...and as i read and recalled, a little, those first lines on the cover and turned the page to continue, out fell another rare little pamphlet = PAUL BLACKBURN'S copy of LARRY EIGNER'S "The Music, The Rooms", DESERT REVIEW PRESS, New Mexico...i'd clean forgotten i had it! Probably bought it from Jack Shoemaker's SAND DOLLAR BOOKS in the 1970's via Mail Order.
It has always been Americans with whom i really connected...so generous and up-for-it...New Worlders!
It was Jack Shoemaker's Maya Quarto series, of letterpress chapbooks, which inspired me to start publishing under my own imprint = STINGY ARTIST EDITIONS, in 1978. The first publication was MONTALE'S TYPOS by Kris Hemensley (lucky to have a poet/writer in the family...THE poet/writer in the family)...AND the second publication was LARRY EIGNER's "FLAGPOLE RIDING" with whom i was already corresponding -(still living in SWAMPSCOTT, at the time)... i was put onto him by my brother, Kris, as Eigner was a favourite and i'd been reading him since i'd seen his poems in Clayton Eshleman's CATERPILLAR magazine and saw the adverts for BLACK SPARROW PRESS in it. i ordered "AIR THE TREES" by LARRY EIGNER, "THE DAYS RUN AWAY LIKE WILD HORSES OVER THE HILLS" by CHARLES BUKOWSKI and "FRAGMENT" by JOHN ASHBERRY:the beginnings of my collection...circa 1969...and the beginnings of a tenuous affair. BUT so many years later, after times of thinking that i would REALLY like to be like that original "Stingy Artist" and "disappear" into the mountains, i am more pleased than not, to have a "hermitage" full of some little thoughts and these attendant "little" books...
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Golden GOJI Hermitage
27TH/JUNE/2014
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Allow me to copy my response to your F/b link, appreciating that people dont always proceed from the F/b note to the Blog itself... Before i do though my eye just then drawn up to Eigner's "In the field with Poe", and i thrill again to the invitation it once seemed to be to a hybrid of Olson's Projective & the Gothic/Romantic! Anyway, this is what i wrote on F/b :
ReplyDeleteKris Hemensley Thanks for this, B.. As i sd on my page in response to your 'share', the conjunctions are important, crucial as to what we mean by 'world' including 'self'! Your snaps of the Eigner & the Blackburn from those 60s70s times are a reminder of the extent to which the little mags defined poetry's parameters for many of us --the production of the books & mags, the ambition for the poem itself, the world that such involvement in the 'new' & 'experimental' writing enabled... And it is an important question to ask of oneself as well as of the succeeding times, "what happened?" How did we change? How did the poetry scene change? How did life change? It does depend on ourselves, enthusiasts, to advocate for our poets, especially after their time. Life as a continuing im memorium, poetry as a continuous rereading (riff, elegy, celebration)... In which regard, i copy this passage from David Caddy's recent review of the latest issue of the Long Poem Magazine (#11, 2014), --"Issue 11 is no exception to the usual high standard. Robert Vas Dias’ essay on Paul Blackburn’s The Journals (1975) is a wonderfully written personal and critical introduction to the subject. It is highly informative, providing a contextualised reading of a neglected, major American poet. By the way, Simon Smith is editing a Paul Blackburn Reader for publication by Shearsman in 2015, which will include hitherto unpublished material from the Blackburn archive at San Diego." --We've recently, indeed often, spoken about the dropping out of the conversation of so many poets we've regarded as major --fashion as instrument of oblivion --Paul Blackburn for one. So it's great to be given the opportunity to sss & think about P B again via yr lovely note and to anticipate both Vas Dias' & Simon Smith's re-views! (I still have Robert V-D issue of Sixpack devoted to Blackburn, when was it, London '75? --just after the Cambridge Fest, his party for Jackson MacLow in Hampstead wch John Robinson & i attended... another great story!)