new from above/ground press: LALIQUE, by Artie Gold & George Bowering

LALIQUE
Artie Gold & George Bowering
$5

                        AG: Lalique

 

They're both in the room. He, he's slow or dull-witted. She does
most of the talking. I guess her to be in her early sixties; she is
telling me of a time she bought two lovely milk-glass table-
pieces. She's doing all of the talking, seems to hover near the
door. The room is filled with small lacquered tables, doilies,
silver ashtrays too small for cigarettes; the curtains are from
the thirties, horrible things really drawn tight, yet light enters
diffused about the blotches of almost shapeless flowers and
green pears woven into the cloth. The chairs are highbacked
Duncan Phyfes neatly arranged geometrically about a table of
stained medium wood, cherry maybe. Four thin people might
slip between table and chairs, ghost-dining. He mumbles,
"cranberry glass"; I take no notice; he leaves, I guess, because
he feels unnecessary. She motions to another room, a bed,
magnificent poster. satin overcloth, no windows anywhere,
smaller room we are inside. She sits by the drawn sheet pillow.
I am standing, mention yes, there's no cameo glass anymore,
hardly see Lalique in stores. She rises; I shuffle, look about,
see some smaller pieces of glass on corner bracket shelves;
she bends a bit at the back, straightens, bids me be seated,
which seems innocent (I know it's not). Hand bends across
my arm, touches lightly; she isn't talking any longer. I am
seated. She is seated beside or by my side hand limp brushes
my forearm I am excited as hell I can hear old man heavy
breathing outside door.

 

                        GB: Lalique

 

Every time I went over to Mary Brown's place, where he
lived, Artie would show me stuff he collected. I was a
collector, too, of books, sport magazines, frog figurines,
James Dean stuff. But Artie, a decade younger than I,
was a lot more sophisticated. He had a lot of collections,
and I kind of think that he decided not to become an in-
patient at the Montreal Chest Clinic because he did not
want to give up his rocks, his precious stones, his ancient
cocaine tins, his Laliques, his Sendaks, his Frank O'Haras.
As to the woman sitting beside him on the four-poster
bed, did you think this is a dream account? I am not so
sure. After quite a while that possibility entered my mind;
but it didn't necessarily stay there.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
July 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

In Spring of 2023 NeWest Press published George Bowering’s anthology of English language poets from Wyatt to Avison, with one-page essays on each of the poets, Good Morning Poems.

Montreal poet Artie Gold (1947-2007) published numerous books throughout the 1970s. His selected poems, The Beautiful Chemical Waltz (1992), appeared with an introduction by George Bowering. Talonbooks published The Collected Books of Artie Gold in 2010.

This is George Bowering’s seventh above/ground press title, after STANZAS #12 (“BLONDES ON BIKES: 1-20,” April 1997), A, You’re Adorable (as “Ellen Field,” October, 1998; reissued October 2004), Tocking Heads (ALBERTA SERIES #2, October, 2007), That Toddlin’ Town / Baby, don’ ya wanna go? (2016), Hotels (2021) and the collaborative Ruby Wounds, with Artie Gold (2022).

Artie Gold’s above/ground press chapbook, THE HOTEL VICTORIA POEMS, appeared in 2003.

An Artie Gold/George Bowering bundle is currently available as part of the above/ground press 30th anniversary fundraiser.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: from RUBY WOUNDS, by Artie Gold & George Bowering

from RUBY WOUNDS
Artie Gold & George Bowering
$5

                 AG: The Naked Prose of my Heart

 

I can show you  that  10 /  is  15, and this is not my paradox. Distributed like the naked vernacular that composes cities, I am asleep with the sense of being awake. Now /  there is contra- diction.  Now  /  perhaps the middle skin examined. And light. Light is accident. Mowers in a field. Mechanical decomposers. I am reduced physically; therefore, these must be my simpler elements. O take me to reduced consciousness. Wrap my dry skin in hot Vic Tanny oblivion. To get away is neither to live nor to die, but to be comfortable. It's only when I add a third ball, then I am the juggler. This  /  is the prose of my equally naked disposition. Which, curdling itself last week or so, and lifting,  /  only revealed itself. Beneath one thing are small pieces of that thing, gnostic and absurdly available to Parmedines. Beneath scepticism, you want to say, is doubt, but  /  how do you know? Whoever claims against you is in possession of fenced goods and throws the towel in––but the absurdity of the situation––well, son, I would like to be able to claim you as a non-dependent  (said my father  /  like the caterpillar in Alice­­­­––but you exist . . . you are a fact!

