Friday, March 31, 2006

Thanks

I want to thank all of you whom have already joined in the buzz for "Kisses for Karma" and encourage all of you who have not yet made the pilgimage to head to the
Radio City of Legends
site and en joi!

I'm off to spend some quality time with my boys...be back late Sunday...in the meantime, consider what you are going to do to help make National Poetry Month a success. Seriously.

I plan to make this the best month of my life for writing, ever, eclipsing even November of 1973, December of 1995 and, of course, April of 2004. Let's take this trip together...I want to hear poems and eloquences, I want to be inspired, fired and wired (taking applications for a permanent muse, soemthing in a goddess, size whatever). I want it all to be a time that we look back on as both a great season of creativity, but also the launching point for something truly epic.

Oh, and E.J.? Try not to make a muck of the place while I'm gone...virtual messes are still messes.

Friday Morning and "Kisses..." is up

Okay, got the show up for this week...go to Radio City of Legends if you want the whole pie...

We got a good cover for Tag's book, finally...I think we're both happy with it. That takes a load off of me...

I'm going to go see my sons this weekend, which means my blogging may be spotty, if at all...but E.J. is welcome to publicly demonstrate his lack of respect for my readers and the English language.

I see where, the week after I'm reading and signing at Barnes and Noble, Eileen McKinney will be taking the same spot. If you don't know the estemmed Ms. McKinney, she is the West Virginia Poet Laureate and an excellent bard in her own write. Check her out either in person or at least via the web this month.

This is sizing up to be one of my most un-public National Poetry Months ever...and people wonder why I miss California...

I am extremely gratitifed at the response to "Kisses for Karma"...thank you all who have downloaded the new composition and responded to it. E.J. has talked me into doing an interview later this month...oh goodie, more softball pap for questions.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Two hearts in the happy ending machine...tbd

The call for me to do a new CD has intensified since the releases of "Kisses for Karma" (yes, I know it is only a day old, but that's the beauty of the world-wide-web, almost instant gratification). I'm not taking a position on this, as I want time to evaluate how I would approach it, market it, distribute it...and there is the question of content. Give me a few days to think about it, m'kay?

Excellent, just excellent episode of LOST last night. Between the recent quality of it, 24 and these final episodes of THE WEST WING, we seem to be living in a Garden of Eden for well-made television (and let us not forget last week's season finale of THE SHIELD).

Someone wrote the other day and asked where they could find a copy of my poem "Small Hands" for Mother's Day. I wish I knew. Originally posted to a site called CyberVines, it and a half dozen other unreplicated works were lost when that site went down. Repeated emails to the site owners were not responded to, so I finally just wrote off that poem and the others, including "Salieri's Children" (which I think I recall enough of to replicate someday). If any of my readers out there did make print outs of my works from that site, drop me a line...I'll gladly swap an autographed volume or two for a copy.

I have been asked to explain my phrase "kisses for karma", which is the title of the new work and also the line appears in a few earlier poems of mine. I can only offer my sincere insight:

"Kisses for Karma" is my take on the old Beatles' line "And, in the end...the love you take is equal to the love you make". I think that either it is, or it should be, that the love you find, the joy in your life, should be tied to the sincerity, instensity and purity of your passion and love for others, particularly your lover. Yeah, I have screwed things up, more than once, but on the whole I have been an earnest suitor, and I've paid a penance in dishonest, disingenuous and deceitful lovers as much as or more than I have ever been feckless or false.

In the end, I hope it is true that you trade "kisses for karma", that the universe judges you by the purpose behind your actions, and your actions themselves, in determining the happily ever after. I can honestly say that in the vast majority of situations, I have gone the furthest in my relationships. I still hold out the hope for the happy ending, to paraphase Darryl Hall, I'd be satisfied with "two hearts in the happy ending machine".

A recent acquaintance and I were discussing our relationship histories and she paused and said "you don't have relationships, you take on projects"...yep. What most of my former lovers and my mother long ago observed is obvious still. Whether due to a need to do penance for some past sins, or just a desire to be a good guy, or a vision of the need to be filled, I have a history of sacrificing myself on the altar of love, out a desire to help the most bruised person in the room. That's probably why I am attracted to truly, truly damaged people so often.

Hey, somebody needs to do the heavy lifting, and what do you do when a beautiful friend leans on your shoulder and says "I don't think I could live without you in my life, save me"?

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Congratulations, Prince

Congratulations to the artists known as Prince, for placing his first #1 debut on the charts with "3121"...

'bout damn time. Guess he's not face down, like Warners' thought.

Kisses for Karma: World Premiere

Okay, people, here it is...raising the bar again...there are days I hate myself for this sort of thing.

Kisses for Karma

The full text of the poem is:

kisses for karma
dreams of the damned
lost in the silence
as doorways are slammed

where is my goddess
what is my dream
where is the promise
that answers the theme

shall I seduce you
or am I too late
as you slide from my rescue
rejecting your fate

kisses for karma
dreams of the damned
lost in the silence
as doorways are slammed

I am forever
bound to your light
let this be more
than a memory of night

kisses for karma
dreams of the damned
lost in the silence
as doorways are slammed


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.


watch out for the horns and harmonica, they sneak up on you.

This piece will be a major part of this week's podcast, but I decided to make it available as "a single" for those who just want it for their players or computers. I'm really quite pleased...hmmm...pleased...more like delighted. Okay, confused and bewildered that I made something that sounded this good.

The poem is actually subject to two different readings, and to be honest it is actually both at the same time: Wistful and hopeful, while at the same time tragic and wounded. The story of my life, so far.

awake and moving

I need to hone my time management skills if I am going to succeed in all the ventures I have taken on. The sheer magnitude of what I have promised my readers is startling when I step bac and examine it with a dispassionate eye.

We'll see how that goes. I slept well and listened to the recording...I am still happy with it.

I also had a chance last night to speak to Danielle Mundy, who is probably going to be a guest on the show within the next two months. Extremely talented, she'll shake things up a bit.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Kisses for Karma, it is

I finished it..."Kisses for Karma" will be the centerpiece of this week's show. Phew...I won't change it, at all...I quit art because I had the tendency to touch and retouch and retouch. It's why I became a first draft poet...I break more than I fix with tinkering.

