Michael Chikiris (1941-2003)

40 years ago my roommate in the garret at 334 South Willow St in Kent was Michael Chikiris. altho I followd his career over the years we weren't personally in touch. I only learnd of his too-early death yesterday.

Mike was an intense young man. already a fine photographer. shortly after he mov'd in I went to a long exhilirating lecture by Buckminster Fuller. when I returnd I was completely engrossd in writing a poem in an attempt to capture the experience. Mike pickd up his omnipresent camera & shot a series of me writing. I believe one appeard in the university yearbook Chestnut Burr.

the only Chikiris photograph in my art collection is this portrait of our friend Cynthia Mayer:


, 

after graduation Mike became a staff photographer on the Pittsburgh Press. in the early '70s he shot 3D images of the Pittsburgh Steelers (inc Kent State's Jack Lambert) for View Master. at the same time he became a friend of & driver for Stan Brakhage while the filmmaker shot his Pittsburgh trilogy. Mike appears in some late Brakhage films & fatefully died the day after the filmmaker.

Mike remains well-known for his portraits of writers as various as Ginsberg & Updike & of experimental filmmakers such as Hollis Frampton & Jonas Mekas. however his nudes & other work have been increasingly collectable & are available online via several galleries.

Marilyn forever

I knew the film reference books of James Robert Parish long before I accidentally met him in NYC in the fall of 1976.

Jim is generous to his friends. he sends me packets of clippings from time to time. the one that arrivd last week includ'd a chapter of the fascinating new bio of gay agent Henry Willson.

he also e's me online articles every morning. & 2 of today's center on Marilyn Monroe. one was the obit of her first husband James Dougherty. the other was abt the current exhibition of Marilyn-inspird photographs of Mary Ann Lynch.

like her '50s male counterpart James Dean   Marilyn seems to be ubiquitous. hardly a week goes by without their images appearing or their names being utterd.

headlines

heroin bust?
Hebron blast?

a matter
of letters

Al Carmines (1938-2005)

my houseguest

John Grimes grew up in Key West where he was Tennessee Williams' paperboy. many years later I heard him in the orchestra of Lake George Opera for a performance of "Summer and Smoke."

John is a world-class musician   currently with Boston Baroque. we've been catching up on synchronicities. which also means dealing with ghosts which is a juggle of sad & happy.


with prickly pear cactus juice at Rancho de Chimayo 

John Grimes

I met the tympanist 32 summers ago after he'd performd George Crumb's setting of Lorca poems on the Kent State campus. he'll be arriving in a few hours for what I believe is his first Santa Fe visit. & strangely it's the Lorca summer here. with the new opera & city-wide events abt the Spaniard.

a nite at the opera

Barbara & Todd Moore came up from Albuquerque yesterday. after a pleasant repast at Zia Diner we went to the opera for a lecture in which Peter Sellars again spoke of opera as a collaborative art.

for me in that art form composer is auteur. if the music isn't there there's no life for the work.

Santa Fe Opera's premiere of "Aindamar" seems overproducd to me. Gronk's busy "set" (really just another mural)makes it difficult to focus on the performers. at only 75 minutes this one-act seems more a chamber piece to me & if I ever see it again I'd hope for fewer production values & more concentration on the music.

Larry Smith just sent this to me

Attention Small Publishers,
Book Artists, Zinesters


During the month of October-November an Exhibit of
Modern Micro-Publishing will Hang Out at Mac's Backs
Books on Coventry
as part of
the 2005 Celebration
'Poet d.a. levy and the Late 1960's
Cleveland Cultural Scene'




If You Want Your "little magazine" To Be Included in the Exhibit,
Please Send to Mac's Backs c/o Bree, 1820 Coventry Road,
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118

Books/Chapbooks/Broadsides/Zines/Bag-o-zines May Remark Upon d.a. levy, Cleveland, Then or Now, the Culture of Publishing, or May By Any Contemporary, Published Work. All Works will be Held at Mac's After the Exhibit for the Publisher to Retrieve.

Send Now! all books must arrive no later than September 20th.

googling the dead

I find faces
once so familiar
I slept
in their shadows

stuff

I had to delete comments on the Bel Geddes entry because some asshole postd spam there.

for something more gratifying: Kimberly Nichols is seeking xerox'd self-protraits for a grid project to be exhibitd next year. e-mail her (knichols@dc.rr.com) a 300 resolution image in jpg format.

