Thanks for this, Stephen. Sorry never to have witnessed James Liddy, though I've been
aware of him for nearly 40 years and have read some of his work. So he never had
direct contact with Jack Spicer? Was he then part of the posthumous Spicer circle? I can
remember being taken by Moira Roth in 1977 to a private apartment reading by Andrew
Hoyen, seated on a crown-like chair surrounded by those I took to be post-Spicerian
devotees. In retrospect, I'm glad I was afforded an anthropological glimpse of that
context. Formally, I find it useful to extrapolate from Spicerian serialism. Even his
reported practice of eating a pork chop sandwich for lunch each day in a North Beach cafe
feeds into my unannounced performances in daily life of my own variants of Alison
Knowles' and Philip Corner's performances of "The Identical Lunch", though I've yet to
consume a pork chop sandwich. A 99 cent Israeli kosher hot dog was an intriguing recent
stand-in, until I could no longer stomach the truly fascistic "stance towards reality" my
practice eventually elicited from "management". Moti's "Empire" has been crumbling for
quite some time, not unlike W(ORST)'s.
Barry Alpert
On Fri, 7 Nov 2008 11:03:27 -0800, Stephen Vincent <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>For those out of the Ron Silliman loop,
>James Liddy, the long resident of America, Irish poet, has passed away. (1934 - 2008).
>He came to teach at San Francisco State College in the late Sixties where I knew him,
partly as a neighbor. He held classes at his home during the SF State Strike - in which I
would occasionally sit-in. It was the place where I first met Ron Silliman, a student then.
>James was totally enamored of the fresh legacy of Jack Spicer (d. 1965) while
becoming good friend of Graham Mackintosh, the White Rabbit Press printer and close
associate of Spicer. Sadly, or to the benefit of Milwaukee, James left the City in the
70's. A warm, lively gregarious spirit totally devoted to the realms of Poetry - much
devoted to his friends - much to be missed, I am sure.
>
>Stephen Vincent
> http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
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