Just give me Richard Thompson, the darker the better…
Doug
On Apr 3, 2014, at 6:09 AM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> C'mon people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now .... Yes, surely the pop/rock canon is wide enough to accommodate mystics and rockers. Van Morrison almost bridged that divide for a while before he noodled off into the Ulster distance. Fugs rarely get listened to now surely for all their grit and grumble. Incredible String Band's jigs I loved especially Grumbling Old Men on Liquid Acrobat but that Likky voice was a trial and Mike Heron's meanders didn't always sit well for me with Robin Williamson's strings. Give me, instead, Richard Thompson's Crazy Man Michael from his Fairport days.
>
> Bill
>
>> On 3 Apr 2014, at 9:00 pm, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> You may never have heard The Fugs having at Donovan during their shows back
>> in 1968. They referred to him as "Donovan Puke Freak." And it got better
>> from there. Hell, Donovan was simply singing a sweet vision of life. Or a
>> mystical one. Guinevere in the Royal Court of Arthur. (I thought the Royal
>> Court was a theater in London.) As for The Fugs, the grosser the better. I
>> guess everything has its place. They were crass fun. But for Ed Sanders, the
>> whole world was the gross-out world of turned over dustbins, and bodily
>> fluid transfers in apartments on East 9th Street on Lower East Side. That
>> was fun, but it wasn't all there was, for Godsake. Gentleness and beauty
>> were in there too.
>>
>> There seemed to be rock "camps" in the late Sixties. Mystical, like the
>> Incredible String Band (I adored them), and rock blasters.
>>
>> Ken
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
>> Behalf Of Bill Wootton
>> Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 2014 5:50 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Snap Ken: La Cauchemar
>>
>> Ah, Donovan, so maligned by the Bobster in Don't Look Back, as he unleashed
>> It's all over now, zbaby Blue.
>>
>> When I look out my window
>> What do you think I see?
>> And when I look in my window
>> So many different people to be
>> It's strange
>> Sure is strange
>>
>> You got to pick up every stitch
>>
>> Ken,
>>
>> In dreams, things unstitch for me. Responsibilities don't so much begin as
>> unravel and echo. So many different people I might have been but will never
>> be. Demons? But maybe you are right: stitches become available for picking
>> up and reincorporating somehow.
>>
>> Bill
>>
>>> On 3 Apr 2014, at 8:24 am, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Schwartz's was a courtship story, his father dating his mother. It's
>>> something to do with him witnessing it as in a theater and crying out
>>> in horror not to go through with it because of what's coming.
>>> Mine...more like losing everything, the Donovan song "Season of the
>>> Witch." If you lose it, tough, you still have to find it because you
>>> own the bits and pieces of your life, even if they dropped stitches.
>>> So back I went in dreams to an aborted teaching career, some of it
>>> realized but then ruined. One of the worst night's sleep I've had in
>>> ages. But--I lived anyway. Tough shit to the demons in my head. One day
>> they may claim me, but not for a while yet.
>>>
>>> Ken
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>>> On Behalf Of Bill Wootton
>>> Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 2014 8:16 AM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: Snap Ken: La Cauchemar
>>>
>>> Things lost I get too in dreams, Ken but more often ways lost, being
>>> diverted so I am late and getting later for some appointment, often a
>>> teaching appointment but the more I try to get on track, the farther I
>>> wander. And a dawning acceptance of knowing I won't make it. Papers
>>> not written or not submitted I get too. Remembered hallways are only
>>> half-remembered and what's at either end of the hallway changes, even
>>> the side walls bulge or become intangible. Like the sides of a Murakami
>> well.
>>>
>>> Responsibilities. Calling out in the picture theatre is the bit that
>>> stayed with me in the Schwartz story. And being evicted and so missing
>>> some of the story of his parents' courtship wasn't it? But being
>>> returned too and having to pick it up. And the awful inevitabilities.
>>>
>>> I like your poem for its chase.
>>>
>>> Bill
>>>
>>>>> On 2 Apr 2014, at 10:20 pm, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Come to in my office chair
>>>>
>>>> 2:40 in the morning
>>>>
>>>> After a dream of failed tasks
>>>>
>>>> exams not given
>>>>
>>>> classes untaught
>>>>
>>>> oh that was a baddie.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Fall into bed and the dream
>>>>
>>>> is not through with me yet.
>>>>
>>>> It is proctoring an exam in
>>>>
>>>> the cafeteria of my elementary school
>>>>
>>>> papers ungraded
>>>>
>>>> Mr. Wolman what are we to do?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I do not know I remember
>>>>
>>>> my own work left undone
>>>>
>>>> a dissertation unwritten
>>>>
>>>> chapters to be handed in
>>>>
>>>> I cannot do this
>>>>
>>>> I cannot answer for what I fear
>>>>
>>>> or what I am supposed to do
>>>>
>>>> for them or for myself.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The same dream, things dropped
>>>>
>>>> cannot be found
>>>>
>>>> cannot be recaptured
>>>>
>>>> a dream of things lost
>>>>
>>>> things that cannot be found
>>>>
>>>> chasing in remembered hallways.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Ken
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Truly awful dream. Delmore Schwartz was right: in dreams begin
>>>> responsibilities. Horrible. I've not had a "losing dream"-my
>>>> standard-in years, it came back last night. It took me a few minutes
>>>> to collect myself and realize my only call is to myself, from myself.
>>>> Unrevised except to fix Outlook's habit of capitalizing first lines
>>>> of
>>> everything.
>>
>
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
Something else is out there
godamnit
And I want to hear it
C.D.Wright
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