Had a pleasant evening with Tag at B&N...we discussed poetry, he really seems to be getting into the villanelle form...it is addictive, as I recall...I once wrote an entire cycle of poems in it...and had threatened to do an entire book of just villanelles.

I told him of a young woman I had encountered that I found intriguing...he was supportive. I think he has noted I am starting to come out of my shell. That is what friends do, they emotionally support their friends. It is good to have a few friends, I think. Between Tag, Anastacia and Alan, it makes a difference in the world.

The production on "Kisses for Karma" has left me drained for the moment, so I shall get some rest.

KIsses for Karma

The baying of the hounds tell me what I already knew...I can't sing. Oh, I can carry a tune, but to compose a song from my own works, it is not practical...

So, while working on ths week's podcast, I have taken the remarkable musical composition I have constructed and assembled a spoken word track to it, of my work "kisses for karma", which was actually inspired by the music. (was that inspired or insipid? I really cannot tell)

Anyway...

I'm almost done with the show, so I am going to unwind by going out to Barnes and Noble and debate poetry with Tag while we girl watch. I'll finish the edits tomorrow night after "Lost", then completely tear it apart and redo it at the last minute Thursday and Friday, as that is what artists do...

Hey, I didn't invent the process, talk to God.

running out the door as I check my FreeFind report

I love my weekly FreeFind report. It tells me what, to visitors on the site, was a point of curiosity for them. Whether they were looking for a specific poem or line, or a concept.

This week, on The City of Legends...

Strong interest in female body parts, particularly phrases for the genitals and secondary secondary characteristics (not a lot of hits, since I am more into deification than objectification of women...yes, I love women's bodies (I think I remember what they look like) but the person is more important than the appendage). Guys, I don't use THOSE words in conversation, and I speak with the same vocabulary I write.

A few people were obviously looking up my poem "The Jester of Hearts", as well as "The Trinity Cycle". Either psychologists (one in particular), Matrix fans or theologians, for the latter search. Although it doesn't have anything to do with the second and third genres.

"Glass roses" remains a fan favourite, which is okay by me, it always reminds me of my uber-editor, now retired, Jan Innes, who inspired the work.

Well, gotta run...have tons to do...will throw in some new poetry in this evening's blog...plus some news on THEOCRICIDE.

Monday, March 27, 2006

A feasibility study

Yes, I authored the study of alternatives that the poet is wringing his hands over...

But he asked me to, so no violence, please...I vas chust followink orders. I hear that defense works, no? No? Ah, hell.

It's a combination of factors, not the least of which being the desire to consolidate operations under one publisher. In the end it will come down to a handful of fundamental questions: Does iUniverse really offer a better marketing pipe? Can we replicate 101 GREAT LOVE POEMS at lulu without losing quality? Is the imprint concept that the poet and Tag the blue-collar-boy-wonder are considering even possible? (Yes, I know, all things are possible...where there's a William, there's a way, blah blah blah...but I have to live in a world apart from platitudes.) Do we want THEOCRICIDE to be the quantum fusion bomb the poet conceived it to be, or is it better to peel it down to something lean and deadly, an adamantium flechette?

You're asking me? Hell if I know, I just work here and remind the guy of his clippings whenever he gets a bad case of the insecurities (yes, I know he's a deified figures in some circles, but trust me, put him in the same room with a pretty girl or tell him poem x is "not as good as" poem z and he flies to pieces so fast you're in danger from the shrapnel).

I'm picking up the galloping digressions from him. I need to work on that, if I fall prey to it then we'll end up like Dennis Miller...doing beer commercials and Monday Night Football.

In the end, here's what I think is going to happen:

He's going to keep INVOCATO, put out a full-fledged THEOCRICIDE, transfer 101 GREAT LOVE POEMS to lulu and put out 101 GREAT EROTIC POEMS and still have his novel out by Christmas...but I am going to try and get him to postpone RONIN IN THE TEMPLE OF APHRODITE until next Spring...he needs to slow down. You can see the incandescence as he works now...he's not burning out...but he's burning...and it is a beautiful, terrible light to behold.

Personally, I'm a bit mesmerized by it all. It's not quite a natural process he's going through, but, to paraphrase the poet himself, it is his nature.

Stanislaw Lem: 1921-2006

Stanislaw Lem, the brilliant Polish science fiction writer, has died.

Once expelled from SFWA (the Science Fiction Writers of America) for speaking the truth, that most science fiction published is poorly thought out action-adventure fiction, he was a critic of the perversion of that literary genre in the Star Trek - Star Wars era away from serious contemplation of societal and technological evolution to space opera shoot-em-ups.

It is ironic that a man from a totalitarian state, as was Poland at the time of his comments, was expelled from an American organization for exercising his free speech. That spoke volumes more than any author has ever penned.

His best known work remains SOLARIS, about a sentient planet with god-like powers, and the crew of a space station that encounters it. It was twice adapted into films, the most recent version by Steven Soderbergh with George Clooney.

decisions

I have a proposal on my desk, an alternative to current publishing plans I've been quite public about, that I am pondering. I hate indecision, I'd almost rather make a quick judgement and be done with it and maybe be wrong than agonize over it.

The original plan (plan A):

INVOCATO is withdrawn from circulation, May 2006.
THEOCRICIDE as a large, coffee-table sized book, with approximately 750 works, publication in May or June of this year. lulu.com
101 GREAT EROTIC POEMS as a matched book to my earlier 101 GREAT LOVE POEMS, 101 poems (of course) and issued in both softcover and hardback editions, August or September this year. iUniverse.com.
RONIN IN THE TEMPLE OF APHRODITE as a standard-sized softcover book, approximately 200 works, publication in November. lulu.com.

Feasibility study (plan B):

INVOCATO stays where and as it is.
THEOCRICIDE as a lean, coffee-table format book, approximately 250 works, publication in June. lulu.com.
101 GREAT LOVE POEMS to be reissued in August 2006, via lulu.com, with 101 GREAT EROTIC POEMS to follow in September, also via lulu.com.
RONIN IN THE TEMPLE OF APHRODITE as a standard-sized softcover book, approximately 200 works, publication in November. lulu.com.

Plan B completely weans me from iUniverse, but I may end up giving up my hardcover edition of 101GLP.

