Issue 59 of Red Fez is up today and along with it a new poem from me!
http://www.redfez.net/poetry/1881
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Saturday, August 3, 2013
New poems
happy hour indeed - two new poems penned by this gal over at The Camel Saloon!
http://thecamelsaloon.blogspot.com/
http://thecamelsaloon.blogspot.com/
Friday, August 2, 2013
Fug You!
Fug
You
is the missing piece of the 1960s counterculture puzzle I didn’t know I was
looking for. I started reading the Beats in high school and from there explored
all the obvious alleys and backroads. I obsessed over Ginsberg, struggled in
vain to reconcile Kerouac with the myth surrounding him, and learned magick by way
of Gysin, Burroughs, and their cut-up approach to reality. I delved into the
neurophilosophy of Timothy Leary, the transcendental love of Ram Dass, and the culture-hungry
Zen of Alan Watts. I explored new worlds via City Lights, Grove Press, and
Donald Allen’s New American Poetry
anthology. I danced to the music, and I thought Kesey was Paul Newman-handsome.
I thought I had as clear a picture of an era as possible for someone who wasn’t
there. I felt the vibe, and that alone seemed to give my readings some glistering
quality of the Real.
Then I came across Fug You and realized my mental syllabus was incomplete. Part autobiography,
part scholarly historical documentation, Fug
You is the book that will bring a new generation to familiarity with Ed
Sanders, his avant-garde country-jazz band, and his contribution to American
letters. The years described in this book span from 1960 to the early 1970s when
Sanders pulled back from his work as a folk-rock star and poet to pen his book
about the Manson family. As told by Sanders, the decade comes across as a
roller coaster ride of highs and lows, victories and failures. Structurally, Fug You mirrors this wild ride. The
whole account is broken down into short sections that rarely exceed two or
three pages in length. This made for a slightly disjointed reading, but it
worked – it made sense in terms of the content, and in an odd way it conveyed a
sense of fun.
Fug
You
is Ed Sander’s life story. From small town origins, Sanders found himself in the
Lower East Side of New York studying Greek and Egyptian at SUNY. He started
writing poetry, contemplated a life as an academic, and ultimately took a fork
in the road right before grad school. He pulled from his knowledge of Egyptian
hieroglyphics and classical poetry to reinterpret poesy’s inherent
possibilities. 1962 saw the birth of one of his first claims to fame, Fuck You / A Magazine of the Arts.
Through this avenue, Sanders published his own poetry as well as material by
Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, d.a. levy, Gregory Corso, Ted Berrigan, Diane
DiPrima, Leroi Jones, and others. The magazine was a success and helped launch
the 1960s literary zine culture. Poetry junkies can download complete issues
for free at http://realitystudio.org/bibliographic-bunker/fuck-you-press-archive/.
While building his resume as a poet and exploring
the world of the underground press, Sanders formed with Tuli Kupferberg The
Fugs, an avant-garde band preoccupied with political malcontent, the Civil Rights
Movement, love, gropes, beauty, and poetry (They put several of William Blake’s
poems to music.). They were weird, loud, crude, funny, and fantastic. They were
an anomaly.
Freaky music scaffolding the background, poetry
running out the margins, Sanders spread himself thin. He started work in the
underground film scene, headed up LEMAR – an organization promoting the
legalization of marijuana, partied with modern day god-icons like Janis Joplin and
Jimi Hendrix, was witness to the horrors of the 1968 Democratic Convention,
contributed to the protests led by the political rebels who would spawn the
Yippies, organized a mass exorcism of the Pentagon with the likes of Kenneth
Anger in tow, etc. etc. etc. The 1960s in America was a decade of high
weirdness, fun, art, and love. All of this comes through in Fug You. In fact, this happy tome may be
just the puzzle piece you were missing, too.
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