 

 

                 GB: My Heart's Naked Prose

 

Morality is no one's business. But perhaps we all have need of it. I can show you that 10 is 15, and this is not my paradox. It belongs to poetry and therefore not my heart. I am asleep and dreaming of being awake, though dreams are told as if they were prose, so people who have to hear are bored. Even Freud suspected that dreams were boring, even though he thought poets were people who never grew up. Freud pounded his fist and Asked H.D. what the hell women wanted when he should have remembered that she was a very tall poet. Lying down on a couch nearby, now could one not become bored? Not to get away is neither to live nor to die, but only to be comfortable. If I had been Sigmund Freud I would have had my analysands stand up for fifty minutes. H.D. mentioned that Freud had miniature statues all over his office. I have only a few, including a little Parmenides I received from a famous grown up poet. Ever since it came to me it has existed, and I talk to it when I have a thought to. I tell it that 10 is 15 and it speaks into my hearing aids: "If you speak of something it must be." I believe that he was telling me something about my poor injured heart's ordinary prose.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
December 2022
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

In Spring of 2023 NeWest Press will publish George Bowering’s anthology of English language poets from Wyatt to Avison, with one-page essays on each of the poets, Good Morning Poems.

Montreal poet Artie Gold (1947-2007) published numerous books throughout the 1970s. His selected poems, The Beautiful Chemical Waltz (1992), appeared with an introduction by George Bowering. Talonbooks published The Collected Books of Artie Gold in 2010.

This is George Bowering’s sixth above/ground press title, after STANZAS #12 (“BLONDES ON BIKES: 1-20,” April 1997), A, You’re Adorable (as “Ellen Field,” October, 1998; reissued October 2004), Tocking Heads (ALBERTA SERIES #2, October, 2007), That Toddlin’ Town / Baby, don’ ya wanna go? (2016) and Hotels (2021).

Artie Gold’s above/ground press chapbook, THE HOTEL VICTORIA POEMS, appeared in 2003.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Burgoyne, Solomon, mclennan, Norris, Gold, Bowering, Siklosi + Witte,

Sarah Burgoyne collaborates on some poems with Misha Solomon, via Solomon's substack; rob mclennan responds to the "Six Questions" interview via Chaudiere Books; Ken Norris, Artie Gold, George Bowering + Kate Siklosi, etcetera have new work in mouse eggs; and Valerie Witte is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.

new from above/ground press: Hotels, by George Bowering

Hotels
George Bowering
$5

                       1.


At the Swiss American Hotel
in San Francisco there weren't any
Swiss.

There wasn't any
lock on the door, either, just
a little loop that slipped over
a nail.

The smoke I smelled did not
resemble plankton, maybe the night breeze
through sagebrush outside
Oliver, B.C., coyotes drifting by.

No two girls on the hallway rugs, no
rugs in the hallway. No phone ringing,
in fact, no phone. What was outside
the window? I don't know, I didn't
look out the window.

They told me Lenny Bruce
was out there; wasn't he
supposed to be in here?

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
October 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

George Bowering: I have been working all year on the unpublished book Romantic Words by the late Artie Gold. I have just finished a response book, poem by poem. My 13-section “Hotels” is in response to his “Hotel Victoria.”

Hotels is George Bowering’s fifth above/ground press chapbook, after STANZAS #12 (“BLONDES ON BIKES: 1-20,” April 1997), A, You’re Adorable (as “Ellen Field,” October, 1998; reissued October 2004), Tocking Heads (ALBERTA SERIES #2, October, 2007) and That Toddlin’ Town / Baby, don’ ya wanna go? (2016).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Johnson, Paty, Radmore, O'Reilly, Norris + Gold,

Chris Johnson has a new poem up at Train : a poetry journal; Allyson Paty is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Claudia Coutu Radmore has a new essay in the "Talking Poetics" series over at the ottawa poetry newsletter, as well as an obituary for Ottawa poet Lesley Strutt; Nathanael O'Reilly is interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; and Ken Norris and the late Artie Gold etcetera have work in the newly-revamped mouse eggs.

Stephen Morrissey on Guy Birchard and Artie Gold

Photo by Stephen Morrissey : Home of Mary Brown and Artie Gold at 3667 Lorne Crescent

Prompted by reading Guy Birchard's above/ground press debut, VALEDICTIONS (2019), Montreal poet Stephen Morrissey wrote on Birchard and Artie Gold (as well as a mention of his 2003 above/ground press chapbook, THE HOTEL VICTORIA POEMS). You can see his original post here. As Morrissey writes:

Before George Bowering was GB there was Guy Birchard, maybe the first GB, both named as such by AG, Artie Gold. Valedictions (2019), published by rob mclennan's above/ground press, is Guy's farewell to three deceased artists, poet William Hawkins, musician and visual artist Ray 'Condo' Tremblay, and our mutual friend, poet Artie Gold. I met Guy in the spring of 1973, I met Artie through Guy. I never met Ray Tremblay but one day my brother took a taxi in Ottawa that was driven by William Hawkins; somehow the subject of poets came up and Hawkins said that he had heard of me. It's a small world; we were all a lot younger in those days, we knew a lot of people. And now Guy's memoir has caused me to think about Artie once again, he was an imposing and domineering figure for many of us in the early 1970s.

