ASSAILED NO MORE

FIND PHOTOGRAPHER HERE

Nothing new to report. Still working my way through algebra problems, specially troubled by the horrid word problems. No different than when I was a kid in school. I wrote a poem, a lushi, yesterday about aging and how my perceptions no longer elicit immediate emotional responses within me. I recall when I could not walk down a city street without being assailed by numerous often troubling and illusive emotions. Is this a blessing or a curse of age, I have to ask myself. My novel is still out there and a poetry ms at Iowa. I have little hope of success.

BEATNIK SILENTLY STUMBLES INTO ALGEBRA

As of November 30, 2018, I've stopped writing and returned to working on intermediate algebra problems. It's fun to sit in coffee shops and work problems and learn new things. When I retired in 2003 at age 66, I began working at algebra. I monitored courses at the community college in Spokane. I had the goal of learning calculus. My father was a tool designer and, of course, as a CNC machinist, I used lots of math to perform my duties. Math is in my genes so to speak.

I did not win the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize at the University of Pittsburg Press where I had submitted my ms based on my prostate cancer. The poetry was authentic and pretty decent, actually, but the competition is stiff. All the most recognized and ambitious poets submit to it, so it's no disgrace not to win. The same ms is still at the Iowa Review, and Ghoul World is still at DAW which says it will take at least 3 mos. to respond. I've still got several poetry submissions out at various literary magazines, and I do have a piece of prose history that's to be published by Geoff Peterson's in his Archipelago.

The reason I've stopped writing to be honest is that I tried to write a poem the other day. If writing is going well, the writer gets hits of emotion as he works. They reward writing. When those emotional jolts disappear, there's no impulse to continue writing. Writing is its own reward, and when one isn't being self-rewarded, it's time to take a break.

GEOFF PETERSON AND THE SILENT BEATNIK BOOMER

Geoff Peterson

Gray, gray Monday in Vancouver Washington. No news is good news from DAW Publishing, Iowa Review or Pittsburg Press. For a couple of weeks nothing creative has entered my thoughts, but my three kids and their loved ones came for Thanksgiving, and we played Golf card game or Splendor and talked up storms. My newly-married youngest son is in love. He and she were often absent while remaining in the room, whispering and giggling together. I loved the vision of their love, even though I distinctly felt their absence from the room from time to time. At times, the rest of us disappeared for them also, I think.

I've just finished a brief memoir about arriving in 1975 to Cheney, Washington. Friend and poet Geoff Peterson plans to include the essay at the end of his newest book Archipelago which arises from the poetry he wrote during that time when we both attended Eastern Washington University to earn MFA's in Poetry. Today, as usual, inspired by a final read through of his Archipelago, I've roughed out two lushis. His work almost always triggers my own imagination, even though our styles are distinctly different. You can find most all his books on Amazon. Click on his name under the photo, read one. You can't go wrong.

SILENT BEAT BOOMER SUBMITS AT LAST

Photo by

Outside this River Maiden espresso joint in Vancouver Washington, a leaf blower is swooshing wet leaves into mountains of golden red. A blue sky peeks between brilliant white clouds above. The sun at the moment is hidden. Last night, I sent off Ghoul World to DAW Publishing. Happily, I was able to use Submittable. Last time I checked, DAW wanted hard copy. I'm glad I checked one last time before I got the ms printed and shipped off. It would have cost me less than 100 dollars to get it printed and shipped. I could have printed it myself too, but the task felt daunting, so I planned to act wealthy and get it done for me. Instead, DAW accepted the ms for free, not even a nominal Submittable fee. They'll report in less than 3 months.

Truthfully? I feel little hope Ghoul World will be accepted. It's well written, but I don't think it's modern enough for young tastes. It's a science fiction film noir with a private investigator. I had in mind Blade Runner, the movie when I began. Perhaps not enough action. The last three chapters are purely expository, as a character called Urthana explains the utopian world of Alteregoia where Charley Manning finds himself at novel's end.

