Wednesday, July 20, 2022
“Invisible Strings”: “The Pleasure of Return”
Yesterday afternoon, I had a long phone conversation with the poet Genet Bosque, whom I have seen in person only once in the past 25 years. That occasion was about three years ago, when I had driven from Long Beach to Cecilia Woloch’s apartment to talk with her and another friend about a job interview application at an out-of-state college. I got up in her area early enough to swing by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to see an exhibit I had read about that included a handwritten transcription of Allen Ginsberg’s “Wichita Vortex Sutra” in a huge painting. As I wandered into a nearby gallery, I heard a voice say, “Bill!” It turned out that Genet was working as a gallery attendant, which caught me off guard because I thought she was still living up north. We exchanged phone numbers and emails, but did not end up contacting each long until recently, when a brief e-mail exchange led to yesterday’s chance to catch up with each other.
Last night, appropriately enough, I spent an hour reading INVISIBLE STRINGS, an extraordinary book of poems by Jim Moore, a poet who has living and worked in St. Paul, Minnesota for most of the past half-century. I published Jim’s second collection, WHAT THR BIRD SEES, in 1978.
Today, the “invisible strings” continued to guide me along. Just four hours ago, I was at my storage unit, going through boxes of my archives to prepare them for being taken down to UCSD, and I found a carbon copy of a letter I wrote back in early 1978 to Sandra Tanhauser. The letter primarily concerned the attendance of Los Angeles poets at the publication party for issue number 10 of BACHY magazine at Papa Bach Bookstore. In the letter, I mention how I showed copies of Jim’s book to Holly and Harry.
Lo and behold, when I got home I found an email from Harry in which he says that Jim Moore’s review of Holly Prado’s book, “WEATHER,” can be found at the following link (Times Times 3):
https://timestimes3.blogspot.com/?fbclid=IwAR3yzywked7nLcjpzUupOuj7OvLH1u7w9wKegLGM-3mW-AQbXr7Ix7JB0ck
“Invisible Strings,” indeed. “The pleasure of return,” as Jim Moore says in his review.
About Bill Mohr