Showing posts with label Shelton Lea. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shelton Lea. Show all posts
Sunday, September 15, 2013
I.M. BETTY BURSTALL, 1926-2013
I'm looking at Nicole Emanuel's photograph of Betty Burstall from 2005, reproduced for Sonia Harford's valedictory article in The Age (June 18, '13), "Melbourne mourns 'La Mama' of contemporary theatre scene". The photo's taken from low down, looking up into Betty's sunny face, artfully juxtaposed with a Charles Blackman girl on the nearside wall, suggesting perhaps that Child is judge of Age, its grave beauty, coursing the years, secure finally in the septuagenarian bloom. Inset in the frame is a pic of Betty sitting at one of the original La Mama cafe-theatre's signature small tables, candle in bottle & steaming coffee before her, this from the first flush of La Mama news worthiness…
Another : Betty in her twenties, sitting on bush grass & wild flowers beside sprawled Tim in the cover-photograph of Memoirs of a Young Bastard : The Diaries of Tim Burstall, November 1953 to December 1954, the superbly produced Miegunyah Press volume, published in 2012 ('introduced & annotated by Hilary McPhee with Ann Standish'), and though it's a mid '50s pic I'm struck that she looks exactly as I remember her in the '60s --same curly brown hair, head-scarf, bursting with vitality, and a mixture of querulousness & determination in her eye --that thinking, critical, intelligent eye on the world. Ditto the '70s when we met up again after the Hemensleys' years in England, --& the '80s when she was en route to Greece or returning, trading in Greek textiles. A painter now, the artist she'd probably always been --recall the set of earthenware mugs she presented to us for our wedding in '68 (included in the huge trunk of mostly poetry books we took to England with us, on the long voyage late '69 on the French cargo-boat through New Caledonia, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Panama, Martinique, Madeira, to Marseilles & home)-- supplying us, at Collected Works bookshop, with postcard reproductions of her own town & country Australian & Greek-island paintings…
One day at the Shop (in Smith Street, Collingwood), mid '80s, catching sight of an issue of my mag, H/EAR, Betty asked about its production (silk-screen cover, mimeographed A-4 pages, filled with poetry, commentary, correspondence) & straightaway decided it was important & required sponsorship! She invited me to her Palmerston Street, Carlton house for breakfast with Arthur Boyd. Evidently in the interim she'd shown him the mag. When I called on her, a little coyly I must say, Arthur was already there & casting his eye over Betty's paintings, praising & encouraging. I told him I'd been to his house in Highgate around 1970/71, invited by Garrie Hutchinson, one of the 1969 La Mama alumni, who'd house-sat while Arthur was in Portugal overseeing the production of tapestries based on his paintings. I vividly remembered the tapestries hanging over the bannister all the way upstairs. Fifteen years later here we were meeting! Arthur asked me about my magazine's form & direction, particularly interested in the art & poetry interaction and the historical chronicling. Reaching into his jacket pocket he peeled off a wad of notes & pressed them into my hand, wishing the mag & I the best of luck. The arrival of Betty's daughter-in-law, Sigrid Thornton, signalled the end of breakfast.
The particular issue of the mag enabled by his patronage happened to contain my interview with Pete Spence mainly about art, particularly Pete's hostility to what he contended was Nolan, Boyd & co's monopoly of Australian critical attention -- Pete's critique was consistent with the opinion & interest of many of us in favour of the marginalised practice in all the arts. Although aware I was biting the hand that feeds, I couldn't censor the interview. Dutifully I sent copies of the issue to Betty & Arthur but never heard back from either… Apart from passing in the street, perhaps the last time I saw Betty was with Tim Burstall (and of course we'd met Tim & their boys back in the day) at Collected Works for the launching of Rudi Krausmann & Andrew Sibley's (poems & drawings) collaboration, ca 2003 --the smallest return for her unrivalled hospitality at La Mama…
Memories of Betty Burstall are inseparable from the La Mama cafe-theatre on Faraday Street in Carlton where we met around about this time 46 years ago. Winter 1967 : small tables & chairs downstairs, bric-a-brac, junk/furniture upstairs. One-act plays performed beside & amongst the coffee-drinkers. Log fire in wall grate; coffee urn bubbling. A poetry reading organised by the folk-singer Glen Thomasetti, well-known from the anti-Vietnam War protest movement, that featured or happened to include a poet, in his late thirties (being 21 or so an older poet one had to have perceived), leg in plaster &/or balancing on crutches, jacket, shirt, beard trimmed to cheek : Charles Kenneth Taylor (called Ken by some, Charles by others), working in the talks department at the ABC. As far as I was concerned, the reading was momentous. His reading voice accurately describing his poems' pace & lineation, and his references to Ashbery & Snyder sheer music to my ears for though well acquainted with such poetry I hadn't yet heard it even cited in Melbourne. All this is inscribed in other histories or should be! Suffice to say here that I celebrated Ken Taylor's reading with a poem, Poem For Ken Taylor (first published in the 1968 chapbook, Two Poets [Ken Taylor & Kris Hemensley], with its our glass motif silk-screen cover by Mike Hudson), which I read later in '67 at one of Glen's readings, word of which got back to Ken --probably Betty told him (the Burstalls & the Taylors & the Wallace-Crabbes had all been in New York around 1965/6 via Harkness Fellowships). She introduced us, and that was the origin of the Melbourne chapter of the New Australian Poetry (as I conceived it) --true to say, and I say it as I think it, the contemporary continues its particular & timely articulation in & from that occasion's significant swing…
Betty Burstall had returned to Melbourne from New York inspired by alternative theatre in the Village, especially Ellen Stewart's La Ma Ma Experimental Theatre Club (founded in 1961). Just as Ken Taylor returned on a mission --to establish the Australian extension to John Gill & Earle Birney's New American & Canadian Poetry (magazine & books), out of Trumansburg in up-state New York , so Betty sought to emulate New York's La Ma Ma : theatre presented outside of the normal performance settings in Melbourne, amateur or commercial. Betty's vision was for a space to hold all the arts --theatre, poetry, music, film. Upstairs & downstairs it became a regular hang-out for some of us in 67/8 --Frank Bren, Bill Beard, Michael Hudson, Gary Petersen, Elaine Rushbrooke, Sid Clayton et al… Having experienced the productions of Jack Hibberd's playlets, I'd reported back to the New Theatre, of which Loretta Garvey, Frank & Bill were younger stalwarts, that the real new theatre, innovative & politically aware, was occurring at La Mama : if we really believed New Theatre's manifestos then La Mama was where we should also be. Minus the Communist Party bit of course --easier to negotiate in 67/8 with the alternative presence of the New Left than before I suspect. And so we came across the road to Betty Burstall's La Mama without abandoning the New Theatre although, naturally, that was how our expedition was viewed by some…
Betty & theatre : The New Australian Theatre, in its Melbourne manifestation, depends upon the particular place & space of La Mama for its origin & subsequent development…
Betty & the poets : The New Australian Poetry, in its Melbourne manifestation, depends upon that particular place & space for its origin & subsequent development…
Betty the hostess of fabulous dinners in the cafe-theatre where she conscientiously set about bridging the personalities & generations, the different tribes & their territories via Bohemian bonhomie & a wholesome menu of wine, platters of hard & soft cheeses, bread, olives, sausage, salad… I see Betty setting me down at a table with Keith Harrison, the Australian poet visiting from the States, & Philip Martin, poet & younger academic from Monash. Perfect example of her mix & match, not that she foresaw Philip taking the liberty of introducing me to Keith & describing me as a representative of the new Melbourne poetry's Wordsworthian tendency! I hit the roof : Wordsworth? Our poets were Pound, Williams, the Beats, Olson, Creeley, Duncan, Levertov, Black Mountain, San Francisco, New York et al with Liverpool Scene, Tarn, MacDiarmid, Bunting, Turnbull & other British thrown in. Our politics collaged Berkeley, Paris, Berlin, London, Che & Ho Chi Minh! Betty flew to my side to tamp down the anger! Amazing to me, Keith knew my poetry references & pouring out the good wine ameliorated the argument : it was Wordsworth the erstwhile sympathiser of the French Revolution whom Philip had in mind he interceded, while Olson & Co & all the bards of hippiedom were a rather different kettle of fish, ill-fitting Philip's equation. I left La Mama that night excited by the older generation ex-pat's broad mindedness, wishing he lived & taught in Melbourne instead of the US, wishing Australia could have held him and, despite the rising of the New, already suspecting why it mightnt… At another dinner, recall being called over by John Perceval, whom I'd already met in out-of-the-city, leafy Canterbury, introduced by Mike Dugan whose neighbour he was, to join him in polishing off a carafe… Tony Murphett, wearing ostentatious necklace-broach he claimed once belonged to the Austro-Hungarian empress, careered around the tables… The wonder of being an English immigrant youth, plucked out of the obscurity of nowhere Southampton & sub-Bohemian Melbourne, into proximity of the locally celebrated art & literature, still tickles me nearly half a century on… I think Betty understood her role as medium, moderator, provider, proselytiser : I wouldn't be alone in saying she was La Mama…
One day, summer '68, she asked me to go around the corner from the cafe-theatre to a terrace house in Elgin Street and, virtually, save a poet! His name is Shelton Lea, she said, --he needs to know about La Mama, he needs to meet other poets, he's isolated, desperate, in need of nurture, connection et cetera. So I strolled around. Shelton was tall, slender, high cheeked, Roman-like, trembling with intensity. He immediately stated his contempt for that modern poetry which eschewed regular rhyme & metre & demanded from me the rationale for free verse. He enthused about Countee Cullen (whom I misheard as Cunty Cullen), unknown to me but evidently Shelton's example of a great poet. I spoke about the emergent new Melbourne poetry and our, mostly, American references. I remember saying that poems don't have to rhyme though the rhythm of speech & mind was a given. In my mind he's smoking, juggling a baby, another tripping around his feet, with his dark eyed, long haired, similarly slender actress wife in & out of the room with coffee. He said he'd try to come to La Mama but was flat out struggling to exist…
Around this time, impressed by the popularity of the curtain-raiser poetry performances I provided for Mike Hudson's versions of Peter Schumann's Bread & Puppet Theatre, Betty invited me to take on a regular poetry evening. She proposed we go 50/50 on the door, and so long as I could pay the rent would be part of La Mama's permanent programme. We planned but didn't bite the bullet until September '68 when the inaugural reading of what I named the La Mama Poets Workshop began with its boast "Tuesday nights forever!" By August '69 the Hemensleys were off to Europe, leaving the Workshop in the hands of Mike Dugan, Charles Buckmaster, Bill Beard, Ian Robertson, Geoff Eggleston, Garrie Hutchinson & others, until sometime in 1970 they moved on to the Melbourne Arts Co-Op (another history yet to be analysed & written). Betty threw a going-away party for us in her Eltham house, wished us all the best but insisted we return to Melbourne & La Mama. Late '72 we did, but though she invited me start up poetry at La Mama again one had obviously moved on. 'Breakthrough' politics & poetics had grown, after the 1970-72 English infusion, into the 'international' perspective --that is, Melbourne & Australian poetry in the world of poetry. Ten years later Val Kirwin had a go, on Betty's successors, Maureen Hartley & Liz Jones' instigation, & invited me to read with her at the well-attended first salon, but it wasn't until Mal Morgan, whom I'd put on the bill back in 68/9, began his La Mama Poetica a few years later that the La Mama tradition resumed. It continues to this day…
Betty's generosity to the new playwrights & actors (Hibberd, Blundell, Davies, Romeril & co) is legend, to the extent of warping the actual history of performance (of new music & film as well as theatre) at La Mama, especially in the first couple of years. After the resident group suddenly abandoned La Mama, hurting & shocking her to the core, she came to see it as an opportunity for ever greater variety of the new & experimental. Her devotion to the theatre was equalled by her support of the poets. Tim Burstall, in contrast, could be critical & dismissive of the La Mama poets. I recall Betty once more keeping the peace & explaining that Tim was a poet himself once. Her own children also had inclinations to write --I think it was young Tom who hung around the barely older Charles Buckmaster, which may have exacerbated Burstall senior's inter-generational irritation…
In the three years I was away ('69-'72), Betty had me sending her playscripts for which she found directors, mounting a succession of productions of my plays at La Mama. From the day in late '67 when she recruited Malcolm Robertson (moonlighting from the MTC under the pseudonym 'Garibaldi') to direct my first La Mama play, The Blind, she was my greatest advocate. Our last collaboration was in 1973 when she invited me to join herself & Wilfrid Last as the La Mama/Australian Performance Group's contribution to the Independent Schools' Drama Conference in Canberra. Among the other presenters were Roger Pulvers & (the late) Solrun Haas. The play I wrote for the event, The Grand Centenary Cricket Match, was performed by dozens of students & directed (choreographed) by Wilfrid. Betty & I led discussion of contemporary theatre, critiquing short plays by the school groups. Unqualified academically, we'd become a reference for Australian theatre through experience & enthusiasm. Precisely what Ken Taylor meant when he said that with the inception of the La Mama poetry readings, a poet no longer required a license from the English department of Melbourne University!