COLD BEATNIKS THE SILENT BOOMER

cathode ray tube brain injection

My plan was to rewrite just the final 3 chapters one more time because I felt I'd grown careless as the long process of the 11th rewrite drew to a close. So I got two chapters done pretty fast, then a cold struck, and I'm just coming out of that cold. Hope this week to finish the 12th rewrite of the last chapter. I checked into getting someone other than me to print it out, since the publisher wants to receive those old fashioned manuscripts rather than electronic files that are now common in the market place. Boy, colds get me down nowadays, sap my strength and attitude too, but I got a ray injection into my brain. 

BIG BANGED BEATNIK

Eleventh rewrite done. Reduced the novel Ghoul World by 168 pages and by 54,595 words. The last two chapters produce a problem. They are explanatory and introduce a utopian theme to the dystopian ending and they explain all that has gone before for the reader. I kept a lot of things mysterious to the reader till the end. I fear to submit it in this state. I can see it as a movie, and, oh, so much would not be included that is in the novel. What a problem! Could an entirely new vision and revision be required? A 12th rewrite? Good heavens and gadzooks.

BEAT BEAT BEAT AND POPE FRANCIS

A beautiful sunny warm day in Vancouver, and I'm supposed to be writing at the River Maiden. That's our Honda Civic outside, resting in the shade. Didn't sleep well last night. My mind is elephant tired. No day for writing. I'm about 25 pages from finishing the 11th rewrite, and I've been stuck for several days now from being tired or unmotivated. When I'm like this, I'll go over a previous days corrections and find new worse errors. So I shall not write today, even though I got up earlier than usual and started rewriting earlier. Just too tired to care. Will try to walk on Burnt Bridge Creek trail. Maybe a stroll would be better than a walk. If you've read this far, looking for news of Pope Francis, you won't find it. I just thought I'd see how many people ended up here by Googling him. I like him, by the way. Sad he messed up the pedophile situation. His heart seems to be in the right place.

BEAT NEAR END OF REWRITE

A beautiful drizzly warm Vancouver USA day. I'm still poised before my laptop, writing away. I'm at Chapter 51 of the 52 chapter Ghoul World. This rewrite has taken a little more than a month longer than I planned. Hope to finish in another week, two weeks at most. I think writers usually take a little longer on their projects than they guesstimate. 

Photo Marvin Ronsdorf

Chapter 51 introduces a happy surprise—a happy sad ending. I guarantee progressive readers with the environment in mind will be most pleased at the final two chapters. In the last chapter, a possibility for more novels presents itself. At the moment, at age 80 [81 on the 20th of October], I cannot imagine another novel, but the opening is there in case I or another writer would like to pursue it, an ending with a much greater latitude of possibilities than most novels written as serial fiction. I can't tell you why that is true. My revelation would ruin the novel.

BEAT BEAT

Caption

There are days like this in everyperson's life when s/he wants to quit writing at last for good. Confronting the very small odds that one, even if one writes pretty well, will find an agent who will find a publisher, let alone a movie producer who'll produce the film s/he wrote the novel Ghoul World to reach, is daunting. Sigh. Specially if one's age suggests his/her thoughts may be out of date. But here s/he sits, poised at a Barnes & Noble with laptop open ready to go to work. 

AMAZING MENTAL GYMNASTICS, KEN KESEY

Facebook informed me last night that everyone was waiting with bated breath for my next entry. Also, nowadays, Facebook keeps inviting me to boost my blog entries with dollars. I have refrained from that thus far. Is boosting worth anything? I'm not going to pretend I don't want people waiting for my sci fi novel to come out.

My last entry, if you recall, was about all the balls one must keep in the air—the memory required—to write a novel, specially a detective novel with many mental mazes included within its pages. Sometimes the thing to be recalled is quite simple. Just this morning, my character, Charley Manning, was recalling his last meeting on the sidewalk before his apartment building with Misty Frampton. Then I had to recall whether or not I'd removed that meeting for some other important reason. At last, not able to find the meeting, I kept in his thought about last seeing Misty [for romantic reasons], but I removed the reference to any specific place. That's a simple example how things must be juggled. An example of why Ken Kesey quit writing.