So I have much to consider. Including an early stage plan by Tag and I to start our own imprint. I'll fill you in more on that later in the week.

Oh, hello, Anthony, Alan says you'd been by the site. Nice to know you are out there. Drop me an email sometime.

W

Before the Tangled Throes of Spring Would Come

Very proud of Tag, he rose to the challenge and writ a pretty good villanelle after we discussed the French Sonnet form the other evening. If you wand to see it, head over to Authors' Den via this link:

Before the Tangled Throes of Spring Would Come

Hey, it's not "The Poisoned Pen"...but what is? Just teasing, Tag. Aside from the fact some guy someone just deidciated a romantic poem to me, nothing wrong with it. Hmmm...maybe it is time I started dating again.

Ten thousand things to do today...I'll be back later...

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Free Books to Twenty People Who Can Afford Them

Poet's Challenge: Seeding the Mighty

In some circles we call the practice of leaving copies of our books in public places or giving free copies to high-profile celebrities "seeding"...perhaps the most legendary seeding "incident" occurred when television viewers being lead on a tour of the White House by Jackie found an Ian Fleming novel on JFK's nightstand. No doubt but that the phenomenon that was James Bond would not have erupted in the early sixties to the degree it did without that moment of exposure.

Usually during National Poetry Month I give away a few books...usually to schools and libraries, but someone asked me if I had ever given any to celebrities. Of course. A few of the others in the AEI's "Art&Soul" have received copies of my books, as have some poetic peers and actor Robert Davi, who is a great fan of the poetic arts. Also the full line ups of a few LA-based rock bands. Who? I'll never tell if they don't.

But the next question was "Who would you like to give copies of your books to? What persons would you most want to have drop you an email and ask for a free copy of one of your books?" We decided on a list format, twenty people. So, to my fellow authors, think about it...which twenty living celebrities or figures would you most like to give a copy of one of your books to?

Here's my list, made up of people for various reasons, I'd be willing to lose the revenues on a copy of one of my books, even if they didn't plug it. For the sake of argument, we'll assume we're talking about the massive volume THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES. And, if any of them, or their representatives, do contact me, I will make good on this promise:

Bill Clinton
Emma Thompson
Robin Williams
Dave Chapelle
David Bowie
"The Panther"
Steve Jobs
Prince
Daryl Hannah
David Letterman
Steve Martin
Gina Gershon
"The Goldenheart"
Bill Nighy
Roy Scheider
"The Wisp"
Michael Moorcock
Peter O'Toole
Teri Hatcher
Sean Young

Not a perfect list, ask me tomorrow and I'd probably change half a dozen, but I'll stand on this one. I, myself, was a little surprised there weren't more women on my list, particularly young women, on the list but I guess I figure they can talk me out of copies anyway. Three of my classic muses made the list, and maybe that was cheating on my part, so if they were banned from the official list, whom would I replace them with?

Jon Stewart
Qi Shu
Sting

There...now you can't say I copped out. Play all the silly guessing games you want about why certain people were on (or not on) this list...I have my reasons (I left Oprah off this list because very author pimps their books to Oprah)...but I am willing to listen to reason and if anyone wants to challenge for a place on the list and a free book, drop me a line, and I'll be happy to consider it...and I'll even send out a press release saying who got knocked off the list by you.

Now that's what marketing is all about...

The uni-verse

Tag and I sat down last night and discussed future publication strategies...some good material came out of it. Most I can't discuss now, as we want there to be some surprises.

It was funny. Yesterday evening I gave him a call and got no answer, so I figured he was busy and I headed up to the local Barnes & Noble. Their iced tea is passable, I want to get the feel of the place for the signing next month and they have this one server in their Starbucks whom I find very attractive (Tag has a crush on a different one there and we sometimes will call one another up from there saying "Hey, your future wife is here...")

Midway through my tea I tried him again. He answered this time and told me he was at Books-a-Million. After a discussion of the various merits of the two places it came down to the notion that he had dug in at BAM (Meaning he was toting around a lot more material and it woud have been more troublesome for him to reolocate...) so I headed over there.

Once there, I did look around for a manager who'd clued me into what would be required for them to carry my books. Nowhere to be found. Basically, to be carried by the local BAM store, I'd need to fill out some paperwork for their third party distributor and give them two copies of every book I wanted them to carry (as evaluation copies, not for resale, or so they say). B&N, on the other hand, volunteered to carry my books and set up a signing.

Like I said to Tag, imagine there are two women. One is very intriguing, one is fairly intriguing (if you are going to stick around me much, you have to learn my terms for things...by "intriguing" I mean that combination of factors that stir my fancy, which is a combination of personality, style and attractiveness...). The "Fairly Attractive" one (we'll call her Bachelorette #2) has let you know that, in order to go out with her, you need to run it by her best friend and give her best friend some presents to evaluate. Then, she'll get back to you. Then, maybe, she'll have lunch with you sometime.

Bachelorette #1 (who is more interesting anyway) calls you up, asks if you are busy Friday nght, volunteers to pay for dinner and tells you to bring an overnight bag and to make sure to pack condoms.

Hmmmm...tough choices. The conversation at this point largely dissolved into a comparative discussion of what the two women would ask from you, rapidly descending into the gutter.

But we somehow got back on track discussing book plans, until we got sidetracked by a disucssion of poetic form...he confessed he'd never written a villanelle before, which led me to run to the reference section and get him a copy of 'The Idiot's Guide to Poetry" which lists several form requirements...it wasn't a bad book, although it does take an assholish attitude towards poets on the web and is five years old (culture, like science, advances swiftly...paying full price for a five year old book that addresses cultural issues should be a crime...thank God we didn't buy the book). Our main humour focused on the notion that the author is a poetry professor who said that one should not "lecture" in one's poetry.

Um. And what does she do to her classes? Face the wall and mumble shopping lists? Some of the best poetry is in one's face about issues and beliefs. There is a challenge in throwing punch to the frontal lobes with grace and style and skill. Feh, academic poets. Again, I say, "feh". Actually, there are many fine poets of that ilk, but since the public seemes to want to create a distinction between "street poets" and "academic poets" (both sides say I am of the other) I will abuse my free-agency status and crap on them both.

Street poets need to commit. Academic poets need to quit masturbating.