If Betty Burstall's Memorial in the forecourt of La Mama in Faraday Street, Carlton was her final performance, where she was hailed by friends & colleagues traversing the 46 years since her creation of that theatre --with mostly theatre people speaking, which both Ken Taylor, down from Mount Macedon for the event, & I anticipated --La Mama's poets & poetry sidelined by the actors (--we're here for Betty & that's all that matters, he said --this is where she introduced us & how it all began) -- it's another performance, in which she serendipitously featured, which leaps out of my memory… Sometime in 1969, one of Sid Clayton's marvellous & inscrutable events --that poet-composer's magical theatre, part meticulous composition, part happening --for the crux of which he'd directed the audience to become participants in a ritual procession around a table, onto which Betty had unexpectedly hopped up & now lay supine! We were to circle clock-wise --though I remember rebelling against that expectation, circling the other way. Ironically, Sid attempted to shepherd me back into the orthodox circle. Betty was taken over by the 'ceremony'. Bill Beard equally enthusiastic (as was his nature). Recorded music or percussion played ever louder around us. It was dark apart from candle-light. And it only finished when we left off. Betty was the last. From the sidelines we saw her slide off the table, flushed cheeks, exhilarated…
[18/19-6 // 27-7 // 15-9-2013]
Sunday, September 27, 2009
THE MERRI CREEK : POEMS & PIECES, # 13, September, 2009
KRIS HEMENSLEY
FIVE PORTRAITS IN MINIATURE
MIKE
He makes no man his enemy.
he is not many men.
he is himself.
he helps himself.
his enemy is not many men.
he stands amongst many men.
he is himself amongst many men.
GEOFF
He comes from nowhere & says something.
he goes somewhere with nothing.
he says somewhere is nowhere & nothing is something.
he comes & goes.
he says he is somewhere you havent been.
he says you are somewhere else.
he is something for nothing.
TERRY
He is never seen.
he is still away.
he is sometimes very still.
he arrived unannounced.
he is still unannounced.
he is never far away from stillness.
he sees the announcer.
NIGEL
He is the man who knows who sd it.
he is the man who says he knows.
he is the man who stays awake.
he knows the man.
he says the man doesnt know.
he is the man who does.
he is the man who doesnt.
BILL
He is the stranger who smiles.
he smiles at strangers.
he is strangely strong.
he has the strangest of smiles.
he has found a string.
he smells a rat.
he strings along.
[Southampton/UK, 1971;
first published in Mal Morgan's Parachute Poems, Melbourne, 1972]
Note:
The portraits are of Michael Dugan, Geoffrey Eggleston, Terry Gillmore, Nigel Roberts & Bill Beard.
________________________________________________________________
TERRY GILLMORE
CORRESPONDENCE
[14/09/09]
Dear Kris
I guess this is the ‘unutterable news that comes out of silence’ – the dead and the dying – Geoffrey is dead/Alison is dead; there is a meaningless private synchronicity in this coupling, for me.
Yesterday, I spent my lunchtime in a bookshop and sped-read Shelton’s biography, and afterwards searched his name in Google, and found your archive; I can’t bring myself to use the ‘b’ word. I am out-of-date since poetry in my poor fella country turned into a farce, or just seemed that way to me.
I thought I should write to you because I have always been ‘soft’ for you, and I think you are, and have always appeared to be, so non-judgemental, so inclusive.
Beyond that, you are spot-on about ‘The Crimson Jargon’. It was such a labour of love for Alison and even though I don’t have a copy, her images and Baldessin’s are inscribed in my neurons – nearly 40 years later. Also inscribed is the confrontation with the executive of RMIT that were trying to censor the publication. The only good thing about that is George Orwell’s (I am reading the thousand pages of his Essays etc in the ‘Everyman’ edition) central thesis that the only thing that separates the capitalist democracies from the totalitarian states is the principle, and passage, of free speech. The word, the word…
I still write poetry, and write (supposedly) for a living; although it’s time I was on the road again.
Anyway as Alison was dying I was writing this – I sent it to our son, that night. So for the record this is what was happening with me.
"Dearest Jerome
After four stubbies of Cooper's Pale Ale, I'm moved to send you what I wrote around 10am this morning. I know that it is not, expressly, particular to your mother but I was writing it at the time of her passing.
It is relevant because of her quality of soul. She perceived so much, as you know, through this opening. I should hope that we could speak more about this when we next meet.
Forgive the tone of what follows but I was writing it for common debate in a 'style' that I hoped could be in the public domain.
My son I cannot touch your grief or that of Ian and his sisters. However, I sincerely believe, that the sentiments expressed are something that she would have had 'some' sympathy for.
Your father
ooOOoo
Whatever happened to the Holy Ghost? In my lifetime, which takes in more than half of last century, Jesus Christ and, to a lesser extent, God have had their names in 12pt. While the 'Ghost' seems to have been lurking, slinking in the footnotes, at best masquerading as the glue that holds that Trinity together. Why this pecking order when the Trinity is paradoxically and theologically inseparably separable? Is it because that now ‘science’ and ‘philosophy’ and the sneerers etc have decided for eternity that the soul does not exist, that God is dead even though the sun shines most days in this drought riven land. It appears that Jesus Christ is certainly dead despite resurrection rumours that he is cohabiting with Osiris in another universe. But is he really dead – I cannot resile from the reality that in the beginning there was the ‘word’, and in the end there will be the death of the ‘word’, and we’re not there, yet, even though we’re moving toward it with unseemly haste. I remember that my paternal grandmother had an embroidered plaque on her lounge room wall that said ‘God is Love’. At four, just able to read, it seemed so simple that I dared not ask what it meant and because, as I know now, it was of that class of knowledge that once known, seems to have been always known. I knew what it meant but cannot, even now, begin to articulate the full meaning of this artless, Blake-like profundity. It was as if its meaning was inscribed in its simplicity. What is this Ghost? On my reckoning it is love, is compassion, is the 2nd commandment which more than complements the 1st. It is what speaks to our poor lonely souls which do exist – it is a question of thirst, of listening, of being able to hear and feel, and be overcome and comforted.
ooOOoo
And Jerome here is a little poem I wrote two days ago:
‘the Holy Ghost draweth with His love’[1]
I faced the full moon rising in the east
And the Ghost was in me.
I know that this was the ‘love’
I sought in the wasted years.
[1] Meister Eckhart's Sermons / translated into English by Claud Field
ooOOoo
Anyway dear Kris, I will send this in all its callow crassness, already regretting it. We rarely speak as we would like, and mostly hold our silence with the dead. The above stems from being swept away recently by Marilynne Robinson’s ‘Home’ and ‘Gilead’. She is a ‘great’ writer, if there is such a beast.
Love
Terry
ooOOoo
[15/09/09]
Dear Terry, heart felt condolences regarding Alison... A shock and continuing sadness... Ironic for me that I was reading all around her as I wrote that piece (The Divine Issue followed up with the Addendum, wch you saw)... And we spoke after I'd published the first piece. She said she too had been thinking of those times & people and wd look the piece up & read it & get back to me... Life so relentlessly busy that tho I knew she hadnt been back in a while it was as it always was... often months if not a year will go by between her visits to the bookshop... Ah well... As you say, Geoffrey, Alison, too many... Shelton, Michael Dugan... THANK YOU though for sending me your message to Jerome and the poem... It wd be good to catch up, as of course youve begun here... Re- my "b." --it's an archive/running commentary/magazine, obviously not the 'hi ya' kind of caper... Here in the old Melbourne I run the Bookshop with Retta's help... she's receiving radiation treatment at moment for breast cancer... After our son's death Retta's attitude and mine has been that the worst that cd happen HAS happened...so we get on with it, and happily...All very best to you, with good thoughts for the old days and now, and blessings for Alison,
As ever, Kris
ooOOoo
[15/09/09]
Dear Kris
Thanks for your reply and your thoughts. It seems of late that I am surrounded by death - well, I am 65. I didn't know about your son's death or Michael's. As you probably know, I know about children dying before their time, and your's and Retta's response that the worst that could happen - has happened, however after thirty years, new but unwanted things subsume the grief, and the butter falling out of the fridge does drive you crazy. Give Retta my regards and my deep wish for her recovery. I am so sorry about your son, don't let me pick at the wound. You're right as Dylan said 'keep on keeping on / like a bird that flew / tangled up in blue (blew). It is a miracle, the whole shebang...I am frequently reminded of Afterman's poem - I think it was called Pieta - the essence that I took from it was that it is a wonder that we are not daily on our knees praying at the pity, the sadness of it all. On the other hand why are we not dancing daily at the miracle, the wonder and beauty of it all on this remote outpost/backwater of the multiverses?
with affection
Terry
ooOOoo
Going inside
What is inside
Is not as temporary
As what is outside.
My being’s soul
Is that of my child
ooOOoo
Essentially, eternally
I am you, am him.
Your birth my birth
Everything is born.
_______________________________________________________________
KARL GALLAGHER
CORRESPONDENCE
[August,'09]
Dave Ellison et al; are without any pretension beat, among other things,
and in an un self-conscious way as writers, not in a negative way,
but simply being oneself in a creative way naturally; culturally influenced by diverse
streams of humanity and themselves as historical players, with identity;
that I am somehow or other out of touch with modern times and the younger generation is probably due to age difference and experience and memories of times gone by
and as an old man remembering those who are gone
now I am looking at modern times through bifocals, deaf in right ear, hearing aid in the left, chronic back and neck pain et al, looking at seventy I’m 66, part time socially active, still smoke .