PS: I keep extensive plot notes, but, then I make changes and don't update the notes. The notes become as much of a distraction as the novel itself.

BEATNIK JUGGLING LIKE KEN KESEY, DROPPING BALLS

Writers have to know at all times what each character knows

about what's going on, what they've said to each other, what they're hiding from each other and from themselves, and what the writer wants to hide from the reader until it's time to let them in on the plot. At my age, I constantly make mistakes that have to be fixed. It gets harder and harder to fix them because fixing gets pretty complex. Quite often to fix one thing, the writer has to go back through the novel and fix all the problems created by the fix. Then he discovers that the fixes of the fix create other things that need fixing. A cascade of problems, a flood of them, bursts the dam of reality. Kesey gave up writing because, he said, he couldn't keep all the balls in the air anymore. I'm currently stuck, trying to work out one of those problems. I think I might be dropping too many balls. Some may have rolled off the stage, and I didn't see them fall. Discouraging. I don't want to have to go back through this novel an 11th time.

DE NIRO, SCORSESE, AND A BEATNIK MEMORY OF DESPAIR

I'm on page 288 of remaining 402 pages of Ghoul World. With only 113,812 words remaining, I'm sure to get below 400 pages and maybe below 100,000 words before rewrite is completed. The publisher I intend to send Ghoul World to says they prefer novels to be above 80,000 words.
  
As is obvious to anyone reading Silent Boomer, I've been on a tear for last year. Inspired by Han-Shan, I wrote many more than 100 lüshis. Now back at novel rewrite. Have in back of my mind writing another screenplay but subject matter is cloudy. Could be based on Ghoul World for all I know or another novel of mine, The Porn Writer.

Watched one of my favorite movies last night. Taxi Driver. Before I quit drinking, I often had moments when I felt like Travis Bickle [minus murderous thoughts], alienated, angry, alone and despairing. I used to call it existential angst. Was it so philosophical or was it merely feeling sorry for self? No matter what I call those moods, I was driven once to crash my car on purpose, accelerating while going around a corner so fast I knew I couldn't make it. The act was totally unplanned,  happened in an instant on the spur of that cornered moment. I'm so far removed from those days I can't bring the feelings up anymore. Sometimes, for the sake of my art, I'll wish I could, but do I really? My thought as I accelerated was, "They'll be sorry." The women in my mind at the time shall go nameless. That's everything I know about suicide. How many times have I told this tale?

SILENTLY BOOMING ALONG WITH REWRITE

Facebook informed me today that people who look into "The Silent Boomer" hadn't heard from me in a long while. I see it's only nine days. Many times, it's been longer than that. But I have little to say. I'm still on 10th rewrite of Ghoul World. I'm definitely improving it by shortening it. Tell you what.... When I rewrite this many times, I see whole new ways to structure the novel that would shorten it even more, but, then, character would suffer in the hands of expediency. It's a balance in a science fiction mystery novel between character and plot. I've eliminated 2 chapters but added chapters by splitting long chapters into smaller ones. I began this rewrite with 534pp and 157,025 words. Now at 410pp and 116,525 words with 130pp to go. I see no damage at all to plot or character. Big lesson, eh?

About garbage disposal issues. I think I did not need to replace the last unit. Had I read the instruction booklet, I'd have known that in the bottom of the unit is a little red RESET BUTTON. Cost me $200 to learn this lesson. Education is expensive. Always read your manuals, George. Otherwise, savvy plumbers grow rich. College did not teach me about savvy plumbers with trade secrets. However it did teach me not to vote for lying people with dictatorial personalities. Plumbers learn one thing and college graduates learn another—well—most of them do. Who says college graduates won't love dictators?

