Steve Bunch Shares Allen Ginsburg, Ed Dorn, Other Lawrence Literary History

Here are Steve Bunch's Lawrence literary memories of the Rock Chalk Cafe, which served Ed Dorn, the Fugs, Allen Ginsberg, many other literati over the years. It begins:

Steve Bunch

"Edward Dorn's poem "The Cosmology of Finding Your Spot" celebrated the Rock Chalk and its denizens (http://www.vlib.us/beats/dorn.html ) and was published (typos and all) as a broadside in connection with a reading in support of the Draft Resisters League in 1969. The reading occurred just across the street from the Rock Chalk, at the United Campus Christian Fellowship building. As I recall, Robert Bly also read that evening. Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Galway Kinnell, and Diane Wakoski also came through Lawrence that spring."

I remember the reading at the UCC, and how suave Dorn was, how cooly activist. His wife Jennifer Dorn was with him, also a respected poet, and she impressed me. Do I remember what he read? Yes--parts of Gunslinger he was working on at the time. He made me think differently about history of the West, my home region. It was a long way from Gunsmoke and Palladin, although there were some of the same characters. He had a grasp of the history that informed his discussion as well of the poets, and I admired that. Here is a review from the Guardian by Patrick McGuinnis of Gunslinger, and it begins:

"Gunslinger is perhaps the strangest long poem of the last half-century: a quest myth wrapped around an acid-inspired western comic strip adventure in which a gunslinger, astride a drug-taking, talking horse called Levi-Strauss, searches for Howard Hughes ("they say he moved to Vegas / or bought Vegas and / moved it. / I can't remember which"). Charles Olson had insisted, in the wake of Pound, that where Europe had history to make poetry with, America must take geography. Dorn's contribution to the Great American Long Poem – Pound's Cantos, WC Williams's Paterson, Olson's Maximus … – was Gunslinger, which appeared in five sections over six years. The American west was Dorn's imaginative home, and his poem is an extraordinary feat of imagination, humour, allusion and lyric invention. It takes the standard fare of a good if surreal western (brothel madams, saloon brawls and gunfights) and melds it with high philosophical riffs."

Re-poeting the Frontier: Edward Dorn, Diane Hueter Warner, Karen Holmberg, and dg nanouk okpik

I'm grateful to the Kansas City Star for their support of literature, including my "On Poetry" column. Here is the

start of the recent "Western Edges" review, working east to west. This is one of the few American reviews of Illinois/Black Mountain poet Ed Dorn's Collected Works, which was published in England at the end of last year. He spent a semester at Ks. University in 1969, and I was lucky to audit his class and see him around town. He had a huge influence on many of us. Buddy-poet Steve Bunch has been reminding me of that year: Robert Bly, Robert Duncan, and Galway Kinnell were visiting readers. I thought this was normal. Diane Hueter Warner is another fine poet, who spent some time at KU also. Karen Holmberg attended Mizzou. Dg nanouk okpik is a newcomer, and wow, she's amazing. Here is a start, but please go to the KC Star page for the full review.

"The Western frontier appears on the earliest European maps, with sea serpents encircling Terra Incognita. American poets continue to renew myths of exotic territories just beyond the pale of civilization. Publication of Edward Dorn’s “Collected Poems” showcases his seminal revision of the literary West. Books by Diane Hueter Warner of Texas, Karen Holmberg of Oregon and Dg Nanouk Okpik, an Alaskan native, locate ever more remote distances of Western borderlands.Dorn’s thousand-page volume collects all his published and unpublished verse from 1964 to 2009, when he died. In total, the work documents the poet’s reconfiguration of the American West. Although he knew British poetics well, he located his explorations in New Mexico and surrounding regions.

Dorn is a fortuneteller. His epic “Gunslinger,” written between 1968 and 1975, opens in Mesilla, where the frontier exists today among Spanish, English, Apache and other Native language-speaking populations. Even the title “Gunslinger” is prophetic, as the current debate continues to highlight guns as essential parts of the American experience.Dorn’s slick hero would be as comfortable on YouTube as on the pages of this book. . . ."
To read the rest of the review:
http://www.kansascity.com/2013/04/04/4161333/four-writers-explore-the-western.html?storylink=twt

Edward Dorn - "Inspection" and Commentary by David Mortiz

After viewing this video, David Moritz wrote on Facebook (reprinted with permission):

