Koan Kinship — Bill Mohr's Blog

Page Against the Machine Bookstore
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presents

TWO LONG BEACH POETS

Bill Mohr
and
Fred Voss

Saturday, September 16
6:00 p.m.
FREE

Saturday, August 26

I didn’t have to read more than the title of the article to be reminded of one of the many things I learned from studying with Louis Montrose at the University of California, San Diego. I took several seminars with him, even though I would have met my breadth requirements with a single quarter’s worth of work. Montrose was a Renaissance specialist, but his analysis and the texts he assigned often intriguingly applied to contemporary 20th century work. (By the way, I say “was” not because he has died, but because he retired over a decade ago and has gone on to become a highly respected photographer.)

One of Montrose’s key insights is that “All representations of power are appropriations of power.” In Renaissance England, for instance, this would have meant all instances of kings and queens being on a public stage, whether or not the royal figure was historical or not. Montrose’s rule of thumb can easily apply to other categories other than monarchies. Tyrants certainly understand what must seem to them to be insidious intrusions on their authority when comics get on a stage and mimic them. Truep certainly hated Saturday Night Live. Most importantly, though, is the way that the appropriated power can be brought to bear to also empower other attitudes and characterizations of other issues, such as race, gender, and class, that are brought into direction conduction or immediate association.

A “tribute” is inherently an appropriation of power. Think of “tribute” bands in which look-a-like perform a set of greatest hits. An enjoyable evening for the band’s insatiable fans, but there is an element of appropriation to it, even if the band has a financial arrangement with the original. The singer or musician may not be the original, but getting applauded while you pretend to be someone famous must release an extra dose of dopamine that no one can allege to be self-indulgent fantasy. After all, you’re working for your high!

Well, I guess I’d better read the article before I say anything else, but I enjoy any excuse to think about one of my favorite professors at UCSD. I would not have been able to work at CSULB the past 17 years if it were not for the training I received from him, as well as Michael Davidson, Donald Wesling, Kathryn Shevelow, Marcel Henaff, Page Du Bois, Winnie Woodhull, John Carlos Rowe, David and Eleanor Antin, and Stephen Cox.

I was the publisher of Len Roberts’s first collection of poetry, COHOES THEATER, and it was recognized by the Elliston Prize Committee as one of the two dozen best books of poetry published in the United States in 1980. Roberts went on to have another half-dozen books published, including THE DRIVING. As I’ve been going through my archives, I found a copy of a review written by a poet in Philadelphia named Louis McKee. Both Roberts and McKee are dead, but I was thinking of them both today and decided to post this short review by McKee.

“Roberts has a cellar full of ghosts to exorcise — and may of the poems in THE DRIVING deal with those ghosts, whether they be his father, his brothers, mother, or other lost loved ones. But this volume deals especially with his mother, thus the title poem, “The riving,” which clearly shows what his mother “had been driven to,” and also sets the tone for the rest of the book. Indeed, many of these poems are ‘driven in that sense, and as one reads further he realizes he is being taken on a compulsory (for the writer, at least) journey, one which eventually leads from the hard, bitter memories to a place to in Big Red’s Bar where the person can

…………………. sitagain on the own red stools and lift
glasses of beer to the neon bull glowing
in the window, praising our mother and her
burnt fish cakes with side dishes of spaghetti,
praising our father who strode in those nights
with iced winter on his Army jacks fur collar.
Then we toast the thorazine that helps my bother
sleep, the benzedrine that wakes him up ….
(from “At Big Reds)

Clearly Roberts’ gentle and kind voice pulls a quiet strength, ‘a beautiful moral prescience’ as Gerald Stern calls it, from the re-living o what easily could have been destructive and cruel moments in his past. THE DRIVING insists upon a complete examination of these moments, without hesitation without fear, and because of this it is a book made of brave poems.”

— Louis McKee

Some of Len Roberts’s other books include THE SILENT SINGER; FROM THE DARK; COUNTING THE BLACK ANGELS, and THE TROUBLE-MAKING FINCH.

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YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Len Roberts correspondence, 1983-2006
Collection consists of correspondence to Len Roberts from poets Hayden Carruth, Philip Levine, and Sharon Olds spanning over two decades from the mid-1980s to shortly before Roberts death in 2007. There are approximately 143 letters from Hayden Carruth, dating from 1984 to 2006. The correspondence files from Sharon Olds and Philip Levine, which contain 46 and 23 letters respectively, are augmented by notes in Roberts’ hand.