SEA LIONS AND GARBAGE DISPOSAL PROBLEMS

Vacation retreat. Lovely and right on the beach. Yesterday, Labor Day, was my first attempt to write after more than a week long break, but my mind wouldn't focus. Having the same problem today. I'm giving up for another day. This often happens to me on Mondays after a weekend of not writing. Maybe my mind is adrift because of the garbage disposal unit that went out last night. Can't get someone to install the one I bought at Home Depot until Thursday. I'm just too old to get down on hands and knees for a extended time to do the job myself. Disposal unit burned up while wife and I were having a heated discussion about cooking. A rare event, the heat. And costly too. I'm 80 years old and did not know until yesterday that a disposal will overheat and burn out if you don't run cold water through it even if it's not grinding on anything. I know one needs to run cold water when grinding up garbage, but...? Nothing else new except we learned that the sea lions go missing from Sea Lion Cave as winter approaches. Still, the cave itself was interesting, and they gave us a rain check we can use next year if we go again. Plus two dollar price cut.

SILENT BOOMER ON VACATION

ON VACATION. Back soon.... Writing on hold. Having fun. The only unease is not having the routine of writing to calm my nerves.

OLD BEATNIK, CZESLAW MILOSZ & F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

Nearly midnight, 7th of August. Thanks to all who have

Black Virgin at Rocamadour

been checking in, but what little is there to relate? Knocking off a chapter a weekday of 10th rewrite of Ghoul World. Sometimes two or one and a half chapters. I'd like to get the word count down near 100,000 words, but that is still a long way to go. I'm cutting out many of my favorite tales and thoughts, but who says main character Charley Manning must spill everything I know? I'm leaving in his romance with Misty Frampton and his sexual dalliance with Beaunita (if that's her real name) though they could go and boy would that shorten the novel.

Roc Amadour

Finished at last 20th Century American Poetry, Vol. I. I think I renewed it about 5 times during two different check out periods. Quickly finished Great Gatsby and have returned to reading poetry of Czeslaw Milosz in Selected And Last Poems 1931-2004. Powerful poem The Rising Of The Sun that imaginatively constructs his leaving naturalism to become a poet, inspired by a visit to Roc Amadour, a legendary religious center. Will I ever be able to remember how to spell his name w/o cheating? Watching DVDs of "Hinterland" and "Garrow's Law" with my dear wife after she comes home from work. So lovely to share so much.

BEATNIK'S BIG TOE, F. SCOTT FITZGERALD & J.D. SALINGER

Wow! 118 people took a look at this blog today, and I've not got much to report except a big toe that is infected with cellulitis which "is a potentially dangerous bacterial infection that affects the deeper layers of the skin, including the dermis, or second layer of the skin." Soaking in Epson Salt and using antibacterial unguent and swallowing antibacterial pills. Lesson learned? "Do not pull hangnails off of toes". 

Rewrite of Ghoul World is proceeding apace. Came upon a scifi publisher attached to Penguin that is accepting unagented manuscripts. Rare. Very rare. I must hurry to finish the current rewrite of the novel and send it in to that publisher before the window closes again. I keep seeing the book as a movie. The cinematic effects will be really fascinating. A world of workaday zombies who call themselves "ghouls". 

Current reading? Poetry and  The Great Gatsby for the 4th or so time. Fitzgerald and Salinger—I never tire of them.

OLD SILENT BEATNIK JUMPS THROUGH A BIG WINDOW

Wow, good week. Nearly 200 people checked in, and a poem "Reams Of Poetry Adrift" has been accepted by Big Windows Review. It will appear online August 10 and in hard copy, I believe, in November, Issue 13. Thank you Editor Tom Zimmerman and students working with him.