Street poets rarely put out books, sometimes because they don't understand the process, sometimes because they view the written word with a strange suspicion. Academic poets abuse the "poetry welfare system" we call the university presses, so that their writings are inbred and are often published based not on the merits of the work, but the grant proposal they submitted to get the book funded.

Street poets are about "cred". Academic poets are about "tenure".

Historically, great street poets include...em...er...um...

Great academic poets include...er...um...er....

Grow up, kids, stop subdividing your turfs. Remember Occam's razor..."entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity". If the only way you can feel good about yourself is to be the "best left-handed albino poet with a PhD in Home Ec from Boise State who writes about penguins popping caps" you have a real self-esteem problem.

It's like denominations in religion. The more times a "faith" has to subdivide to support the whims and wills of the people in it, the less legitimate it seems. We are all sisters and brothers in the uni-verse, the sphere of poets.

But, again I digress.

So we discussed issues around our existing book projects, and future ones. THEOCRICIDE is very much in flux right now, as it is in the shaping stage. Comments made by various readers have made me rethink some of my longest-held notions about the contents, size and format of that volume.

We shall see,

Saturday, March 25, 2006

The new show is up

Works from Sarah Teasdale ("Water Lillies"), Emily Dickinson ("Elysium is as far to"), William Blake ("My Pretty Rose Tree"), Walt Whitman ("Poets to Come"), George Gordon Lord Byron ("She Walks in Beauty"), Sappho ("To Aphrodite"), Edgar Allan Poe ("Annabelle Lee") and Percy Bysshe Shelley ("Ozymandias of Egypt") are featured in my weekly podcast, just elevated a few moments ago...

check it out at
Radio City of Legends
and, no, NONE of my poems are featured. I didn't want to make the others look pale...

just wait until next month, when I do Gertrude Stein.

Otherwise, an amusingly, seductively odd day, especially if you, as I, have a hard time reading a woman's intentions.

I smell sweet disaster on the wind. Which is my natural environment, why fight it now?

a genii unsummoned, sings to me

the other morning I woke up, and the first sentence on my lips was a quote from the movie "Blade Runner".

No, not "I have done questionable things". I use that one enough. Nor Roy's death speech, I have used that.

A small line, spoken by Harrison Ford to the eternally yummy Sean Young: "I dreamed music". I spoke it aloud, like an observation, or a wish.

The sphere evolves.

This morning I rose and checked my email and there was an offering. An email. A link to a piece of music, spun by a genii, offered up as a bit of gratitude for what my works had resonated with the reader.

I listened to it. And.

And it found a corner. First one, then another, and another and anotheranotheranotheranother. Where I haven't been before, inside my head. Where the light of words had not yet penetrated.

So, I did not dream music. It dreamt me, and in doing so I found a genii. What does a genii do when it meets a genii?

We shall see.

I shall fill in the details when the time is apropriate, for now, know that this Atlas does not shrug...he tenses. Waiting for his next two wishes.

Friday, March 24, 2006

The Central Appalachian Leaders' Summit on the Arts in Education

I just received word in the mail that the Appalachian Education Initiative (AEI), in partnership with the College of Creative Arts at West Virginia University (WVU) will be presenting a regional Summit on the Arts in Education at the WVU Creative Arts Center in Morgantown on May 18-20 of this year.

They're targeting business, cultural and education leaders from the regional (usually defined as Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia).

If you are a business, cultural or education leader, I'd look into it. Besides, the $50 registration fee gets you into Kathy Mattea's Thursday night perfomance and talk (as you are probably aware, Ms. Mattea and I are both honorees by the AEI in their "Art&Soul" book...)

Other speakers (none of whom will be signing, I believe) include:

*Randy Cohen, Vice President of Research and Information at Americans for the Arts
*Dick Deasy, Director of the Arts Education Partnership
*Jim Flanagan of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills
*Nick Rabin, Executive Director of the Center for Arts Policy at Columbia College, Chicago
*Eric Booth, educator, actor, author and businessman, who holds a chair on the College Board's Arts Advisory Committee
*Daniel Pink, author of "A Whole New Mind" and former speechwriter to Al Gore
and finally
*Sir Ken Robinson, Senior Advisor to the J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles.

Not a bad pool to swim in, eh? I'm particularly imprssed with Pink and Robinson, but they're all big league talent.

Contact the AEI at (304)225-0101 for more info or to register.

Hey, I might even be there, you never know...then you can buy yourself a copy of the "Art&Soul" book and get both Kathy and I to sign it. She's the one with the nicer handwriting. And she's prettier. And she sings better. And she's richer. And she smells nicer.

Hmmm...I better stop before I get depressed.

joining the machine

fingers locking into the grooves
between the teeth
of the great god gear

joining the machine

finding point and purpose to stalk Sisyphus
before we are lost in the imponderable

joining the machine

the great god gear turns
and we are pulled
as our slack runs out

joining the machine

pulled in pulled on pulled apart
our hearts start and stop and start

joining the machine

bracing our last traces of face
we ride with pride into silence
the violence of sentience surrendered

joining the machine

to serve as little more than lubricant
to a future generation

joining the machine

because we didn't dare we didn't care
to shout a warning over the thrum
of torn flesh and grinding bone

joining the machine


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

night air

with visions clear
can you shed a tear
like water off your back
where you belong?

strong.

stronger.

pounding like a grounding wind
that slams you to the earth
without any discussion
of justice or fate

catering to nothing but the feast
of ages

cages
of man

planning the revolution
in the face of an evolution
that explodes
like poppies
in the firepit

spitting
a balm
of oblivion
into the cool
and cruel
night air.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

ever feel like there is a scorpion in your skull, looking for the way out. or further in?

me, too.

imagine how I'd be if I had ever done drugs? scary.

Happy week-before-National-Poetry-Month. I'm back. be glad. I am.

Mari Laureano's THE FAIRYTALE JOURNALS

Got my copy of Mari Laureano's latest collection of poetry THE FAIRYTALE JOURNALS.

Mari, you astound me. Your voice, as a poet of both the erotic and the hearth, is very mature now, very confident, very powerful. My only quibble with the entire volume (besides the fact my name is nowhere to be seen so I can't take any credit for this book) is that the picture of you on the rear cover does not do you justice.

