Events

De Lavallade, Faison & Wilkinson reflect on Janet Collins & their careers

 COLLAGE

Panelists include Carmen de Lavallade, George Faison, and Raven Wilkinson.

Sunday, September 20th 2PM
Barnes & Noble, 150 East 86th Street (86th & Lexington Ave.), New York, NY
212-369-2180

Moderated by author Yaël Tamar Lewin, to celebrate the paperback edition of Night’s Dancer: The Life of Janet Collins.
A panel of renowned artists will reflect on Collins and her career, and discuss their own experiences as African-American performers in a racially segregated United States. There will also be a brief reading from the book and a screening of historical film clips.

Carmen de Lavallade is an award-winning dancer, choreographer, and actress. She performed with the Lester Horton Dance Theater and Alvin Ailey Dance Company and has appeared on Broadway (House of Flowers) and off (Othello, Death of a Salesman), as well as in film (Carmen Jones, Odds Against Tomorrow). Janet Collins was her first cousin and a great inspiration to de Lavallade, who danced some of her roles at the Metropolitan Opera. De Lavallade was also wife and dance partner to the late Geoffrey Holder.

George Faison is a celebrated dancer, choreographer, and producer who was the first African American to win a Tony Award for Best Choreography—which he received for The Wiz in 1975. He has also worked with popular entertainers such as Ashford & Simpson, Patti LaBelle, Dionne Warwick, and Earth, Wind & Fire. In addition, Faison is the artistic director of the Faison Firehouse Theater, a performing arts and cultural center that seeks to preserve Harlem’s historic past.

Raven Wilkinson was the first African-American dancer with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, which she joined in 1955, becoming a soloist in her second season. When performing in the American South, she wore white makeup to conceal her race. After her identity was revealed, she faced threats from the KKK. She left the company in 1961 and went on to work with the Dutch National Ballet and New York City Opera.

 

RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/504146629740543/

#tbt: Young Union “Soldiers”

Today’s Throwback Thursday images are from the book Heroes for all Time: Connecticut Civil War Soldiers Tell Their Stories. These photographs depict two rather young Union “soldiers”.

 Children

The name of boy on the left has been lost to history. He was most likely a former slave who sought shelter with Union soldiers. Many such boys and young men became servants to Union soldiers—cooking, washing clothes, cutting wood, and tending to gear. Some traveled North after the close of the war, to continue working as attendants in the homes of returning soldiers. On the right is Robert Morton, who worked as a servant for Union soldier Robert Potter during the war. As with many African American people who hired themselves to Union soldiers, little is known of his life.

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Nationwide, and in Connecticut, Sesquicentennial Commemorations of the Civil War are Winding Down.
Wesleyan author Matthew Warshauer has played a large role in the Commemoration efforts here in Connecticut. He is co-chair ofthe Connecticut Civil War Commemoration Commission, author of Connecticut in the American Civil Warand editor of Inside Connecticut and the Civil War. The authors of Heroes for All Time will be at both of the Connecticut events listed below, answering questions about Connecticut soldiers and signing copies of their book—which if full of interesting stories such as those of the two boys photographed above.

August 29th & 30th
After four years of amazing events and an impressive range of new scholarship and understanding of Connecticut’s important role in the Civil War, the Civil War Commemoration is coming to a close during the last weekend of August, 2015. You can join the Connecticut Civil War Commemoration Commission at scenic Bauer Park (Madison, CT) for the final Commission sponsored encampment of the 150th anniversary commemoration. The event will feature hundreds of re-enactors and displays. Be there for the last great battle on Saturday and the official closing ceremonies on Sunday. You can find more information here.

September 12th
Join the Middlesex County Historical Society for a day of history, music, and remembrance in the back yard of the General Mansfield House. The featured speaker will be Edward Ball, acclaimed author of Slaves in the Family, winner of the National Book Award. Tom Callinan, Connecticut’s first State Troubadour, will be on hand to sing popular songs from the Civil War era, as well as original compositions. Re-enactors will portray civilians and soldiers from Company F of the 14th CVI. They will demonstrate camp life including drills, cooking over campfires, and other activities necessary to the operation of an army of the period. You can find more information here.

