Joe Ceravolo Once and Forever

I can distinctly remember the moment when I first read Joe Ceravolo's poem "Ho Ho Ho Caribou" in The Paris Review No. 44, Fall 1968. I was a junior at UC Berkeley, and I picked up the issue in a little corner drugstore on Telegraph Avenue, which carried racks of current magazines, and dimestore paperback editions. That kind of market is mostly gone now, places where you could browse serious literary work side-by-side with mass-cult periodicals and low-brow fiction. That was how I first discovered Caterpillar Magazine, and John Fowles's The Magus, and James Salter's A Sport and a Pastime. 

I knew by this time who Robert Creeley--the subject of an Art of Poetry #10 interview in the same issue--was, though I couldn't have summarized his work or career accurately. There were poems in that issue, too, by James Koller, David Shapiro, John Thorpe ("Bolinas"), and John Wieners, and a story by Salter.

But who was this guy Joe Ceravolo, and what kind of weird poetry was this???

It didn't scan, it didn't rhyme, it didn't even seem to make any evident sense on first reading. But there were startling effects, almost like magic, which were like messages from an alien sensibility. Did I suspect that maybe the author was on some kind of drug that altered his consciousness, allowing him to perceive reality in a different, perhaps more insightful way? Anything seemed possible. 

The poem was not made out of "literary" language, and it wasn't eloquent in the sense that Richard Wilbur or Archibald MacLeish were in their verse. The author clearly wasn't interested in displaying his facility to make convincing or persuasive statements. It seemed more like an investigation into how the mind and body perceive reality, how rational and non-rational mental data are sorted and processed, how sensations and impressions are mixed and scrubbed and weighed, and it seemed to want to turn the raw stuff of apprehension into novel language. "Ho Ho Ho Caribou" seemed almost ecstatic in its awe and delight at inventive ingenuity. 

The first stanza is miraculous in its leaps and disjunctions. The lead-in line "Leaped at the caribou" springs right out at you, putting the reader right into the middle of action, before he's had a chance to catch his breath. We know already in a few lines that this is a white man with children and maybe he's taken them to the zoo. Like any father, he feels slightly disconcerted by the responsibility of caring for them. The irony of it's being "like paradise" is not lost on us. Does his daughter have a doll? Is that doll along for a lunch? Then there's that hip sentence "It was clean and flying." 

The stanzas are like axes or coordinates of feeling and event, in which emotion and language and observation converge, rub up against each other, producing sparks and slippery motion and resistant hooks. So we have "Where you . . . the axes/are." Coming home, daddy's hand is on the gate. 

Would I have spoken in this way then, in my innocence, of poetry as fresh and unassuming as this was? Probably not. I was preoccupied with regurgitating my knowledge and insight into literature in those days. What undergraduate English major isn't? That's the whole bargain of a humanist education in the academy, recapitulating what you've read and heard, in acceptable forms and with the proper respect for the canons of decency and good taste. How might I have mediated between the obvious energy and freshness of language like this, and the real world of academic standards? Eliot and Williams and Wallace Stevens--they were the "new thing" in the 1960's--demonstrating the usual "lag" between performance and recognition common to the humanities in those days.

But is it innocence or sophistication that's behind Ceravolo's studied, surreal inventions? If his work demonstrates a "reading" of any forbears, who would that be? You could posit Gertrude Stein, but Ceravolo's work breathes a different air than her insistent, nested nursery-rhythms. Instead, you might consider it an appropriation of the language of juvenile literature, with its credulous, negligent pieties--

Underwater fish
brush by us. Oh leg 

not reaching!

Is this the odd simplicity of Satie, or the coy nonsense of Edward Lear? Is it wit, or naivité? 

Ceravolo's Collected Poems has just been published by Wesleyan University Press. This book had to wait 25 years after the author's death to get done. Why? There's neglect, and then there's sheer incomprehension. Was it the obscurity of Ceravolo's life or career that caused this delay, or the relative marginality of its significance?

After publishing two small pamphlets, with "C" Press (Ted Berrigan) in 1965 and then with the highly-regarded Tibor de Nagy Gallery series in 1967, he won the Frank O'Hara Award for Spring in This World of Poor Mutts (Columbia University Press) in 1968, where "Ho Ho Ho Caribou" was included. Though subsequent collections--Transmigration Solo (Toothpaste Press, 1979), and Millennium Dust (Kulchur Foundation, 1982)--would follow, Ceravolo's work failed to attract the attention which such energetic and ground-breaking poetry clearly merited. The reaction which ensued to experimentation in the 1970's and '80's might be the simplest explanation. After Koch's As the Sun Tries to Go On, Kerouac's Mexico City Blues, O'Hara's Second Avenue, Burroughs's Naked Lunch, Ashbery's Tennis Court Oath, Olson's Maximus (II and III), Berrigan's Sonnets, and Jackson Mac Low's Stanzas for Iris Lezak, all completed by the mid-1960's, it may have seemed as if experimentation, as a program, was due for a rest. Whether such historical trend-lines are of any significance to those actually writing at any given moment is perhaps another issue.     