Rewrite of Ghoul World is moving along. I keep putting different chapters first, trying to catch the reader's attention. I think I've got it now. Shifting chapters around creates problems for this old brain. Being a science fiction novel, a certain amount of information has to be presented. Making sure the same information isn't offered repeatedly or that it's presented in a coherent sequence calls for a much younger brain than my own. I hope I'm successful. I've eliminated nearly 2000 words in just 24 pages. I've a bad habit of thinking I must explain everything to my readers, and when I'm writing a scene, I sometimes put in too many qualifying clauses and phrases to explain the action, such as, "He was stunned. Before he could think about it, he strode to the door and disappeared into the fog." Sometimes, the sentence could as easily read, "Stunned, he disappeared into the fog." Depends. Every time I rewrite, I change things. Always.

BACK TO THE STINKING WORLD OF GHOULS FOR THIS OLD BEAT

Thanks to all who continue to check in on this writer's blog. I think my muse has finally gotten through to me. Time for change. I wrote something like 150 eight line poems. Nothing much has been stirring since, but, then I'm also not reading the lucid and peaceful poetry of Chinese poets inspired by Buddhism, the Tao or Confucian thought. The end to writing poetry means that I will return to another rewrite of Ghoul World and the two item bucket list beginning next week, probably, unless this old brain forgets what it thinks it might do today next week. 

The human animal, well "me" at least, is odd. Just a month ago, I thought I had maybe a year or two ahead before the return of my high risk prostate cancer would take my life. Told I'll "probably" have 8-10 more years and die of congestive heart failure, I've gone back to obsessing about politics, and will Lebron leave Cleveland. Doctor was funny too. At one point, I said to him, "I'm not ready to go yet." A little later he said, "In 8 years you'll be a different person." Took me awhile to realize that in 7 years most all my cells will have been renewed with accompanying miscommunication failures. I might be ready to turn in my steel suit and retire from the battle against evil        

....IF?

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS UNDERSTOOD

One-hundred twenty-six people looked in a couple of days ago to see what's happening here. I finally put together the ms Wrestling Hanshan and sent it off to a contest, but, today, Monday, I feel so out of it that not a creative synapse is firing within the old cranium. Nada, even in a clean well-lighted room like this Starbucks I'm sitting in. Increasingly, I experience these hazy mornings, lethargic and uncreative. I checked four movies out of the library this morning. Maybe I need to go home and watch one. An odd movie is A Ghost Story.

I've also again taken out of the library the book American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Volume One. Bios for each poet in the volume are included. You'd be surprised how many of their lives end in suicide. Also the range of poetry is surprising. Many wrote in styles I just do not understand. Last month's Poetry Magazine out of Chicago was dedicated to Native Americans who write poetry. Most of their poems were totally beyond my experience to understand. Don't get it, not at all. Why write poetry that most will not understand unless they take a college course? Even Bill Williams understood. Of course, he then wrote many poems that are hard to understand, even for a intelligent gent like myself. 

I wanted to write a poem

that you would understand.

For what good is it to me

if you can’t understand it?

                        — W.C. Williams

Exactly.

NO FEAR LIKE SPIDER FEAR... OR OF A CLOWN

Today, my task is to complete a table of contents for a 76 poem ms of 8 line poetry. I'm entering it in a contest with deadline of June 30th. I guess I'll call it Wrestling Hanshan as is the longer ms entitled that I've selected the poems from.

I've been kind of down these past few days. This morning I went in to get a blood draw to test my PSA level. I was scheduled to go in June 1, but I held back. It's been six months since last test and I fear, for no good reason at all, the PSA level is on its way up. I'll soon know. If so, the cancer would be back. Last two days have felt very tentative and melancholy. I made the mistake of watching a video about Roger Ebert last night—Life Itself. He died of cancer. The man had no lower jaw, could not eat or drink the final years of his life. It was not uplifting to watch.

Yesterday, I rode the Max into Portland just to change pace. Read Milosz's poetry and sat around at sidewalk tables, watching people. Tried to write some poetry but haven't looked at it today to see if anything still clicks. The rewrite of the novel Ghoul World draws near, I think. The impulse to write poems seems to have eased.

MILOSZ, NOBEL PRIZES AND THE BEATNICK BOOMER

That's Milosz.