Barbara Bel Geddes (1921-2005)

& Mr. Como too

in some ways William Como was the successor to Daniel Blum. he didn't produce books but his magazines were as vital in their day.

as a young man Como studied dance & tried his hand at Hollywood. in the late '40s he became an office boy at Dance Magazine   working his way up to editor. in the late '60s he began After Dark   which was calld "a national magazine of entertainment." like Blum before him   Como rarely found a picture of a young man wearing very little that he didn't like. this may have been the first mainstream magazine aimd at a gay audience. I first subscribd in early 1969. thruout the following decade all my friends read it. when poems of mine appeard in its pages in 1976 I had more response than I did from any of the little mags I'd been in.


1978 

thx again Mr. Blum

when I was 15 I wrote to Daniel Blum thanking him for his books. I'd discoverd them at Elyria Public Library & they opend up the histories of theater & film for me.

today Blum's books get short shrift from academics because they were heavier on illustration than text. but that's probably why so many fans of stage & screen found them irresistible.

& to my generation of gay men his books had a special significance. Blum had an eye for hot men. the less the costume the better the chances for an actor to be featurd in his pages. in A Pictorial History of the Silent Screen we're treatd to Doug Fairbanks' bare butt   Valentino's bulge   George O'Brien's chest. that book was pubishd when I was 10. 5 years later came A Pictorial History of the Talkies with its famous photos of John Payne in boxing trunks & Aldo Ray in a bathing suit.

lest one think Blum satisfies only my prurience allow me to note that his annuals -- Theater World & Screen World -- continue to be among my most-consultd reference works.

Blum has been dead for 42 years. I hope he got many letters like the one I wrote.

Ibrahim Ferrer (1927-2005)

aahhhhhhhhhhh

I rarely read poetry criticism. it's hard enough to try to keep up with poetry. but I found a line I like from Roger Pao :

"Nick Carbo's Her Ahs and Ohs is like chocolate cheesecake."

seeing double

Riva Yares Gallery is probably the best in town. its shows consistently are of quality. the current one   "Milton Avery: Connections Over Time"   is museum-worthy.

it consists of 48 pieces from 1920-1963. & it's strikingly hung. all the works are in pairs. for instance   "Still Life with Spoon" (c. 1929) is next to "Still Life with Bottles" (1944) which is a reworking of the earlier painting. not every pairing is that precise but each at least shares subject matter.

the paintings from the '50s & '60s are so sublime I wantd to sit on the gallery floor & simply feast. which is what I did a few years ago when Dennis Yares -- who runs the Santa Fe gallery -- mountd his Morris Louis show.

if you can't get here in the next 9 days to see this remarkable show it will travel a bit. in dec it'll be in Miami for Art Basel & then in feb it goes to Riva's Scottsdale gallery.


"Trees by Southern Sea" (1959) 

"Restoring Pasolini"

on his blog Doug Ireland posts a fuller version of his LA Weekly article on the murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini.

must reading.

I miss Howard P. Vincent

perhaps because Jack & I mentiond him   Howard showd up in my dreams last nite.

I've already written abt the Melville scholar & one of my best teachers.

often I miss the dead. today I'm esp missing Howard.

Jack's back

/ 

it's been many a year since the readings at The Cellar on the Kent State campus. but pleasant memories of them came rushing back when Jack Ramey stoppd by for lunch with his lovely wife Nancy Rodgers.

fresh from his triumph reading Whitman at NYPL   Jack was paying his first visit to Santa Fe. as things seem to happen with folks of a certain age   the coversation often turnd to the past.

Jack's memory is much clearer than mine. The Cellar -- long gone -- was a black-box theater that opend in the bowels of the Music & Speech Building in 1964. the theater department used it most frequently & it was here that Dennis Deal producd his early musicals. monthly open readings were held there emcee'd by either Jake Leed or Mac Hassler. in 1965 d.a. levy joind us for a reading & the campus memorial to him was held there in late 1968.

it was endearing to share Jack's recollections of some of the readers at this nearly legendary venue:

Spud Boy (whose poems were often abt -- yup -- potatoes)

Patrick Cullie (who got great fun on playing a practical joke on the serious Howie Emmer)

Michael Glaser (who had a series of poems abt toilet paper he'd collectd on a trip to Europe)

Myrna Loy's centennial

. 