Thursday, August 24, 2023

Normally, in about 14 months, the two leading presidential candidates would face off in a publicly broadcast series of debates, but if the conventions of the major parties representing the dominant factions of the bourgeois corporate interest in this country play out the way that one might currently anticipate, I think it’s time now for us to brace ourselves that there will be no debates in October, 2024.

The only “debate” that should be taking place is the one in a jury room in a courtroom in Georgia. The winner of “The Smarmy Grifter of the Century” award needs to learn that laws apply to him, too.

By the way, it obviously took far longer than I expected for this melt-down to happen, but one could go back seven years in this blog and find an article just before the presidential election entitled “Trump Towers as the Berlin Bunker of 2016.”

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And in the interest of being “fair and balanced,” here is an equal time response from SARAH PALIN:

“I think of those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tiered system of justice and I want to ask them, ‘What the heck? Do you want us to be in civil war?’ Because that’s what’s going to happen,” Palin said. “We’re not going to keep putting up with this. And Eric, I like that you suggested that we need to get angry. We do need to rise up and take our country back.
““The RNC (Republican National Committee)… that’s what’s lacking when it comes to collective anger, which can be healthy and it can be useful. Where is the RNC. They hold the purse strings to the party. They have the platform. and yet they’re too timid. A bunch of frickin’ RINOs running the thing. They better get their stuff together.”

Shortly after noon today, Paul Vangelisti gave me a call to talk about various topics, including the disappearance of box scores from daily newspapers. We are not alone in missing that pleasure. I think particularly of a poem by the late Tom Clark, “Baseball and Classicism.” You can find it at this blog post:
https://archivedinnings.com/2015/08/06/baseball-and-classicism-by-tom-clark/

And for those in protest:
https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2023-07-22/letters-to-sports

Toward the end of our conversation, Paul mentioned that he had to head over to Beyond Baroque for a memorial service this afternoon for Barbara Maloutas, a poet and book artist who worked at Otis College of Design for many years. I had not heard that she had died, so the news startled me.

I first met her when I was teaching a free poetry workshop at Beyond Baroque from the summer of 1993 to the summer of 1995. Barbara was obviously not a novice writer, but on the other hand she seemed reticent to get her poetry out into the world. I recollect that several of the poems had references to life in Greece, but she never provided any personal background that explained her attachment to those images. In general, I remember how the other members of the work always talked about one of her poems, after she had passed it around and read it, with respect and curiosity. To an unusual degree, each poem she wrote seemed to be already in anticipation of the poem that was yet to come. There was a foundation of clam inevitability to her writing. She seemed undaunted by the “youth culture” that permeated “po biz.”

Douglas Messerli’s PIP (Project for Innovative Poetry) has an obituary that gives further details about her life. According to this obituary, it was indeed around 1994 that she began writing poetry in earnest.

http://pippoetry.blogspot.com/2010/06/barbara-maloutas-usa-1945-born-in-bryn.html

It is certainly not unheard of for an older poet to finally begin getting their work out in books; indeed, several women have done so in recent decades, and Barbara is one of them: swas almost 60 years old when her first full-length book, “Practices” (New Michigan Press/Diagram; 2003). That volume was followed by “In a Combination of Practices,” (New Issues, 2004), Coffee Hazilly (Beard of Bees, 2007) and “the whole Marie” (2008 Sawtooth Poetry Prize winner). In 2011, “Of Which Anything Consists” appeared from New Michigan Press.

I hope that future anthologies of Los Angeles-based poets make certain to include a generous selection of her work.

Audri Phillips went to extraordinary lengths in the spring of 2023 to pull together a festival of dancers, musicians, visual artists, and poets in West Hollywood’s large public park near its library. I was only able to attend one afternoon, but it was a yet another instance of mutual respect among the artists who participated.

Over 50 poets were part of the programming, so only a small percentage of them are glimpsed in the footage of this three-minute panoply of programming dexterity. Some of the poets who are not visible in the film include Pam Ward, Terry Wolverton, Laurel Ann Bogen, Brendan Constantine, and Suzanne Lummis. Tom Laichas also deserves considerable praise for his curation of the poetry potion of this arts festival.

You can find the video on ladiesofcourage.com on the bottom of the opening home page.
You can also find it https://vimeo.com/837260862?share=copy

(left-to-right: Hassan; Rep. Adam Schiff; and S.A. Griffin at the Netflix picket, Wilton & Sunset.)

