New and On View: Mudlark Flash No. 73 (2013)
The New God is a Revolver in the Sun
and So Death Blows His Little Fucking Trumpet
by John Valentine
Author's Note: It's been some 16 years now since the passing of Larry
Levis, and he is missed. He wasn't just an extraordinary wordsmith. He
was--as are we all--an uncanny event, "an unfinishable agenda of the
stars." What I've admired about his poems is his amazing ability to
point at the uniqueness, the singularity, of the existential moment and
the people in it. A very precise example of this is the poem
"Photograph: Migrant Worker, Parlier, California, 1967" in the
collection ELEGY. Here, we are invited to dwell upon the utter facticity
of Johnny Dominguez, his individual, transient, and profoundly
irreplaceable being-there. In so doing, Levis reminds us all of our own
such being. "The New God is a Revolver in the Sun" and "So Death Blows
His Little Fucking Trumpet" are thus a kind of pointing as well, an
homage, a reminder of a man and his very special talent. JV
When Mudlark Flash No. 73 first appeared in January of this year, 2013,
it was a single, "The New God is a Revolver in the Sun," just the one
poem. But since then Valentine has made what he calls "another attempt
at a Levis tribute" and that poem, "So Death Blows His Little Fucking
Trumpet" has been added to Mudlark Poster No. 73 here, a flip side, thus
making it new again.
John Valentine teaches philosophy at the Savannah College of Art and
Design in Savannah, Georgia. His poems have appeared in various
journals, including The Sewanee Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Southern
Poetry Review, The Adirondack Review, and Rock Salt Plum Review. He has
had five chapbooks published with Pudding House Publications, and one
chapbook with Big Table Publishing.
Spread the word. Far and wide,
William Slaughter
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