& some came naked

for the opening of its exhibition "The Naked Truth" Vienna's Leopold Museum gave free admission to those coming without habiliments.

can you imagine the uproar the biblebangers wd cause were such to happen here?

times change

for the first time in a while I went to a party yesterday. it was a potluck dinner/housewarming. it brought back memories of my Kent years when the house on Morris Rd was part hotel   part party center. any poet passing thru town knew he cd stay at my place. & social gatherings were frequent & often impromptu. once I'd just returnd from visiting my parents in Elyria for the day to discover the nite-blooming cereus was in spectacular blossom. so I calld up friends & voila: instant party.

in the past 5 or so years here it seems I've been aiming toward hermithood. as I grow older being social takes more work. my circle of friends in town is less than a handful.

today I'm beginning to clean house. next month marks a sort of return to my old role of host with more out-of-town guests than I've had in some time.

the men behind "Ainadamar"

/ 
this ayem I was off to the Lensic for a panel by the creative team behind SFO's Lorca opera which opens tonite.

composer Osvaldo Golijov seems a gentle quiet person on the outside but with seething passions running deep. he spoke of the layers of our minds.

librettist David Henry Hwang -- a sexy & funny man -- was attractd to Lorca because: "my art predicts my own life" as did the Spanaird's.

director Peter Sellars -- aging wunderkind with the electric hair -- drew enthusiastic applause when he condemnd the country's current political climate.

set designer Gronk who paintd the entire set himself describd his use of the imagery of seeds.

I don't see the piece for another 2 weeks but can't wait.


Hwang 

calld Dad

on his birthday.

he's quite the neighborhood charmer. so all his "girlfriends" are making a fuss. completely with Mom's approval.

a perfect nite

it began with a delicious meal of halibut at one of the town's best restaurants. then out to that starry expanse under which is Santa Fe Opera. another brilliant Britten. this time "Peter Grimes" with a magnificent performance by Anthony Dean Griffey in the title role. he brings great voice & powerful acting to the part.

& who cd be luckier than me to hear Christine Brewer sing Britten 2 months in a row. her role here is less than hers in "Gloriana" but she brings as much stage presence & skill to it.

a special nod too to Judith Christin who once again creates an entire world with a supporting part. she has been a joy since I first began going to SFO.

under the bay to Berkeley

the next day I met Kent Taylor at Civic Center & we took BART to North Berkeley.


years after Cleveland 

under the bay I hand'd him the Century Dimes & he gave them right back to me. easily the quickest transfer I've ever had. "I even pay my bills immediately" he laughd.

we were pickd up at the station by Jeff Maser. this amazing young man has establishd himself as one of the nation's premier booksellers. he has a stock in excess of 300000 volumes which soon I was wandering thru. it includes the holdings of Jim Lowell's legendary Asphodel.


thx to Jeff's 911 Camelia St broadsides this is becoming one of the important addresses in current American poetry 

Jeff showd me a copy of Dec. '70:Ohio with the original mailing envelope which I'd addressd to Paul Mariah. quite a surprise.

the 3 of us took a great lunch break at a spot calld Jimmy Bean's. when we returnd we were joind by Jason Davis. his Verdant Press occupies space in Jeff's warehouse. Jason handsets broadsides & chapbooks which reprint d.a. levy & present new work by Richard Krech & Thurston Moore. he's also responsible for important checklists of such poets as Russell Atkins & r.j.s.


/ 

also on this trip I was thrilld by hearing D. Travers Scott read from his new novel & by viewing "The Art of Richard Tuttle" at SFMOMA. & finally I saw an over-the-top performance by Patrick Michael Dukeman. some 20 years ago he was an outrageous theater student at Kent State. it was good to see that his flame still burns bright.

got in late last nite... errrr early this ayem

the impetus for my visit to San Francisco was to view "Sporting Life: GLBT Athletics and Cultural Change from the 1960s to Today." the impressive exhibition was guest-curatd by old pal Jim Provenzano at the GLBT Historical Socity on Mission St.


/ 

much new -- to me -- material. altho I was happy to see the only football card I own: Jerry Smith's.

after that Jim took me to SFPL to view "Out at the Library: Celebrating the James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center." many familiar faces in this exhibition. when I came across the Robert Giard portrait of dear James Broughton I had to have Jim shoot me with James:


, 

up up & away

to celebrate Tom Beckett's birthday
I'm flying to San Francisco this afternoon

back in a few

found photos

thx to Jean Vengua for introducing me to Square America.

the site is joyous.

my entertaining day

after yesterday morning's family calls & Melina-brushing I walkd to the college to see Nick Mangano's vibrant "Measure for Measure." during intermission Robert Nott remind'd me that we'd seen a production some summers ago at the other college in town. that one was so bad I'd totally forgotten I'd seen the play. but Mangano's modern dress staging is exciting theater from lights up till final fade.