        
Ceravolo, who had studied with Koch at Columbia, was obviously aware of the French and/or German surrealists. His work evidenced an awareness of collage, cut-up, automatic writing, surreal disjunction, cinematic telescoping, atonality, etc., but the over-riding impression one derived from a close reading of his work was an acute originality of expression, unlike almost anything done before. 

The same year I first read Ceravolo's poem, I went to the rare book reading room on campus and spent the better part of one afternoon reading a first edition copy of Oppen's Discrete Series, under the watchful eye of the room librarian. Pound had expressed a similar astonishment at the young poet's odd and very unusual style, as I had registered with Ceravolo, some 35 years later. 

Though Ceravolo's work clearly falls within the demarcation of the Second Generation New York School, it doesn't exhibit the same quality of speech, that talky facility and archly ironic tone characteristic of his contemparies. David Shapiro could sound like Ashbery, and Berkson could sound like O'Hara crossed with Koch, but Ceravolo was the only figure who seemed to have burst, fully formed and newly minted, from the artistic milieu that had fostered that first wave of avants (Ashbery, Koch, O'Hara, Schuyler, Guest). You'd probably have to go all the way back to Edwin Denby's unexpected and improbable elaborations of the sonnet form, to find someone as uniquely inspired as Ceravolo was in the late 1960's. 

"Ho Ho Ho Caribou" plays flirtingly with a primitivism that is pantheistic.   

I did drink my milk
like a mother of wolves.
Wolves on the desert 
of ice cold love, of
fireproof breasts and the breast
I took like snow.

This moves so quickly through its iterations that the changes are refreshed by their enjambed suddenness. Contexts shift and slide crosswise to accommodate a short attention span. In what must be one of modern or post-modern poetry's most charming and triumphant moments, Ceravolo rises to a veritable hymn--

Like a flower, little light, you open
and we make believe
we die. We die all around
you like a snake in a 
well and we come up out
of the warm well and
are born again out of dry
mammas, nourishing mammas, always
holding you as I
love you and am
revived inside you, but
die in you and am
never born again in
the same place; never
stop!

--joining the flower, the snake, motherhood, childhood, sex and death into a single writhing, twisting lyric of joy and confirming pronouncement. It is both a proof of the discoveries he had made in syntax, and an arrival. Nothing had prepared me for work like this in 1968, and I suspect it's no more "familiar" to young readers today, no matter what their training. The line-breaks are literal shifts in gear, placing unsuspecting similes and oppositions in augmented proximity. The language is simple, shrewdly employing familiar speech to link seemingly disparate elements into uncertain intimacy. The last lines are like a veiled manifesto--"always/holding you as I/love you and am/revived inside you, but/die in you and am/never born again in/the same place; never/stop!" Each phrase carries the meaning one iteration further, concluding with the triple implication of "never/stop!" Each engagement is a new possibility, reviving and liberating, but each lives and dies in its time, never to be reborn, except in a new place, always different, each moment, each poem a reincarnation and a birth, a novel consciousness. I guess what I'm trying to suggest here is that though he ostensibly belongs to the Second Generation of The New York School Poets, like most writers or artists with unique, powerful visions, he really is separate and "out of step" with his contemporary milieu. Unlike Berrigan and Padgett--who used cut-up and quotation and cartoons, for instance, to create ambiguous camp contexts--you get the distinct feeling that Ceravolo really saw through his language and invested in its method as a direct form of personal expression, rather than as a Dada-ist object-projection. He made the language his own. He had something to say, and a new way to say it. He is more like Verlaine, say, than Andy Warhol.              

