THIS OL' BEATNIK POET WILL BE READING...

I'm honored! I've been invited by Poet Laureate of Washington State Tod Marshall to share my poetry at Washougal High School in Southwest Washington this coming Wednesday, the  26th at 7:00pm. Chris Luna, Clark County Poet Laureate, will also be reading and his wife, the accomplished poet Toni Luna. I'll be reading my poem "Legacy" from the anthology  Washington 129  as well as older work and perhaps one or two from the collection of poetry I wrote while dealing with prostate cancer last year. Washington 129 is a collection of poetry all by Washington State poets. Here's a chance to support poetry in Washington State by going to the Sage Hill Press internet site and purchasing a copy from the publisher.

Randall Jahnson

I'm elated and surprised. My second short film script is done and emailed in PDF form to Randall Jahnson. I am enjoying this process all to hell, and I fear I'm learning that I ought to have taken to screenwriting as my first choice in writing. I enjoy it so much and my imagination seems to flower more completely. When I think about my misspent writing life, I realize that when a book became a movie, I always referred to the movie in my head when I talked about the book. Another interesting thing to me has come up because of screenwriting. Except for my science fiction novel, I have a hard time not writing about myself. I'm the main character in much of my poetry and fiction. Not all, but a great deal of it. However, my first two short film scripts are completely imaginary affairs. I'm not in them at all except as writer. I'm floored by this realization, and hope it doesn't turn into depression based on lost opportunities. What the hell! It's fun now, and I'm still alive and writing. Who knows how it'll turn out?

GALLERY 360 BOOK FAIR A TRIUMPH

They bought my book, Tenderfoot

I sold four books at the Gallery 360 Book Fair put together by Peggy Bird and promoted strongly by Clark County Poet Laureate Chris Luna. Mertie came down to Gallery 360 to take a look and bought 9 books from one of the other book sellers...children's books for her nieces and nephews in Spokane. We're losing money, but who cares, as long as writers and poets get the money. We're heading to Spokane during whatever week of July holds the 13th... Mertie's birthday. 

The young man, above, opened Tenderfoot and began to read the following poem: 

SKATING THIN ICE

 

Stepping from the landlocked trees to ice,

On thin, steel blades, the skater leaves

His two sure feet and sails;

     He skims the grey-smooth ice on out

To places where the firmness softens and water's deep.

There, black holes gape and bubbles rise

Through thick, black water like thoughts of gods.

     That far out on flying edges,

The skater's body quails with soaring fear,

And shore fires cast a fitful light

On small musings that freeze like cubes of ice;

     That far out

The rugged shore and threadbare trees

Seem dreams that edge a frozen universe

Where bubble thoughts drift up through thick

Black air on spumes of mist to burst away,

     And water's deep.

I told him I thought the poem was about taking intellectual risks, about thinking like an atheist...or something like one. 

Still no news on the novels and short stories I have in circulation. Down to two chapters on the rewrite of the novel Programming Frank Singletary that was once upon a time called The Porno Writer.

KIRK DOUGLAS & CHRIS LUNA & MORE BEATNIK STUFF

A new working title for the Manning novel may be, Last Chance For the Human Race. Dramatic, eh? Writing it is still going swimmingly. That other novel, the first I ever wrote, The Man In The Mirror, the one I'm typing from hard copy into editable files? It's down to 20 pp. At one or two pages a day, I'll be done in 10 to 20 days. A whole 'nother George wrote that crazy thing. A murderous high school teacher? I would soon after be a sinister [according to the principal] high school teacher for one year.

Speaking of old guys still performing, I caught Kirk Douglas's one man show, "Before I Forget", on the Turner Classic Movies Channel. He was sweetly entertaining. I used to think something like that ought to be easy to do, then I saw how much cleverness goes into pacing a performance like his!

Living in a lively town like Portland, you rub elbows with talent all day long. Went to St. John's Booksellers this morning to buy a copy of Chris Luna's Brutal Glints of Moonlight, style inspired, I believe, by Jack Kerouac's school of disembodied poetics. Never visited that neighborhood before.  Afterwards, I took my hour walk there and discovered Pier Park: softball fields, b-ball courts, swimming pool, walking trails, picnic shelters. It features a huge disc golf course. Suddenly a young man stepped from behind a pine to call out, "Sir?" "Yes," I said. "We're shooting a scene for Grim right now," he said. "Can you stay to the left of that basketball court so you won't be in the shot?" "Of course," I said. Two brief summers ago, Mertie had to skirt her usual lunch hour walk in a Vancouver cemetery because "Leverage" was being shot there. Add those encounters to the time we had brunch with Timothy Hutton and his girlfriend ... well ... you get the picture. Actually, we were seated at a table right next to theirs, but...?

CHRIS LUNA, COVER TO COVER BOOKS & RUSSELL MICKLER

Have been hard at work rewriting the novel which was my thesis for the Masters Degree in English with an emphasis on Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University. I have a goal of publishing it as an ebook with Amazon. I've got so much to learn about that process, but I was much helped by that inexpensive and informative 9 hour course with Russel Mickler called Blogging and Self-publishing. Rewriting is stimulating and fills in when original creative inspiration is flagging so it's good to have lots of old work lying around. 

MY HERMITAGE

I'm looking forward to the next Ghost Town Poetry reading on the second Thursday in April, organized by Chris Luna at Cover To Cover books. He's a local powerhouse when it comes to generating and publicizing things of value to local poets. My interest in that next opportunity to read generated two new poems. Then I dug up some poetry that I wrote in the late 1980s while I was living like a hermit in a farmhouse outside of Cheney. I think I published one or two poems from that series, but I lost interest in them as being too narrative and not as metaphorical as I had come to think was the best kind of poetry I could produce. In looking them over again, my interest in them was rekindled and I spent all day today, working away at them and dusting them off. I can see a chapbook length production in them. I was genuinely happy working away at them. They inspirited me, and I believe it is one or two of them that I'll read next at Ghost Town Poetry.