from there I took a bus to town for dinner at Plaza Cafe. I walkd around   encountering a photo shoot at a local bar. then to the Lensic for the Santa Fe Jazz Festival. the performers were Tuck & Patti -- just weeks away from their 27th anniversary as a duo. early on Patti meltd me with "My Romance." abt midway she turnd the mic over to Tuck & exitd the stage. previously mute he suddenly blossomd as a deft comedian with his Wes Montgomery story. they are unique performers who create utter joy on stage.

back home I was determind to stay up late & watch the first screening of "The High and the Mighty" in decades. my boyhood memory of Jan Sterling's performance has always been strong. it was on American Movie Classics. when that channel began I was a regular viewer. they showd vintange films without interruption. but somewhere along the way its owners became greedy. they began to stop the film midway for a long commercial break. I stoppd watching. last nite the movie was interruptd abt a dozen minutes into it. I had no idea that AMC now is totally like network. as much as I wantd to see Sterling I simply cdn't watch her under such barbaric conditions. so I reluctantly turnd off AMC.

my well-read cat

Melina 

Santa Fe Art Fair

I've purchasd work at this annual event before   but I never go with that intention. I feel an obligation to support emerging artists but don't have the purse to be able to do so with the panache I'd like.

yesterday I'd finishd a yum Thai lunch with a friend & had a few hours before Lee Friedlander's opening. so I went to the fair. at the booth of LA gallery DeSoto I encounterd some charming little paintings of chairs. I thot they'd be a great match for my friend Billy who collects both art & designer chairs. when I askd abt them it turnd out that the artist Kelly Reemtsen was there. we had a lovely chat.

around another corner was a booth for Albuquerque's New Grounds Print Workshop. the one piece that caught my eye was a photogravure calld "Solace."



I noticd a young man who I presumd workd at the booth noticing me looking at the piece. suddenly I realizd he was the subject of the work. so I began talking with him & learnd that he -- Rob Thalmann -- was the artist.

well yes. I walkd out of the place with the print under my arm.

hell of a Bela

sometimes I wander yon & hither thru the ethers of the net like I used to do thru the shelves of Elyria Public Library when I was a kid. & sometimes I come up with the damnest stuff.

here are some old photos now circulating from a Passion Play of nearly a century ago in which JC was portrayd by the man who keeps Dracula alive:

Terminal Tower

Mother begins her day by reading 2 newspapers. & she clips as she goes. when I visit I have to get up early to read thru the Plain Dealer & Chronicle-Telegram before she gets her scissors out.

I'm one of the lucky ones who receive regular mailings of her clippings. last week she gave me the recent ones she hadn't maild yet. one was abt Cleveland's celebrations of the 75th anniversary of the Terminal Tower   my first skyscraper & still a favorite building.


, 

when I was a boy Terminal Tower was the second tallest building in the world. every time I went to Cleveland I lookd forward to gazing up at its elegance. in recent years a Cleveland building whose name I don't care to mention surpassd its 52 stories but in my mind Terminal Tower will always be Cleveland to me.

built in the late 1920s by the bachelor Van Sweringen brothers   the structure has been featurd in movies & famous photographs by Margaret Bourke-White who was once a tenant. on the nightstand beside my bed I keep this antique souvenir my parents found at a garage sale:


, 

reaching for Harlow

Todd Moore dedicates The Dead Zone Trilogy to "The Duende, the movies, and my wife Barbara."

in the first poem of the trilogy -- which Moore claims concludes his epic Dillinger -- Jean Harlow speaks to John Dillinger who reaches out to her:

  my
  hands get
  alllllllllllll
  tangled up
  in the
  moo
  vie
  light n dark
  get alllllll
  mixed to
  gether so
  that
  I cdn't
  tell
  which
  was
  which

this seems to me a particularly important visual. anyone who reads Moore realizes the significance cinema plays as both source material & inspiration.

so we have multiple layers at work. there's Dillinger attempting to hold the unholdable   not being able to distinguish light from dark   confusing reality with fiction. but there's also the poet feeding off the movies.

any work as vast as Dillinger has got to function on several levels. I've long felt that one of those was as a paean to the movies. I even wonder if Moore's honing of his lines from sentence to word to syllable is almost a replication of physical film going thru a projector to cast its image.

I'm not done with Dillinger yet. he keeps pointing that gun at me.

