The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (12 page)

 

a guy told me,

you don’t have to worry about worms when you’re

dead

they never get to you

the body changes like in all different

ways—by the time

they’ve worked through the casket

things have happened and it

always happens

different—

they’ve dug up these old kings outa tombs, ya

know:

one guy was just

a little splotch of black

water, another had a

beard 18 feet long and another had

turned to a kind of rock-like

salt.

 

 

yeah? I said.

yeah, he said.

 

 

he knew
all
these things.

he lived high in the hills and had these

tremendous brains.

 

 

before I left I reached out and

pulled the worms out of his

eyes nose belly shoes hair ears

and then he said

good night

and I said

good night

and I got in my car and drove off

 

 

and the worms laughed

\

all the way home.

 

 

I finished my drink and went back

upstairs to hear the second half—

another piano concerto, and

2 are too many and

I couldn’t make it out

having lost my program so

I left the place and drove 21 blocks

South and East

to where 2 flyweights

a Jap and a Mexican were

going at it. the

Mexican butted the Jap and

the Jap bled from a cut

above the eye

but only fought harder

he was grasshopper slim with

very thin arms but

hit very hard. it went all ten and

the Jap got the verdict, another

ten followed. I drank a lot of

beer

kept leaving to piss and

when I came back one time it

was over: k.o.,

and I walked out to my car and

since I was downtown I

drove to where I worked in the

daylight

to see if maybe the place looked less

painful and

I looked through the window and

thought I saw Ralph the stockboy in

there

crawling around on his hands and his

knees. he was an odd one and

the secretaries were afraid of him

and I thought I should call the

police

but then I thought

I don’t care if he raids the

place or sets it on

fire. I got back into my car

and took the freeway back to my

apartment.

 

 

I drank a couple glasses of scotch,

set the clock for 6:30

ate a vitamin

thought about a whore in Glendale

checked the ball scores

pissed again

turned out the lights

got into bed (alone)

didn’t pray

thought of places like Japan and

Central Avenue

thought about the dead and

the famous

thought about dying

while the Thames went along without

me and the girls walked up and down the

sidewalks without me

and then I thought I wouldn’t mind

so much

and went to sleep and

slept good.

 

 

(dedicated to my betters)

Wednesday, 24 July 1969; Morning Session (Robert Hansen

and Allen Truport):

        discussed sure discussed

WORK HABITS. Bob ingests, ingests, ingests, so we get those

wonderfully turned—

Allen keeps large notebooks

wherein

        he told us

he notes down EVERYTHING. a kind of spatial flowing

viewPOINT.

Allen says

he writes all the time as much as possible;

it’s like hanging a coat in a closet: you’ve

got to get in there. reasonableness may not be

enchanting, but said Allen, it is REWARDING.

a big notebook, he said, by God that’s the

                THING!

like Genet on the sand

        blowing cock!

Bob said:

what the primary interest is and should be is ingesting,

ingesting, a kind of pulmonary percussion indrawn, tightened and

then placed upon the paper, the marble in tight order of grip,

allowing the function to be the (possible) anguish rather than

any

    MESSAGE or a) art-order

            b) audience-relationship.

Allen: I want to write

            ENOUGH POEMS

                so that when I die

all the shit will be out of me, I mean the guff, the nonsense,

the turds yes, ah I mean—that I have expressed enough

ENOUGH you see to

free me.

R.H.—I realize the standard essence of all your POETRY;

I say content is an extension of form. we must barter

for a firmer divinity. the conduct of children,

for instance, is fairly free but

UNFORMED

and in the final

multiplication…useless.

I would say that the difference between

Hansen and Truport is that Hansen KNOWS

what he is

doing.

Evening Session (R.H. and A.T.)

Bob says priests should stick to their robes and leave

POETRY

            to him.

I agree

with this.

Allen says political poetry or poetry dealing with immediate causes and reflections is

                interesting, and interesting

                goes well, badly written

or not, it appears IMPORTANT, is appears sympathetic

and the ONE THING I do not want to do is lose

                    my AUDIENCE.

 

 

Thursday, July 25th; no classes:

a dozen of us had gone over to Buchanan 106

for the hell of

            it

                to use the lecture room

                    anyhow

but we found some WOMEN in there

and they appeared HOSTILE when we walked in and

even MORE hostile when we began talking about

                            POETRY.

their hostility is perhaps understandable because we

        DON’T

            tend to them.

they’ll just have to WAIT until workshop

CLASSES to get a portion of our

attention.

but it was really something, all of us there together,

talking, TALKING,—Hansen, Truport, Missions, De Costro

Sevadov, and Starwort, all all

            together

                    here in ONE room was

the heart of American POETRY

                talking, my

                    god.

