***retro warning (I'm serious)***

sometimes I get a little stuck in 1968, so be forewarned. I turn your attention, O Bram-hordes, to the tune Pride of Man by Quicksilver Messenger Service. this is a live version of a song on QMS's 1st lp. it's a bit crappy version but still chilling. QMS was a psychedelic SF band, as you can probably tell with a listen. the song was written by Hamilton Camp, a comedic actor who used to appear on the Smothers Brothers Show, lots of others as well. I guess he was also a folkie, too. done by QMS, this is pyschedelic Old Testament. I mean it is heavy, man. imagine hearing this song after missing the turn onto The Golden Road and heading straight for Bummer City! yow! I take this song as a crazy ass rendering of fundamentalist horror. QMS, on their lp Happy Trails, did an instrumental depiction of Christ going down for the 3 count called "Calvary", which is Cecil B de Mille on acid. lots of acid, in fact. just to clear your mental palate, you might try a taste of "Mona". the Bo Diddley song, but slowed down some. I love the lead guitar, an amorphous sound filtered thru tremolo and wah wah.

well, I've been reading Jung so this'll fit right in. an antique clock was in my father's room, one that belonged to his mother if not generations before. it hasn't worked reliably for years, and so hasn't been wound. Beth noticed today that it is stopped at 3:19. my father died on March 19.

Creeley

I was living with a picture of Robert Creeley. It's awfully hard to
define in some exclusive manner. In fact, Having begun in thought, Other
kinds of statements of speech are defined. by the way, 'they' give
instructions or make qualifications, something apart from 'them'. Poetry
is an art wherein various qualifications sound "reference or meaning."
they have grammatical circumstances much to do with long ago. I thought
I could be done, or so I thought. There wasn't a lot of time for me, I
had to get No one to witness and adjust. Meanwhile, no one drove the car
moving. Creeley would die someday. I would hear about it. The world
would enjoy this moment, gashed as it has been. Well I have this picture
of Creeley. It says something in between reading, Robert Creeley as
articulate as tatters. So much of my childhood seems to have been pulled
down to make it darker. 'they' are short; 'they' are not short enough.

a trip thru lovely Concord to view the spring flood. 100+ scintillating photos, as proof. Thoreau quotes some authority that a 1/8 inch incline over a mile is enough to create a flow, and surmises that the Concord River's at right about that incline. a poky old river but in spring the river at least gets wide. a big change at the Bridge is the loss of trees. this area, and down the road--the so called Battle Road for the British coming from Charlestown to sniff out weapons caches of the fomenting revolutionaries--is National Park. and someone's wisdom was to return the area to how it looked then. that is: farmland: no trees. so down go the trees, even some old and lovely willows. sigh. Beth and I exchanged marriage vows on that bridge. as we arrived, a busload of teenagers arrived. looking at the spread of water from the bridge, a girl said, I didn't know lakes had currents.

wall 

rude bridge that something something the flood 

poet/savant 

the mighty Concord overfloweth 

Hawthorne's Old Manse, and a big puddle 

I'm listening to Charles Reznikoff read, one of the sound files at Penn Sound (link to the right). he reads quickly, with great amusement. which is how I hear him as I have read him. I always felt I rushed as I read him, hopping along with the morsel-sized pieces, but in fact I was right on. he read aloud as fast as I read him to myself. zipping along with rustle of papers, often no pause whatsoever between pieces. it's a cinematic mode, energetic. the speed of his reading asks nothing of you, as in: please just regard these heartfelt words if you can hear at all, or let it all go. he trusts that you'll catch a glimpse. he rushes past the idea of drama, just wants the poem to live alive. god, I really love this. it's a shepherding, not a hypnotic act but a generosity. thank that deity that no photos of me with Rezzy or Creel exist, that I could fling onto this blog as some pious resumption of my poetic fervour. writers lived and live who just worked at it, sans photo op or whatever the engine is that trivializes the energy at that moment where the word is. one word, I mean, hopeful as any meaning. we're all nervous creatures seeking some complimenary flush. and what's lovely are the moments that ignore that. I also read/saw from the same source Creeley talk about Zukofsky. and it is lovely too. the conception of his comprising is a lasting offering. yes, there are many lovely poems with Creeley's name attached. here's someone who could be in that conversation of poetry at any time. there's a tired politic machination that I don't even want to get angry about, you fuckers know who you are. and poetry lives beyond. poetry is talking right thru, and it doesn't even care where you live.