I always find that a book of poems will never let me down no matter what -- poetry a spiritual world that anyone can enter and that I enter – the beauty of modern times -- I can get that way. The knowing that it can happen, is that memory, of an identity from an old dream? of ghosts Neal and Jack and the women that they, and that we all knew, in many ways a more innocent time amidst post war changes.
I don’t recall Kerouac ever express anything political, I mean, he said almost nothing of world war two yet he was a merchant seaman – when much later, as an alcoholic he appeared on a now infamous televised debate with a student activist –
he was focussed only on the cultural and liberating, I mean how clean is politics – no dharma there.
He said he was a ’yes’ man, being for and not a ‘no’ man and being against, anyway he had said the same thing years before in ‘On the Road’
it was what attracted him to Neal and vice versa, they were young and crazy to burn to talk to talk, to go somewhere to Harlem or Birdland to hear Miles or someone else on Bleaker St or the Cedar Bar where Pollock and others be there, and those musicians all knew him and liked and respected him and had a drink or chat with him, they dug him, they knew that he dug and knew their art, like Neal he understood and loved the music, Kerouac personally knew a lot of jazz/ bop players.
Dave Ellison and the others are prime examples of the living spirit of the hip dharma bums of modern times, in any location in the world – the planetary village’s writers and the normalising globalising of beat - and other influences, past present cultural and spiritual influences, that are always part of who we are, how ever we are,
as writers and of course as human individuals with a personal social life. To write is to dream.
oo00oo
HOLY BARBARIANS
[7th/August,'09]
Kris,
did you ever come across a book called ‘The Holy Barbarians’ Published 1959? I was given a throw away copy in early 1965 and it put me ‘on to’ all that followed regarding the beats, voluntary poverty, Buddhism, etc. it made a major impact on me and what happened thereafter. At the time I was an art student, nights, at RMIT and just meeting some of the local beat types, i.e. Alison Hill, and Nigel Roberts among others on a visit from Syd at Maisy’s hotel in South Yarra, one of the hangouts, a 100metres from ‘The Fat Black Pussycat’. It’s been out of print for years. It was one of the first books that I asked Geoff Eggleston ‘have you read this book?’ the Holy Barbarians was my measure, if you had read that one, then ok lets talk. And of course the title is very suggestive. Lipton spelled it out clearly, that is was a spiritual awakening - (just preceding the explosion of the counter culture). That was just what I was looking for – a major change of attitude and lifestyle, spiritual in character – as a way out of gang culture.
From that book, I bought The Way of Zen, On the Road, Howl, Henry Miller, et al. And I picked up in a second-hand bookstore in Russell St two LPs one Kerouac reading with sax backing, and Dylan Thomas recorded in NY (on his 33rd or 34th birthday) he was dead a month later. Both LPs went missing early. I had new friends. Some who didn’t have the same standards regarding stealing from friends as my previous network - the Melbourne docks and underworld.
If you don’t know the book, or haven’t had a copy in years then:
The full text is available here:
http://www.archive.org/stream/holybarbarians000549mbp/holybarbarians000549mbp_djvu.txt
or here too:
http://www.archive.org/details/holybarbarians000549mbp
karl
________________________________________________________________
EDWARD MYCUE
[local pieces part history and part gratitude]
JUSTINE JONES FIXEL & HER KIND SAN FRANCISCO
she was from bingham canyon and salt lake city in utah & she loved the name (of a younger cousin) jersey justine, justine being the name given to girls all down the generations. her
mom's & dad's folks were breakaway mormans. a justine said to be the youngest of joseph smith's “six” wives taken in by brigham young to the Promised Land of utah when smith was
murdered in illinois . justine came to san francisco at 21 with a b.a. from the catholic women's college in salt lake city .. her dad had a bar in bingham canyon (that city no longer exists because of the copper mines tunnelled underneath) & later in salt lake city and there would be poker games in their salt lake city house late into the night. her brother kendell jones ten years older had come earlier to the university in berkeley . justine went into social work, but i don't recall it
that was her first job. when the war began she became a WAVE and lived with 3 others—jean broadbent, winifred lair, cecelia hurwich (“92 stairs”, says cecel, to get to their apt penthouse at 1230B washington st bet. jones & taylor in ‘the casbah” on telegraph hill). farwell taylor (for
whom mingus wrote “farewell, farewell”) also lived in the casbah and did that painting of justine & cecel the lifetime best pals. her palship w/ bari rolfe, mime and mime teacher, goes back to bari’s & marcel marceau years together (in the 50’s or 60’s). & warren anderson who played a beautiful piano and became kendell’s lifelong partner. after the war following an interval of modeling & partying & before getting her masters from the social welfare school, uc-berkeley,
justine was a social worker, & around that time worked for Canon Kip program, still going, of the Episcopal church (canon kip was a san francisco hero of 1906 earthquake days). i recall her stories of spending nights with kids rescued, & before they were able to be placed, in the loft of the old bldg on l9th avenue and ortega that later became for decades the san francisco music conservatory (before its recent move to oak/van ness/market). therapist wings. academic articles.
met larry by or in 1950's. they'd been married before (she to keith). (larry a daughter kate frankel in los angeles--granddaughter adrian & grandson joshua.). stayed married. larry died in 2003.
justine got a fulbright to italy to consult on changing their social work system at univ level etc, had extensions twice—rare, 3 years in rome 1960-63. while larry wrote. came back a year &
headed for mexico for another year (looking for george price larry's best bud, & to see if they could find a way to support/live there. later learned they'd crossed w/george returning to sf where
george a writing professor at sf state had returned via los angeles where he met zdena berger (price). zdena wrote TELL ME ANOTHER MORNING publ 1961 recently 2007 republd by
paris press as a refound woman hero writer--abt surviving camps --she was from prague &
of her wide family she, an aunt, a cousin survived world war 2.). justine when i first knew her in
1970 was teaching at uc-berkeley in the school of social work and practicing as a founding member of the family therapy center in sf (then a pioneering approach). she had a long productive life. larry used to complain that justine was a great source of misinformation, which
mostly amused her because maybe only larry could be teased that way and i heard it as
"mixedinformation". in her practice, justine’s “sand tray” therapy, its development and her
teaching its use lead back to her work as a painter of oil on canvas to her incorporations, assemblings, environments with miniature figures, furniture, the natural world & symbols
including her last great achievement “the white house”, her Venetian paintings, a series of frieze-like sculptures suffused with Jungian themes, & household objects combined into a mixed conglomeration arranged into painted autobiography and family history (much of this documented on film by al leveton). memories of justine, of larry, names that drift up, constellate
& swim, a history, pantheon, honorable people. I thought of ruth witt-diamant again last night (justine & larry’s neighbor and friend who began the poetry center as san francisco state) & thanked her for all her kindnesses; oldest friend george & mary oppen through whom I met lawrence & justine fixel in 1970; of florence hegi, oldest of the family therapy group of friends
& colleagues (al, eva, bob hovering over her to the very end) that justine belonged to: eva & al leveton w/ ben handleman the prime founders,& virginia belfort, sue eldredge; roz parenti, bob
cantor, michael geis. neighbors too in those early days: lois and roy steinberg & julian, then 5, now a photographer; mark citret (ansel adams’ last student, then 22-- eminent now); of al and minnie (a founding member of the california communist party, related to my sister jane by marriage) and daughter laura bock down high willard street; judy pollatsek and her kids josh & jessica; the wolfe’s on farnsworth steps; al palavin; the jaeks, a nice couple w/ kids goldsworths
(he at uc-sf & judy) next to ruth witt’s; & memories of anais nin when she was lodged uphill in a cottage ruth found for her; the then taos-bound dorothy kethler; & in taos, bob eliot, who built
said justine the ideal house; jo lander; florida & angela who worked for the un’s fao in rome; bill
minshew first met in rome; george hitchcock; cass humble; edouard roditi who often returned from france--an old schoolmate of ruth’s at uc berkeley in the 30’s; james broughton; justine van gundy who taught at sf state; her san diego cousin dianne cawood, soprano; diane scott her therapist; tom, stephanie, dante sanchez; always cecelia (“cecel”, “cese”) & b.j., lynn, rudy
hurwich; larry’s nephew robbie berkelman; & “old jack” (w.w.. lyman, jr.) of bayles mill—born there in napa valley 1885--ruth brought me over to meet (‘the oldest living poet’ she’d drive up to bring down to san francisco . i was her gardener & the then young poet, 35, she wanted him to connect with, his wife helen hoyt an esteemed poet who’d been asst editor to harriet monroe at poetry magazine in chicago dead a decade or more by then)(his three volumes of typed memoirs--he lived to1983 leaving a son amos hoyt at bayles mill--are in st. helena, ca public library’s
locked room); & others who make their entries but who’s names now escape me but will possibly come tomorrow; folks we met, knew together--panjandrum press & poetry flash crowds & dennis
koran; richard steger; lennart & sonia bruce; exemplary pals william dickey & adrianne marcus ;shirley kaufman & jack gilbert; laura ulewicz; anthony rudolf; jo-anne rosen; laura beausoleil; david & judy gascoyne ; sybil wood/cooper; sharon coleman; gerald fleming; carl rakosi & marilyn kane. many gone before justine & so many more left because this was a woman
who knew people & was interested in them: remembering her is to consider friends you make in life, who contributed to who you became, you’ve helped, who’ve helped you. final days,weeks, months, years, close were naomi schwartz , josephine moore, gail lubin, christina fisher, toby damon, andrea rubin, marsha trainer, al & eva leveton, ken meacham & pearl, wendy rosado-
berkelman (larry’s sister pearl fixel berkelman’s daughter), her daughter sunya; tom sanchez; cecilia london (justine’s student at uc-berkeley who who returned to justine in those four years after larry’s death as justine’s guide/ social worker), & always stephanie sanchez, bob cantor, naomi, al & eva, george & zdena, cecel & don (ross)—friends, colleagues, confidantes.
accretion. attrition. vale.
[11 OCTOBER 2007]
ooOOoo
[for Justine Jones Fixel (Sept. 5, 1920-Aug. 5, 2007)]
A SEA CHANGE
Fish in a net, old salts,
as the wheels keep turning,
a spinning plate half-dipping
into the Pacific Ocean here
you and I are at Land’s End
on this tilting/raked stage
where great ships foundered.
Their sentences of life, death
are unfinished symphonies;
a future out there our audience
who’ve sailed-in to watch
a sea change, diminishing star
dust a gusher pinkening milky
sunrise, sunset in the gloaming
thickening light a sea scar as
roses silt down the sea to sleep.
The wheel is round; life pushes;
photography winds over time,
westering, voicing the mind’s
brown shale for it will take, it
took a lifetime to flower, to fly,
to sail this sea this widening
light where I hear voices under
the surface of consciousness:
harmony’s memory rising up.
ooOOoo
WHEN JUSTINE FIXEL DIED AUG 5, 2007 JUST ONE MONTH SHORT OF HER 87th BIRTHDAY
when justine jones fixel died aug 5, 2007 just one month short of her 87th birthday. i was brokenhearted. her husband lawrence fixel had been my best friend from the time i came back to san francisco to live. george oppen had introduced us. he was sure we would be great for each other. and justine also became a great friend, and mentor. larry died 4 years ago. she had been very ill, but i just didn't want to have her forgotten. she was at the center of the cultural/literary life of this san francisco area. and she was a great and professional jungian therapist & teacher who also was a painter and artist of assembleges. after she died, i wrote and expanded and corrected the piece on her, the one you have being the one beginning the growing versions that ended with the nov.5 piece of now 4 pages titled GROUP PORTRAIT WITH LADY: JUSTINE JONES FIXEL AND HER KIND SAN FRANCISCO.
