights
Bookstore.

LOVE - ZERO by A. D. Winans
Foreword by Neeli Cherkovski

Limited Regular Edition: $10, plus $5.00 S&H

New York Residents only add: 8 5/8% NYS Sales Tax.
Special Limited and Numbered 26 lettered (A-Z, as available) copies Signed by the author and publisher $25 (includes shipping and any sales tax)

Make payment to:
Cross-Cultural Communications
239 Wynsum Avenue
Merrick, NY 11566-4725
 cccpoetry@aol.com
                                                                                            

FROM THE FOREWORD BY BEAT BIOGRAPHER NEELI CHERKOVSKI

“Here, in a clear language that “hangs” tough while tipping toward the lyrical, A. D.
Winans delivers another surprise. In his life as a poet he has given us the working class
blues, poems of protest, the world of jazz, and surrendered to the elegiac, honoring the
creative artists, who, like himself, cared little for safe and sane poetics. Now he comes at
us with a book of love that echoes far back in time. I wonder if some Sumerian ancestor
felt the same way about a woman he had loved. Here is an honesty I have seen in Li Po,
who drank with the moon, Francois Villon, who held a poetic sword unlike any other, and
all those poets of love and of love lost who crowded my dreams with their music.”

This book of poems by Winans is an epic body of work. Copies are selling quickly and can be bought from the publisher above. Don't miss out on a great opportunity to have your own copy of LOVE-ZERO.

Charles Plymell's "Eat Not Thy Mind" Reviewed by Paul Hawkins


Photo © by Laki Vazakas 2008

Charley Plymell is rightly thought of as one of the best poets within the Amerikan literary underground. He has seen a lot since his birth on the Kansas high plains in 1935 and the early memories of the sound of the wind in the cab of an Reo Speedwagon truck. His father was a cowboy, his mother once a stunt car driver. He stormed out of Kansas with the likes of Bob Branaman, S. Clay Wilson, Michael McClure, Bruce Connor and the Wichita Punks speeding through the vortex, wailing and roaring north, south, east and west. Plymell and the Wichita Punks had road tested speed, dropped LSD, held mescaline rituals and experimented with art and other creative forms in the 1950`s. All trail blazers.

He already had two volumes of poetry, Neon Poems and Apocalypse Rose out when in 1971 City Lights published his seminal novel, Last of The Moccasins.

This novel grips, gleams and glistens with his hobohemian prose-style; spinning tales of his life in and around Wichita, his road trips to and from the West Coast along the Rt. 66 Benzedrine Highway and beyond, his crazy Hipster years and the boho life of his elder sister Betty. His words became sparks of energy, sparring partners to the mind.

Eat Not Thy Mind`s lexeme glows incandescent in 21st century dark consciousness becoming the lubricant on which the freaky brain clouds part to reveal a head-on, vibrant and astute engagement with life. Charley`s words at once heady, seductive and intoxicatingly descriptive.

His Hipster years melded into his psychedelic ones and he hit the handbrake in San Francisco. Charley lived with Ginsberg and Neal Cassady, printed the first Zap Comix by Robert Crumb, wrote and wrote and wrote some more.

Having burnt rubber and seen through the Beats Inc. Charley licked his wounds and wound up in Cherry Valley. He condemned the National Endowment for the Arts and his sharp and intelligent analysis appeared in the NY Times and other print outlets, spilling the beans on the NEA`s inbred favoritism. With his wife Pam they started Cherry Valley Editions publishing Herbert Huncke, William Burroughs, Roxie Powell, Claude Pelieu, Mary Beach to name but a few. Charley still and always will remain very firmly a poet. And what a poet. Always sensing where to cross the tracks from an early age, Charley`s Eat Not Thy Mind sends energy pulses soaring round the readers mind, birth pooling a new view on the present day madness, anutha zone of interrogation, a fresh windblast for the head and heart to get tanked up on and soar. Charley Plymell`s Eat Not Thy Mind is supreme!