Ho Ho Ho Caribou
by Joseph Ceravolo
I Leaped at the caribou. My son looked at the caribou. The kangaroo leaped on the fruit tree. I am a white man and my children are hungry which is like paradise. The doll is sleeping. It lay down to creep into the plate. It was clean and flying. II Where you...the axes are. Why is this home so hard. So much like the sent over the courses below the home having a porch. Felt it on my gate in the place where caribous jumped over. Where geese sons and pouches of daughters look at me and say "I'm hungry daddy." III Not alone in the gastrous desert. We are looking at the caribous out in the water swimming around. We want to go in the ocean along the dunes. Where do we like? Like little lice in the sand we look into a fruit expanse. Oh the sky is so cold. We run into the water. Lice in heaven. IV My heel. Ten o'clock the class. Underwater fish brush by us. Oh leg not reaching! The show is stopping at the sky to drive in the truck. Tell us where to stop and eat. And drink which comes to us out in the sand is at a star. My pants are damp. Is tonight treating us but not reaching through the window. V Where is that bug going? Why are your hips rounded as the sand? What is jewelry? Baby sleeps. Sleeping on the cliff is dangerous. The television of all voice is way far behind. Do we flow nothing? Where did you follow that bug to? See quick......is flying VI Caribou, what have I done? See how her heart moves like a little bug......under my thumb. Throw me deeply. I am the floes. Ho ho ho caribou, light brown and wetness caribou. I stink and I know it. "Screw you!...you're right." VII Everyone has seen us out with the caribou but no one has seen us out in the car. You passed beyond us. We saw your knees but the other night we couldn't call you. You were more far than a widow feeling you. Nothing has been terrible. We are the people who have been running with animals. More than when we run? VIII Tell us where o eat to stop and eat. The diner is never gonna come. The forest things are passing. I did drink my milk like a mother of wolves. Wolves on the desert of ice cold love, of fireproof breasts and the breast I took like snow. Following me I love you and I fall beyond and I eat you like a bow and arrow withering in the desert. IX No one should be mean. Making affection and all the green winters wide awake. Blubber is desert. Out on the firm lake, o firm and aboriginal kiss. To dance, to hunt, to sing, no one should be mean. Not needing these things. X Like a flower, little light, you open and we make believe we die. We die all around you like a snake in a well and we come up out of the warm well and are born again out of dry mammas, nourishing mammas, always holding you as I love you and am revived inside you, but die in you and am never born again in the same place; never stop!

Aurora Rarotonga

Say the two words together, rather quickly, aurora rarotonga, aurora rarotonga, aurora rarotonga, and see if you don't feel the rhythm. Au-RO-ra ra-ro-TONG-ga. Somewhere in the deep memory of the race, your butt begins to jiggle.

What would it be like if women only wore grass skirts, and no underwear? Mr. Christian, I think I catch your drift.  

The heat is oppressive, and overwhelming.

Tropical breezes move the palms gently to and fro, as you brush the sand from between your toes.

The picture above is of Rarotonga, major of the Cook Islands in the South Pacific. They be atolls, just craggy accidents of volcanic eruption in the scaleless blue Pacific. We went there in the 1990's, and between the occasional violent downpour, performed a magical circumnavigation of the island on a motorscooter--my first attempt at motorized bi-wheeling.

Here's a drink to conjure by. Straight-laced Englishmen set adrift on a sea of forgetfulness, forsaken to pleasure or the emptiness of desire. 

Call it the Aurora Rarotonga, and don't tell the children. 


By proportion, as usual:


4 parts Bacardi white rum
2 parts Key Lime Liqueur
1 Part Midori Liqueur
1 Part fresh lemon juice


--shaken (or shimmied) and served up in frosted cocktail glasses.


I guarantee this one, without reservation. It will seduce you out of any doldrums, tickle your fancy, feather your ear, and make you feel 22 again. How long ago was that? I won't tell!

Cheers! 

Ciao, bene, one shot per favore

The first thing to know about the word espresso, is that it isn't pronounced "ex-PRESS-oh" but "es-PRESS-oh." There's nothing "express" about espresso coffee drinks. Espresso means literally to press out or extrude--which is what making espresso coffee drinks involves. The word is Italian in origin, deriving from the Latin word exprimere. 

Espresso machines were invented in Italy, and in 1905 the patent for the earliest design dedicated to the immediate preparation of served espresso coffee drinks was bought by Desiderio Pavoni, who began manufacturing them in Milan. 

Espresso coffee is made by forcing very hot (steaming) water through a densely packed finely ground dark roast powder, which produces a coffee concentrate much stronger and more flavorful than is produced through drip or French press methods. 

In Italy, the consumption of espresso drinks at bars encouraged the habit of standing up while drinking it. Espresso drinks proliferated throughout Europe and the Americas in the 20th Century, developing into variations such as capuccino, latte, etc., with the inclusion of milk products and flavorings (sweeteners etc.). 

Modern espresso machines are still marketed under the Pavoni name. They come with a steam spout which feeds off the same heating reservoir that provides the steaming water, which is used to steam the milk for the making of lattes or cappuccinos. Everyone has seen the larger models used by restaurants, but the principle is the same, except that the pumping (or pressurization) action can be automated.               