I sent many copies of each developing version w/some as submissions and some probably just information copies to spread the work about the end of a time when justine and larry and their friends george oppen, rosalie moore, carl rakosi, josephine miles, and a zillion others lent their intellects and sound moral floor to so many of us then and now so many less alive now. the coda poem "fish in a net" that ended the first group. with george price's help (larry's oldest friend--he was writing professor at sf state) i cut the poem by a third and retitled it "a sea change" from the shakespeare line already in the first poem. in the beginning the piece was more memoir/biography. then i began to see it at cultural history and thus appropriated heinrich boll's GROUP PORTRAIT WITH LADY a novel of 40 years ago and that for me referenced his THE CLOWN as well (portrait of the artist) and also reference to christopher isherwood's CHRISTOPHER AND HIS KIND.
i worked on it 4 months never needing to thinking of publication because i continually corrected it and altered it. no doubt some of this might come under a rubric of "grieving".
at 70 i have lost many kin and many more kith, especially during the aids crisis in the 1980's up through the 1990's primarily. now they are almost all gone.
i just call it cultural history. i am no sociologist, no intellectual, no historian. it hasn't pleased me as writing but it has given me relief to write it--to write it and honor my friends seeing them in such a rosy glow again as if from the beginning.
________________________________________________________________
CONTRIBUTORS NOTES
TERRY GILLMORE, part of the Free Poetry (Sydney) crew of the late '60s (with Nigel Roberts, Johnny Goodall & co). Two published collections, Further, Poems 1966-76 (New Poetry, Sydney, 1977), Surviving the Shadow (Paper Bark Press, Sydney, 1990). Robert Harris wrote of the latter poems, "Love, friendship and poetry have each become more, rather than less, substantial to Terry Gillmore, but differently contoured and wracked on human realities...[he] is, in our time, an Australian Orpheus, and like Orpheus, he is the singer of urgent and neglected knowledge."
KARL GALLAGHER see previous numbers of Poems & Pieces for bio; most recently is represented on the new Meher Baba poets & artists website, http://mehermelb.jimdo.com/
EDWARD MYCUE, San Francisco poet, goes back a long time and with the Australian & English connection (which includes The Merri Creek Or Nero & H/EAR magazines). Has published around 17 books & chapbooks, most recently his selected poems, Mindwalking, 1937-2007 (Philos Press, '08). Other books include Damage Within the Community (Panjandrum, '73), Route, Route & Range : The Song Returns (published by Walter Billeter's Paper Castle, Melbourne, '79), The Singing Man My Father Gave Me (Menard Press,UK, '80), Pink Gardens/Brown Trees (Bernard Hemensley's Stingy Artist/Last Straw Press, UK, '90). Forthcoming is The San Francisco Poems, from Paul Green's Spectacular Diseases Press,UK.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-That's all folks! -done on a wet & blustery Melbourne Sunday afternoon, 27th September, 2009-
Kris Hemensley
FIVE PORTRAITS IN MINIATURE
MIKE
He makes no man his enemy.
he is not many men.
he is himself.
he helps himself.
his enemy is not many men.
he stands amongst many men.
he is himself amongst many men.
GEOFF
He comes from nowhere & says something.
he goes somewhere with nothing.
he says somewhere is nowhere & nothing is something.
he comes & goes.
he says he is somewhere you havent been.
he says you are somewhere else.
he is something for nothing.
TERRY
He is never seen.
he is still away.
he is sometimes very still.
he arrived unannounced.
he is still unannounced.
he is never far away from stillness.
he sees the announcer.
NIGEL
He is the man who knows who sd it.
he is the man who says he knows.
he is the man who stays awake.
he knows the man.
he says the man doesnt know.
he is the man who does.
he is the man who doesnt.
BILL
He is the stranger who smiles.
he smiles at strangers.
he is strangely strong.
he has the strangest of smiles.
he has found a string.
he smells a rat.
he strings along.
[Southampton/UK, 1971;
first published in Mal Morgan's Parachute Poems, Melbourne, 1972]
Note:
The portraits are of Michael Dugan, Geoffrey Eggleston, Terry Gillmore, Nigel Roberts & Bill Beard.
________________________________________________________________
TERRY GILLMORE
CORRESPONDENCE
[14/09/09]
Dear Kris
I guess this is the ‘unutterable news that comes out of silence’ – the dead and the dying – Geoffrey is dead/Alison is dead; there is a meaningless private synchronicity in this coupling, for me.
Yesterday, I spent my lunchtime in a bookshop and sped-read Shelton’s biography, and afterwards searched his name in Google, and found your archive; I can’t bring myself to use the ‘b’ word. I am out-of-date since poetry in my poor fella country turned into a farce, or just seemed that way to me.
I thought I should write to you because I have always been ‘soft’ for you, and I think you are, and have always appeared to be, so non-judgemental, so inclusive.
Beyond that, you are spot-on about ‘The Crimson Jargon’. It was such a labour of love for Alison and even though I don’t have a copy, her images and Baldessin’s are inscribed in my neurons – nearly 40 years later. Also inscribed is the confrontation with the executive of RMIT that were trying to censor the publication. The only good thing about that is George Orwell’s (I am reading the thousand pages of his Essays etc in the ‘Everyman’ edition) central thesis that the only thing that separates the capitalist democracies from the totalitarian states is the principle, and passage, of free speech. The word, the word…
I still write poetry, and write (supposedly) for a living; although it’s time I was on the road again.
Anyway as Alison was dying I was writing this – I sent it to our son, that night. So for the record this is what was happening with me.
"Dearest Jerome
After four stubbies of Cooper's Pale Ale, I'm moved to send you what I wrote around 10am this morning. I know that it is not, expressly, particular to your mother but I was writing it at the time of her passing.
It is relevant because of her quality of soul. She perceived so much, as you know, through this opening. I should hope that we could speak more about this when we next meet.
Forgive the tone of what follows but I was writing it for common debate in a 'style' that I hoped could be in the public domain.
My son I cannot touch your grief or that of Ian and his sisters. However, I sincerely believe, that the sentiments expressed are something that she would have had 'some' sympathy for.
Your father
ooOOoo
Whatever happened to the Holy Ghost? In my lifetime, which takes in more than half of last century, Jesus Christ and, to a lesser extent, God have had their names in 12pt. While the 'Ghost' seems to have been lurking, slinking in the footnotes, at best masquerading as the glue that holds that Trinity together. Why this pecking order when the Trinity is paradoxically and theologically inseparably separable? Is it because that now ‘science’ and ‘philosophy’ and the sneerers etc have decided for eternity that the soul does not exist, that God is dead even though the sun shines most days in this drought riven land. It appears that Jesus Christ is certainly dead despite resurrection rumours that he is cohabiting with Osiris in another universe. But is he really dead – I cannot resile from the reality that in the beginning there was the ‘word’, and in the end there will be the death of the ‘word’, and we’re not there, yet, even though we’re moving toward it with unseemly haste. I remember that my paternal grandmother had an embroidered plaque on her lounge room wall that said ‘God is Love’. At four, just able to read, it seemed so simple that I dared not ask what it meant and because, as I know now, it was of that class of knowledge that once known, seems to have been always known. I knew what it meant but cannot, even now, begin to articulate the full meaning of this artless, Blake-like profundity. It was as if its meaning was inscribed in its simplicity. What is this Ghost? On my reckoning it is love, is compassion, is the 2nd commandment which more than complements the 1st. It is what speaks to our poor lonely souls which do exist – it is a question of thirst, of listening, of being able to hear and feel, and be overcome and comforted.
ooOOoo
And Jerome here is a little poem I wrote two days ago:
‘the Holy Ghost draweth with His love’[1]
I faced the full moon rising in the east
And the Ghost was in me.
I know that this was the ‘love’
I sought in the wasted years.
[1] Meister Eckhart's Sermons / translated into English by Claud Field
ooOOoo
Anyway dear Kris, I will send this in all its callow crassness, already regretting it. We rarely speak as we would like, and mostly hold our silence with the dead. The above stems from being swept away recently by Marilynne Robinson’s ‘Home’ and ‘Gilead’. She is a ‘great’ writer, if there is such a beast.
Love
Terry
ooOOoo
[15/09/09]
Dear Terry, heart felt condolences regarding Alison... A shock and continuing sadness... Ironic for me that I was reading all around her as I wrote that piece (The Divine Issue followed up with the Addendum, wch you saw)... And we spoke after I'd published the first piece. She said she too had been thinking of those times & people and wd look the piece up & read it & get back to me... Life so relentlessly busy that tho I knew she hadnt been back in a while it was as it always was... often months if not a year will go by between her visits to the bookshop... Ah well... As you say, Geoffrey, Alison, too many... Shelton, Michael Dugan... THANK YOU though for sending me your message to Jerome and the poem... It wd be good to catch up, as of course youve begun here... Re- my "b." --it's an archive/running commentary/magazine, obviously not the 'hi ya' kind of caper... Here in the old Melbourne I run the Bookshop with Retta's help... she's receiving radiation treatment at moment for breast cancer... After our son's death Retta's attitude and mine has been that the worst that cd happen HAS happened...so we get on with it, and happily...All very best to you, with good thoughts for the old days and now, and blessings for Alison,
As ever, Kris
ooOOoo
[15/09/09]
Dear Kris
Thanks for your reply and your thoughts. It seems of late that I am surrounded by death - well, I am 65. I didn't know about your son's death or Michael's. As you probably know, I know about children dying before their time, and your's and Retta's response that the worst that could happen - has happened, however after thirty years, new but unwanted things subsume the grief, and the butter falling out of the fridge does drive you crazy. Give Retta my regards and my deep wish for her recovery. I am so sorry about your son, don't let me pick at the wound. You're right as Dylan said 'keep on keeping on / like a bird that flew / tangled up in blue (blew). It is a miracle, the whole shebang...I am frequently reminded of Afterman's poem - I think it was called Pieta - the essence that I took from it was that it is a wonder that we are not daily on our knees praying at the pity, the sadness of it all. On the other hand why are we not dancing daily at the miracle, the wonder and beauty of it all on this remote outpost/backwater of the multiverses?
with affection
Terry
ooOOoo
Going inside
What is inside
Is not as temporary
As what is outside.
My being’s soul
Is that of my child
ooOOoo
Essentially, eternally
I am you, am him.
Your birth my birth
Everything is born.
_______________________________________________________________
KARL GALLAGHER
CORRESPONDENCE
[August,'09]
Dave Ellison et al; are without any pretension beat, among other things,
and in an un self-conscious way as writers, not in a negative way,
but simply being oneself in a creative way naturally; culturally influenced by diverse
streams of humanity and themselves as historical players, with identity;
that I am somehow or other out of touch with modern times and the younger generation is probably due to age difference and experience and memories of times gone by
and as an old man remembering those who are gone
now I am looking at modern times through bifocals, deaf in right ear, hearing aid in the left, chronic back and neck pain et al, looking at seventy I’m 66, part time socially active, still smoke .