Anthology Film Archives (NYC) presents Robert Ryan

Robert Ryan: An Actor’s Actor
Special screenings of films featuring Robert Ryan
Sept. 4–10 @ Anthology Film Archives 

 Jones comps.indd

A six-film Robert Ryan retrospective
in conjunction with The Lives of Robert Ryan (Wesleyan UP)

  • ACT OF VIOLENCE (Fred Zinnemann, 1948)
    September 4, 7:00 PM; September 6, 4:15 PM; September 8, 9:00 PM
  • ON DANGEROUS GROUND (Nicholas Ray, 1952)
    September 4, 9:00 PM; September 7, 7:00 PM; September 10, 7:00 PM
  • THE NAKED SPUR (Anthony Mann, 1953)
    September 5, 4:30 PM; September 7, 9:00 PM; September 9, 7:00 PM
  • BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK (John Sturges, 1955)
    September 5, 9:15 PM; September 6, 9:00 PM; September 8, 7:00 PM

From September 4–10, Anthology Film Archives in New York will celebrate publication of The Lives of Robert Ryan with the retrospective series “Robert Ryan: An Actor’s Actor.” The series collects six of the most arresting screen performances by this gifted artist and activist, whom Martin Scorsese called “one of the greatest actors in the history of American film.” Select screenings will feature discussions with author J.R. Jones, film editor for the Chicago Reader, and Robert Ryan’s son, Cheyney Ryan, professor of law and philosophy at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict at Oxford University.

The son of a Chicago construction executive with strong ties to the Democratic machine, Robert Ryan became a star after World War II on the strength of his menacing performance as an anti-Semitic murderer in the film noir Crossfire. Over the next quarter century he created a gallery of brooding, neurotic, and violent characters in such movies as Bad Day at Black RockBilly BuddThe Dirty Dozen, and The Wild Bunch. His riveting performances expose the darkest impulses of the American psyche during the Cold War.

At the same time, Ryan’s marriage to a liberal Quaker and his own sense of conscience launched him into a tireless career of peace and civil rights activism that stood in direct contrast to his screen persona. Drawing on unpublished writings and revealing interviews, Jones deftly explores the many contradictory facets of Ryan’s public and private lives, and how these lives intertwined in one of the most compelling actors of a generation.

Jones has recently spoken about The Lives of Robert Ryan at the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival in Palm Springs and at the Printers Row Lit Fest in Chicago. At the Music Box Theatre in Chicago, he presented a screening of Ryan’s boxing classic The Set-Up and took part in a discussion with Lisa Ryan, the actor’s daughter. The Lives of Robert Ryan is the featured book for July on Turner Classic Movies.

J.R. JONES is film editor for the Chicago Reader, where his work has appeared since 1996 and won multiple awards from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia. A member of the National Society of Film Critics, Jones has also published work in the Chicago Sun-Times, New York Press, Kenyon Review, and Da Capo Best Music Writing 2000, edited by Peter Guralnick.

CHEYNEY RYAN is Human Rights Program Director at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict at Oxford University, where he is engaged in a multi-year project exploring the relation of pacifism and nonviolence to contemporary just war theory. He has also taught at Harvard Law School, Northwestern University, and University of Oregon, where he is a professor emeritus. His most recent book is The Chickenhawk Syndrome: War, Sacrifice, and Personal Responsibility.

ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES is an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema. AFA maintains a reference library containing the world’s largest collection of books, periodicals, stills, and other paper materials related to avant-garde cinema. It screens more than 900 programs annually, preserves an average of 25 films per year, publishes books and DVDs, and hosts numerous scholars and researchers.

Praise for The Lives of Robert Ryan:

“A masterly biography that portrays an actor devoted to his craft and dedicated to his personal convictions.” –Richard Dickey, Library Journal

“J.R. Jones in his excellent biography shows what a fascinating career [Ryan’s] was—complicated, contradictory, accidental. . . . As Jones demonstrates at considerable length, [Ryan] was a man of liberal principle and moral courage.” –Philip French, Sight & Sound 

“J.R. Jones’s meticulous, revealing book on Robert Ryan places the actor’s life and career against the turbulent politics of the Cold War and the red scare in Hollywood. Jones is especially adept in moving between the life and the work, the films and their contexts. He introduces political history throughout, in ways that are both relevant and revelatory.” –Foster Hirsch, author of The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir

“As self-effacing yet as solid and as ethically engaged as Robert Ryan himself, J.R. Jones offers a comprehensive and sensitive chronicle of one of the giants of American movie acting.” –Jonathan Rosenbaum, author of Movie Wars

Readercon Weekend–win a book!