Congratulations, Mari, we will get you on my show ASAP.

Stayed up late last night working on this week's podcast, which I am dubbing "9-1/2 poets" because of the last minute absence of Gertrude Stein...but have no fear, I am planning a complete show around the remarkable Ms. Stein next month.

National Poetry Month is almost upon us! Run! Run! Run! ...to your nearest bookstore and get yourself some poetry.

Or, to paraphrase

CELEBRATE NATIONAL POETRY MONTH:
Go Out and Inspire Great Works

so you think you know my soul

So you think you know my soul...

have you seen me, pale with conflict
acknowledging words of death
yet to come
from someone who sees without passion?

have you held me, strong with fury
when I must take a stand that costs me
something I
someone I want in my life but who is killing me?

have you read me, terse with hunger
as I allow my core to breach my mantle
and flood me
with impossibly hot metals and memories?

have you met me, blind and alone
left for dead by one who has fed on me
not caring
that I had carried them from hell on my back?

have you seen me, light with laughter
when words are nothing but words and
the mood fits
like a stray ray of sun on a field of clover?


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Editorial Wars, Gertrude Stein and The Morgantown Public Library

I was talking the other day about using an editor on THEOCRICIDE and they asked me what I looked for in an editor.

I've been lucky so far, in that arena...Jan Innes did the heavy lifting on several of my books, and she was solid. I edited the grand bitch of a book THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES and of course my former protege Laurie Wielenga edited one also.

Did I miss anyone? God, I hope not.

Having had as many bloody fights with editors over the years as I havem, it is tough to trust. The first time I allowed one of my works to appear in print the features editor of my high school newspaper, the Red and Blue Journal, at Morgantown High School, decided to transpose the first and second lines. I threw a fit and she would either run it stet or not at all...she ran white space...
she was setting up a succession of editors and publishers to have to engage me.

Oh, the lines? It was a poem of mine called "Contents of a History Book: 2025" and the opening lines were:

"The human race exists no more,
wiped out by its chief predator..."

She said it was more journalistically correct to make it

"Wiped out by its chief predator,
the human race exists no more..."

Not a huge difference, but as Leonardo Da Vinci said "If I wanted eyebrows on her, I would have painted eyebrows on her".

Later on that year they did run a poem by me...one of our classmates, and my older brothers' fiance, had died...they asked me to write a tribute poem for a "full page memorial"...

I don't know, and don't trust the answers I have been given on either side, but when that issue came out they put it in the corner of a literary page. Editors and publishers can get vindictive.

I recall a few years back I was sleeping with the editor/publisher of a major ezine. Since before we had even met, her readers were treated to glowing reviews of my works. When we broke up, my name stopped appearing in her pages. Those who were around at the time know who I am speaking of. And its fine (who needs her old ezine anyway...sniff...not me...pout), but it points out that it is impossible for an editor or publisher to think one thing of you as a person and another as a writer and not be tainted. We are human beings.

Swung by the Morgantown Public Library to lay my hands on Gertrude Stein's "Sacred Emily" for the podcast...

Problem is, they don't have any of Gertrude's books of poetry. Any. So, if you want to be a nice person, buy or otherwise acquire a copy of any of Miss Stein's books of poetry and send it to:

Morgantown Public Library
373 Spruce Street
Morgantown, WV 26505

They need it, Morgantown needs it. Now I have to do audio whitespace on my podcast as I am unable to find a copy of that work in the short amount of time left to me...I'll make sure to feature that work on an upcoming show.

PS: Fellow poet Katy Acheson just gave me a great and incisive insight into one of my recent works that not only told me why I might not want to include it in a book, but also what my public persona is, the way she perceives it.

I wonder if she's single? And, if not, does she have a sister? And whether or not, would she like to edit a book for me? Her or her sister?

whosoever would dare to kill a god must first go mad

There's a death struggle going on over here in the City of Legends. Well, not exactly a death struggle, but a hearts-and-minds issue. Okay, maybe not that big, but certainly a very interesting debate...er...discussion.

We're working on his next book THEOCRICIDE and suddenly he announces that he's thinking of doing three things:

a) Pulling INVOCATO from release (He has a few pieces in there he "needs" for THEOCRICIDE)

b) Stripping the book down from the nearly seven hundred works in it right now to about 250

c) Changing the title (What? I said "What?"...you have to see the facial expression...ever see Letterman do that schtick? same face) Don't even ask what his suggested alternate titles are, you don't want to know...I mean it.

I am used to the mercurial nature of his book evolution process, but this isn't picking a handful of new pieces, this is gutting, renaming and executing the runt older brother. A little more than minor tweaks.

I will let you know how it turns out. Right now we're arguing over the inclusion of
a) The entirety of "The Goldenheart Cycles" or
b) Just a few key pieces from the GC's or
c) Neither of the above.

Aigh! Ack! I personally think he's trying to reach too far (a common disease with the man). He's more fun to deal with when he's getting laid...he pours so much into the relationship he leaves those of us like webmasters and editors around him to do our jobs WHICH WE ARE QUITE CAPABLE OF DOING WITHOUT HIS CONSTANT REVISION.

Quick, someone find him...someone. This Queen Elizabeth "I-am-married-to-my-throne" BS is wearing thin. Deities preferred, mortal women willing to become immortals accepted. Sane but creative - definitely preferred. He'll probably write you a few hundred poems and dedicated a book or ten to you, more if you stick around. You get immortality as an object of admiration, awe, desire and envy to future generations. It's not all bad.

I've got email. Probably Captain "If I'm Not Happy No One Can Be" announcing a complete overhaul of everything he ever wrote, to begin with having it translated to Urdu, then cross-translated to Swahili with pictograms crammed in there someplace. Either that or he broke his longstanding rule against reading what I write in here and read the draft.

Help! How much is postage on a grown man if I want to crate him up and send him to Rio? Do you take credit cards?

Gertrude is crude but too rude to intrude in the feud, dude

With the sounds of Sophie B. Hawkins' marvelous "Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover" echoing in my ears, I ponder the imponderable:

Is "Sacred Emily" too long for the podcast, as a reading? I have received several notes from regular listeners who don't want me to do such a long work of Gertrude Stein's while doing relatively short works by the other poets. Good points to be made, but I think it comes down to this:

Bite me.