Marketer's photo of a modern Pavoni espresso machine (circa 1980's)

Like most people who crave coffee, I eventually discovered the attractions of espresso. When espresso is made, the liquid produces a kind of head or foam on top, known as the crema. This is sort of the créme de la créme, if you will, of the essence of the coffee bean. People have told me that the crema is too bitter, that the real flavor is in the liquid underneath. But this is apocryphal. The crema is in fact the desirable alembic of the brew, and the connoisseur's delight. In France and America, there developed the "au lait" combination, in which steamed whole milk is mixed with freshly brewed espresso. The joining of the crema with the milk foam produces a distinctly refined combination of the natural sugar in milk and the bitter, cocoa-like flavors of the coffee.         

Photo of my brass and copper Pavoni espresso machine (acquired about 25 years ago)

Due to the intensity of the espresso flavor, and its high caffeine content, very little espresso can or should be consumed at one time. Indeed, its fragility and evanescence demand that it be consumed within a minute or two of its brewing, since it tends to go "flat" and to cool very rapidly. Whereas regular (or Americano) coffee can be kept warm and relatively fresh for perhaps an hour or more, espresso is only at its best in the first moments after being served, in little demitasse cups small enough for a doll's party. 

When in Italy, you will see men in business-suits standing at little open air bars, brief-case in hand, downing an espresso in 15 seconds, then hurrying on to work. You don't see this in America, though there was a little place on Market Street in San Francisco, across from where I worked there in the 1980's, where I used to get a shot or two during my mid-morning break. 

We tend to like a double espresso shot after a nice dinner; it's a fitting end to the evening repast. It has less to do with the stimulation than the confirmation of a familiar taste. I suspect that people who smoke may have the same feeling about a good cigarette, or a good cigar after a meal. I've never smoked, so that isn't something I can vouch for.   

Ciao, bene, one shot per favore!

A Precise Moment of History

The 49ers lost the SuperBowl 34 to 31. It was a game for the ages--dire beginning, unbelievable comeback, crucial failure at the end.

In the movie Patton, the screenplay for which was co-authored by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North, George C. Scott and his adjutant stride out onto a field of a bloody battle, which the night before had come down to hand-to-hand fighting. He kisses the solder leaning against a tank, and says to his aide, "God, how I love it so . . . I had a dream last night. In my dream it came to me that right now the German Reich is mine for the taking. Think . . . I was nearly sent home in disgrace. Now, I have precisely the right instrument, at precisely the right moment in history, in exactly the right place . . . This too will change very quickly, like a planet spinning off into the universe . . . A moment like this will not come again for a thousand years . . . All I need is a few miserable gallons of gasoline . . . Right now the weakness is here . . . In ten days we could be in Berlin!"  

The sense of the passing of a moment of opportunity was so keen at the end of the game. The Niners had fallen far behind (28-6), and all seemed lost. Then after a long delay to restart the stadium lights which had mysteriously failed just after half-time, they began a dramatic comeback which brought them to within 5 points of Baltimore, with just two minutes to play. They were on the Ravens 7 yard line, with a first down. Four downs to score and a SuperBowl victory! 

But they couldn't do it. Four tries, and on the last play a disputed foul by the Raven's defensive back who held on to Crabtree, keeping him from jumping for the high lob into the corner of the end zone.  And suddenly, it was all over. We had precisely the right instrument at precisely the right place on the field, at precisely the right moment, but it just didn't happen. 

Clearly, Kaepernick is our quarterback of the future. Which means there may well be more chances down the road. But this one really hurt. We were that close!     

The Delta Queen for Superbowl Sunday

Vintage 19th Century photograph of Mississippi riverboats

The last time I commemorated the Super Bowl with a new cocktail was in February 2010, when the victors that year were New Orleans own Saints. In the intervening two years, the Saints have fallen from grace, and our own 49ers have risen again from the ashes of a decade of mediocrity, and will vie this Sunday, February 3rd, in Super Bowl XLVII. The history of the 49ers previous Super Bowl appearances is now a storied legend of the game. Under the ownership of Eddie DeBartolo Jr. beginning in 1977, the Niners won five NFL championships, never having lost a Super Bowl appearance. 

Eddie DeBartolo Jr. former owner of the San Francisco 49ers

Fans and non-fans alike will recall that Eddie lost control of his beloved franchise in 2000 as a result of his being involved in a corruption pay-off scheme with Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards to obtain a riverboat gaming license. After Eddie gave it up, the 49ers passed to his sister Marie Denise DeBartolo York. The Yorks pretty much made a mess of things with the team, and it wasn't until they handed the reigns of the management of the franchise to their son (Eddie's nephew) Jed York, that things began to turn around. The Niners lost the NFC Championship (the precursor to the Super Bowl) last year on a fluke, when a San Francisco kick returner had the ball stripped from his grip as he raced upfield, the ensuing fumble recovery leading to the New York Giants victory in the closing seconds. That was a bitter pill to swallow. But this year, the team was right back in the running.

