Fort Lauderdale, Foonerary—All equals here have been called into suck office. General Suckface has fired Fleabane, his cat. Mother McCree has knock-knees. It's better to be lame than mordant. Or better to Picasso than pee. Or, Gertrude Stein has talked to Ann Quin. Quin was Mistress on a Talk Show and interviewed Stein about her past. "It all came out in an equal struggle," she said, passing Alice to Ann. Ann was gracious as a Hostess at tea. "Our British charm will delight."
"Yes, you are a sight, a sight," Gertrude then replied.
Stress Ejector Ejects Saints As Well As Sinners.
"Thus we do not age but only begin to understand the process," Gertrude said. Ann asked her what the weather was on Mars.
"On Mars, on Venus too," Gertrude responded. "The ability to respond is the response of responsibility," Robert Duncan rejoined as Gertrude cross-examined her host.
Ann Quin quintessenced.
"It is foggy in Norway and the horns are blowing on Capricorn," Henry Miller came back from the dead and said.
"What stories are you writing now," Ann asked either of them.
"I am telling them," Gertrude said. Henry went back to the dead.
"I am telling them through people who want me to write through them."
"Are you functioning as a medium?"
"I am simply doing my morning thing the way I always have. Sometimes someone picks up on it & carries it out the door."
Ann was intrigued: this struck a very near bell. "Then you, Miss Stein, have become muse to many."
"I feel it is so," Gertrude said, "someone carries my writing out the door. Death is more than I can write in heaven. Heaven, hell, earth, puddin-tame, it's all in a name."
"And you my dear girl," Gertrude said to Ann, "after you walked off into the sea, have become quite a mystery."
"I've come back from obscurity," Ann said, "to recover my sanity, to put things more on an even keel, to renew my audience, to wave my hand & talk, with a laugh that hits to the mark.
"What do you think, Miss Stein, of the women's movement of during the last two decades?"
"It's graying, but it will spark out again. Things always spark out from graying."
Gertrude Stein (1974-1946)
Ann Quin (1936-1973)
Larry Goodell / Placitas, New Mexico
The concepts
of the expression
of metaphoric use
of ice cream
of locales
of icons
of decals
of layered usage
of the shrine
of tradition
of the ignorance
of grammar
of grandparent generation
of imagination
of the rejection
of the mother-tongue
of the infernal growth
of the colloquial transformation
between the toes
is the use
of physical silence
transparent bifurcation
of glottal stops
of the organ stops
of the lower
subeternal desiccated
liver tones
of the closure
of the open rejection
of the writing
of the below freezing temperatures
of the sweat off
the left brain
of the right positive Messianic side
of the exploitable viable blank wall
of poetry of
the implicit seizure
of the ghost parallel
of the talking illusion
of the construction
of life
of the mind mode
of the assertion
of the polarity
of the cross-talk pop stress
between ironic involvement
with dismemberment
of the vowel and the diphthong
of manipulative emotion
of the disfigured poet
of gargoyles
of sound
of inklings
of the sententious exclusion
of ecstacy deballed
of politics
hairline schizophrenic mumbo-jumbo
of the idiotic god lecture
of lexicon maggots
stone crazy tautology
of infinitude disagreement
of the word accorded weight
of ass-air elegance
of escaping roles
of head-on problem frying
egg-head ad nauseam
of lecture pictographic
word-root bleach
of subliminal symmetry
and meaningless meaning
of of-ness
writing talks of text-snatching
of indecipherable multi-dialects
of uncertain categories
of dissimulated signs
of conceptualized ding-dongs
the more I think about it
the more I prefer
disembodied burps and
high-low open-closed
raw-cooked tomatoes.
larry goodell / placitas, new mexico
Larry Goodell was born in 1935 in Roswell, New Mexico, where crossing cattle trails meet the Pecos River. He is married to Lenore Goodell, photographer & phenologist, and has lived in Placitas since 1963, extending poetry into its ceremonial roots—performance, masks, costume, lighting, song, scene, with cloth or painted backings to poems when appropriate. Although tagged as a performance poet since the early 60's he loves the printed page and founded duende press in '64.
Books: Cycles, 1966 (duende press), Firecracker Soup, 1990 (Cinco Puntos Press), Here on Earth, 1996 (La Alameda Press). His online work is on the move, see About.Me/LarryGoodell for interviews, articles, numerous poems, plays, songs and a blog on three-dimensional poetry.
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