"Visions & Affiliations": 65 years of Bay Area poetry

 

At the San Francisco Chronicle, Evan Karp writes about a book covering sixty-five years of Bay Area poets and poetry. The resulting lavish and entertaining two-volume chronology is just part one of a continuing timeline being compiled by Jack Foley, who in the article says he and his wife Adelle struggled to find the right way to tell the history.

 

As he told Karp about fashioning history from so many creative strands, Foley said, "That's the problem with multiplicity: How do you find a form that will express it, but which is not totally chaotic. The right kind of chaos rather than the wrong kind."

The force of creative chaos that runs through the Bay Area history from 1940 to 2005 is less an organizing principle than, in Foley's words, a human response that defined character: "As circumstances arise we discover/invent selves to deal with them. In story, our lives tend to take on a coherence and purpose which they may well have lacked in actuality." Here's a brief excerpt from Karp's SF Gate article:

Jack Foley, 71, took a decade to write his 1,300-page book, Visions and Affiliations, which offers a timeline of poetic and social events from the years 1940 to 2005.

 

If Jack Foley were a book, he’d be a 1,300-page chrono-encyclopedia of Bay Area poets and poetry that spans 65 years and is written in the present tense. But that’s just the latest chapter in the rich and ongoing story of the Oakland poet and critic.

 

Foley, 71, describes both himself and the book, “Visions and Affiliations” (Pantograph Press), which he has spent over a decade composing, with the same statement: “In story, our lives tend to take on a coherence and purpose which they may well have lacked in actuality. As circumstances arise we discover/invent selves to deal with them. And the circumstances change in response to those selves.”

In the house in the Maxwell Park neighborhood that he has occupied with his wife, Adelle, since 1974, Foley laughs, “That means I’m crazy, right?” 

“The problem with unity,” he continues, “is that in order to achieve it, you leave all these things out that might glitter around it and contradict it. So you don’t want unity, because it simplifies. What you want is to have something like the feeling of the complexity of life as it is.” ...

 

As Adelle Foley noted in a follow-up letter to the SF Gate article further explaining the book's wide focus: while Bay Area poetry is covered extensively the book is broadly about California poetry and features, among many others, such Angelean luminaries as “Tommy the Commie” (Thomas McGrath), Philomene Long, William Pillen, Amy Gerstler, and David St. John.

 

For an excerpt from Visions and Affiliations: A California Literary Timeline 1940-2005 there is more at Jack and Adelle Foley's web page.

"Burial For A King," Rebecca Burns: Atlanta, April 1968

January 15 is the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968).

A recent book by Rebecca Burns, Burial For A King, recalls the events in Atlanta surrounding the weekend of Reverend King's assassination in Memphis. Disturbances occurred in many cities, and in Atlanta there were concerns there might be rioting during the funeral itself. Here is an early excerpt about a lunch that Thursday, April 4, after King's departure to Tennessee, in which a friend arranges an unusual meeting for King after his scheduled return.

"Of all the weird ideas you've had for me, this is one of the weirdest," Martin Luther King Jr. told Xernona Clayton when she approached him with a request: Calvin Craig, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, wanted to meet him. Would he consider? King eventually agreed, and so on this Thursday, the day after she took King to the airport to catch a flight to Memphis, Clayton had lunch with Craig to finalize the details.

While they ate in the Marriott's tropical-themed dining room, Clayton realized the attention they were drawing. It was still odd in 1960s Atlanta to see a black woman and a white man sharing a meal -- especially in a hotel restaurant. On top of that, she and Craig were minor local celebrities, which contributed to the raised eyebrows, sideways glances, and outright stares.

She was the star of The Xernona Clayton Show on the local CBS affiliate -- the first television show in the South to be hosted by a black woman. Her husband, Ed Clayton, had directed public relations for Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and after Ed died she had filled in when needed. She frequently traveled with King's wife Coretta Scott King. Diminutive and feisty Clayton was recognized by her trademark hairstyle -- a tall, tightly pinned topknot anchored by a shiny headband. She had a flair for fashion and an enviably taut figure; she had met Ed when he begged her and her identical twin, Xenobia, to model bikinis for the centerfold of Jet magazine.

In contrast to the chic Clayton, Calvin Craig was a burly construction worker, mustached and with arms and a neck reddened from a lifetime of outdoor labor. Like Clayton, Calvin Craig was familiar to television viewers -- but as the subject of news stories, not a polished anchor. He notoriously appeared in full Klan regalia to lead anti-integration protests through the streets of Atlanta or on the steps of the Georgia capitol. He traveled throughout the South to attend cross burnings.

Craig and Clayton met through Model Cities, the urban component of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. Craig was named to the program as the representative from Adair Park, a neighborhood of mostly working-class whites not far from its predominantly black counterpart, Pittsburgh. Their first encounter was prickly; Clayton watched as Craig scooted from chair to chair to avoid sitting next to any black participant in the meeting. Not long after, Craig visited Clayton's office and rattled her as he revealed he had compiled a dossier on her. ...