This Actor Kills Fascists
This machine kills fascists – on Woody Guthrie’s guitar

as actors and writers
we are the dream language of
popcorn and celluloid lions
the philosophy of light and sound
and their flickering byproduct
a creative disagreement in action
as spectacle on full view

we stand before A.I.
the new wheel
a Promethean spark
the bright edge of a
blistering sunrise

the evil it is
that it can be
we are

for too long we have been divided
by fantasies of an Easy Street
allowing the power brokers and their elected messengers
to wage war on humanity

and now it is time for us to
wage war for humanity

pain is human
and these human machines that
make machines human
must feel our pain

if in our action
we do not inflict substantial pain
our pain will be that much greater

the feral creatures of our creative existence
our collective suspension of disbelief
is what is at stake here

as curious children
doubt follows belief

but first
we must
believe

– S.A. Griffin

July 14, 2023
The First Day of the SAG-AFTRA Strike with WGA
Woody Guthrie’s birthday

Monday, July 17th

I talked with S.A. Griffin this past weekend about several things, including an event to honor the poet and actor Harry E. Northup at Beyond Baroque on Saturday, September 16. About 25 poets have been invited to take part in this celebration of his writing and I’m looking forward to it very much.

In the meantime, both the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) are on strike, and S.A. is walking the picket line. As we continued our conversation via text messages, both of us acknowledged that these simultaneous strikes will one day be looked back upon as turning points in the struggle for human dignity. The corporations that insist on imposing absolute control on the economic, social, and cultural agency of working people are not settling for half-way measure in 2023. Corporate aggrandizement is truly after total domination.

I am not a member of SAG or WGA, but in solidarity with their cause, I propose that all working people in Los Angeles set aside their Labor Day holiday this year, on Monday, September 4, and take part in marches across the entire county of Los Angeles in support of our sisters and brothers in these unions.

Now it’s possible that these strikes will be settled by the end of August, but I doubt it. If not, it’s imperative that a massive turnout increase public pressure and force the corporations to relent.

Onward!

THE COYOTE CYCLE: A Documentary Film
World Premiere – Sunday, July 30 at 4:00 p.m. (PDT)

LINK TO RESERVING YOUR SEAT:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-coyote-cycle-documentary-finishing-funds–2/x/2682414?fbclid=IwAR3RCnVVX_aTXlTfSzPVU-7GzufalRYVYGSAVWyhzmaNLCy1Sqy8sCnfrPk#/

The first public viewing of a documentary film about Murray Mednick’s THE COYOTE CYCLE will take place on-line as a fundraiser to complete all the loose ends needed to launch this film into full distribution. Admission, however, is not contingent on your ability to pay. A donation at any monetary level will give you a virtual seat.

Padua Hills was a crucial turning point in my life as a poet. In point of fact, I am probably the only American poet to have a poem about a major underground theater festival as the subject of a poem in her or his first full-length book of poetry. To a large extent, much of the writing I have done since my first attendance at Padua Hills in 1979 has involved a dialogue with its theatrical poetics. While this film focuses on a cycle of plays that deserve to be set alongside other canonical cycles, the first assessment should be about establishing the context of Mednick’s encounters with indigenous myth as it once again permeates the domain it emerged out of. This is not done in a theatrical vacuum. If one is not aware of the other plays done at Padua, the Coyote Cycle loses some of its impact. Among the most memorable productions that accompanied the annual installments of THE COYOTE CYCLE, I would in particular cite the following:

Martin Epstein – “The Man Who Killed the Buddha”
John O’Keefe – Don’t You Ever Cal Me Anything But Mother
Maria Irene Fornes – Fefu and Her Friends
Maria Irene Fornes – Mud
Martin Epstein – Mysteries of the Bridal Night
Leon Martelll – Hoss Drawin
Leon Martell and Elizabeth Ruscio – El Dorado 1961
Walter Hadler – Alive
Connie Managhan – Guys in Black Leather Jackets Stepping into Phone Booths
Susan La Tempa – Sunset Beach
John Steppling – Neck
Kathleen Cramer and O-Lan Jones: The Man Whose Brother Was Eaten by Wolves

Although THE COYOTE CYCLE as a published script is available in a stand-alone volume, I would argue that an ideal reference volume would be to have entire script by Mednick interspersed in a volume with the scripts from the above plays. Only then could you begin to understand the significance and meaning of Padua Hills as a cultural project. There were other playwrights who contributed work to the Festival, too, such as Michael Monroe.