Colin Kaepernick posing in the end-zone after his long TD run

As readers of this blog will recall, I was never a fan of the 49ers quarterback Alex Smith. I've written several times about his failures, and my firm belief that he will never bring real success to the team. Last year, I was basically proved wrong, when Smith led the team to a 13-3 record, redeeming himself in the eyes of coaches and players and fans around the league. But life has a way of overturning expectations. This year, almost out of nowhere, the 49ers 2nd round draft pick, Colin Kaepernick, took over for an injured Smith in game #8, and never looked back. Kaepernick has been a revelation, with his power passing, and superior mobility and speed, going 6-2-1, and leading the team into the playoffs, defeating the Green Bay Packers and the Atlanta Falcons to get to the upcoming contest for all the marbles. Had this feat been achieved by Smith, I would (reluctantly) have admitted that he deserved our undiminished praise. But with the arrival of Kaepernick, this will be moot; Smith is obviously going to leave the team in the off-season, either as a free-agent, or through a trade (he is still under contract through next year). 

The Niners are favored over the opposing team the Baltimore Ravens by 3 1/2 points, largely as a result of Kaepernick's extraordinary skills at running the quarterback option, in which he either hands off to Frank Gore, keeps the ball and runs, or throws a pass. His success with this maneuver--once a staple of traditional college teams, before the era of the "pocket passer" strategy of the modern NFL--has heralded a new era in quarterbacking, characterized by great mobility combined with an ability to make split-second decisions. There have been great mobile quarterbacks in the past, but the new style seems to be evolving out of the necessity to keep defenses from settling into classic zone configurations. Kaepernick's elusiveness and speed make catching him a difficult proposition, and with his rocket arm, the potential for his future as a passer seems almost unlimited. It's early days, for sure, but who knows what the kid will do?

Right now, we're in the Super Bowl, and the excitement is building. The media party has been in progress now for over a week, with many of the star players conducting interviews and generally basking in the glow of the notoriety that accompanies the nation's largest single sports event. Bourbon Street in New Orleans will be hopping again, as pre- and post-game celebrations get into full swing. 

  Bourbon Street in the rain

          

I've been to New Orleans, but never during Mardi Gras or Super Bowl. Rain in season (as above) can dampen sentiments, but bar-hopping isn't really an outdoor sport. I've even watched a game in the Super Dome, one in which our Steve Young and company dismantled the then pitiful Saints that day, 31-0.  

New Orleans Super Dome at sunset

Eating and drinking in New Orleans is almost a way of living, a devotion to indulgence pure and simple. If you like seafood, rich sauces, and seductive cocktails, this is your oyster. So, in honor of the 49ers, who will be playing in their sixth Super Bowl to date, a toast!   

Recipe for the Delta Queen, if you please, with (as usual) the ingredients by proportion:

3 Parts Buffalo Trace Bourbon

2 Parts Myers Dark Rum

1 Part Praline liqueur

1 Part Amaro liqueur

1.5 Parts fresh lemon juice

--garnish with lemon peel as desired. Shaken and served up in my preferred fashion. 

The best book I know about the Mississippi riverboat culture is Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi. It's been dramatized, and they made a much under-rated movie of it in 1980 featuring Robert Lansing in the Horace Bixby part. Twain, who grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, loved steamboating, and Life on the Mississippi is his paean to the dream of piloting a real paddle-wheeler. Today, tourists can book passage on big imitation paddle-wheel steamers plying their way up and down the river, but it's nothing like the 19th Century days when it represented the real commerce of the mid-way, and riverboat gamblers rubbed shoulders with rich planters and the fleecy ladies of the day. Gambling, and living well, and the national diversion. All our fun nowadays seems to be vicarious. But I'm not sure I'd really want to be in New Orleans for the Super Bowl, even with the home team playing in it. It's much more relaxing to watch it on television, in a tavern, or with friends in your living room. What's more, you can mix your own cocktails!  

Go Niners!

People Who Died: Anselm Hollo 1934-2013

Anselm Hollo as a young man - at about the time I knew him

Ted Berrigan wrote a poem once called "People Who Died"--which you can read in his Collected Poems, and even hear him read via the PennSound link. Berrigan had at least two sides to his nature--one very weirdly insincere and playful, and one very emotional and occasionally sad. I was reminded of it yesterday when I received word that Anselm Hollo, who had been my first poet-instructor at the Iowa Writer's Workshop in 1969, had died yesterday morning in Colorado, surrounded by friends and family, following a long and exhausting illness. And again just now, when the spam-box of my email just received an advertisement for "Life Insurance." What a funny concept, when you think about it, life insurance.  There isn't any such thing as life insurance; no one, nothing can insure you against death. We're all uninsurable! And yet the business stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the fact, playing off our fears and apprehensions about the consequences of mortality. It's very important, apparently, to make elaborate and fail-safe plans against the possibility of dying messily, as if one of our most crucial responsibilities, in life, or most important tasks, for those who are left behind, was to relieve them of the problems, the loose ends, created by our departure. 