Eat Not Thy Mind is a piece of art. A collage by Claude Pelieu on the front cover and a foreword written by friend and bass spanker Mike Watt. This book comprises of 18 contemporary poems by the Outlaw Poet that is Charley Plymell. With love and care Glass Eye Books/Ecstatic Peace Library series editors Byron Coley and Thurston Moore have produced a beautiful artifact. And that`s just the outside!

"Charles Plymell remains a working poet before everything else, and his work is brilliant! His is a voice of a proletarian intellectual wise-guy-- funny, smart, loose, political, rhythmic, maybe a little high." 
 -Mike Watt


EAT NOT THY MIND by Charles Plymell is for sale HERE

Wanted: The Art of Robert Branaman


WANTED: The Art of ROBERT BRANAMAN is a celebration of the life and work of artist, film maker and poet ROBERT BRANAMAN.

A Kansas native, Robert Branaman was an integral part of the WichitaVortex, a group of the beat generation that includes Bruce ConnerCharles Plymell, Roxie Powell, Michael McClure and Dave Haselwood.

Robert Branaman's work includes etchings, paintings, films, books, and most recently a series of limited edition digital/traditional prints.

Branaman showed at the legendary Batman Gallery in San Francisco, was part of Michael McClure’s play ! The Feast ! and his paintings were featured in Oliver Stone’s film The Doors.

Bob's films include Ginsberg (1966) and Goldmouth (1965) starring Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Bob will screen select films for this show which includes presentations by S.A. Griffin, Mike Watt on Bass and other surprise guests. Hosted by Richard Modiano.







Click on this link to view a short video of Bob's last show at artcoyote.com

The Poetry Bomb: by S.A. Griffin



The Poetry Bomb is a former U.S. military practice bomb. The artifact will be completely converted into a beautiful object filled with poetry from around the world. When finished, it will have a primo paint job just as if it were a classic car, complete with pin-striping. It will also have a window or portal that will open and close making it possible to not only see inside of the piece, but to take poems out at performances to read out loud, and to add future submissions. Once converted, S.A. Griffin plans to take The Poetry Bomb on tour across the United States.

Griffin is soliciting financial donations and "backers" for this project at KICKSTARTER to help with the costs of creating The Poetry Bomb as well as for funding allocated to offset the costs of taking The Poetry Bomb on tour. He hopes to begin The Poetry Bomb Tour in late April of 2010.

Click the widget above to learn how to donate or to become involved with S.A. Griffin's Poetry Bomb project and for information on submitting your own piece of poetry to be included in the Poetry Bomb.

Giclee Printing by Hammond Guthrie



"Inside-Outside Allen Kaprow" 
by Hammond Guthrie


"Print Out Shred Out" 
by Hammond Guthrie

Poem by Geraldine Green

DRIVING LOVE HOME

she drove like a crazy she drove like a beast
she drove like footsteps tapping in the street
she drove all night and she drove all day
she drove all before her out the way
she drove like a virgin drove like the sea
drove like floodgates opening to me
she drove her heart right out her mouth
drove her hair right into the clouds
she drove like a torrent flowing downhill
drove like a steam train drove where she will

she drove like a demon on its way to eternity
drove like a sailor home on leave
she drove like a lambast drove like a frown
drove like the ocean driving the wind down
drove like a leaf like a doorknob like a spell
drove like a hound howling to be free
drove like politicians drive us mad
drove like governors shackled to their fears
drove like presidents some good some bad
drove like hustlers high on speed
drove like dumpsters drove like fleas
drove like mangy dogs let off their leads
she drove me to love drove me to drink
drove me to everything so ok i'm on the brink
she drove me to distraction drove me loose
drove me to hell and back

yeah so ok i'm in love with a phantom
in love with a ghost
love with a dream that'll melt in the post
she loves me like a railroad yard
she bangs me like a brass gong

yeah ok so i can't break free
her love is like a piston
like a piston driving her love home.
Click for More Info about Geraldine Green