place 

Amazon 

thanks to Mark Young, who's doing monday while I'm still doing sunday, I now know where Tom Beckett went.

candle shell 

miscanthis sky 

hyacinth and mole/vole hole 

doodle doodle. Dog Window is recent. I'm trying to attain competancy in sketching. the other 3 visual items are from my 1st sketchbook. Beth gave it to me 3 years ago, when I suddenly declared I was going to start doing visual work. the cartoony things make the most of very little, and somehow crack me up. Ceremonial is calligraphy without knowing a bit about it. I cando better now, but smudges such as can be seen here are still part of my method. my desk is messy too.

ceremonial 

21st century 

les drapeaux 

dog window 

I finally stumbled on this. Kasey Mohammad posted this to Patrick Herron's Imitation Poetics list some years (three?) ago. from out of nowhere, so far as I could tell. it must be my 1st meeting with flarf. so click yourself away to Lester blog. my name only appears because I posted to the list a bit.

well, I do enjoy pointing my finger at work well done. thus 2 posts by Stephen Vincent. 1st as you come to them, some thoughts on Terry Schiavo and the Pope, and 2nd, a little about Creeley. an appeal to diversity, if you will, in the Creeley post.

Site Metre notes a visit here of 3 seconds (the average good reader of Tributary likes to relax and take 7 seconds to read my sententious yet vital musings), which came by way of a Google search (in Russia, that would be a Gogol search), to wit: +01 comcast.net "allen". I wonder if the perp of this curiosity might be someone involved in the government of an African nation, who wishes to remove some funds therefrom, and could use my help...

I guess I am performing the patented blogger 180, having said that I was done with the blog, yet soon after here I am. frankly, it still may happen that I'll skip out, but I was aware as I wrote that my determination wasn't strong. so the topic of today's sermon will swirl on the stuff currently in this pool, here, that's part of a tributary, that's part of ...

1st I'm tired and sad. caregiving is wearing. I don't know how the professionals do it, because even with the emotional detachment they can bring, it simply calls for a lot from a person. let me blow my own horn that much about caregiving for my father, that I accepted that responsibility. so did Beth, and Erin too. I want to say love kept me going, love from Beth and Erin, love for my father, but one worries always using the word love: will it refuse to carry one's meaning. I'm sorry I seem to be wearing my father's death on my sleeve. it is a presence for me, and this blog is what I write in the present.

the death of Terry Schiavo and the Pope's decline brought back my father's last days. Robert Creeley's death struck me as well. if I wanted to resort to a term like father figure as regards my poetry writing, he would be one. complete with all the little squabbles to balance against the great gifts. Creeley's a poet who could be a poet all the time. that's not just speaking of his art, I mean a social thing too. there aren't too many poets nowadays who aren't something else as well. I mean, I know Creeley taught, but really, he taught because he was Creeley. no one cares how Creeley did in graduate school. so poetry is just that marginal. and I am a marginal poet. usually, I am okay with being marginal. the centre, as often defined, can be so purely social as to be trivial, an anxious network. and the work, doesn't it get done on the edges, away from the roiling masses? I think I am original, if that word isn't completely flaccid. I'm not rewriting the O'Hara oeuvre, or whatever, I'm trying to find my own way. mostly I am okay with this, but sometimes being twice marginal is too much. it's weak of me but there I am.

BUT what I recognize, is the worth this blog has for me. it allows me a public voice, albeit with scant public with which to exercise my divagations. this is public writing not private musing. it is a confrontation with what's out there. I'm introvert enough to need to make that effort. I think what I write here is worth reading in its way. how bold for me to say! I'll just end with a thank you to Stephen Vincent and Nick Piombino for their kind encouragement.