My show, my agenda, my choice and it is occasionally a good thing to give people what they need aside from bread and circuses and TiVos and 'Desperate Housewives' and trans fat laced mystery meat patties with secret sauces.

Repeat: Bite me.

Thus endeth the lesson. I've got a show to record, edit, and publish.

Repeat after me..."Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose".

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Locked in a room with Sarah Teasdale and William Blake

I awoke to the return of the screaming headache from last week. Who needs anthrax? All terrorists need to do is figure out how to cause sinusitis and they'd bring this country to its knees in a week.

Selected the poems for this week's podcast show...just looking for a clean copy of Gertrude Stein's "Sacred Emily"...

other poets in the list are (se if you can guess which of their works I am doing):

Emily Dickinson (anyone who knows me personally can probably guess which one I'm reading)
Sarah Teasdale (poet and muse, an archetype)
William Blake (of course, but no snakes)
Percy Bysshe Shelley (this is an easy guess)
Sappho (hey, good poetry is good poetry)
Edgar Allan Poe (stop looking at me that way)
George Gordon, Lord Byron (mad, bad and dangerous to know, y'know)
Walt Whitman (the first ever disgruntled ex-postal worker)
John Donne (ever since a reviewer in "Poetry Heaven" compared me to him, I've been itching for this)

Don't expect this very often...I rarely publicly read other poets. I was going to do "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll, but found so many other works I wanted to take a whack at...maybe some other time.

Runners up? How about both Brownings, Longfellow, a handful of poets laureate and some guy who slept with Gwyneth Paltrow in a fictionalized recounting of his coming of age as a playwrite...I also considered Ginsberg and Buchowski, but decided ultimately to avoid possible legal entanglements. I almost added Swinburne as an inside joke...and there are some nice translations of Rabindranath Tagore...but I didn't know if you'd sit still for a six-hour reading.

All in all, a goodly crew, one worthy to, to paraphrase Frank Capra "speak to you for a half hour in the silence".

Enjoi.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

vaccinating my legacy

A public appearance for me is like a shot.

It is painful and subject to much preliminary dread.

When I was a child I was infamous for my desire so much to avoid needles that I required dentists to work on me without anesthetic and when I was in the hospital, almost dead, when I was 13, I more than once refused a shot that would have at least taken the edge off the pain. Call it phobic, if you will. I have gotten better...and although I still do not like needles, I can just grit my teeth and bear it.

But readings and signing, still a time of dread. I know the necessity of them, I know it full well. I am just not, of a nature, someone who enjoys the spotlight. I have had to learn to adapt parts of my self to that mode, but I resent it. It brings out the insecure kid in me, who has to, on that fulcrumed point of adrenaline, either stand and fight - or flee. Haven't fled yet, before a read, although there are many stories of me vanishing immediately after a read. It's probably the one time in my life when I wish I had taken to drink to numb myself.

Once I know I am to appear, I try to not think about it until I am in a tranquil space, then I do a flurry of activity to decide what to read. Selection is important, and difficult, as my catalog is a little absurdly large (13,000 give or take a few dozen, I hear).

This Barnes and Noble signing/reading on the 22nd of April is problematic. I am more comfortable reading than signing...I can disconnect from an audience (ever see me read? note my fondness for sunglasses, or the way I will focus on one person in the room...it was easier when I was married...I was expected to focus on my wife)...I can't from people who engage me in conversation, not without seeming and being rude, and I don't like being rude. I remember being accused of it, more than once, as a teenager, when it was actually shyness, not arrogance, that kept me from engaging (it gave those wanting to pull practical jokes on me a great source of amusement, which didn't exactly help me come out of that at all. I've got some great stories about people making phone calls to me, pretending to be others, or sending girls letters signed with my name, for a laugh. We were a cruel little microcosm.)

But, I digress (I know, EJ., that does seem to be a common word with me...). Part of what confounds me about this appearance is I am promoting two books that do not have my best audience poems for reading...and even with that disclaimer, there are over 700 poems in play if I limit myself to just these. Pick ten from 700. Now.

Another part is that they will try to have me seated. I hate sitting. I will have to negotiate for a lectern to sign books on.

::sigh:: Negotiate.

I hate negotiating. It brings out the competitor in me, and he's a guy I like to keep locked up about six sub-basements and a hot acid moat away. I don't like him, never have. He steps on people, he presumes what he wants is as important or moreso than what others want, which isn't true. I've already gotten just about everything out of this life I am going to get - less than I want, but more than I deserve.

All I fight for now is the happiness of my children and control of my legacy. The creation of the viral memoirs plan helped the latter, immensely. If I am going to have to go through with my sons the alienation I have gone through with my daughter, I am not sure I want to stick around for the former. Indeed, it seems that Peri is much happier with me gone than present.

And you want me to get worked up over two hours standing in the corner of a bookstore while people walk by, their eyes averted, wondering who the funny man is?

Well, you got your wish. And I cringe, a month before, thinking of the needle. Knowing the inevitability of the adrenaline, and that guy in the dungeon picking the locks, to escape for a few hours. Because I have to let him out, to vaccinate my legacy.

one am

Wow...one am...

wide awake. not good.

but it has been a good day...much accomplished.

Had a good talk with my old friend Alan. He has a gift for making me feel more hopeful about the world. Mostly because he can be so cynical. But the people you love, you love for who they are, not what you can make from them.

Wrote some good stuff today, I really liked "Arabesque".

Tomorrow, or perhaps today already, is another day.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Arabesque

with a special, most honorific, nod to the genius of Edgar Allan Poe

Arabesque

my treasure
my pleasure
most fortunate one
be merry
with sherry
I have hid from the sun

and if you
continue
to harden my heart
be aware
in my stare
lays a grim work of art


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

Anyone want to guess how many references to the story (you have to know that!) that inspired this poem that there are in it?

more from the mus(ic)

Relooping the background music for the piece I am working on for FROM OUT OF THE CITY and new words are just flowing. Still playing with the horn stings, but the electric harp, guitar, piano and drums are melting into something that was always there, just waiting to be uncovered.