I always find that a book of poems will never let me down no matter what -- poetry a spiritual world that anyone can enter and that I enter – the beauty of modern times -- I can get that way. The knowing that it can happen, is that memory, of an identity from an old dream? of ghosts Neal and Jack and the women that they, and that we all knew, in many ways a more innocent time amidst post war changes.
I don’t recall Kerouac ever express anything political, I mean, he said almost nothing of world war two yet he was a merchant seaman – when much later, as an alcoholic he appeared on a now infamous televised debate with a student activist –
he was focussed only on the cultural and liberating, I mean how clean is politics – no dharma there.
He said he was a ’yes’ man, being for and not a ‘no’ man and being against, anyway he had said the same thing years before in ‘On the Road’
it was what attracted him to Neal and vice versa, they were young and crazy to burn to talk to talk, to go somewhere to Harlem or Birdland to hear Miles or someone else on Bleaker St or the Cedar Bar where Pollock and others be there, and those musicians all knew him and liked and respected him and had a drink or chat with him, they dug him, they knew that he dug and knew their art, like Neal he understood and loved the music, Kerouac personally knew a lot of jazz/ bop players.
Dave Ellison and the others are prime examples of the living spirit of the hip dharma bums of modern times, in any location in the world – the planetary village’s writers and the normalising globalising of beat - and other influences, past present cultural and spiritual influences, that are always part of who we are, how ever we are,
as writers and of course as human individuals with a personal social life. To write is to dream.
oo00oo
HOLY BARBARIANS
[7th/August,'09]
Kris,
did you ever come across a book called ‘The Holy Barbarians’ Published 1959? I was given a throw away copy in early 1965 and it put me ‘on to’ all that followed regarding the beats, voluntary poverty, Buddhism, etc. it made a major impact on me and what happened thereafter. At the time I was an art student, nights, at RMIT and just meeting some of the local beat types, i.e. Alison Hill, and Nigel Roberts among others on a visit from Syd at Maisy’s hotel in South Yarra, one of the hangouts, a 100metres from ‘The Fat Black Pussycat’. It’s been out of print for years. It was one of the first books that I asked Geoff Eggleston ‘have you read this book?’ the Holy Barbarians was my measure, if you had read that one, then ok lets talk. And of course the title is very suggestive. Lipton spelled it out clearly, that is was a spiritual awakening - (just preceding the explosion of the counter culture). That was just what I was looking for – a major change of attitude and lifestyle, spiritual in character – as a way out of gang culture.
From that book, I bought The Way of Zen, On the Road, Howl, Henry Miller, et al. And I picked up in a second-hand bookstore in Russell St two LPs one Kerouac reading with sax backing, and Dylan Thomas recorded in NY (on his 33rd or 34th birthday) he was dead a month later. Both LPs went missing early. I had new friends. Some who didn’t have the same standards regarding stealing from friends as my previous network - the Melbourne docks and underworld.
If you don’t know the book, or haven’t had a copy in years then:
The full text is available here:
http://www.archive.org/stream/holybarbarians000549mbp/holybarbarians000549mbp_djvu.txt
or here too:
http://www.archive.org/details/holybarbarians000549mbp
karl
________________________________________________________________
EDWARD MYCUE
[local pieces part history and part gratitude]
JUSTINE JONES FIXEL & HER KIND SAN FRANCISCO
she was from bingham canyon and salt lake city in utah & she loved the name (of a younger cousin) jersey justine, justine being the name given to girls all down the generations. her
mom's & dad's folks were breakaway mormans. a justine said to be the youngest of joseph smith's “six” wives taken in by brigham young to the Promised Land of utah when smith was
murdered in illinois . justine came to san francisco at 21 with a b.a. from the catholic women's college in salt lake city .. her dad had a bar in bingham canyon (that city no longer exists because of the copper mines tunnelled underneath) & later in salt lake city and there would be poker games in their salt lake city house late into the night. her brother kendell jones ten years older had come earlier to the university in berkeley . justine went into social work, but i don't recall it
that was her first job. when the war began she became a WAVE and lived with 3 others—jean broadbent, winifred lair, cecelia hurwich (“92 stairs”, says cecel, to get to their apt penthouse at 1230B washington st bet. jones & taylor in ‘the casbah” on telegraph hill). farwell taylor (for
whom mingus wrote “farewell, farewell”) also lived in the casbah and did that painting of justine & cecel the lifetime best pals. her palship w/ bari rolfe, mime and mime teacher, goes back to bari’s & marcel marceau years together (in the 50’s or 60’s). & warren anderson who played a beautiful piano and became kendell’s lifelong partner. after the war following an interval of modeling & partying & before getting her masters from the social welfare school, uc-berkeley,
justine was a social worker, & around that time worked for Canon Kip program, still going, of the Episcopal church (canon kip was a san francisco hero of 1906 earthquake days). i recall her stories of spending nights with kids rescued, & before they were able to be placed, in the loft of the old bldg on l9th avenue and ortega that later became for decades the san francisco music conservatory (before its recent move to oak/van ness/market). therapist wings. academic articles.
met larry by or in 1950's. they'd been married before (she to keith). (larry a daughter kate frankel in los angeles--granddaughter adrian & grandson joshua.). stayed married. larry died in 2003.
justine got a fulbright to italy to consult on changing their social work system at univ level etc, had extensions twice—rare, 3 years in rome 1960-63. while larry wrote. came back a year &
headed for mexico for another year (looking for george price larry's best bud, & to see if they could find a way to support/live there. later learned they'd crossed w/george returning to sf where
george a writing professor at sf state had returned via los angeles where he met zdena berger (price). zdena wrote TELL ME ANOTHER MORNING publ 1961 recently 2007 republd by
paris press as a refound woman hero writer--abt surviving camps --she was from prague &
of her wide family she, an aunt, a cousin survived world war 2.). justine when i first knew her in
1970 was teaching at uc-berkeley in the school of social work and practicing as a founding member of the family therapy center in sf (then a pioneering approach). she had a long productive life. larry used to complain that justine was a great source of misinformation, which
mostly amused her because maybe only larry could be teased that way and i heard it as
"mixedinformation". in her practice, justine’s “sand tray” therapy, its development and her
teaching its use lead back to her work as a painter of oil on canvas to her incorporations, assemblings, environments with miniature figures, furniture, the natural world & symbols
including her last great achievement “the white house”, her Venetian paintings, a series of frieze-like sculptures suffused with Jungian themes, & household objects combined into a mixed conglomeration arranged into painted autobiography and family history (much of this documented on film by al leveton). memories of justine, of larry, names that drift up, constellate
& swim, a history, pantheon, honorable people. I thought of ruth witt-diamant again last night (justine & larry’s neighbor and friend who began the poetry center as san francisco state) & thanked her for all her kindnesses; oldest friend george & mary oppen through whom I met lawrence & justine fixel in 1970; of florence hegi, oldest of the family therapy group of friends
& colleagues (al, eva, bob hovering over her to the very end) that justine belonged to: eva & al leveton w/ ben handleman the prime founders,& virginia belfort, sue eldredge; roz parenti, bob
cantor, michael geis. neighbors too in those early days: lois and roy steinberg & julian, then 5, now a photographer; mark citret (ansel adams’ last student, then 22-- eminent now); of al and minnie (a founding member of the california communist party, related to my sister jane by marriage) and daughter laura bock down high willard street; judy pollatsek and her kids josh & jessica; the wolfe’s on farnsworth steps; al palavin; the jaeks, a nice couple w/ kids goldsworths
(he at uc-sf & judy) next to ruth witt’s; & memories of anais nin when she was lodged uphill in a cottage ruth found for her; the then taos-bound dorothy kethler; & in taos, bob eliot, who built
said justine the ideal house; jo lander; florida & angela who worked for the un’s fao in rome; bill
minshew first met in rome; george hitchcock; cass humble; edouard roditi who often returned from france--an old schoolmate of ruth’s at uc berkeley in the 30’s; james broughton; justine van gundy who taught at sf state; her san diego cousin dianne cawood, soprano; diane scott her therapist; tom, stephanie, dante sanchez; always cecelia (“cecel”, “cese”) & b.j., lynn, rudy
hurwich; larry’s nephew robbie berkelman; & “old jack” (w.w.. lyman, jr.) of bayles mill—born there in napa valley 1885--ruth brought me over to meet (‘the oldest living poet’ she’d drive up to bring down to san francisco . i was her gardener & the then young poet, 35, she wanted him to connect with, his wife helen hoyt an esteemed poet who’d been asst editor to harriet monroe at poetry magazine in chicago dead a decade or more by then)(his three volumes of typed memoirs--he lived to1983 leaving a son amos hoyt at bayles mill--are in st. helena, ca public library’s
locked room); & others who make their entries but who’s names now escape me but will possibly come tomorrow; folks we met, knew together--panjandrum press & poetry flash crowds & dennis
koran; richard steger; lennart & sonia bruce; exemplary pals william dickey & adrianne marcus ;shirley kaufman & jack gilbert; laura ulewicz; anthony rudolf; jo-anne rosen; laura beausoleil; david & judy gascoyne ; sybil wood/cooper; sharon coleman; gerald fleming; carl rakosi & marilyn kane. many gone before justine & so many more left because this was a woman
who knew people & was interested in them: remembering her is to consider friends you make in life, who contributed to who you became, you’ve helped, who’ve helped you. final days,weeks, months, years, close were naomi schwartz , josephine moore, gail lubin, christina fisher, toby damon, andrea rubin, marsha trainer, al & eva leveton, ken meacham & pearl, wendy rosado-
berkelman (larry’s sister pearl fixel berkelman’s daughter), her daughter sunya; tom sanchez; cecilia london (justine’s student at uc-berkeley who who returned to justine in those four years after larry’s death as justine’s guide/ social worker), & always stephanie sanchez, bob cantor, naomi, al & eva, george & zdena, cecel & don (ross)—friends, colleagues, confidantes.
accretion. attrition. vale.
[11 OCTOBER 2007]
ooOOoo
[for Justine Jones Fixel (Sept. 5, 1920-Aug. 5, 2007)]
A SEA CHANGE
Fish in a net, old salts,
as the wheels keep turning,
a spinning plate half-dipping
into the Pacific Ocean here
you and I are at Land’s End
on this tilting/raked stage
where great ships foundered.
Their sentences of life, death
are unfinished symphonies;
a future out there our audience
who’ve sailed-in to watch
a sea change, diminishing star
dust a gusher pinkening milky
sunrise, sunset in the gloaming
thickening light a sea scar as
roses silt down the sea to sleep.