 

 

Friday, July 26th; Morning Session:

De Costro dominated the whole damned meeting. he has

big hands and many

        IDEAS. Truport appears to be afraid

of De Costro. Hansen cools it. nobody gets along.

yet there is no

        YELLING. these are
only
poets.

De Costro says the root of the thing is transferred to the tree

and the tree dies and

        becomes HISTORY

            and that

                    generally

history is pretty

disappointing, it’s easier to chop down a

tree than a poem, he says, history chops

                YOU down.

FUCK ALL MEANING! Bob suddenly screams.

then, in softer voice:

        we ought to
discard.

            we all agree that feeling is
everything
and

we go out for coffee

leaving three girls sitting

there with their dresses hiked-up around their

                    HIPS.

 

 

Monday, July 29th; Morning Session:

 

 

I saw all FIVE OF THEM!!!

            around a desk

                  TOGETHER:

                    Hansen, Truport,

                    De Costro,

                    Starwort and

                    Phillip Maxwell.

Phillip didn’t ARGUE didn’t say much

and left before the meeting was OVER

            but explained he’d wait

OUTSIDE for the free lunch. his books haven’t been

            GOING well.

Starwort read his
Man on a Streetcar Running Backwards

        from
Bent Lily
#8.

I couldn’t really understand his

        READING

            but will have to see

the work in print before I make a

        JUDGMENT.

            v    Maybe Allie Denby

will send me a

copy of the issue, tho, alas, I understand it is

now a RARE ITEM

        going to $20 out of Fort Lauderdale.

the past can only take place in the PRESENT, if you

know what I mean, said

                De Costro.

we all

nodded.

Truport said he was afraid of being BROKE. he was

lined up for one more session at the

            U. of K.

but hadn’t heard much

more. of course, he’d been moving

around quite a bit, in TOUCH and

        OUT OF TOUCH:

Paris, Cuba, the Congo, India, Moscow and Denver, Colorado.

we spoke of
The Cantos.

        Pound continually tries to find space

AREAS, ARENAS OF CONTOUR for his extra-cerebral

power-poetic

uningrained…uncontrived soul-mind…like a…like a

whip lashing against the sides of an old

            BARN.

we want a COMPLETE EMERGENCE, said De Costro.

nothing half nothing wilted

we want the poetic Christ-thing walking out of

the barn

and Teaching—not from the TOP-down

but through and through and

            THROUGH.

god damn it to hell, said Starwort. suddenly.

in taking my notes I could not fit it into

the

    conversation.

 

 

First Workshop session with R.H.:

he seemed to say a lot that I didn’t understand but

the others seemed to understand

and the session went well.

Bob looked well. I had a

        HANGOVER.

 

 

Wednesday, July 31st; Morning Session (most of us there):

 

 

there were again the old arguments about Vietnam,

Cleaver and the Panthers, all of which, I am afraid, I

        no longer

understand.

I am AFRAID

    I am getting tired

        although the others appear very

energetic.

I need SECURITY, said Hansen. I need a perpetual FATHER

and a GOOD JOB or my work is

            HINDERED.

Allen read some of his early stuff. I understand some of it

but FRANKLY, I think he tends to

        holler and OVERSTAGE.

I left with a

HEADACHE.

 

 

Friday, August 2nd; Morning Session:

 

 

Allen spoke of some of the poetry he had seen in

the campus shithouses and said it was pretty

                    GOOD.

 

 

then Wm. Burroughs was discussed

his USE of timely and pertinent

news material that RELATED…

        by clipping out words in the paper

and pasting them in DIFFERENT ORDER

  A NEW ORDER

            was established

and a neutralization of time and event

            WAS

                established.

THIS WAs imporTANT. YeS. I’ll sAY sO.

we all admitted we often read
Time
and

                Pravda.

then Allen read

AGAIN

        this time from UnpubliSHED

                    WoRk

dIrEcTly FrOM the JOuRnals

      there were 250 people attending

and he read LOUDLY and I had another

          HANGOVER.

he screamed for FORTYFIVE MINUTES! then became

TERRIBLY

exhausted, you couldn’t hear him, his voice BECAME

a monotonous drone and he asked the audience:

may I stop now?

they applauded LOUDLY.

 

 

Sunday, August 4th:

 

 

the janitor had locked all the doors on the campus so

we met at Hansen’s room and drank port wine. Denise and

Carol came up but they were SAFE

although everyone appeared a little sullen.

I think it was being LOCKED OUT like that.

later in the night Allen grew angry and slapped

Bob. then Allen read his poetry again, it was

good being there all together all of us.

I have tried to take notes and hope you have

        APPRECIATED THEM.

next summer I am sure we will be

            INVITED BACK

and I look forward

    EAGERLY

            to these great American poets

and their DISCUSSION of what makes POETRY GO, what it

iS!!

AnD To haVE tHem rEaD thEiR OWN WORKS OnCe

        AgAin.

 

—Howard Peter, University of L.
August 5, 1969