Associations

Since 2005 I've been keeping a list of books read by year. Since 2010 I've been intermittently writing mini-reviews of those books, what I sometimes call "associative reviews." I'm no good at the expository (like my friend Patrick James Dunagan, who is clearly a review writing whirling dervish), I'm a terrible essay writer, but that's okay I think, I don't really have any interest in doing that kind of writing anyway (though I love reading it), so "associative" in the sense that my reviews have nothing to do with the text/ book per se, but everything to do with my sense-memory of that book/ poet. This could be biography, gossip, hearsay, an anecdotal story the book conjures out of me/ through me; not to get too cute (Stevie Nicks hipster OCCULTISM is really in right now) but I guess I treat the book as a psychometric object, a token object imbued with the aura of my time spent with it, whatever you want to call that energy, biography, memory, associations, that's this. So here are a couple associative reviews from books I've recently read, I'll be posting these here and there throughout the month.

1. All This Everyday- Joanne Kyger
Big Sky

I bought this book in Boulder, CO in the summer of 2004. I remember listening to a tape while working as an audio technician at the Naropa Audio Archives, Kyger leading a workshop, talking about Spicer's "recognition of disgust," a poem's transcendence (beauty etc.) being explicitly bound to a recognizing of the un-beautiful, the disgusting qualities in the work...this was super interesting and reminded me a little of Alan Gilbert's (who I had just met, and bonded with over the prosody of Aesop rock, at a house party) notion of the "grotesque" in poetry, citing Canadian rapper Buck 65's song "The Centaur" as a primary example...basically a ditty about the bane of being endowed with a huge centaur penis... "of couse my cock is bigger than yours I'm a centaur for Christ's sake..."...anyway, I asked Joanne to sign my book, she did, "for John/ all this and some more/ Joanne K. July 2 '04"

but then she noticed that I was carrying my skateboard, she goes "actually I'd like to sign that..." and I go "my skateboard?" and she goes "...yeah..." so I hand her my board and a Sharpie marker (always keep a Sharpie marker on your person), and she proceeds to sign my board, right under the front left truck, "Hello From Bo"...

get it? it took me a second, Hello From Bolinas, classic fantastic heart dreamy, thanks Joanne, all this and more, John S.

2. Etruscan Reader VI—Robin Blaser, Barbara Guest, Lee Harwood
Etruscan Books

I bought this book after meeting Robin in 2005. That meeting had a profound effect on me, I was meeting one of the BIG 3 of the SF/Berkeley REN, unbelievable, up to that point he was just a character, lore and legend, someone Kevin Killian would talk about fondly, a presence in Poet Be Like God, The Poetics Of The Outside, but here he was, a living breathing human man, gracious and glowing, the gravely timbre of his voice, eyes sparkling, beautiful and generous.

I remember working on a Blaser lecture in the archives, all about "cultural despair," he spent a lot of time discussing forgiveness vs. awareness in poetry and philosophy (the totality of it all). I remember him getting into the etymology of the word "pathetic" ("with strong emotion!") with regards to his libretto, all about the the last supper, Judas in the 20th century, etc.

He tells a fantastic story of him, Duncan and Spicer soliciting work from Laura Riding for a poetry magazine during their Berkeley years, with Riding writing back to them "give it up [poetry], it's a dead end," and then Blaser's quipping "and she wouldn't even let us publish that!!!"

Here's a photo of Blaser signing my copy of Even On Sunday.

Blaser's partner David took this photo of us right after I interviewed him for The Poker #5 (the skateboard that Joanne signed perched on the picnic table behind us), republished on my own blog here))

Rest In Peace Robin