The wheel is round; life pushes;
photography winds over time,
westering, voicing the mind’s
brown shale for it will take, it
took a lifetime to flower, to fly,
to sail this sea this widening
light where I hear voices under
the surface of consciousness:
harmony’s memory rising up.
ooOOoo
WHEN JUSTINE FIXEL DIED AUG 5, 2007 JUST ONE MONTH SHORT OF HER 87th BIRTHDAY
when justine jones fixel died aug 5, 2007 just one month short of her 87th birthday. i was brokenhearted. her husband lawrence fixel had been my best friend from the time i came back to san francisco to live. george oppen had introduced us. he was sure we would be great for each other. and justine also became a great friend, and mentor. larry died 4 years ago. she had been very ill, but i just didn't want to have her forgotten. she was at the center of the cultural/literary life of this san francisco area. and she was a great and professional jungian therapist & teacher who also was a painter and artist of assembleges. after she died, i wrote and expanded and corrected the piece on her, the one you have being the one beginning the growing versions that ended with the nov.5 piece of now 4 pages titled GROUP PORTRAIT WITH LADY: JUSTINE JONES FIXEL AND HER KIND SAN FRANCISCO.
I sent many copies of each developing version w/some as submissions and some probably just information copies to spread the work about the end of a time when justine and larry and their friends george oppen, rosalie moore, carl rakosi, josephine miles, and a zillion others lent their intellects and sound moral floor to so many of us then and now so many less alive now. the coda poem "fish in a net" that ended the first group. with george price's help (larry's oldest friend--he was writing professor at sf state) i cut the poem by a third and retitled it "a sea change" from the shakespeare line already in the first poem. in the beginning the piece was more memoir/biography. then i began to see it at cultural history and thus appropriated heinrich boll's GROUP PORTRAIT WITH LADY a novel of 40 years ago and that for me referenced his THE CLOWN as well (portrait of the artist) and also reference to christopher isherwood's CHRISTOPHER AND HIS KIND.
i worked on it 4 months never needing to thinking of publication because i continually corrected it and altered it. no doubt some of this might come under a rubric of "grieving".
at 70 i have lost many kin and many more kith, especially during the aids crisis in the 1980's up through the 1990's primarily. now they are almost all gone.
i just call it cultural history. i am no sociologist, no intellectual, no historian. it hasn't pleased me as writing but it has given me relief to write it--to write it and honor my friends seeing them in such a rosy glow again as if from the beginning.
________________________________________________________________
CONTRIBUTORS NOTES
TERRY GILLMORE, part of the Free Poetry (Sydney) crew of the late '60s (with Nigel Roberts, Johnny Goodall & co). Two published collections, Further, Poems 1966-76 (New Poetry, Sydney, 1977), Surviving the Shadow (Paper Bark Press, Sydney, 1990). Robert Harris wrote of the latter poems, "Love, friendship and poetry have each become more, rather than less, substantial to Terry Gillmore, but differently contoured and wracked on human realities...[he] is, in our time, an Australian Orpheus, and like Orpheus, he is the singer of urgent and neglected knowledge."
KARL GALLAGHER see previous numbers of Poems & Pieces for bio; most recently is represented on the new Meher Baba poets & artists website, http://mehermelb.jimdo.com/
EDWARD MYCUE, San Francisco poet, goes back a long time and with the Australian & English connection (which includes The Merri Creek Or Nero & H/EAR magazines). Has published around 17 books & chapbooks, most recently his selected poems, Mindwalking, 1937-2007 (Philos Press, '08). Other books include Damage Within the Community (Panjandrum, '73), Route, Route & Range : The Song Returns (published by Walter Billeter's Paper Castle, Melbourne, '79), The Singing Man My Father Gave Me (Menard Press,UK, '80), Pink Gardens/Brown Trees (Bernard Hemensley's Stingy Artist/Last Straw Press, UK, '90). Forthcoming is The San Francisco Poems, from Paul Green's Spectacular Diseases Press,UK.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-That's all folks! -done on a wet & blustery Melbourne Sunday afternoon, 27th September, 2009-
Kris Hemensley
Sunday, September 20, 2009
POETS' PORTRAITS
Should you come up to the Shop today you'll be in for a big surprise... and for certain because : charcoals by Raffaella Torresan on the high windows at the far end of the room, portraits of seven Melbourne worthies, drawn at different times in the Nineties, four of whom, sad to say, have died. The upper 4 & lower 3 sequence I've arranged in the window frames features Adrian Rawlins, Shelton Lea, Geoffrey Eggleston & Myron Lysenko, followed by Ted Lord, Colin Talbot & Patrick McCauley. Legends is a better description. Incidentally, I wonder who has drawn the women poets over the years --which isnt to join the "it's all blokes" chorus, since one's a poet ahead or despite of gender (& 'because of' would surely now apply equally)... And, another thought, is it usually women making portraits of men?
The first portrait we acquired was Nancy Buller's water-colour of Peter Bakowksi, mid-'90s. He'd sat for a St Kilda elderly women's art group I seem to recall. A chance purchase --there it was one Sunday, in a church hall or a temporary gallery at the Bowling Club --perhaps it was a St Kilda arts festival. Retta thinks she, Catherine & myself all saw it together. I bought it & someone from their group delivered it to the Shop... Next in the collection was Ashley Higgs' silk-screen of Pi O, which I saw at a Council of Adult Education exhibition in Flinders Street --more a glimpse than a study but the profile's unmistakable in its white on yellow cartoon. Its success depends upon the speed of one's look! Then, Javant Biarujia's hand-coloured photo-montage, Frank Hardy (Brushing Up On A Fallen Hero In An Era of Abstraction And Angst), featuring the laureate of Carringbush & his glowering dog in gentling yellow & sepia. It might be a surprise to many that once upon a time --this work is from 1982, acquired a couple of years ago --Javant was as serious about art-photography as writing. About the same time I bought Grant MacCracken's fiercely funny oil of the busking poet (himself as Sham Cabaret, all black shades & leathers) outside of Paul Elliott's Polyester Books & Music in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy. It was in the window of the Smith Street, Collingwood picture-framers during an exhibition of his signature moonlit grey & white narratives a few years ago. Next, two pen & inks, drawn from photographs I believe, Judy Johnson by Erin Hunting, & John Tranter by Tim Bruce, both from a 2007 Victorian Writers' Centre exhibition of prize-winning authors, curated by Pam Davison. I'm constantly amused when people mistake the Tranter portrait for me! Of course it's not me, I exclaim --it's obviously Tranter! But I do confess the jolly, full cheeks' expression, could be me in a certain frame of mind (probably full of wine)!
There's a suggestion of the curled lip & raised eyebrow in Raffaella's Adrian Rawlins (1990), a touch of Frank Thring or as David Pepperell called him, Dr Nosh --perhaps thinking of the cheese-platter reward after the artist has finished! Shelton Lea (1998) combines street-wise & imperious but vulnerable too. A difficult face to capture because so well known. Geoffrey Eggleston (1994) she entitles 'Geo Egg' ("Come on the Egg!" one of his old mates yelled across the slope at Montsalvat as son, Nathaniel, buried the casket of ashes, reminding me that was the nickname we'd learned from Mike Dugan in the '60s). Flamboyant in cravat, he also wears that wonderfully stoned expression one recalls over the decades, beady-eyed, mirthful yet serene. Myron Lysenko (1995) is boyish, & there's a kind of blur as though the spectacles are necessary to clarify things. Ted Lord (1998), 'Teddy', seems to float out of a long history; he swims in mortal tenderness. Colin Talbot (1995) has a youthful, handsome athlete's face with a hint of smile he's stringing out like a kite. Patrick McCauley (1998), rugged, windblown, the patina left by a harder life, shared in the visages of Shelton & Ted.
Raffaella Torresan literally sees the best in her sitters, the best & not the beast. Her charcoal portraits are affectionate. The affection attracts & communicates life as well as likeness. It's a truism that drawings are more like living things than any photograph can be, and I swear another species of life is enacted here.
__________________
--Kris Hemensley
fin, 20th September,'09--
The first portrait we acquired was Nancy Buller's water-colour of Peter Bakowksi, mid-'90s. He'd sat for a St Kilda elderly women's art group I seem to recall. A chance purchase --there it was one Sunday, in a church hall or a temporary gallery at the Bowling Club --perhaps it was a St Kilda arts festival. Retta thinks she, Catherine & myself all saw it together. I bought it & someone from their group delivered it to the Shop... Next in the collection was Ashley Higgs' silk-screen of Pi O, which I saw at a Council of Adult Education exhibition in Flinders Street --more a glimpse than a study but the profile's unmistakable in its white on yellow cartoon. Its success depends upon the speed of one's look! Then, Javant Biarujia's hand-coloured photo-montage, Frank Hardy (Brushing Up On A Fallen Hero In An Era of Abstraction And Angst), featuring the laureate of Carringbush & his glowering dog in gentling yellow & sepia. It might be a surprise to many that once upon a time --this work is from 1982, acquired a couple of years ago --Javant was as serious about art-photography as writing. About the same time I bought Grant MacCracken's fiercely funny oil of the busking poet (himself as Sham Cabaret, all black shades & leathers) outside of Paul Elliott's Polyester Books & Music in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy. It was in the window of the Smith Street, Collingwood picture-framers during an exhibition of his signature moonlit grey & white narratives a few years ago. Next, two pen & inks, drawn from photographs I believe, Judy Johnson by Erin Hunting, & John Tranter by Tim Bruce, both from a 2007 Victorian Writers' Centre exhibition of prize-winning authors, curated by Pam Davison. I'm constantly amused when people mistake the Tranter portrait for me! Of course it's not me, I exclaim --it's obviously Tranter! But I do confess the jolly, full cheeks' expression, could be me in a certain frame of mind (probably full of wine)!
There's a suggestion of the curled lip & raised eyebrow in Raffaella's Adrian Rawlins (1990), a touch of Frank Thring or as David Pepperell called him, Dr Nosh --perhaps thinking of the cheese-platter reward after the artist has finished! Shelton Lea (1998) combines street-wise & imperious but vulnerable too. A difficult face to capture because so well known. Geoffrey Eggleston (1994) she entitles 'Geo Egg' ("Come on the Egg!" one of his old mates yelled across the slope at Montsalvat as son, Nathaniel, buried the casket of ashes, reminding me that was the nickname we'd learned from Mike Dugan in the '60s). Flamboyant in cravat, he also wears that wonderfully stoned expression one recalls over the decades, beady-eyed, mirthful yet serene. Myron Lysenko (1995) is boyish, & there's a kind of blur as though the spectacles are necessary to clarify things. Ted Lord (1998), 'Teddy', seems to float out of a long history; he swims in mortal tenderness. Colin Talbot (1995) has a youthful, handsome athlete's face with a hint of smile he's stringing out like a kite. Patrick McCauley (1998), rugged, windblown, the patina left by a harder life, shared in the visages of Shelton & Ted.
Raffaella Torresan literally sees the best in her sitters, the best & not the beast. Her charcoal portraits are affectionate. The affection attracts & communicates life as well as likeness. It's a truism that drawings are more like living things than any photograph can be, and I swear another species of life is enacted here.
__________________
--Kris Hemensley
fin, 20th September,'09--
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
THE LIFE AND POETRY OF SHELTON LEA
COLIN TALBOT
SHELTON, PRINCE OF FITZROY
(a review of Delinquent Angel, the biography of Shelton Lea by Diana Georgeff, published Random House, Australia, 2007.)
romantic |rōˈmantik; rə-|
adjective
1 inclined toward or suggestive of the feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love : a romantic candlelit dinner.
• relating to love, esp. in a sentimental or idealized way : a romantic comedy.
See note at sentimental .
2 . of, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealized view of reality : a romantic attitude toward the past | some romantic dream of country peace.