To share what's bubbling up:

where is my goddess
what is my dream
where is the promise
that answers the theme

shall I seduce you
or am I too late
as you slide from my rescue
rejecting your fate

kisses for karma
dreams of the damned
lost in the silence
as doorways are slammed

I am forever
bound to your light
let this be more
than a memory of night


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

Sounds like a return to mid-70's thematics and structuring, although a little spare for my usual constructions, but some nice bits in there.

Five Memorable Public Appearances

Well, on April 22nd, I have to put up or shut up. Not the first time, not the last, I am sure.

It's just a reading, actually a book signing, not my most important, but it is likely to get attention on several fronts.

Commercially, Barnes and Noble will be taking my temperature to see how well the small stack of books they provide sells. Best result, they sell out during my first hour. Worst result, nothing moves, nothing sells, and I bite a passer-by.

Okay, the latter is unlikely. But I think back to some of my more notable fulcrumed appearances. Here's my five most memorable, in no particular order.

The Southern Poets Reading Tour (I), The Fairhope Arts Center, Fairhope, Alabama, Summer of 1997. Loki was right, I'd been flat all weekend, and I was supposed to be the big dog. So, I drop my reading list, put on my shades and did a set only of poems I could recite from the heart. As they were almost all about my relationship with Psyche, I cried through the read, then left the building. Ann followed and had to bring me back into the room, where poet after poet who followed me was changing reading lists and doing their most intimate works. It became a massive, public, catharsis session. I wrote my poem "Breathe" in one of the Leopard Cycles, about the incident.

The AOL Writers Club Party, The Algonquin Hotel, New York City, September of 1995. Having helped plan and execute this intimate gathering of poets and authors, when I was called upon to read to a room of peers, I chose works from the first six "Panther Cycles" (that's all there were back then). It's the only public reading I ever did with the Panther herself in the room, and the stress of being conscious of her presence in a room where, theoretically, no one knew about "us" yet, was intense.

A Catholic Girls' High School in California, April, 2003. Just months before abandoning my beloved Golden State, I was invited to speak at this school. I called the place Kevin Smith's Greatest Nightmare (or his wet dream). Several hundred well-groomed, upper middle class Catholic high school girls, all in their uniforms, most with attitude. I was actually intimidated. Yeah, I know, that's funny. I recall particularly, not so much darkly, the one girl in the front row whose blouse was brobably unbuttoned one more button than permitted, who seemed to be trying to channel Sharon Stone in 'Basic Instinct' with a smirk as she slouched in her seat, her knees apart, through most of the read. If I was but twenty years younger and willing to do jail time, I might have thought more about her. As it was, I had a good audience, and I got to see how well my material played to a young, estrogen-laced audience, which has always supposed to be a key demographic for the "Romantic Poet of the Internet".

The coffeehouse at Drummond Chapel United Methodist Church, Morgantown, West Virginia, sometime in 1974. I don't recall the exact date, but it was my first "real" reading. After enduring a couple of rounds of polite applause from an audience that opviously was not listening to what I was reading, I gave them a tongue lashing for their hypocrisy. Thus was a reputation born.

The sports bar reading, Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, late 1978. My friend Dave Demeter, whose band was playing that night, set me up to be the act between musical sets. It takes a certain amount of confidence to be reading my poetry between msucial sets in a place where most of the people are half into their third beer, watching a hockey game. It toughened me. I got applause, sold a few books, and fulfilled my quest to stop reading in poetry venues. Plus, it was the first place I ever performed "TRIUMPH". I don't recall the exact name of the bar, alas.

So, aside from a few "private" readings, these are the ones that really stand out to me. If I had to pick a sixth, it would be the reading at The Blue Moose in Morgantown, during my 2002 tour. I sold a ton of books that night and met some guy named Dan McTaggart, plus it was the first time in decades that I had done a public reading in West Virginia.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

memory calls: a lyric

listening to a loop of music I've been composing for the podcast, it invoked this poem.


memory calls as the grey facade falls
and I remember you just as you were

kisses that linger, God sent in a ringer,
to humble me when I thought I was sure

your were temptation to my concentration,
a bright point of light in the night

princess and goddess and not to seem modest
but I worshipped your essence, so bright

so what is left for me but reflected glory
a story in words that seems pale

to what we then shared when we did what we dared
and we found our Olympus to scale


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

The Muppet Matrix

There are three things I consider essential to my morning:

1) Brush my teeth
2) Get something done I've been putting off and
3) Smile

Well, through my friend Jessica Mathis at Dogged Drama Productions I discovered

The Muppet Matrix

It may be old, it may be new, it may be a little strange (Rowlf makes a compelling Morpheus, Kermit is perfect as Neo and Piggy, well, Piggy as Trinity probably needed a little more time with her trainer before slipping into the vinyl kinky daywear...but Gonzo strangely fits as Agent Smith, though I admit seeing a grim-faced Beaker with a gun is jarring)...but it is amusing.

Anyway, while my brain is still looking for a comfortable gear...here it is...

THE MUPPET MATRIX
along with an interview with it's Architect, Derek Carr.

I'll be clever later. I was up late working on next week's podcast...

Saturday, March 18, 2006

truth is a bitch

tired. and wired. and inspired.

how's that for an unholy trinity?

been laying the groundwork for the next two shows, and pondering the possibility of doing a show built around a recording of a real life reading during National Poetry Month.

Next week's is going to be a compilation of some of my favourite works...by other authors. Get set for my favourite poems and see what influences hammered me into the curious shape I am in the literary puzzle.

Then, the next week...The first show of National Poetry Month...let's just say I have something startling for you...I'm going to distibute to a few close friends some hints...but nothing obvious.

I opened a fortune cookie yesterday...and the fortune read "You think that it is a secret, but it never has been one." What? I've been brutally honest in my failings and failures, confessing to anything and everything I can imagine. I always find it funny when someone accuses me of withholding something...why would I confess to the crap I have done and leave out the pretty stuff they want me to admit to? Sorry, troopers, aside from some small piddle that it would do harm to others to unveil, and some well buried crushes, I'm pretty much as advertised.

Hmmm...maybe "she" knows how I feel. Nah. Too Cyrano. A role I have taken on so many times I am beginning to resent the historical and fictional hero. I have found those who want me to play that role tend to fall into two categories: Those sincerely needy and those sincerely parasitic. I have a tough time telling one from the other.

