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."

Stephen Bunch Publishes New Post-Pop Work in Mudlark

Read a generous selection of recent poems, an online chapbook, by Lawrence cult figure Stephen Bunch at Mudlark Flash #97 (2015), entitled DisquiEtudes | Poems. It has three sections, or more accurately, movements: "Dyspepsia" | "Domestic Disturbances" | "Perturbations." Pop culture appears mashed up with ingredients of ennui, quotidian moments, and startles of Zen-Tao awareness. Bunch has been a presence in the Lawrence beat-experimental scene for decades, one of the best voices and most dissident. Watch out if you run into him at the grocery store. You might end up cross-haired in his word-scope. Don't miss this online bundle of poems from a wise fool. I take the liberty of quoting one of his short poems from "Domestic Disturbances":
     Man Takes Out Trash

He rolls the receptacle out

     to the curb—
     not Sisyphus exactly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 Stephen Bunch lives and writes in Lawrence, Kansas, where he received the 2008 Langston Hughes Award for Poetry from the Lawrence Arts Center and Raven Books. His poems can be found in Autumn Sky Poetry, The Externalist, The Literary Bohemian, Fickle Muses, IthacaLit and Umbrella. From 1978 to 1988, he edited and published Tellus, a little magazine that featured work by Victor Contoski, Edward Dorn, Jane Hirshfield, Donald Levering, Denise Low, Paul Metcalf, Edward Sanders, and many others. After a fifteen-year hibernation, he awoke in 2005 and resumed writing. Preparing to Leave, his first gathering of poems, was published in 2011. Bunch can be found on the Map of Kansas Literature near L. Frank Baum and Gwendolyn Brooks. (He reports that property values tanked when he moved into the neighborhood.)

 

 

 

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

2011 TOP 12 BOOKS OF POETRY & MORE!

I've read the 10 best NY Times book list, the local paper Lawrence Journal World's best 2011 list, and no poetry is included. I'm listing my own 2011 poetry favorites, based on books I have received this year. I'm including a few anthologies and related prose books. I know I am excluding some wonderful books, but mostly I don't have access to them. I have champagne tastes in poetry and a Kool-Aid budget. I will be nominating some of these for the National Book Critics Circle awards, as a member (see their website for more information about nomination processes by board members and also members-at-large). I do regular reviews of poetry for print and electronic media as well as this blog--please send books if you would like to be considered in 2012.

2011 Denise Low DOZEN BEST BOOKS OF POETRY, alphabetical order

1. Water Puppets by Quan Barry (Perihelion), winner of the 2010 AWP Donald Hall poetry award. I picked this up at the public library and loved the language.  http://poems.com/feature.php?date=15255
2. Mackinac Suite by James J. Bogan, Jr. (The Full Court Press). This writer always takes me with him on his trips.
3. Preparing to Leave by Stephen Bunch (The Lives You Touch Press) http://thelivesyoutouch.com/touchjournal/Publications/Bunch.html
4. Things Come On: An Amneoir by Joseph Harrington (Wesleyan University Press). This book changed how I think about language and about memory. Julia Kristeva writes about how poets lead innovation by word tinkering. This book is amazing. http://deniselow.blogspot.com/2011/03/review-of-things-come-on-amneoir-by.html     
5. Domande Personali by William J. Harris (Leconte). Italian bilingual edition that sings, sings.  http://deniselow.blogspot.com/2011/04/wm-j-harris-publishes-domande.html       
6. Glamour by Jonathan Holden (Mammoth Publications). Jonathan is such a good poet that he can make math and science lyrical. He's 1st poet laureate of Kansas.  http://deniselow.blogspot.com/2011/03/mammoth-publications-presents-glamour.html     
7. Carry Catastrophe by Megan Kaminski's (Grey Book Press) . This poet is a comer. Watch for her full-length book coming from Coconut Books. http://deniselow.blogspot.com/2011/01/so-many-good-new-books-like-megan.html      
8. Pretend the World by Kathryn Kysar (Holy Cow! Press). This Minneapolis poet shines even in the crowded heaves of the Minnesota arts scene. http://www.kathrynkysar.com/page1/page2/PretendWorld.html
9. PoDoom by Jim McCrary (Hank’s Original Loose Gravel Press). McCrary hones social critique to a high art.  http://wwwresistingpoetry.blogspot.com/2011/03/re-coming-soon.html
10. Rain Comes Riding by William Sheldon (Mammoth Publications). This Great Plains poet combines Goldbarthian awareness of syntax with compelling narratives of place. http://deniselow.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-10-27T10:27:00-05:00&max-results=7
11. The Afterlives of Trees by Wyatt Townley (Woodley). Terrific images ornament all the poems.  http://wyatttownley.com/the-afterlives-of-trees.html
12. Ship of Fool by William Trowbridge (Red Hen). Smart, funny, sad. First rate poetry and a handbook of poetic form. http://deniselow.blogspot.com/2011/12/favorite-book-of-2011-william.html

POETRY ANTHOLOGIES
Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas, edited by Allison Hedge Coke (University of Arizona Press) 
Begin Again: 150 Kansas Poems, edited by Caryn Mirriam Goldberg. You will be surprised how many poets of merit come from this crossroads state. http://150kansaspoems.wordpress.com/readings/  
The Best American Poetry 2011 guest edited by Kevin Young, series editor David Lehman (Scribner). Topeka poet Kevin Young continues to excel in curating as well as his own writing—see also his own Dear Darkness (Knopf 2008).
An Endless Skyway: Poetry From the State Poets Laureate edited by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Marilyn L. Taylor, Denise Low and Walter Bargen (Ice Cube Books). 38 or so states have poets laureate. Here’s a sampling of some of the diversity, beautifully produced by Iowa’s Ice Cube Books. http://www.icecubepress.com/2011-books/an-endless-skyway
The Penguin Anthology of  20^th Century American Poetry edited by Rita Dove  (Penguin). Thank you to courageous Rita Dove for shifting the center of gravity to include more real gritty American life in these selections.
PROSE ABOUT POETRY
Robert Duncan: The H.D. Book, edited and with an Introduction by Michael Boughn and Victor Coleman (University of California Press). Amazing discussion of how poetry enters our lives through memorable people and events. Thank you to Ken Irby for this gift!
Beautiful & Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry by David Orr (Harper). Orr is always provocative if not always right.
Also a word for: Natural Theologies: Essays About Literature of the New Middle West by Denise Low. I appreciate Greg Kuzma and Nebraska's The Backwaters Press for taking a gamble on this first book about contemporary grasslands literature. http://www.thebackwaterspress.org/our-authors/denise-low/