3 (usu. Romantic) of, relating to, or denoting the artistic and literary movement of Romanticism : the Romantic tradition.
noun
a person with romantic beliefs or attitudes : I am an incurable romantic.
• (usu. Romantic) a writer or artist of the Romantic movement.
DERIVATIVES
romantically |-ik(ə)lē| |roʊˈmøn(t)ək(ə)li| adverb
ORIGIN mid 17th cent. (referring to the characteristics of romance in a narrative): from archaic romaunt [tale of chivalry,] from an Old French variant of romanz (see romance ).
When I heard there was a biography of Shelton coming out, it was a bag of mixed emotions. Good that the enfant terrible was to be noted, celebrated probably, by the machine which loves to punish poets in the worst way – that is, to ignore and to not publish. And emotions from a darker zone because I had not been consulted for biographical data. I coulda been a contender, I could have been somebody in that biography.
Okay…To be sure to be sure, I was but a minor player in just the B Role of Shelley’s (I was gonna say ‘braggadocio’ life. But I don’t mean that in a rude way, I think I mean ‘shining’, or ‘romantic’) life. But like all of us who knew him, I felt that I knew him.
There had been one line which only Shelton, a policewoman, a quite comatose drunk and I were witness to. Reading the book, as I have now done, I can see that the comment by Shelton to the ‘jack’ really was made for this book. It was perfect as a window into his way, into the journey and moral righteousness that was this knockabout poet. Shelley was a lover. A lover of life. Abide with me while I regail:
Spinning out of the Albion Hotel *one night, Shelton and I were headed Christ Knows Where(* the Albion was on the corner of Lygon and Faraday in Carlton, now replaced by a frock shop and in the early seventies, chockerblock with artists/panhandlers/pricks/ponces/partygoers/poets/physicists/novelists/Pram Factory etc etc plus the odd murderer) when he spots a policewoman with a divvy van (we used to call them the Black Maria back in South Australia—or my Scots grandmother did, and maybe it is so in Victoria too) loading a bloke in to the lock-up.
Shelton is outraged at the spectacle and confronts the uniformed woman with a snarled (and I quote verbatim because of the strong impression of the moment…) "Any man who turns the key on another man is a dog!”
I got him out of there, as I didn’t want to see us in the divvy van too, and the copper was glad to see the back of us.
The title of the book about Shelton – Delinquent Angel – is a just title. It is perfect for the boy. And I do like the book. With reservations. It has been researched up the keister, apart from missing out on a few essential spectators to the Romantic life that Shelton lead.
A friend of ours, Billy Baker (not a poet, not a published poet, but a face from the Albion and the times) ran with Shelton in the teenage years. Billy knew a lot, a real lot about Shelton in those years. The author did speak to Billy on the phone but I suspect she missed a lot of pure gold to be had by an afternoon with Bill talking of Shelley.
That said, the book has many (though not a daunting amount of) pages and reads well and full. Like all great persons, Shelton lead a life that could serve to fill the pages of more than one biography, and each would be worthy…well here I’m in truly hypothetical space, so I’ll say potentially worthy.
I first met Shelton when I wrote for a counter-culture newspaper named The Digger. IT was a great paper, a broadsheet and acknowledged worldwide in the alternative scene as being a class act. Names like (well, actually and in fact) Helen Garner, Virginia Frazer, Phillip Fraser (I think the ‘s’ and ‘z’ are where they ought be), Garrie Hutchinson, Bill Garner, Jenny Brown (now Jenjewel), Ponch Hawkes etc etc worked for the rag.
I had reviewed a book by Shelton and I think the collection included a poem with a line about hammering a dog to death, and I reacted to it. Also Shelton sometimes was a trifle majestic with his language and I being not a great fan of the prosaic. … though some might contend otherwise… anyway, the review I gave was ‘mixed’.
And by chance a few days after publication of the review, at The Albion, someone said that Shelton Lea, I didn’t yet know him, was there. I went up and introduced myself. I said I had written the review. Shelton said he'd read it. Now Shelton wasn’t built like a brick shithouse and his fighting skills were never formalised, as far as I know, and he had no karate belts or martial arts gradings. I was taller and weighed in a division or two heavier. But he could summon the hard eye of a bloke who’ll happily go in. Especially when the honour of someone has been tarnished. In this case, his.
But he said, not in these exact words but near enough…that he respected honesty, as in my equivocating review, and he appreciated that I had faced up to him. Shelley had dash, and he admired it in others, even if, as in my case, the dash was fleeting and minor.
I immediately liked him, and not just because he had no plans to deck me.
Shelton was the true spirit of poetry. The wanderer, you might catch him at a hippy poetry reading here, a library ladies luncheon reading there, or jumping up on the bar of a rough pub somewhere inland to read his work, and almost beggin’ for a punch in the gob.
Over the years I can’t remember a time when to run into Shelton was not an uplifting moment…well, maybe the odd time when he was too pissed to perambulate, or too stoned to dig into his pocket and share what was making him fly.
Hard Time One: He was really angry when the publishing company I was a founding member of –Outback Press – stuffed up the publishing of his poetry collection, The Palatine Madonna, misspelling the cover to make ‘Palantine’.
Of course there is always the obligation of the writer to proofread (you the writer of the book are the one who cares most and knows most, and the chance will never comer again) but…the publisher must wear it. I said to Shelley that I too thought it was shabby and then made it clear that I had been cleaned out of Outback Press (with Mark Gillespie) and that Fred Milgrom and Morrie Schwartz, who had tipped out Mark and me, were the responsible ones. But I won’t venture further down this memory lane, that dark time is not for this review.
Hard Time Two: And the only other time was when somehow he ended up with what I thought was a rare copy of a theosophy book by Madam Blavatsky that had started out that day being owned by me…he didn’t nick it, I gave it to him, but I suspect there was so me sort of hypnosis thing happening. And really, madam Blavatsky wasn’t all that important. Actually I’m just saying that, I wouldn’t know either way.
Speaking of Times: The last time I saw Shelton was at Shelton and (his partner in life) Lee’s place for dinner, a few months before he left this world for parts unknown, or left in parts and unknown, when he invited me and my friend Liz, and a handful of poets, to celebrate the launch of Raffaella Torresan’s book of photography of poets reading live around Melbourne.
Shelton had acted as publisher, and I had written the cover notes. There was, at the dinner party, unfortunately, a moment were voices were raised over an issue (an issue I took seriously), things got a bit testy and Shelton watched from the sidelines. He didn’t jump in and up hold the honor of the situation, as I just assumed (but was not encouraging or wanting or hoping for) would happen. And I guess that’s when I felt something was up with his state…more than just the crook ankle that the walking cane and the slow release morphine started. For normally Shelley would have been front and square.
I don’t mean for this to sound like I think I was a close friend or that I knew Shelley well. Many others knew him better for longer and in a more real way. But I was a close friend and knew him well. (That’s the sort of statement Socrates could make I reckon.)
When he had his bookshop up in North Fitzroy called Dehavillands (the significance is mentioned in the biography I think), I had a book I’d written called The Zen Detective (it was totally unpublicised by the publisher so you’d never know it had been released) and I placed a few in his shop. Sometimes I got cash from a sale (but I kept sales records, I hasten to mention), sometimes, if he was short, I’d swap my sale for a book or two in his shop, and more often than I wished, the invoice had sort of slipped behind a cabinet and we didn’t know what had sold or what he held…After a while, I realised that it didn’t really matter. It was simply a reason to visit, a transaction to have while Shell sat in the back room smoking tobacco lacerated dope, drinking mild grog and swallowing slow-acting morphine (for a broken foot).
It wasn’t as if I thought his poetry was the greatest – but apart from John Forbes and Kris Hemensley and a couple of others, Judith Wright, Slessor, CJ Dennis, I dunno… okay there are heaps of good ones, I dunno…I am not a massive unquestioning fan of modern poetry anymore– but his presence as a poet was perfect. He was poetry. Now that sounds a wee naff, but I dunno how else to say it. Errol Flynn, Lord Byron, Rimbaud, oh yeah,
Shelley…
But back to the book. And I liked the book,to read it is to get a feeling for the regard in which Shelton was held. Is to understand a little of why the title Delinquent Angel is just right. How the wee Shelton was abused, and it is awful to read of this abuse. That poetry saved his life from much much more crime and sorrow is just true.
That poetry gave a grand focus for the rough diamond light blazing from his soul is beyond dispute.
Now there is an episode in the book where Shelton is at a poets' pub in Sydney, I think it was the Rose, Shamrock and Thistle, called the three weeds by locals and poets – I see Wales didn’t get a look-in, I dunno what their national flower is– at a poetry night and Shelton emptied his bladder on a row of Hell’s Angels' Harleys (I think they were Harleys).
I read in the book that Robert Adamson thought it had to be an accident and someone else thought it was deliberate. The outcome was Shelley was bashed a bit by the bikies when they came out.
Well, friends, it was deliberate because I was there, beggin him (well, begging is a bit strong, let’s say trying to appeal to a drunk Shelton’s reason, when he was already upset at the way the bikies were acting inside the pub – and I have no idea what the problem was, but Shelley felt his honor was besmirched, whatever) not to do what I feared he was about to do.
We’d left the hotel together to do what I can’t recall, he saw the row of bikes, I saw the light in his eyes raise in radiance, and he changed the direction of his minor alcoholic stagger. Then he fumbled with the zip of his fly and I yelled out ‘Shelton, don’t, please' (a few tries) and then ‘Shelley, I’m not going to back you up on this one, Shelley you’re on your own..dont please’ etc etc.
Yeah, I admit it, I never had much dash, and Shelton had it by the wheatbag full—although Shelley’s was coupled with a chaotic edge, often.
So he pissed on the bikes, the bikies came out, true to my word I sat back and watched as half a dozen leather clad blokes knocked Shelley about a bit. I mean, he had just done a pee on their prides n joy. He fought back as best he could.
When they stopped, I probably helped him up, I dunno. He had a split lip. Blood. He was happy. Another stoush when he was five out. So if there’s a second edition of Delinquent Angel, I offer this version as the whole truth of a moment in Shelton’s remarkable life.
Take two: Now after writing the above, as luck would have it, the next day I was at lunch in Windsor with Jen Jewel Brown, who is a poet and was Jenny Brown when she wrote for The Digger so many years ago, and she is also literary executrix for Shelley’s Estate. Jen says that there is not a lot of happiness about the biography. For instance she says there is dispute over the use of Shelley’s poetry in the book (a lot is used) and that there are rights’ issues. Among other issues. I will not here break the privilege Jen’s conversation details with me. But it was necessary to mention the above, I felt. If you want to read one view of his life, the biography exists. Yet there was much more to Shelley’s life, and many more views and angles are yet to be shown the light.
If you want to read his work, go to Shelley’s books of poetry.
And that is where I leave it.
colin talbot st kilda july 2009
-------------------------------------------
Colin Talbot is a self-described "minor Victorian novelist". An ex rock columnist for The Australian and existential columnist for Richard Neville's Living Daylights newspaper, he was a founding director of Outback Press in the '70s. Wrote & directed the feature film Sweethearts from his own novel. Last published novel was The Zen Detective. Web, www.travenworld.com/
SHELTON, PRINCE OF FITZROY
(a review of Delinquent Angel, the biography of Shelton Lea by Diana Georgeff, published Random House, Australia, 2007.)
romantic |rōˈmantik; rə-|
adjective
1 inclined toward or suggestive of the feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love : a romantic candlelit dinner.