People who checked in on this blog have triggered me to do this entry. Eighty-two looked in yesterday. I have more or less finished with writing the eight line poetry for the book Wrestling Hanshan. I plan one or two more read throughs before looking at contests to enter it into. Am submitting them in groups of five to lit. mags. I have written 120 of them. That may be too many for a book. Some contests limit total number of pages. Thus one read through will be to mark any that would go first if I had to trim the length and another to get an idea how it sounds in my head start to finish.

Off Topic: today I bowled two games at a local alley. First time in four or more years and following the radiation treatments. I bowled 99 and 102. The first time I bowled I was in my early teens, and I failed to break 100. Never since that time until today have a failed to break the century mark. In my heyday, I could break 200 on a semi-regular basis. You can see the arc of a life in my bowling experience. I was too weak to control the ball and missed my spot nearly every time, although I did get two strikes in a row, the only marks in my 102 game.

The other day, I was writing in our local Barnes & Noble, and I want to support them, so I bought a collection of the poetry of Czeslaw Milosz, Nobel Prize winner. Beautiful stuff, and I can understand some of them. They touch me. Buy books at your local book stores, small and large. Amazon will do okay without us.

THE BEATNIK APPEARS NEAR COLD MOUNTAIN

Professor Heinricks

Sixty-three people looked in yesterday to Silent Boomer, and I'm shamed that I'm just not keeping up with writing blog entries. I'm nearing the end of the 8 line poems for my ms Wrestling Hanshan. I must still look over seven more of Hanshan's lüshis with an eye to wrestling with him over them or singing harmony with him whichever occurs as best. It's a very friendly musical contest between poets of like temperament. Next project is to return to the novel Ghoul World to rewrite and correct several accidentally comic passages. Another movie is in my mind, but it's so awfully serious, I don't know if I have the temperament anymore to pull it off without laughing like Hanshan.

I was encouraged when I emailed Robert G. Heinricks, Preston Kelsey Professor of Religion, Emeritus, at Dartmouth. Beside his other accomplishment, his translation of Hanshan's 300 poems were the ones I first sought after Gary Snyder brought Hanshan [Cold Mountain] to my attention 25 years ago. You see, I have doubts about this little known poet that I am attempting to compare and contrast my poetry with the impressive lüshis of Hanshan. I sent along three of my 8 line poems, and Professor Heinricks was kind enough to answer and encourage me. He thought my work sounded like Hanshan's work and that is exactly what I want my work to do. Interesting to me that a happily married city atheist like myself can feel in his bones very like a semi-religious hermit poet from China who wrote 12 centuries ago. But I have had some legitimate fears about how men and women who read Chinese and who have studied Buddhism and Hanshan will respond to my presumption. Thank you, Professor Heinricks, for your encouragement. 

BEATNIKING OUT THE LÜSHIS

Thank you to the 81 people who checked in yesterday to see what I'm about. I have written 89 new lüshis by now, my goal to be 100 of them, for the manuscript I now call Wrestling Hanshan, and I have submitted my prostate cancer manuscript You Wake One Morning, Remembering to the Pittsburg University Press and The Iowa University Press contests. Last year, I submitted the ms to the Walt Whitman Prize of the Academy of American Poets. It was recently returned. The form letter was very encouraging, and I had to ask myself hopefully if they send back rejections in more than one form. Of course, the rejection is just being professional, so why does my mind want to make something special about it? The Pittsburg submission process asked for my curriculum vitae. Ha! What curriculum vitae? I sent in my list of publications (several pages) and honors (few as they are). 

Recently, after watching yet another coming of age film through sturm und drang of a young female protagonist, my brain—of its own volition of course—began working on a stormy film of my own, beginning with the scene after my first divorce when at age 36 I awoke from a dream of my infant self trapped in a VW with a snow monster in the passenger seat staring down at me who lay in the driver's seat from which I awoke, crying out in a pitiful child voice, "Mamma, Mamma," while tears streamed down my cheeks... I kid you not.