Readercon 26 is taking place this weekend, July9–12, in Burlington, Massachusetts. Returning conference-goers will be used to seeing Leslie Starr at our booth. Alas, Leslie is retiring! Our wonderful new marketing manager, Jaclyn Wilson, is on hand at our booth to answer questions. Please stop by to introduce yourself and check out our new books, including Five Weeks in a Balloon. You can watch a trailer about the book and enter to win a free copy here.

 readercon2015

This year, two of Readercon’s three Guests of Honor were published by Wesleyan: Gary K. Wolfe (who is sharing honors with Nicola Griffith) and Memorial Guest of Honor Joanna Russ.

Wolfe is the author of Evaporating Genres: Essays on Fantastic Literature and contributed the introduction to our forthcoming book, Reality by Other Means: The Best Short Fiction of James Morrow. Wesleyan reissued two of Russ’s novels in 2005: We Who Are About To… (with an introduction by Samuel R. Delany) and The Two of Them (with a foreword by Sarah LaFanu). In addition, we published the critical volume On Joanna Russ, edited by Farah Mendlesohn, with contributors Andrew M. Butler, Brian Charles Clark, Samuel R. Delany, Edward James , Sandra Lindow, Keridwen Luis, Paul March-Russell, Helen Merrick, Dianne Newell, Graham Sleight, Jenéa Tallentire, Jason Vest, Sherryl Vint, Pat Wheeler, Tess Williams, Gary K. Wolfe, and Lisa Yaszek.

ReaderCon is full of useful panels and presentations for writers, scholars, editors, and readers. Day passes are available. To read more, please be sure to visit their website, http://readercon.org/. Have a wonderful conference!

Gerald Vizenor at AWP

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A Tribute to Gerald Vizenor @ AWP Minneapolis
Friday, 4/10: 1:30–2:45pm
w/ Heid Erdrich, Kim Blaeser, Gordon Henry Jr., Margaret Noodin, & Gerald Vizenor
Room 208 C&D, Level 2

“I am still discovering who I am, the myth in me…I am part crow, part dragonfly, part squirrel, part bear. I kick at the sides of boxes out. I will not be pinned down. I am flying home in words and myths.”  –Gerald Vizenor, This Song Remembers

“…his texts are not the end, but the means. They invite the reader to be a party to discovery.” –Kimberly Blaeser, Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition

“Gerald Vizenor combines ancient American storytelling with space-age technique.” –Ishmael Reed

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Wesleyan Film @ SCMS Montreal

The Society for Cinema & Media Studies‘ annual conference is currently underway in Montreal. Founded in 1959, SCMS is a professional organization of college and university educators, filmmakers, historians, critics, scholars, and others devoted to the study of the moving image. Wesleyan’s film series acquisitions editor, Parker Smathers, will be in attendance this weekend, catching up on the latest news in the field.

The Wesleyan Film series takes a back-to-basics approach to the art of cinema. Books in the series deal with the formal, the historical, and the cultural—putting a premium on visual analysis, close readings, and an understanding of the history of Hollywood and international cinema, both artistically and industrially. Volumes in the series are rigorous, critical, and accessible both to academics and to lay readers with a serious interest in film.

 FilmFall_14-Spring_15covers

Our new and forthcoming film-related books include:

The Director Within: Storytellers of Stage and Screen

The Cinema of Errol Morris

The Lives of Robert Ryan

View a full list of books in the Wesleyan Film Series here.

On May 31st the Music Box Theatre in Chicago will host a special screening of The Set-Up to celebrate the release of The Lives of Robert Ryan. A Q&A with author J.R. Jones and the late actor’s daughter, Lisa Ryan, will follow the screening. Attendees will be able to purchase a book/ticket combo at a discounted price, thanks to the support of The Book Cellar. Stay tuned for details! For now, you can check out this piece on Robert Ryan, from The Chicago Reader, by J.R. Jones.

