A PUBLICATION PLAN

Time sure disappears. Last entry in this writer's blog was June 22. I'm more than 4/5 done on 6th? 10th? rewrite of my novel The Porn Writer. I'm reworking poetry constantly as they straggle home bedraggled and d(r)ejected from the fields of literature.

The August issue of Better 

Than Starbucks is here, 

online or ready to be bought 

and printed at Lulu. My poem Afterthought sits inside, a lüshi in the 8 line form of Chinese poet Hanshan.

Read the other day, the "publication plan" of a fellow writer. He said his goal was to get 100 rejections next year. Do you know how hard it is to get 100 rejections? I'm lucky to get 2 or 3 a month.

"Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?" from a Ronald Reagan campaign speech, 1980. And we wonder why the Republican Party has deteriorated so badly.

 

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. 

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 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.