"MetaMaus" : a collection of Art Spiegelman's art from "Maus" [1992]

MetaMaus is Art Spiegelman's comprehensive book about the creation of Maus, A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History, the 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning story of his father's experience in a Nazi prison camp. It's a great look-behind-the-scenes at the creation of Spiegelman's ground-breaking approach to visualizing non-fiction.

The book, which includes a DVD of the complete Maus hyper-linked with source materials, is structured around an extensive interview with Spiegelman.

In a 2011 interview with David D'Arcy at The Art Newspaper, Spiegelman revealed what he called his "ambivalence" about doing press junkets for this particular work -- in essence, interviews about the interview presented in the book:

“I feel it’s a bit absurd to be interviewed about an interview, but the book came out way better than expected, so I feel protective of it. I’m in my usual situation, which I think is called ambivalence. I know I have to do something with the press. I’m not going to J.D. Salinger this one out. On the other hand, I don’t relish being in a hall of mirrors, like MetaMetaMetaMaus.”

Here, from The Atlantic online, is a selection of Spiegelman's original sketches that eventually framed the story for Maus.

"Visions and Affiliations", a 1300-page history of Bay Area poetry 1940-2005

At the San Francisco Chronicle, Evan Karp writes about a new book covering sixty-five years of Bay Area poets and poetry. The resulting lavish and entertaining two-volume chronology is just part one of a continuing timeline being compiled by Jack Foley, who in the article says he and his wife Adelle struggled to find the right way to tell the history.

As he told Karp about fashioning history from so many creative strands, Foley said, "That's the problem with multiplicity: How do you find a form that will express it, but which is not totally chaotic. The right kind of chaos rather than the wrong kind."

The force of creative chaos that runs through the Bay Area history from 1940 to 2005 is less an organizing principle than, in Foley's words, a human response that defined character: "As circumstances arise we discover/invent selves to deal with them. In story, our lives tend to take on a coherence and purpose which they may well have lacked in actuality." Here's a brief excerpt from Karp's SF Gate article:

Jack Foley, 71, took a decade to write his 1,300-page book, Visions and Affiliations, which offers a timeline of poetic and social events from the years 1940 to 2005.

If Jack Foley were a book, he’d be a 1,300-page chrono-encyclopedia of Bay Area poets and poetry that spans 65 years and is written in the present tense. But that’s just the latest chapter in the rich and ongoing story of the Oakland poet and critic.

Foley, 71, describes both himself and the book, “Visions and Affiliations” (Pantograph Press), which he has spent over a decade composing, with the same statement: “In story, our lives tend to take on a coherence and purpose which they may well have lacked in actuality. As circumstances arise we discover/invent selves to deal with them. And the circumstances change in response to those selves.”

In the house in the Maxwell Park neighborhood that he has occupied with his wife, Adelle, since 1974, Foley laughs, “That means I’m crazy, right?”

“The problem with unity,” he continues, “is that in order to achieve it, you leave all these things out that might glitter around it and contradict it. So you don’t want unity, because it simplifies. What you want is to have something like the feeling of the complexity of life as it is.” ...

As Adelle Foley noted in a follow-up letter to the SF Gate article further explaining the book's wide focus: while Bay Area poetry is covered extensively the book is broadly about California poetry and features, among many others, such Angelean luminaries as “Tommy the Commie” (Thomas McGrath), Philomene Long, William Pillen, Amy Gerstler, and David St. John.

For an excerpt from Visions and Affiliations: A California Literary Timeline 1940-2005 there is more at Jack and Adelle Foley's web page.

Notes on "Notes of a Dirty Old Man," Charles Bukowski

For those who can't remember past the work of Edward Snowden, here's some real old-school covert surveillance: bukowski.net has posted more than one hundred pages of the poet's FBI files going back to 1968. 

Sure, Martin Luther King was being taped at the same time that year in hotel rooms, but the FBI's resources were apparently limitless. It's interesting to note the amount of redacted material: the poet's newspaper column for the alternative press, "The Notes of a Dirty Old Man," was pretty steamy material, and it brought the poet to trial as being mailed "under obscene cover" by the Post Office. 

The "discreet efforts" to verify Bukowski's employment background were headed toward potential obscenity charges -- it was noted he was "employed by the Post Office" in 1968. Imagine the official outrage, if not the actual irony: a postal employee sending obscene material through the mail ... 

At one point Bukowski's uncouth pronouncements attracted even more scrutiny from the FBI: he was suspected of being the Unabomber. Now the agency has released files showing it kept tabs on hundreds of writers, including Bukowski. Apparently, being dead is a good way to eliminate FBI spying.

The full file of 113 documents is online at bukowski.net. Here are two samples, which can be enlarged by clicking on the images.