#tbt: Kathleen Fraser, “Les Jours Gigantesques”

This week’s Throwback Thursday post features Kathleen Fraser’s poem “Les Jours Gigantesques” from il cuore: the heart, Selected Poems 1970–1995A Tribute to Kathleen Fraser is planned for Sunday, March 22nd (5PM), at California College of the Arts. The event is co-sponsored by the San Francisco State University Poetry Center and Small Press Traffic. Read more about the event here.

 fraser_tbt_post

LES JOURS GIGANTESQUES

Have you noticed the shadow hovering?
     How when you are in the middle of brushing your teeth
     there is something gathering around the corner?
She is dreaming this thought to a self
awake in the world
when she feels a tug, something like a hand pressing
down upon her thigh
     and she remembers she is naked and alone in the room
     and wishes for her silk blouse
     and the zipper with its three silver hooks at the top.
In her body’s emptiness
a growing sense of intimacy,
the pressure of a shadow in its black suit,
its right hand moving
around her waist, as if looking
for a pocket,
     or the push of a head against
     her shoulder, as though
     this movie from some little light booth
     on the opposite wall was focusing,
     on her, and the image was him,
     his half head
moving towards her nipple,
with the thirst in him, dark
against her white body. She looks down,
     she looks down at, oh, the hand, or is it
     the shadow of a hand
     pressing in on the thigh that is hers.
Her muscles bulge with effort
and become tremendous
in their flex. The color drains
from every part of her, but
     the red mouth,
     holding its shape steadily,
     the scream, at first uncertain,
     enters the air
     and becomes the third,
     the knowing, between them.

Wesleyan UP @ AWP2015—Minneapolis

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Wesleyan University Press @ AWP2015—Minneapolis

Friday, 4/10: 1:30–2:45pm
A Tribute to Gerald Vizenor
w/ Heid Erdrich, Kim Blaeser, Gordon Henry Jr., Margaret Noodin, & Gerald Vizenor
Room 208 C&D, Level 2
Anishinaabe writers will read selections from Gerald Vizenor’s vast body of work and reflect on how this elder statesman of Anishinaabe literature influenced and supported their own work. Vizenor’s political writing, nationalist poetry, and history-steeped novels will be represented in this tribute, fittingly held in his homeland of Minnesota. Panelists will reflect on Vizenor’s role as a mentor and teacher who enabled generations of Native writers to find their voice.
Read more here.

Saturday, 4/11: 10:30–11:45am
Wesleyan University Press Poetry Reading
w/ Rae Armantrout, Sarah Blake, Heather Christle, Honorée Jeffers, and Fred Moten
Room 101 H&I, Level 1
A dynamic reading reflecting the breadth of Wesleyan University Press’s esteemed poetry series. These five poets represent diversity of age, race, aesthetics, and poetic voice, and are among the strongest voices in poetry today. Each engages his or her subject matter in distinct, unexpected ways through the use of language and imagery. Their work contemplates popular culture, history, ethics, race, and politics, as well as their personal experiences.
Read more here.

Book Signings @ WUP booth 907

Heather Christle — Thursday, 4/9: 1–2pm

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers — Friday, 4/10: 11am–12pm

Gerald Vizenor — Friday, 4/10: 3:30–4:30pm

Rae Armantrout & Sarah Blake — Saturday, 4/11: 12:30–1:30pm

Fred Moten — Saturday, 4/11: 2–3pm

Offsite Events

[Not organized by Wesleyan. Wesleyan authors, past and present, are included.]

 

Wednesday, 4/8: 7pm
BOMB & Two Dollar Radio Present:
Rae Armantrout, Sarah Gerard, Ian Dreiblatt, & Nicholas Rombes
Magers & Quinn Booksellers, 3038 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55408
More info here.

Wednesday, April 8th, 7:30-8:30pm
Women’s Caucus Reading
Readings by Joy Harjo and Natalie Diaz. Introduction by Heid Erdrich.
Augsburg College, Satern Auditorium, 22nd Ave. South & South 7 1/2 Street, Minneapolis
More info here.

Thursday, 4/9: 6pm
Presenting: Tender Buttons, Black Radish Books, Ugly Duckling Presse, and Station Hill
Lee Ann Brown is reading from Bernadette Mayer’s Sonnets (Tender Buttons)
514 Studio, 514 North 3rd Street Suite 101, Minneapolis
More info here.

Thursday, 4/9: 8pm
Rain Taxi Benefit at Walker Art Center, Greatest Hits Reading
Peter Gizzi, Pierre Joris, Forrest Gander and many others.
Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis
More info here.

Thursday, 4/9: 7:30pm–1am
VIDA Awards, Motionpoems Film Screening, & Dance Party
Sarah Blake’s poem “A Day at the Mall Reminds Me of America” was used in Ayse Altinok’s short film, included in the Motionpoems screening.
Skyway Theater, 711 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis
More info here.