Since I began writing this blog, I've written about quite a few writers, many of whom are dead, some of whom died after I wrote about them. Several of the subject pieces were written on the occasion of their deaths. Growing up in a family of exiles, I was not raised to pay much attention to death, or to mark its occasion with much fanfare. My parents had both left the Midwest, to find a new life on the West Coast, during WWII. They tended not to say very much about the people, or the life, they'd left behind, the people they had known who died, including their parents. Their exile was a form of alienation, not uncommon in this restless mobile land of the free. I've never been a church-goer, as an adult, so attending funerals isn't something I do. Sometimes I think that not marking death's occurrence in a formal way helps to keep the idea of it, its presence, at bay. However, I do think about death, and increasingly now in my mid-60's. For some reason, it surprises me to realize I have reached this stage in my life, though I always knew I was destined for it. It seems to have snuck up on me, as it does to most people, while I was just minding my business, attending to my plans and expectations for the present and future. 

Since I began this blog in January 2009, I've written posts about Donald Justice, John Updike, Ronald Johnson, Louis Zukofsky, MFK Fisher, Harold Pinter, Larry Eigner, Robert Creeley, Marianne Moore,    Ian Hamilton Finlay, George Oppen, Joe Brainard, Ed Dorn, Philip Whalen, Louis Simpson, Robert Frost, Paul Blackburn, Patrick Schnoor, E.B. White, Max Beerbohm, H.L. Mencken, J.D. Salinger, Gertrude Stein, Wright Morris, John Wieners, William Carlos Williams, E.E. Cummings, Jack Gilbert, Matthew Arnold, Anthony Hecht, Philip Levine, Ernest Hemingway, Stewart Ogden Smith, Jon Anderson, James Wright, James Schuyler, Cyril Connolly, Kenneth Koch, Gerard Manley Hopkins, James Joyce, Charles Dickens, Truman Capote, Joe Ceravolo, Dylan Thomas, James Welch, Darrell Gray, Christopher Isherwood, Cid Corman, Walker Percy, Frank O'Hara, Ambrose Bierce, Weldon Kees, Gore Vidal, Beatrix Potter, David Goodis, and Raymond Carver. 

What all these names have in common is that they're all dead people. Some of them died after I wrote about them: Louis Simpson, Jack Gilbert. I wrote a handful about a few when they died. 

My only son died in 1996, in an automobile accident. His death was premature, certainly, but he had been an early-onset diabetic since the age of 4, so his longevity-expectation was not as remote as most. I will certainly never "get over" that tragedy; it will be with me always, along with the certain knowledge that I will not be survived by any descendants. Not that that part bothers me very much. Once in a great while, I think of my maternal great-grandmother, a woman who had been very beautiful in her youth, whom I know only through old sepia photos taken before the end of the 19th century. But I doubt she would have been much interested to know that I was coming down the road; she was very Victorian and formal and dismissive, by all accounts. Does anything of what she was survive in me? Who knows?

During the years I attended the Iowa Workshop, Ted Berrigan and Anselm Hollo were great friends. When Berrigan and Alice Notley had their two sons, they named one Anselm in his honor. Anselm went on to teach at other places, and eventually joined Naropa University as a member of the permanent faculty, where he taught for the last 25 years of his life. When I first knew Anselm, he was just living in America with a "Green Card"--worried about being refused permanent residence and/or American citizenship. A fact not often cited was that Anselm had lived in Iowa City as an "exchange student" while still in high school, traveling from his native Finland in the early 1950's. Later, after periods of living in Germany, and then Britain, he came to America. He actually seemed rather British in his manner, when I knew him, though he was a complex man, of many influences.   

Anselm was a brilliant, and very well-educated man, but he hid his shrewdness and his erudition--at least in the time I knew him--under a veneer of almost continuous amusement and self-deprecation. This was partly a gentlemanly courtliness, but partly a self-effacing shyness. Anselm probably thought of me as a pretty square fellow, but he was always considerate and respectful and indulgent of my immature writing. 

Anselm was a realist. His poems were about real things, and the voice he cultivated as a writer was his own voice, a voice that reflected how he actually thought, without pretense or equivocation. Just being around him was a demonstration of the honesty he projected as an artist. Anselm the man, though, had some difficulties maintaining the various personae of his life: teacher, husband, father, poet, friend. I suppose he managed to come to terms with his various demons in the years after I knew him. 

