moon traveller herald

In the day, Ed Sanders’ notes on futurist performance modes of investigative poets were a resonant signal – Achilles meets RoboCop! He presented the picture of a modern troubadour wired for total full-metal cyberpoet attack. There was some useful irony after all in the idea that the work of the technology infused artist Jimi Hendrix could be used to dissemble or baffle at least the technology infused uber society of the Johnson-Nixon era military complex. Witness Hendrix’s rendition of the StarSpangled Banner. The electronic music components a’ brew in the mid-‘70s – with synthesizers on chips and associated circuitry on the shelves at Radio Shack - could carry the poetry forward. These considerations came to Sanders as he ratcheted down a rock music career, to focus on poetics. In Investigative Poetry he writes: “Poets will, in the new few years, be able to affix “tone rows” or tangible tone triggers on, say, their forearms, or knees, or thrill nodes, so that during a poem, merely by...

Around 1975 Ed Sanders included some observations on ‘the public performances of investigative poets’ as part of a lecture prepared for sessions at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. The lecture , which called on poets to “again assume responsibility for the description of history,” became the basis for Investigative Poetry, City Lights, 1976, and a signpost for Sanders’ subsequent work – a steady stream of sidereal poetry marked recently by a four volume verse history of 20th Century America . Educated in Greek at NYU [1964], Sanders saw special lyric possibilities in combining investigation, poetry, and electronic musical instruments.

Among the formative influences in the development of western music are some that arise out of the world of the Ancient Greeks, the myth and the epic. Western literature also springs from this same font. Bards sang or talk-chanted the national epic poems describing the gods as they strummed lyres – and ‘poetry and music [were] one in execution.’ It is thought that preludes and interludes played on the lyre were part of the presentation. The term for ‘instrument’ was ‘katharsis’ taken now in English to stand for ‘relieve of emotion.’ Reed-pipes also became part of the act, especially among the Dionysian crew that followed the paths of the vineyards. “Lyric poems were so called from their being sung to the lyre.” http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/846778

When I was a managing editor on a monthly in the 1980s I had folders for every month. I embellished this one for Christmas. It shows the advent month coming full speed from off stage and emblematic train going round the tree [or tries to show said]. That train is coming! Happy Christmas, happy world! - J.V. Just a panthering train cross the swells of the carpet Through oriental valleys and their piled paisley sockets Through skyscraper wrappings the apple spanked harlotty papers and things to returnto your feet. - Christmas Locomotive , 1967 Note: Traveller visitors will notice a few broken links. We got rid of our dial up when we got rid of our landline, and Netcom closed down the original site. I thought the Web was forever. Have back up for those pics and stories, but good luck finding them, Jack.

I think of music I heard this year ..and its like film...bird and strings...desmond drops in..also the king of slow soul.. praying, I take it, at wedding..but who knows..at least it is church. Percy Sledge...is set to wait, like old Milwaukee poet Bob Watt, for the answer...buncho'stuff here..if you want to click ..ten for me ..ones I listened as motorin over Chestnut Hill and past its Universalist church [scene of T.Roosevelt's first wedding] to my computer cell unit. Elliot. Fogerty. Auerbach. The musical notesters in my blue hebin. Skipped list in 08 but here's link to 2007 etc.

i. Putzd about with books this year. A bio of Joe McCarthy. A thing about the Gospels by Gary Willis. John Wooden book on how to be a good basketball player. Mailer’s Fire on the Moon in honor of the Lunar Commemoration. One thing I actually finished was Team of Rivals. This Lincoln book didn’t quite hit the mark compared to some of my other history ‘books of the year’ - on Eisenhower , on McArthur , of Grant (is there an apparent thread here?) – but here goes on a book report.. Before Abraham Lincoln was an improbable president, he was an improbable presidential candidate. A bitterly poor youth – he worked every kind of job (land tiller, mule skinner, boat guy, and so on) as he sought to rise from the impoverished mire – was dramatically capped with two years in the 1840s as a Congressman where he unpopularly challenged the Mexican War. But then, quickly, it was back to Illinois for a very long stint as a circuit court rider lawyer. He benefited fortuitously from the locale of the 1...