Thursday, April 9: 7:30–9:30pm
Hick Poetics Anthology Release
Forest Gander is among the participants
Patrick’s Cabaret, 3010 Minnehaha Avenue, Minneapolis
More info here.

Saturday, 4/11: 6pm
The Volta Book of Poets
Fred Moten and Evie Shockley are among the sixteen readers.
Harriet Brewing, 3036 Minnehaha Avenue, Minneapolis
More info here.

#tbt: Pierre Joris, “2 Poems for Pens”

This week’s Throwback Thursday post features work from Pierre Joris’s 2001 collection, Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999Joris is teaming up with multimedia artist Nicole Peyrafitte for two events sponsored by San Francisco State University’s Poetry Center. The first, on March 18th (7PM), will be at City Lights Books and is co-sponsored by City Lights. The second event is on March 19th (4:30PM), at the SFSU Poetry Center, HUM 512. Read more about the events here.

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2 Poems for Pens

 

1.

 

black & blue

the inks mix

sky at five o’color

a fountain

pen like a big

beaked bird,

childhood

games & smells

 

2.

 

I see the pen

poised, the shadow it throws,

the indents in the wooden

underbelly below the nib,

like sharkgills,

the meat eating

metaphor

i.e. writing instrument.

#tbt: Joanne Kyger in “Poet Be Like God”, and reading for SFSU!

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The painter Harry Jacobus lounges behind Joanne Kyger in this Stinson Beach scene from June 1959.
Photo by Tom Field, from Poet Be Like God

Today’s Throwback Thursday post features three brief excerpts from Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance, by Lewis Ellingham and Kevin Killian. On the occasion of Joanne Kyger’s reading for San Francisco State University Poetry Center at the First Unitarian Universalist Church (1187 Franklin St., San Francisco) on Friday, March 6th, we’re sharing a few short passages from Poet Be Like God that touch on Spicer’s literary relationships with Kyger and others in the Bay Area. These passages shed some light on the 1950s Bay Area literacy scene, the rise of the Beatnik in American poetry, and what it was like for women authors navigating the literary landscape of the time.

from page 100:

On Blabbermouth Night, no reading from text was permitted; it was all extemporaneous public speaking. Up on the balcony, set into the wall, stood a box “like a soap-box,” where the contestants stood. If you were terrible, one of the bartenders would play a trumpet, or the crowd would hoot you off by yelling, “Take off your clothes,” as they do in the French Quarter during Mardi Gras.

Just too late to attend the “Magic Workshop,” Joanne Kyger and her childhood friend Emily (“Nemi”) Frost came from Santa Barbara to San Francisco. The two women fell in love with the city’s bohemian splendors. “We couldn’t stand to be away from North Beach,” Nemi remembered, “or each other. We couldn’t go through the tunnel[s—Broadway and Stockton, which divided North Beach from the rest of San Francisco]…. And we just raced to get back. It was home. It was where everything was happening.”

North Beach was a small world—three or four blocks, like a toy city dropped at the edge of a larger metropolis. Nemi, Joanne, and their friends Paul Alexander and Tom Field rarely went even to Washington Square Park, which was just a block away—only after the bars had closed at 2:00 A.M., when Joanne would cartwheel around the Park.

Kyger worked and held court at Brentano’s Bookstore, meeting poets of all schools, including Spicer, who took her under his wing—the wing of Hecate. One night he added her to a group performance of “Zen singers,” inviting Tom Parkinson over from Berkeley to witness their performance at The Place on Blabbermouth Night. In her journal she wrote: “We have rehearsed, whenever we felt like it, such tunes as ‘Give me some Zen who are Stout Hearted Zen’ and ‘When it rains it always rains, Zenies from Heaven.'” When it came time actually to perform, however, the singers demurred “on some grounds or other, probably lack of free beer.”