Finally, I would note that Murray Mednick is also a poet, and I included him in POETRY LOVES POETRY, my anthology of Los Angeles poets that I published in 1985. Other poets included Paul Vangelisti, James Krusoe, Bob Flanagan, Dennis Cooper, Amy Gerstler, Suzanne Lummis, Lewis MacAdams, Brooks Roddan, Jack Grapes, Bob Peters, Charles Harper Webb, Ron Koertge, Charles Bukowski, Laurel Ann Bogen, John Doe, Doren Robbins, Wanda Coleman, Exene Cervenka, Kate Braverman, David E. James, Jed Rasula, Bob Crosson, Max Benavidez, Paul Trachtenberg, and David Trinidad. This, too, is one context within which THE COYOTE CYCLE should be absorbed.

Here is the official announcement from Padua Hills about the documentary film on THE COYOTE CYCLE.

“This feature-length film provides an in depth look at the seminal theater production (1978-1985) by Padua’s founder, the playwright and director Murray Mednick.

“Created by Guy Zimmerman and Bradford L. Cooper, The Coyote Cycle features a narration by Ed Harris, interviews and performances by the original cast of the plays—Darrell Larson, Norbert Weisser, Priscilla Cohen and Christine Avila—along with interviews with Peter Stathis and A. Martinez.

“Murray Menick and his cast delve into the formal investigations that fueled this groundbreaking theater project, as well as Murray’s relationship with prominent indigenous activists such as Leonard Crow Dog, who embraced the project as a way to draw attention to the Hopi prophecy of environmental destruction and collapse. Prophetic and profound, the film brings us back in time to draw inspiration from a more hopeful cultural moment–come join us in celebrating the positive energies of revolution and renewal!”

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-coyote-cycle-documentary-finishing-funds–2#/

FIELD NOTES FROM THE PADUA HILLS THEATER WORKSHOP AND FESTIVAL

In 1977 and 1978, I wrote three full-length plays that all received public readings, the first of which was at a venue organized by Oliver Hailey. He liked what I had written well enough to attend the second one, which was held at Beyond Baroque. The play was about a serial killer in a small beach town in California whose victims were children; that part was read by Leland Hickman. Hailey and his spouse left after the first act. “You don’t have children, do you?” they asked me as they left. “If you did, you would never have written this play.” Jim Krusoe’s reaction after the reading was different: “I kept wondering why all these poems were in a theater script.”

Shortly after I finished the third play, I saw a notice in the L.A. Times that I wish I had seen the summer before: a project called the Padua Hills Theater Festival was looking for participants. I ended up spending a month in the foothills of Claremont, taking workshops with Marie Irene Forces and Michael McClure and helping out with production work. One of the playwrights I grew close to that month was Walter Hadler, who was also an actor as well as playwright.

My own experience at Padua was transformative in ways that were different from anyone else’s who ever took part in that experiment. After that summer, I realized that I would never fit into the world of theater. I wasn’t a theater person. My life was in poetry, though I have hardly been someone who fit comfortably in that world either. To be a poet on the West Coast of the United States is most often to remain at odds with the prevalent canon of the east coast. Even as I began a renewed dedication to publishing the books of other poets in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I still couldn’t resist the pull of Padua. Every summer I attended their festival of plays and I began to regard my attendance as a kind of sacred pilgrimage. It was at this festival that I was introduced to playwrights such as John Steppling, whose play “The Shaper” remains one of the most important plays I have ever seen, Martin Epstein, and Leon Martell. I had always known of the work of Forness and Mednick, though their plays I saw at Padua (Mednicks “Coyote Cycle” and Fornes’s “Mud” and “Fefu”) were astonishingly hypnotic.

Padua Hills, in its first incarnation, lasted until the mid-1990s, and I recollect at least four other sites where the festival took place. It has since resurrected itself closer to the center of Los Angeles, but I have been too busy with my late-in-life academic career to visit it. What recently stirred my heart, though, has been the publication of a book about the Padua Hills Festival founded by Murray Mednick in the late 1970s. It is collection of essays, poetics, commentary and memoir that deserves to be read by anyone who aspires to commit themselves to a life permeated by the imagination. My sense was that the best person to review this book, “OUTLAW THEATRE,” would be another poet, and so I asked Paul Vangelisti to take a look at it. His essay has just appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books and it is the best possible introduction I can offer you to this book.

My only wish about this book is that Walter Hadler could have been more present. The plays he had staged as part of the Festival are not even included in a list of the work presented over the years.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/off-off-broadway-west-on-guy-zimmermans-outlaw-theatre-field-notes-from-the-padua-hills-playwrights-workshop-and-festival/

“Off-Off-Broadway West: On Guy Zimmerman’s “Outlaw Theatre” by Paul Vangelisti

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