DAMS, DAMN IT

Coming out of my cold at 15 days time, still coughing, however, from time to time. Three lüshis yesterday and four lüshis today. They must have been stuck behind the damn of phlegm in my throat, waiting for the strength to push their way out. That's all the news I've got today. Thank you to those still following this ancient beatnik from the Silent Generation. These days, I feel my not so silent observations come from a unique viewpoint in time, so listen up, everybody. Laugh here if you must or want to. I'm so glad I discovered Hanshan [Cold Mountain] 25 years ago during a summer of great internal freedom.

COLD FRONT LANDS IN BEATNIK'S THROAT

Thanks to the 111 people who checked in on this writer's blog today. Excuse: a week ago last Friday, my throat grew scratchy. On Saturday the 10th, my itchy throat turned into a full blown cold that is still with me today in the form of a cough that keeps me awake many hours of the night. Not much energy for creative writing in all that time. Up to that Friday, the 8 line poems continued to come at the pace of about "one a day"... like the vitamin pill. I hope to write one today before I head home. After so much time not creating anything, I sort of lose myself and feel adrift. Yesterday, in a funk, I told my wife she needed to quit her job, and we'd go down and live on the Gulf Coast, an old fantasy of mine that preceded my meeting with her. She laughed, "And we'd live off your social security?" She's been a peach through all this, making dinner when she gets home when it's my job to do that during the week. 

My son and daughter-in-law visited last week for a day and a night, and now my son reports a sore throat. That's the first symptom. I felt a little ashamed in that the dishes were piled high on the counter next to the sink and no food in the house and I wasn't up to cooking. Took them out to dinner and lunch next day. They were uncomplaining, and we had a great visit full of enlightening conversation.

COLD MOUNTAIN/OLD GRAYHOUSE, COMPARE AND CONTRAST

What can I say about my tardiness in making entries in this blog? I have no excuse except the writing of lüshis is carrying me away, and I hesitate to keep using that as an excuse. I think constantly about rewriting Ghoul World, but the creative juices that flow as I write these 8 line poems can't be resisted at this time. As any writer knows, you can't stop one project to start another without totally destroying the state of mind that is driving the first project. My aim is to put together a ms of 100 lüshis before I stop, but if my drive cools down before I reach 100, then, of course, I'll stop. Not more than a few months back, I thought all creative juices had dried up for this 80 year old, but Hanshan's poetry is serving as a springboard for my own work. I've reached a stage where I use Red Pine's translations of Hanshan's work as my starting point. I see some of Hanshan's work as being that of a reclusive and sometime moralizing ancient poet in a rural landscape whereas I'm a modern poet in an urban landscape. Thus I use Hanshan's work as sometimes a contrasting force for my lüshis and sometimes as a comparative force. I'd give you and example, but I'm seeing repeatedly that many literary marketplaces don't want to see submissions of anything that's been published in blogs so I'm mute at this time.

THE SLOGGING OR DASHING BEATNIK

Thank you, Clark, for the image....

I now have enough lushis [8 line poems] to create a book. In addition, I have enough decent poems spread over the years to make at least another book. Adding in the book of poetry I created during my years with prostate cancer and the two self-published books, I have probably six books of poetry already in the can [to borrow from old film lingo]. None of them are anything like the poetry of Clark Coolidge, but poets are a varied lot. 

Ahead of me, still awaits another — the sixth or seventh — rewrite of my sci fi novel Ghoul World. I feel so many good bursts of energy as I work over the rewrites of my poems that I hate to stop to work on Ghoul World. The reworking of a novel requires long periods of slog during which I feel no reward as compared to the rewriting and creation of poetry that offer short bursts of feeling good reward. Not only that, I've been reading modern science fiction and it appears to me that my novel reveals a writer born in a past generation whose style and subject matter might be outdated. But here's a troubling thought. I've read pieces of modern sci fi written by my younger peers that reveal no familiarity with past literature when it comes to good grammatical writing. It can only be their subject matter that causes librarians to choose such poorly written novels. I don't feel any sour grapes when I note this trend. I hope it's just an observation. After all, grammar and word choice does change as the generations unfold, and a writer would be a fool not to accept that fact.