More and more young people, most without the talent and alacrity of Kyger and Frost, flooded the once-quiet streets of North Beach. The police became concerned and assigned a special task force to deal with this invasion. “Officer Bigarani was arresting people for pissing in the street,” George Stanley recalled, “and a woman named Wendy [Murphy] was arrested for “The Whole Boon of His Fertility” being barefoot. It was a big scandal: the Chronicle was playing it up, you know, ‘degeneracy’ or whatever. And then thousands of tourists.” Who was “beat”? Who wasn’t? The wild, crazy style of the Spicer/Duncan group made many of the Beat poets doubt their seriousness. Joanne Kyger, who met her future husband, Gary Snyder, at The Place, was torn between allegiances to two very different kinds of poetry life. The exclusiveness of Spicer’s group of poets, friends, and lovers did not escape the members’ own notice. “There were definitely circles within circles,” recalled another young poet in the Spicer circle. “There was a sense of ‘We are not Beatnik.’ We [the poets] all felt like that. Sometimes we’d play it up to the tourists: the tourists came in and they thought we were all Beatniks. It was a big game. There were Beatniks out there. The Beatniks were more the followers of Ginsberg—more ‘everything is everything else.’ We called them ‘sloppy thinkers.'”

These young poets tended to despise other artists whose interests and personalities seemed unsympathetic. Nevertheless, the allegiances were ambiguous. George Stanley put the matter succinctly: “If you could consider the group centering around Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Corso, and later on, McClure—and still later, the Oregon poets, Whalen, Snyder and Welch—if you consider that one group ‘Beatniks,’ then the group around Spicer and Duncan were anti-Beatniks. But we were all Beatniks; we didn’t think we were Beatniks, but we were.”

from page 111:

In the fall of 1957, Joanne remembered, George Stanley approached her in The Place, and said, “Some people are treating these meetings just like a party.” The tone of his voice left no doubt that “some people” included herself. She hadn’t been reading her own work at the meetings, that was true. Too shy; too hesitant. It was time to shape up. She assembled her work, got on the cable car over the hill, realized she had forgotten her poems, went back home, found the poems, got on the cable car again, and finally read them at the Dunns’. “Robert Duncan loved them, and I remember Jack Spicer looking very serious-faced and saying, ‘Now what do you intend to do?’ His commitment to poetry was absolute, right down to the marrow of your bone. This was no light-hearted affair at all. And then after I wrote ‘The Maze’ poem, which was the first one in The Tapestry and the Web.” Completed late in 1964, The Tapestry and the Web became Kyger’s first book.

If Spicer was serious with Kyger, Duncan was coy. “I remember Robert Duncan saying, ‘There are a few things I could teach you about the line,’ and I said, ‘Well, tell me.’ ‘Oh, I’ll tell you next meeting.’ So, when everything was over, we were standing in the kitchen, and I said, ‘Now tell me.’ ‘Well, ah … ‘and he really didn’t tell me anything at all, as a matter of fact.” Joanne laughed, a deep, rich chortle of warmth. “But there was something he did tell me which then made me more interested in the fact that there was something going on which I wasn’t quite handling, or could handle in some way-some breath-beat implicit in Creeley’s tone, the hanging-article at the end of the breath-line, in the ear, giving this kind of staccato rhythm.”

From page 117

The Sunday meetings attracted a variegated group of men and women, but why were no more women writing than Joanne Kyger? The reason was partly financial, since the women who were likely to contribute were busy supporting their men. Dora Geissler recalled:

I didn’t read anything at Joe Dunn’s. I was Harold [DullJ’s woman. It was sort oflike—There wasn’t room for me to write, too. There were women in the group, but only Joanne did any writing. Nemi [Frost] went to the poetry meetings, too, but she wasn’t a writer. It was the group that went. Joanne and Nemi and I were very good friends. We were so different we weren’t competitive. Nor were we feminists. We all enjoyed the company of gay men, probably for similar reasons. For me, coming to San Francisco and meeting gay men was a wonderful experience, because I had just been through that season in my life where you’re seen as a sex object, and in Seattle, I would try to talk to people and think they were interested in my mind, and they just wanted to get in my pants? That was always so disappointing to me, and then when I met gay men in San Francisco, and realized, “They’re interested in my ideas,” I was just overjoyed! I knew my gay friends enjoyed my company for me alone, not as someone to fuck. That was a very comfortable place for me to be then. Feminism really hadn’t been invented then to any extent, and most women were uninteresting to me. They would talk about the house, and clothes, and I was never interested in makeup, clothes, the things that they talked about that didn’t interest me. The world of ideas and poetry and politics that gay friends would talk to me about, why, that’s where I felt at home.

In addition to Poet Be Like God—a project brought to our attention by Samuel R. Delany—Wesleyan has published two books of Spicer’s work, both poetry and lectures: My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, edited by Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian, and The House that Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer, edited by Peter Gizzi.