The thing about Anselm was that his mind floated over the facts and conditions of his existence with a sort of equipoise. A speaker and a reader in several languages, he seemed to perceive life (and history, and literature) in layers. This sense of being above events and somehow apart from them gave his conversation, and his work, a sense of objectivity. He maintained the air of an amused skeptic, always ready to find delight and absurdity in the baffling events of the larger world. He never seemed to take himself so seriously that he couldn't see irony or vanity in his own life. 

Though our paths never crossed again after I left Iowa in 1973, I remember Anselm Hollo as a felt presence in my life. He left an impression, in a way that most of the other teachers or friends I've had, didn't. An impression of kindness, gentleness, delicacy, and penetrating perspicacity. By the time I learned that he was dying, it was too late to tell him these things. 

But Anselm was not the fellow to accept open praise--that kind of formality was not something he seemed to wear comfortably. Nevertheless, I'm moved to tell him, though he will never hear or read these words. What we say about people we loved or admired, after they've died, is important to us, the living. It is our way of saying what we feel. It's a formal act, almost religious in its implication. 

Bless you, Anselm, for your words and your work. Your memory lives on.     

The New Push for Nuclear

It may seem untimely to raise the issue of the advisability of expanding America's investment in nuclear power generation. Indeed, with the recent memory of the Fukushima meltdown (or has it moved far enough back into our consciousness even to qualify yet as "memory"?) fresh in mind, it might sound absurd to point out that there are serious, perfectly devoted advocates once again pressing the case of an expanded "nuclear option" to be "put back on the table" for discussion of our future energy needs. 

I was reminded of this recently when I happened to watch a re-telecast of a local KQED produced segment of QUEST--a science, nature and environmental television series. Given KQED's growing financial difficulties, it's been troubling to see the station capitulate to necessity, not just through actual commercial message slots (as for automobiles and petroleum corporations), as well as paid programming such as financial advice, health & fitness gurus, and even religious-oriented material, but apparently now also for private energy development. 

The airing of the program in question--"What's Next for Nuclear?"--initially televised on September 18, 2012--featured interviews and testimony by Per Peterson, a member of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant's Independent Safety Committee, and an instructor at UC Berkeley's Department of Nuclear Engineering. It would be hard to imagine anyone more likely to present a partisan view of the issues and concerns surrounding the need for nuclear power than Peterson, who is busily at work devising new ways to handle the problems associated with the uncontrolled heat that is generated in the reactor cores of operating plants. He's clearly invested in the future of this technology. The program was clearly intended to lend unconditional support to a resumption of commitment to more nuclear energy power generation (to the licensing of more American nuclear plants); and to "soften" the objections of a public increasingly suspicious of reassurances from energy corporations about the safety of such plants in the future.      

American nuclear waste

As anyone who has studied the science knows, nuclear power generation presents several intractable problems. Radioactive substances require extremely careful handling, and the processes by which they produce the fission heat that generates power are very dangerous. Radioactive material is expensive to mine, expensive to transport, expensive to store, and expensive to handle. Once the radioactive fuel rods are "spent," they have to be stored. Since their radioactive "life"--as dangerously poisonous contamination--takes hundreds of years to "decay," they impose an incredible burden upon society in the future, to maintain whatever kinds of safekeeping may be employed to keep them away from humans (not to speak of other living things). 

Though our science has progressed to the point that we can successfully generate some power through the use of radioactive fuel rods, the plants themselves do not last very long, and are very expensive to design and build. Further, plans for deposition of the growing pile of nuclear waste generated from existing plants have not materialized; and this burgeoning load of radioactive waste is not being effectively addressed by state and federal agencies established to deal with the problem. The plain fact is that there is no practical, safe way to "dispose" of it, and the government, and the power companies know this. Even the public knows it.          

German nuclear waste

Proponents of  nuclear power generation point to the problems associated with tradition carbon generation, which include global warming, and the considerable health affects tied to air, water and ground contamination. The effects of carbon waste are well-documented. As the world's use of carbon burning ramps up, so do its effects.

What seems clear is that our growing global hunger for more energy is quickly outstripping our ability to supply it, at least in ways that are not so "dirty" or dangerous that the problems associated with their use do not outweigh the advantages. Global warming has finally provided the overwhelming argument against the mindless expansion of carbon burning (coal, gas, wood etc.). Indeed, the underlying realization finally seems to have awakened us to the undeniable fact that humankind is quickly reaching the limits of its ability to "use up" available sources of energy in a "cost effective" way, particularly when the problems associated with that exploitation are factored into the equation.     

Given KQED's "public interest" mandate, and the American public's overwhelming resistance to more nuclear plants--which is well-documented--it struck me as incredible, and indeed intolerable, that a program, produced for public television, purporting to present a balanced view of developments in the "science" of nuclear power engineering, should take such an unequivocally positive view. The presentation included allusions to the health and safety issues associated with the Chernobyl Plant in the Soviet Union, and briefly mentioned the recent disaster at Fukushima, but it passed over these as if they were minor matters. 