NO MOMMY TO COME TO THE AID OF THIS OLD BEATNIK

I've let too much time between entries elapse again and have no excuse. I've been working hard on poetry as my last few entries reveal. I've been sidetracked toward the short stories of David Foster Wallace — his Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. A suicide. I must admit all my early years I was unknowingly attracted to the writing of alcoholic males so who could I be but one of those? Only later did I find out how true that was. It's not the sort of thing that a young man can see into about himself and his taste in literature. Of course I was attracted to the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton too so it's no wonder that at age 31 or so, I would crash my car on purpose by going around a curve at a speed I knew would cause a wreck. Lucky for someone they weren't coming around the curve the other way. Lucky for me too, because three years of counseling and ending drinking eventually led me out of the despair I was living in. Unlike Sexton and Plath, my depression seems to have been curable, situational rather than genetic, but I lived in deep enough despair for long enough time to get an idea what that feels like. I feel sad for Sexton and Plath and Hemingway and Williams. 

I keep turning my mind to rewriting my sci fi novel and others too, my basic bucket list, but poetry has me by the throat and won't let go. I always want to put short poems into my blog but, recently, I've noticed that some lit mags don't want to read anything that has appeared even on a blog. The hell with it. It's not one of my best, but it's recent and it's all this 80 year old can do... and it happened to me so why not? My wife will like it.

A CHILDHOOD SURPRISE

Tricycles are fun.

Tricycles are safe.

You won’t fall over unless …

you peddle too fast,

and get all caught up in the joy of speed,

and your shoe slips from the peddle,

and your toe is grabbed by the spokes,

then you tip over quite violently

and cry and screech till mommy comes

if there’s a mommy to come

but if there’s no mommy to come

then you cry for a very long time

a very long time indeed.

THE SAME OLD ME WHEREVER

A pretty photo for your entertainment...

This will be a short one. The book American Poetry: twentieth century, Vol I is a marvelous and all inclusive accomplishment. Musicians are included and folk poetry, more black poets and women poets than probably few other collections of 20th Century poets have included, though I can't be certain of that fact, but it certainly represents a wide range of poetic forms and poets too. 

In my mind, my new bucket list includes the follow item — "to write as many good and true poems as I can in my 80s."  Today I finished another rewrite of the poetry ms of lüshi [a Chinese form of 8 line poetry employed by my current poet hero, Hanshan]. Here's one of them. The idea certainly isn't new, but it's my expression of the idea "wherever you go, there you find yourself."

LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION

After all my early tramping, Hanshan, you’d think I’d recall,

But the urge to get away always got in the way.

I’d hope a new hat rack might hold everything the old could not.

Off I’d go on a wing and a prayer, wearing my chapeau at a jaunty angle.

To hell with everything I left behind — wife, kids, the rental payment.

In those days, I never could afford a mortgage to nail my feet.

Of course the new hat rack functioned very much like the old,

And I’d find myself again, the same old me in the mirror behind the bar.

WRITING WRITING WRITING .... POETRY

Marsden Hartley. Like this one.

Tonight was looking over Marsden Hartley's art as his poetry is included in American Poetry: The Twentieth Century. It's late, nearing midnight on Friday. For weeks, I've been writing and rewriting the ms of lüshi I now call, Plain As Day: Old Grayhouse Consults Hanshan. I'm hooked on poetry again. Can't write enough of it. It's wonderful to feel this way about writing poetry again. Poetry was, I think, my first love, but I saw there was little money in it, and, crass as I've been, I put it aside except for occasional spurts of energy. My eye is still on a final rewrite of the sci fi novel, Ghoul World. I'm sure I'll get to it in time. If I don't, my bucket list is bust, or I'll have to add "to write all the best poetry I can in my 80s. I'm pretty happy about the poetry so far, quite happy.