Blogoview question of the week

Charles Jensen asks his fellow poet/bloggers a weekly question. this one is which dead poet wd you most like to meet.

Charles names Frank O'Hara. my ship already passd in the nite with that great poet. so for my choice I'll go back a bit further to Hart Crane whose death came almost exactly 11 years before my birth.

I'm not sure if young poets read Crane much anymore. he doesn't seem to be talkd abt in the same way he was when I was a young poet. there is no denying his early influence on me.



* * *

not long after posting the above I went to the site of John Perreault to read the second of his Smithson pieces. what a surprise to find a photo of Hart Crane there...

dreamland

I'm not the kind of person who normally remembers my dreams. if perchance I wake mid-dream it may hover in my mind for a bit but often evaporates by the time I've brushd my teeth.

perhaps sleeping in my boyhood bedroom was magic. dreams were plentiful & rememberd. my first nite I dreamt I was visiting old friend Jean-Claude van Itallie. the next nite I was trying to write a poem. the initial line: "once a bird was caught by a line of poetry." every time I attemptd a second line I'd awaken or dream I'd awakend -- but soon wd be dreaming again abt trying to complete the poem.

on the third nite I was pitching a Calamity Jane script to a dubious Ellen DeGeneres.
the final nite's dream was abt a power struggle at a university library with cameos by everyone from my mother to Barry Goldwater.


as far as I know Aunt Sophie's trumpet vine in Mom & Dad's backyard had nothing to do with my dreaming but then... maybe it did. 

back from Elyria

. 

I can gauge my father's health by looking at his garden.

last year was tough. he was in a precarious state. & the garden lookd like hell. more weeds than plants. on this trip back I found Dad looking & feeling better than he has in some time. of course he's frail & now uses a cane. daily he copes with a multiplicity of insults to the body. but his spirit is inspiring. & he always looks forward. for his 87th birthday he requestd his first electric shaver & I was happy to comply.

& the garden is more handsome than ever. stately rows of tomatoes. perky peppers. cucumbers curling skyward.

I helpd him water   weed   rototill   hill potatoes   plant late peppers. one early evening as we waterd side-by-side he startd whistling. surprisingly to me the song was "3 Coins in the Fountain." that made me happier than I can convey.


, 

abt to shuttle

to Albuquerque
to catch a flight to Houston
followd by another to Cleveland :

visiting my folks
for a few days

much cents

took my penny jar
to Coinstar

total:
$13.13

lucky
change

have a festive 4th

neighbor Rita & I went to Fort Marcy Park last nite for the inaugural Santa Fe Community Picnic. we enjoyd shrimp salad   b-b-q   cherry pie while listening to Los Lobos.

this morning an older tradition is taking place. Pancakes on the Plaza. I usually partake because it feels so wonderfully small-town. but because we went out last nite I stayd at home & fixd banana waffles. will spend part of the day dipping into Leaves of Grass on the 150th anniversary of its publication.

thigh candy

movies generous in display of pulchritude are dubbd "eye candy." last nite I finally saw "Troy." when it was over I wrote a short poem calld "Brad Pitt's Thighs."

a fardel of frustrations

attempt to reserve a particular b & b for a 2006 trip :
already bookd.

stop at Sherman-Williams to purchase exterior paint for touch-up :
can't match the color "buckskin" w/o bringing in a sample.

pause at bank :
too long a line to bother.

finally   success :
visit to Desert Desserts in hopes a cherry pie is available even tho I hadn't placd an order   & it was.

out of the blue

I get an e from poet/actor Jack Ramey who I knew in Kent back in the '70s. he's bouncd around over the years. I remember in 1984 checking into The Royalton in NYC & who shd be working the desk but Jack. haven't seen him now in a dozen years.

he reports he's currently doing a Whitman performance which will play the poet's birthplace on Long Island on 17 july & NYPL the following day. he & his wife also are preparing a Whitman video.

Capparis Spinosa (which is not a philosopher's prank)

so I was reading John Latta's review of Joseph Massey & came across a reference to capers being nasturtium seeds.

there's always a jar of capers in my kitchen. but I never thot of their origin. nasturtiums   huh? naturally I did some googling & found an excellent site by Ben Alkire. he sez they are the immature flower buds of the caperbush.

for me the glory of the caper is that pungent stab to the tongue while nasturtium petals provide the nose with a jolt. in fact "nasturtium" means "nose-twist."

anyway all of this has made me feel terribly Marianne Moore this morning.

cactus blossoms

inside 



outside