Life seems to be a series of coincidences and cumulatively they can add up to something meaningful, or nothing at all. For instance, Guy says that he first encountered Artie at a reading by Michael Benedikt, but I was also at that reading, it was on 16 March 1973 in the Hall Building, the ninth floor I believe, and it may have been at this reading that I also met Guy, sitting a few rows behind me. Around that time, winter-spring 1973, Hopeton Anderson invited Guy to read at Karma Coffee House and that was the occasion on which Guy met Artie Gold; to get this sequence of events accurate, it was also at Guy's reading at Karma that Richie Carson, another poet of that era, invited Guy to read again at Karma. By then I knew Guy and he extended to me an invitation to read after he read (the reading was on the third week of April 1973), just as Hopeton Anderson had extended a similar invitation to Guy, all of these readings taking place at Karma. Karma Coffee House was located in the basement of the Sir Williams University Student Union Building.

Artie was an extraordinary person, there was an aura of excitement surrounding him, he was a genuinely creative person; I doubt most of us meet someone like Artie Gold more than once in a lifetime. One winter day he and I and my first wife took a train to Ottawa and visited the National Gallery of Canada. For years I had a copy of The Far Point, bought on that occasion, an article in that issue was my introduction to what was happening in poetry in Vancouver where many of the most innovative poets were living at that time. There are other, happy memories of Artie; it was a seminal time when we were apprentices as poets. But now, after reading Guy's memoir of Artie, what is for me an unpleasant and pivotal memory has surfaced. It is a memory that explains what happened to my relationship with Artie. I remember talking with Artie and him telling me that he had published more than I had and that he was more important as a poet than I was. It may have been true but do we say that to a friend?  I have never said that to another poet and no other poet has said it to me, except Artie.

Remembering that comment by Artie I also realized that it is may have been around this time that my relationship with him began to diminish.  Artie was getting ahead in poetry, considering his talent and his intelligence the only thing that could hold him back was himself, the baggage of his life; the baggage eventually won: he was now being published by Talon Press in Vancouver; he was giving readings in BC, Ontario, and Quebec; other better known poets had heard of him and made him a celebrity of sorts; he was one of three poetry editors at Vehicule Press, the other two editors were Ken Norris and Endre Farkas. Artie had now become a "somebody". I benefited by Artie's ambition, Artie, Ken, and Endre published my first book, The Trees of Unknowing (Vehicule Press,1978) and I am grateful to them and to the press for that.

So, Artie moved on and was an important poet with a future. Then, Si Dardick, the owner of Vehicule Press, fired his three poetry editors and installed someone else in the job; I don't know the details of this firing but I do know that the books the new editor published never interested me; the emphasis was now on formalistic poetry.

I still knew Artie after he was no longer an editor at Vehicule Press; I gave him readings for several years, beginning in 1976, at the college where I was now teaching, I knew he needed the money. From these readings he would go home with a little money and office supplies from the college. But there were other changes happening in Artie's life; his decline into poverty, worsening health, and increasing drug dependency is usually dated from when Mary Brown, who supported Artie, ended their relationship by moving a few doors away but still on Lorne Crescent; later she moved to a house she helped build in the country. Mary Brown died in 1999. But now I wonder if  Artie's decline might also be dated from when he was no longer an editor at the press.

My long forgotten memory of Artie's comment to me had other repercussions on our relationship; it explains to me my distance from Artie in the years that followed. For instance, I continued knowing Artie but on a more formal basis, the old familiarity we once had was gone. Nothing lasts forever, everything changes. When he stored his boxes of archives in our basement, around 2005, I offered to give him a receipt (of all things!) and this surprised Artie as much as it surprised me at the time; however, I didn't want any problems with Artie and I didn't want Artie coming back at me saying I had polluted his papers with cat dander, an alleged trigger for his COPD (not asthma).  When I bought groceries for Artie, or clothes, or what have you—this was when he had friends supporting him so he could remain living autonomously—if I said I didn't have the time to go to several shops that day to buy him croissants or cans of chick peas he wouldn't push me to do it, he just agreed and let it go, in fact, I noticed he was uncharacteristically meek in accepting what I said. No good deed goes unpublished is one of my mottoes and it included Artie Gold.

Artie died in February 2007 and later that year a small group of us scattered Artie's ashes at places we thought significant to Artie. One of the people at this gathering told me that when she separated from her husband Artie phoned to offer his sympathy, at first this was an incredible thing for Artie to have done, she must have felt supported by Artie's phone call; but, more importantly, it must have at first felt doubly compassionate as it was from someone who was rarely compassionate about anybody. The point of this anecdote is that literally thirty seconds after Artie expressed his sympathy he returned to his favourite subject, himself. We both laughed at this, it was "good old Artie" being himself.

When I first saw Artie's cover drawing on his last chapbook, The Hotel Victoria Poems (above/ground press), I thought it was prescient, that this was the same bed in which the police discovered his body on Valentine's Day in February 2007. But I was wrong, Guy tells me this image appeared on a postcard he received when Artie was still living on Lorne Crescent, it is not the same room and bed where he died in 2007. Artie was a friend of our youth, he was one of the first real poets some of us met on this journey in life.