• relating to love, esp. in a sentimental or idealized way : a romantic comedy.
See note at sentimental .
2 . of, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealized view of reality : a romantic attitude toward the past | some romantic dream of country peace.
3 (usu. Romantic) of, relating to, or denoting the artistic and literary movement of Romanticism : the Romantic tradition.
noun
a person with romantic beliefs or attitudes : I am an incurable romantic.
• (usu. Romantic) a writer or artist of the Romantic movement.
DERIVATIVES
romantically |-ik(ə)lē| |roʊˈmøn(t)ək(ə)li| adverb
ORIGIN mid 17th cent. (referring to the characteristics of romance in a narrative): from archaic romaunt [tale of chivalry,] from an Old French variant of romanz (see romance ).
When I heard there was a biography of Shelton coming out, it was a bag of mixed emotions. Good that the enfant terrible was to be noted, celebrated probably, by the machine which loves to punish poets in the worst way – that is, to ignore and to not publish. And emotions from a darker zone because I had not been consulted for biographical data. I coulda been a contender, I could have been somebody in that biography.
Okay…To be sure to be sure, I was but a minor player in just the B Role of Shelley’s (I was gonna say ‘braggadocio’ life. But I don’t mean that in a rude way, I think I mean ‘shining’, or ‘romantic’) life. But like all of us who knew him, I felt that I knew him.
There had been one line which only Shelton, a policewoman, a quite comatose drunk and I were witness to. Reading the book, as I have now done, I can see that the comment by Shelton to the ‘jack’ really was made for this book. It was perfect as a window into his way, into the journey and moral righteousness that was this knockabout poet. Shelley was a lover. A lover of life. Abide with me while I regail:
Spinning out of the Albion Hotel *one night, Shelton and I were headed Christ Knows Where(* the Albion was on the corner of Lygon and Faraday in Carlton, now replaced by a frock shop and in the early seventies, chockerblock with artists/panhandlers/pricks/
Shelton is outraged at the spectacle and confronts the uniformed woman with a snarled (and I quote verbatim because of the strong impression of the moment…) "Any man who turns the key on another man is a dog!”
I got him out of there, as I didn’t want to see us in the divvy van too, and the copper was glad to see the back of us.
The title of the book about Shelton – Delinquent Angel – is a just title. It is perfect for the boy. And I do like the book. With reservations. It has been researched up the keister, apart from missing out on a few essential spectators to the Romantic life that Shelton lead.
A friend of ours, Billy Baker (not a poet, not a published poet, but a face from the Albion and the times) ran with Shelton in the teenage years. Billy knew a lot, a real lot about Shelton in those years. The author did speak to Billy on the phone but I suspect she missed a lot of pure gold to be had by an afternoon with Bill talking of Shelley.
That said, the book has many (though not a daunting amount of) pages and reads well and full. Like all great persons, Shelton lead a life that could serve to fill the pages of more than one biography, and each would be worthy…well here I’m in truly hypothetical space, so I’ll say potentially worthy.
I first met Shelton when I wrote for a counter-culture newspaper named The Digger. IT was a great paper, a broadsheet and acknowledged worldwide in the alternative scene as being a class act. Names like (well, actually and in fact) Helen Garner, Virginia Frazer, Phillip Fraser (I think the ‘s’ and ‘z’ are where they ought be), Garrie Hutchinson, Bill Garner, Jenny Brown (now Jenjewel), Ponch Hawkes etc etc worked for the rag.
I had reviewed a book by Shelton and I think the collection included a poem with a line about hammering a dog to death, and I reacted to it. Also Shelton sometimes was a trifle majestic with his language and I being not a great fan of the prosaic. … though some might contend otherwise… anyway, the review I gave was ‘mixed’.
And by chance a few days after publication of the review, at The Albion, someone said that Shelton Lea, I didn’t yet know him, was there. I went up and introduced myself. I said I had written the review. Shelton said he'd read it. Now Shelton wasn’t built like a brick shithouse and his fighting skills were never formalised, as far as I know, and he had no karate belts or martial arts gradings. I was taller and weighed in a division or two heavier. But he could summon the hard eye of a bloke who’ll happily go in. Especially when the honour of someone has been tarnished. In this case, his.
But he said, not in these exact words but near enough…that he respected honesty, as in my equivocating review, and he appreciated that I had faced up to him. Shelley had dash, and he admired it in others, even if, as in my case, the dash was fleeting and minor.
I immediately liked him, and not just because he had no plans to deck me.
Shelton was the true spirit of poetry. The wanderer, you might catch him at a hippy poetry reading here, a library ladies luncheon reading there, or jumping up on the bar of a rough pub somewhere inland to read his work, and almost beggin’ for a punch in the gob.
Over the years I can’t remember a time when to run into Shelton was not an uplifting moment…well, maybe the odd time when he was too pissed to perambulate, or too stoned to dig into his pocket and share what was making him fly.
Hard Time One: He was really angry when the publishing company I was a founding member of –Outback Press – stuffed up the publishing of his poetry collection, The Palatine Madonna, misspelling the cover to make ‘Palantine’.
Of course there is always the obligation of the writer to proofread (you the writer of the book are the one who cares most and knows most, and the chance will never comer again) but…the publisher must wear it. I said to Shelley that I too thought it was shabby and then made it clear that I had been cleaned out of Outback Press (with Mark Gillespie) and that Fred Milgrom and Morrie Schwartz, who had tipped out Mark and me, were the responsible ones. But I won’t venture further down this memory lane, that dark time is not for this review.
Hard Time Two: And the only other time was when somehow he ended up with what I thought was a rare copy of a theosophy book by Madam Blavatsky that had started out that day being owned by me…he didn’t nick it, I gave it to him, but I suspect there was so me sort of hypnosis thing happening. And really, madam Blavatsky wasn’t all that important. Actually I’m just saying that, I wouldn’t know either way.
Speaking of Times: The last time I saw Shelton was at Shelton and (his partner in life) Lee’s place for dinner, a few months before he left this world for parts unknown, or left in parts and unknown, when he invited me and my friend Liz, and a handful of poets, to celebrate the launch of Raffaella Torresan’s book of photography of poets reading live around Melbourne.
Shelton had acted as publisher, and I had written the cover notes. There was, at the dinner party, unfortunately, a moment were voices were raised over an issue (an issue I took seriously), things got a bit testy and Shelton watched from the sidelines. He didn’t jump in and up hold the honor of the situation, as I just assumed (but was not encouraging or wanting or hoping for) would happen. And I guess that’s when I felt something was up with his state…more than just the crook ankle that the walking cane and the slow release morphine started. For normally Shelley would have been front and square.
I don’t mean for this to sound like I think I was a close friend or that I knew Shelley well. Many others knew him better for longer and in a more real way. But I was a close friend and knew him well. (That’s the sort of statement Socrates could make I reckon.)
When he had his bookshop up in North Fitzroy called Dehavillands (the significance is mentioned in the biography I think), I had a book I’d written called The Zen Detective (it was totally unpublicised by the publisher so you’d never know it had been released) and I placed a few in his shop. Sometimes I got cash from a sale (but I kept sales records, I hasten to mention), sometimes, if he was short, I’d swap my sale for a book or two in his shop, and more often than I wished, the invoice had sort of slipped behind a cabinet and we didn’t know what had sold or what he held…After a while, I realised that it didn’t really matter. It was simply a reason to visit, a transaction to have while Shell sat in the back room smoking tobacco lacerated dope, drinking mild grog and swallowing slow-acting morphine (for a broken foot).
It wasn’t as if I thought his poetry was the greatest – but apart from John Forbes and Kris Hemensley and a couple of others, Judith Wright, Slessor, CJ Dennis, I dunno… okay there are heaps of good ones, I dunno…I am not a massive unquestioning fan of modern poetry anymore– but his presence as a poet was perfect. He was poetry. Now that sounds a wee naff, but I dunno how else to say it. Errol Flynn, Lord Byron, Rimbaud, oh yeah,
Shelley…
But back to the book. And I liked the book,to read it is to get a feeling for the regard in which Shelton was held. Is to understand a little of why the title Delinquent Angel is just right. How the wee Shelton was abused, and it is awful to read of this abuse. That poetry saved his life from much much more crime and sorrow is just true.
That poetry gave a grand focus for the rough diamond light blazing from his soul is beyond dispute.
Now there is an episode in the book where Shelton is at a poets' pub in Sydney, I think it was the Rose, Shamrock and Thistle, called the three weeds by locals and poets – I see Wales didn’t get a look-in, I dunno what their national flower is– at a poetry night and Shelton emptied his bladder on a row of Hell’s Angels' Harleys (I think they were Harleys).
I read in the book that Robert Adamson thought it had to be an accident and someone else thought it was deliberate. The outcome was Shelley was bashed a bit by the bikies when they came out.
Well, friends, it was deliberate because I was there, beggin him (well, begging is a bit strong, let’s say trying to appeal to a drunk Shelton’s reason, when he was already upset at the way the bikies were acting inside the pub – and I have no idea what the problem was, but Shelley felt his honor was besmirched, whatever) not to do what I feared he was about to do.
We’d left the hotel together to do what I can’t recall, he saw the row of bikes, I saw the light in his eyes raise in radiance, and he changed the direction of his minor alcoholic stagger. Then he fumbled with the zip of his fly and I yelled out ‘Shelton, don’t, please' (a few tries) and then ‘Shelley, I’m not going to back you up on this one, Shelley you’re on your own..dont please’ etc etc.
Yeah, I admit it, I never had much dash, and Shelton had it by the wheatbag full—although Shelley’s was coupled with a chaotic edge, often.
So he pissed on the bikes, the bikies came out, true to my word I sat back and watched as half a dozen leather clad blokes knocked Shelley about a bit. I mean, he had just done a pee on their prides n joy. He fought back as best he could.
When they stopped, I probably helped him up, I dunno. He had a split lip. Blood. He was happy. Another stoush when he was five out. So if there’s a second edition of Delinquent Angel, I offer this version as the whole truth of a moment in Shelton’s remarkable life.
Take two: Now after writing the above, as luck would have it, the next day I was at lunch in Windsor with Jen Jewel Brown, who is a poet and was Jenny Brown when she wrote for The Digger so many years ago, and she is also literary executrix for Shelley’s Estate. Jen says that there is not a lot of happiness about the biography. For instance she says there is dispute over the use of Shelley’s poetry in the book (a lot is used) and that there are rights’ issues. Among other issues. I will not here break the privilege Jen’s conversation details with me. But it was necessary to mention the above, I felt. If you want to read one view of his life, the biography exists. Yet there was much more to Shelley’s life, and many more views and angles are yet to be shown the light.
If you want to read his work, go to Shelley’s books of poetry.
And that is where I leave it.
colin talbot st kilda july 2009
-------------------------------------------
Colin Talbot is a self-described "minor Victorian novelist". An ex rock columnist for The Australian and existential columnist for Richard Neville's Living Daylights newspaper, he was a founding director of Outback Press in the '70s. Wrote & directed the feature film Sweethearts from his own novel. Last published novel was The Zen Detective. Web, www.travenworld.com/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)