David Moritz

I remember one chat with Ed.. sitting on floor of brother John's house.. In those days, I liked to ask people the type of question that would tell me something about their psychological makeup. I asked Ed the old "if you were on a desert is...land and could only have one book, which one would you choose?" Ed answered, without any hesitation, "Don Quixote". Ok.. ummm i was puzzled.. so, not being an intellectual, i asked "Why that book?" to which he answered "its long". Now, i realize Don Quixote is considered a part of the foundation of western literature, and I'll even confess to having admired a windmill or two, but at over 900 pages, i have always suspected he was thinking of its practical use in managing one's toilet.. I also asked him if there was anything he feared in dying and he told me he was concerned that the mortician would pull out all the gold from his teeth.. this was when i decided his choice in books was not one born of intellectual concern. :) But, then, I was not a student at the time of the reunion, just a traveler so I wasn't seeking any great revelations, just some pleasant conversation to go along with the alcohol. I liked talking with Ed... my talks with him were always entertaining.. his mind explored the universe.. and he had a unique view of the world around him which included.. everything: i once heard him give an impromtu dissertation on the literature of a "number of people allowed in this building" document that was hanging in the hallway of a multi-room dwelling - even those formal government lines of text had a rhythm and breath he found interesting. This was 40 years ago, and i was bored with this world then.. and as silly as this event was to me at the time, it impressed me and I don't think i have ever excluded anything from my observation of the world around me since then.. seriously, Ed was seeing poetry in a place I doubt anyone else would ever chance to look for it..."

Stephen Bunch on Bly, 1960s-1970s Lawrence

Friend and poet Stephen Bunch, former editor of Tellus,
sent this response to news of the Robert Bly 80th birth
day party,posted below. Stephen works with Continuing
Ed.at KU these days and still writes solid, inventive
poetry.

He recalls the days when KU was a crossroads for
traveling poets Robert Creeley,Robert Duncan, Galway
Kinnell, Allen Ginsberg, and Diane Wakoski. George
Kimball ran for sheriff. Ed Dorn and his dog drank at
the Rock Chalk tavern.

Thanks,Stephen, for this memoir and links.
_________________________________________________________________________

Hi, Denise, I enjoy your 'blog.

I remember Bly's reading at KU in 1969, when he read
primarily from "The Light Around the Body" and "The
Teeth Mother Naked at Last." I can't describe how
heartening it was for a person of my generation (19
at the time) to hear such a voice with such poetic
and moral authority declaiming from his generation.
I don't remember if I sent you this memoir earlier,
but it encompasses that semester when Bly and other
poetic champions landed in Lawrence.

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/jun/22/business_deal_may_force_closing_crossing/?city_local

In yesterday's news, linked above, comes word that a
storied Lawrence, Kansas, watering hole may be about
to vanish from the north edge of the University of
Kansas campus. Among its distinctions the Rock Chalk
Café, now known as The Crossing,holds a place in local
literary history.

Edward Dorn's poem "The Cosmology of Finding Your
Spot" celebrated the Rock Chalk and its denizens
http://www.ku.edu/heritage/beats/dorn.html and was
published (typos and all) as a broadside in
connection with a reading in support of the Draft
Resisters League in 1969. The reading occurred just
across the street from the Rock Chalk, at the United
Campus Christian Fellowship building. As I recall,
Robert Bly also read that evening. Robert Creeley,
Robert Duncan, Galway Kinnell, and Diane Wakoski
also came through Lawrence that spring.

George Kimball, poet, sportswriter, Yippie
candidate for Douglas County sheriff in 1970,
presided at the Rock Chalk
(http://www.secondsout.com/USA/colhauser.cfm?ccs=208&cs=12746).
He wore a revolver in a holster on his hip and had one
eye. His campaign slogan was that he would keep an eye
on crime. He lost the election, but a fellow Yippie
write-in candidate was elected justice of the peace.
After he announced he would marry gay couples, the
state of Kansas quickly eliminated retroactively
the office of justice of the peace.

In the early '80s Allen Ginsberg was the honored
guest at a large lunch gathering at the Rock Chalk
(by then it may have become the Crossing, I don't
remember). At lunch he signed my old copy of "Grist"
magazine, edited and published by John Fowler out of
the old  Abingdon Bookshop,which was formerly just
down the street from the Rock Chalk. This particular
issue of "Grist" contained an excerpt from "Wichita
Vortex Sutra." Ginsberg then joined Kemp Houck,
English professor at the time (before dropping
out of academia to become an anti-nuke activist),
and me that afternoon to record an interview about
his memories and thoughts regarding Charles Olson.
Unfortunately,Kemp managed inadvertently to erase
much of the tape. Somewhere in my files is a
transcript of the tail end of the interview. That
evening AG read to a standing room only audience,
probably around 800 or so,in the Kansas Union
Ballroom, also just down the street from the Rock
Chalk Cafe. William Burroughs and Andrei Codrescu
were in attendance. Steven Taylor played guitar.

The Rock Chalk was a center of culture, celebration,
and commotion during the Vietnam era. An energy
radiated from it every bit as perceptible as the
sound of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon
Rising" thumping from its jukebox, which I could
hear from my future (and current) wife's bedroom
window a half block away down Oread Street in 1969.