Captain William Kidd, pirate: rum, fact, and fiction

May 23, 1701: 

Captain William Kidd is fed rum and brandy until he cannot stand and paraded in a cart through the streets of London as hysterical crowds scream and cheer. He is hanged, but the rope breaks, depositing him in a heap of mud, while other condemned men swing overhead. Still in a drunken stupor, he is pulled dripping from the slop and hanged a second and final time. 

His corpse is tarred and placed in a cage and hung on the Thames shorleline as a warning to pirates, where it would remain for nearly two years. An epitaph as abominable for its poetry as for its sentiment is nearby:

Reader, near this Tomb don't stand 

Without some Essence in thy Hand; 

For here Kidd's stinking Corpse does lie, 

The Scent of which may infect thy!!

There is no question Kidd was a pirate, since he was hired for that job by King William III himself. In their charges, the government claimed that his piracy strayed beyond  approved targets -- that is, the government felt the pinch themselves. The truth is hard to know, but it seems likely that Kidd was a scapegoat for powerful interests involved in multiple duplicities concerning the distribution of his booty.

Robert Ritchie's biography Captain Kidd and the War Against the Pirates unravels some strands that bind the facts of high-seas piracy with the romantic fiction that followed it. It's as lively a tale-spinning biography as Kidd himself would enjoy. The author of the Flashman series of historical fictions, George MacDonald Fraser, had words of high praise when the book was published in 1988: The most detailed record I have ever seen of a pirate voyage, with its origins and aftermath; I doubt if there is another like it.

William Kidd was born 22 January 1645. He became one of the two or three best known pirates to emerge from an era in which piracy was an enterprise as much as a threat. His checkered legacy gave rise to legends of buried treasure that still attract treasure hunters today. 

Kidd never set out to become a pirate. There is every reason to believe that his eventual trial and execution for piracy -- which has become the stuff of romantic derring-do and outfoxing authority -- was the result of an establishment cover-up, and that crucial documents that could have led to his acquittal were withheld by the British government. 

25 suggestions for Memorial Day weekend reading to combat brain-freeze

Admit it: the long Memorial Day weekend is approaching and you just can't decide if you're ready for another beach book, or picture-perfect book about barbeque, or breathless celebrity tell-all brain-freeze. Besides, you have to save something nap-inducing for the long, lazy days of summer, still a month away. What to read now?

Tyler Coates, online at Flavorwire, offers a smart list of 25 essential non-fiction books -- some serious, some humorous, ranging from gimlet-eyed memoir to astute history -- with lesbian / bi / gay / transgender authors and subjects. Several recommended titles qualify as classics (Quentin Crisp's The Naked Civil Servant, Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On), and there are more recent books of lives led in- or out-of-the-closet. 

As with any online list, readers have responded with their own additions. The genderbending A Low Life in High Heels by Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn would be a good, entertaining extra. Coates makes the point that the broad selection, with topics from gender politics to AIDS to literary outlaws, isn't meant to be complete. At the very least, The Life of Roman Novarro (André Soares) qualifies as both a Hollywood bio and a beach read that could make it to the waterside before before Labor Day. An excerpt from the list and Coates' comments:

The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America by Charles Kaiser. Kaiser’s historical look at how gay men informed the culture of America’s urban areas — particularly New York City — spans 56 years from the periods of silent acceptance, the tumultuous pre-Stonewall years, the empowering ’70s, and the AIDS crisis of the ’80s.

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde. This collection of speeches and essays from the influential and outspoken Audre Lorde touches on racism, sexism, and homophobia without losing a sense of hope for positive results in the face of class struggles. 

Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade by Justin Spring. A contemporary of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and Thornton Wilder, Samuel Steward lived an extraordinary secret sexual life which he chronicled in great detail in a collection of journals.  

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Alison Bechdel’s gorgeous and heartbreaking graphic memoir follows the artist as she grapples with both her own sexuality and the revelation that her cold, distant father led a secret life as a gay man. 

Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas. The internationally renowned poet shares his life story, from his adolescence spent fighting for the Castro regime to his imprisonment for his sexuality to his flight from Cuba to his deathbed in New York City. 

Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us by Kate Bornstein. Legendary transgender activist and writer Kate Bornstein details her transition from a heterosexual man to a lesbian woman in this modern classic about challenging gender and cultural norms. 

Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin by John D’Emilio. Bayard Rush was responsible for teaching the principles of non-violent protest to Martin Luther King, Jr., yet his status as an openly gay man in the midst of the civil rights movement kept him from being recognized for the efforts and activism he accomplished. 

Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramon Novarro by André Soares. This biography tells the story of the first Latin American movie star, whose death was one of the most shocking scandals of the early days of Hollywood. 

Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 by George Chauncy. Chauncy’s history of gay life in New York decades before the impact of the Stonewall riots is a surprising account that defies the notion that homosexuality was hidden out of view until the 1960s.