moon traveller herald

The blues line is a long line but it reached magnificent acme in the work of artistssuch as Tommy Johnson, Robert Johnson, Chester Burnett, John Lee Hooker, McKinley Morganfield, Roosevelt Sykes and others among an initiate group that grew up (in very many cases) in Mississippi in the early 20th Century and in many other cases survived to venture north to Chicago and Detroit and be recorded. Their work ultimately influenced culture, art and music, including 1950s' and 1960s' rock n roll and rock. These blues poets forged art under conditions of poverty and repression as well as amidst frantic social and technological upheaval, and their music reflected a syncopated and prophetic world that still obtains. In "Fattening Frogs for Snakes - Delta Sound Suite," poet John Sinclair takes the meager history that has built up around the above mentioned and other essential blues artists, applies a precisely descriptive and musical poetical form, and magically and quite sympathe...

A couple of years agoe we had a discussion, trying to remember encounter with Ginsberg and Dylan. We each remembered different things in different relief. Kind of like the four gospels, which diverge somewhat. I wrote a version down around 1976 or 1977, that Jan and Val Mazelis ran in Shoreline Erosion, which I have altered since then to be more a flat out prose poem. Because it was nearer the event I take it to be possibly accurate. Last summer when I saw Dave in NYC he'd just gotten note from late Allen Ginsberg via a friend who'd he told this story too. Al's advice at end same as start: First thought best thought! I have at times since then this to brood over : Read Chronicles. Where schmucks were parking out on Dylan’s roof - like raccoons - as no doubt he tried to sleep. We weren’t too different. Can’t take back lost time or call as a witness those Wheels on Fire. I wish I’d been less than dumb star infatuated fan. Wish I hadnt told Ginsberg I was 'looking for s...

Before a bardic push, a respite. Reading on the backporch, 2010.

Got to Worcester for centenary tribute to poet Charles Olson. Was late to the late show – always get lost in Worcester - but saw the last part of Ed Sanders’ reading. Good stuff. With his Strum Stick. Doing Doggtown. Loose Peach Gown. How Sweet I Roamed. Transcendeary! There is a record out now: Be Free – The Fugs Final CD (Part 2) … gasp! Get it! Not because it is the last one. Get it because Ed does the Loose Peach Gown Song, and The Laughing Song. And Tuli (remember him selling little broadsides on the N.Y. street) does Greenwich Village of My Dreams (a great moment in 21st Century Surrealism)plus Backward Jewish Soldiers. New and in the tradition. You will need time to relax with this. So start with the paean to relaxation: Goofitude. Today NPR had a nice review of Be Free that included comments of college mate Larry Sloman. Audio and text.

[Note 2010-02-26-1] “I was carrying with me a little instrument from the ‘60s” – said Sanders in Experimenting with Sappho’s poetry . The device Sanders describes could well be a Dübreq Stylophone , an early portable electronic synthesizer. In ‘’1968: A History in Verse [ p.209 ] he recalls buying just such an instrument in Montreal on Sept 15, 1968. He indicates this as the beginning of the Electronic Bard System effort.

Extra Extra: Ed Sanders’ Investigative Poetry available again - [EBSAddendum 1] - Edward Sanders’ Investigative Poetry has had a slowly percolating influence since its publication by City Lights in 1976. Over the years, Sanders has taught poetry, and this book was a mainstay of his method. It certainly influenced blues poet John Sinclair, as he began to versify on the lives of the blues saints in Fattening Frogs for Snakes [Surregional Press, 2002] – a versified history of blues. Sanders work as a poet and teacher has continued to focus on using poetry to tell history, to tell of real events, to urge the poet to do the gumshoe investigators’ legwork to’ get that story.’ You may recognize that these traits put it outside the mainstream of currently dominant trends in poetry. Example is found everyday on Garrisson Keiller’s PBS poetry reading – it’s nice but there are always words about feelings but nothing ever happens. Sanders might admit to that the investigative style is out of the ...

Sanders: I had broken up the first version of the Fugs in 1969 - I did a couple of solo records for Warners – Sanders Truckstop and Beer Cans on the Moon - then I decided I was going to fade from music - and didn’t really pay any attention to anything musical for five years. I was at Naropa Institute in 1977 - and I was teaching a course in Investigative Poetry. I had been experimenting with Sappho’s poetry - I was carrying with me a little instrument from the ‘60s – a little electronic synthesizer that weighed about a couple of pounds. Just a small synthesizer with a stylus that you made the notes with - and I had it hooked up to the old Fugs’ warm-up amp - the VibraChamp amp - which is a beautiful 1966 Fender. And Allen Ginsberg came into the room, and I sang him a version of Sappho’s Hymn to Aphrodite. And he said it was really nice and ‘why didn’t I do it like that at my reading that night?’ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ And I had never ever-ever thought of ...