"The public health and environmental consequences of using fossil fuels are so enormous that they dwarf even the consequences of nuclear accidents," said Per Peterson. "That said, we need to be moving towards new nuclear energy technologies that do not have the potential to release radiocative materials into the environment." Waiving aside Chernobyl and Fukushima (and Three Mile Island), Peterson smiled with conviction into the camera as he demonstrated his big plastic toy model of a reactor, showing little colored balls circulating around a network of tubes, like a little Pachinko arcade game. I felt as if I were being treated to a replay of my childhood program Science in Action. Shades of the optimistic 1950's! Didn't we all have our little science kits, erector sets, chemistry labs and old issues of Popular Science? Better living through chemistry!  

The general public has known for some time that nuclear power generation--a technology which is yet in its infancy--is an impractical alternative to other kinds of power generation, both because of the considerable costs and risks of building and running nuclear power plants, and because we don't yet have the science to deal with the growing pile of poisonous wastes they produce. 

The primary problem facing humanity is its uncontrolled growth, which is the primary driver of environmental exploitation. Accepting that growth as inevitable creates intolerable requirements which our present science and resources will be unable to fulfill. Accepting that the needs for food, energy, space and occupation are limited is the first step in addressing the question of Global Warming. Those who refuse to address the root cause of the over-exploitation and unwise use of resource, are offering only short-term, and ineffective solutions. 

  

British nuclear waste

We know now that Global Warming is inevitable, that it is just a matter of time before its effects will be felt around the globe. And we know that there is nothing that can be done to avert it, because the growing population of the earth insures that the overwhelming needs associated with that uncontrolled population will overcome any pathetic resistance to exploitation. As the world population grows, our technology will advance to service it, whatever the consequences. 

Science has solved many of mankind's problems, and it may well be that the science of nuclear power may proceed to the extent that its present problems may eventually be fixed, in a century or two. But the pressures of demand are much greater than any prudent cautions that are raised against hurrying forward before we're ready. In capitalistic terms, the motivation to exploit the market for energy consumption is probably ten times greater than our apprehensions about the probable costs of Global Warming.   

Yet why should our present society (and environment) be endangered (and heavily contaminated), while scientists scramble to catch up? It is often said that need drives discovery, that the best crucible for experiment is live testing. That's one of the ways science proceeds, through the testing of a premise, with progressively expanded sampling, to achieve levels of confirmation and probability. But with nuclear power, simply building more power plants, before we know for certain how to design them to be completely safe, and before we've figured out how to deal with the huge pile of radioactive waste, means subjecting humanity (and the environment) to intolerable risks. It means using human society--and the whole environment--as a kind of guinea-pig. 

Those risks have been examined and considered at some length already, and people in this country seem unwilling to proceed, given the enormity of the problems we see in the nuclear "accidents" around the world. We've tended to think of the degree of energy usage as a measure of the progress and sophistication of a society. Indeed, the whole idea of "progress" seems based on an Industrial Age model in which more technology, more mechanization, more automation, and more energy consumption are seen as forms of advancement. But the rapid rise of this kind of "progress" has brought with it vastly expanded "markets" for exploitation, which we seem powerless to control or channel. 

President Obama has even announced that his official policy is to encourage the licensing of more nuclear power plants around the country. But if I have anything to say about it, I will vote against permitting any nuclear power plants, or nuclear waste dumps, to be located within 500 miles of my residence, which I consider to be a minimum "safe distance" from the risks of accident. I regard that as merely prudent. If everyone took that position, what could the proponents of new nuclear facilities say? Where on God's earth could we put these very dangerous contraptions? Who will be willing to risk contamination?

One thing we know from geology is that the earth is not a stable surface. The earth's crust is a shifting, wrinkling jelly, permeated with escape valves for the hot molten interior which is just beneath the thin surface. No one can say for sure that any place on the planet is stable enough to accept the burden of a material as long-lived and insidious as hot nuclear waste. Until we have the technology to address the problem of how to eliminate the waste it creates, nuclear power should be shelved--at least for the time being. How long might it take for the science to "catch up" with our desire to exploit nuclear energy? I have no idea, but I don't have much faith in humanity. More plants will be built, and there will be more accidents. But the real problems will come later, when the dump sites begin to age, and the terrible messes they create will start happening. I'm glad I won't live to see it.  

As long as there are people stupid enough, or gullible enough--or who are being paid enough--to front for the utility companies, there will be programs like What's Next for Nuclear? The producers, and the programming division of KQED should be ashamed. Is there anyone with a conscience there anymore?