Ron Silliman recently suggested in his blog that a Collected Beverly Dahlen
is already long overdue - and I would agree. Today, Chris Murray, on her
tex-files brought attention to a passage from "A Reading: 1 - 7", the first
in a series of books call "A Reading" of which I published the first one at
Momo's Press in 1985:
the Ace is like a big heart blooming out there. and I could wish all my days
to be bound each to each. by natural piety. whatever that is, she wrote
these things are of nature. trees, rocks, flowers, a desert. have a desert,
have an ocean. think of living down there, there would be other fish
swimming around, strange plants growing. that too would be nature, let's not
be too hasty to define it. there's a thin moving line. blurred edges. if it
were there as sharply as Blake wanted who would get over the boundary in the
middle of the night. they were living close to the border in northern Italy,
'we need some new genes' he said. he remembered the nor and thought I was
Norwegian, someone from the north originally. someone, a
Svenska-Suomalainen.
all that was a foreign language, something she was learning. Navajo. o my
horse. the corn of the east. somewhere over the rainbow. blue skies. it's
shaping up and I wasn't even thinking about it. it grows. hard and soft, she
wrote. hard buds, nipples of buds. hardening. I take you. his
oleander. his skinny, the slight boy's brown body.
'the brown boy's slight body.'
(In the non-virtual world, the above text is justified to the right margin!)
Peter Gannick's "Pots & Poets" (Sp?), and Charles Alexander's Chax Press
published the other two volumes of "A Reading". And Elizabeth Robinson's
Press (name) will be publishing a new volume in about a year. I would seek
out these books, as well.
Beverly - one of the founders - with Frances Jaffer and Kathleen Frazer - of
the journal How(ever) (sp?), is a contemporary of George Stanley, and
definitely one of the central figures (tho many years quiet until recently)
of the San Francisco poetry world. Among many, Beverly is one of those
diamonds in the rough that will increasingly rise to fill a significant
place on the late 20th century literary horizon. Like Niedecker she has kept
correspondence with many of her significant peers and elders (Oppen, Duncan,
Rachel Blau Duplessis, Stanley, among others), much of her literary life has
been counter-careerist.
I do still have copies of a Reading 1 - 7. For $12 I will be happy to
provide any and all with a copy - postage and handling included. Send checks
to me at:
3514 21st Street
San Francisco CA 94114
If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area on August 20, I will be reading
with Beverly at the Grand Street series in Oakland on that Sunday evening.
Stephen V
Blog: http://stephenvincent.durationpress.com
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