Such is my life. And people wonder why I am a bit shy with women in real life? It isn't shy, it is bruised. You put up with the lies, the deceits, the manipulations, the disappointments, the slanders, the betrayals and the facades I've had to endure and not grow a little bit of a rough patch over your heart and then you can criticize me. I am certain I haven't had it the worst, but I also think that there are those who will have real reason for regret that I ever got to finish my memoir, if they outlive me.

Truth is a bitch. And I have her by the scruff.

adrenaline overload

YOU try lacing together Fallout Boy's "Sugar, We're Going Down", Meatloaf's "I Would Do Anything for Love" and Van Halen's "Right Now" and see what it does to your blood pressure.

Nice to know I am still alive. I feel sorry the world right now. So many shades of grey and so little real light and dark. Mediocrity is not victory, it is worse than defeat, it is surrender.

Brave, worthy warriors lose battles. Cowards compromise.

Tag is it, this week

Okay, I was a few hours later than usual getting this week's sow out, but you'll agree it was worth the extra effort...

Radio City of Legends this week features Tag (Daniel S. McTaggart), the man, the myth, the former convenience store clerk, as he explores the blue collar universe we live in via his poetry from his upcoming book (all together now) MIDNIGHT MUSE IN A CONVENIENCE STORE. Worth definitely the twenty five minutes and fifty six seconds to listen to.

Went out to the Barnes and Noble in Morgantown, where I will be "doing a signing" on April 22nd, and noted that in their poetry section, due to the alphabetical layout, I will be on the bottom shelf. Thank God TCPC (THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES) is so obscenely huge it will be visible from across the store, out the front door, across the parking lot, over the nearby hll and through to the concession stand at the nearby movie theatre.

Just wait until later this year when THEOCRICIDE hits. It will be visible from space. That's actually the real purpose of the book, to serve as a signal to my returning mothership. Wherever it is detected, this will prove intelligent life and they'll not use their subatomic particle disintegration beams there.

Hmmm...something vaguely Passover about that.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Friday evening reverie

Just finished the recording sessions for this week's show...may not have it ready tonight...whirlwind day. Tomorrow AM, for sure.

Dan McTaggart was my guest this week, pimping his forthocming book of poetry "Midnight Muse in a Convenience Store", which is absolutely wonderful.

Add to that some busy moves on the real-world work front and a very delightful letter from an old friend and lover and I am content with the day. Tag and I went by Barnes and Noble so I could scope out the work space and continue crushing on the lovely young lady who works the cafe. Sigh. We also cruised the poetry section to figure out how many books by other poets they'll have to shift to make space of multiple copies of THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES. Today, Barnes and Noble, tomorrow, the world.

Spoke briefly to my old friend Anastasia tonight, she's doing great. I am so glad we reconnected. She is a good person and although she may sometimes be wrong, she always has my best interests at heart. Friends are people who actually care what happens to you.

for an old friend

shadows melt into shadows melt into memory
of a time when what we were
was what we were
and we stirred the clouds with warm hands
and sated hearts
waiting for nothing more
than the next moment,
falling on us like the naked sun
kissing the shameless moon
eclipsing the day.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

Stuffing 36 hours of things to do into 24 hours...

Okay, I'm awake. Now what?

Bleah.

Have too much to do today, and will be finishing the day on a frantic note as Tag and I sit down to complete this week's podcast show, a day behind my usual last-second deadline.

Oh well. Oy vey! Oy gevalt!

Oh yeah, Happy St. Patrick's Day...

Gotta run!

Thursday, March 16, 2006

a new look at an old poem

One of the more notable habits I have is my packrat-dom. I hoard everything.

Why? For moments like these.

Earlier today I was talking with an old friend and a name came up (the same one behind the "unassuming smile" poem I shared a few weeks back). It happened in the context of a mention I'd made about how a couple of poems I had written about young women I had been enamored with (the poetic equivalent of "having a crush on') and he flat out asked me if I had ever written a poem about "her".

Quirk #2...I don't lie about my poetry. I try not to lie about anything, but my poetry is, let's face it, my religion and you don't want to screw with the powers that be. At least, I don't.

So Alan gave me that old "Oh, yeah?" look he used to give me in junior high when I'd tell him I'd seen a dead bird or found an interesting book. Old habits die hard. I said "Let me see if I can find it".

He asked how I'd know it. For a man as organized as he is, he doesn't understand the concept of VSAM (Virtual Sequential Access Method, a scheme for indexing large files unde rthe IBM 360 architecture...I used to be a VSAM jock in the consulting world...because I understand indexing) as applied to the human mind. I know what everything is for and what it is about, I just have the only copy of my index, and it is imbedded in the RNA of my memory.

So, Alan, here it is...

modest smile (the title is new, it was previously untitled)

I saw you smile the other day, and the lights inside you pause and play,
making a moment, marking a point, a place, in time and in space
that I do not think will fade from my recollections, mid-course corrections
can't mask the pretty, petty imperfections that make life all the more real,
all the more interesting, as the drab grey walls fall as monuments to pretension
in an unmentioned thought, brought to me by your modest smile.

William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

Not awful for something I wrote at 17. I had forgotten until I dragged it out my use of the phrase "modest smile" in it...modest as in a synonym for "unassuming". I must've bridged the gap without realizing it (or her smile really is that unassuming).

April 22nd - Barnes and Noble and I make peace

Well, that went surprisingly well.

I called our local Barnes and Noble this morning to speak with the CRM. I wanted to see about doing a reading during National Poetry Month.

The young lady in question, her name is Chanda, was exceedingly sweet. She informed me that they were having some open microphone readings for NPM. I told her that I usually only do open micropohone readings when either a) I am hosting or b) I am in under cover of a false name to try out new material (but it only takes one person in the crowd to recognize you to mess that up).

She looked up my books, set me up with a signing and reading for April 22, and ordered copies of both THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES and 101 GREAT LOVE POEMS. I talked her out of LOVE GODS OF A FORGOTTEN RELIGION, which is technically off the market, anyway (I can't ask publishers and distributors to burn their stock, can I?)

So, if you are in the Morgantown area on April 22nd and want an autographed copy of TCPC or 101GLP, or just want to touch the hem of my garments, feel free to drop by the Barnes and Noble in Granville. I may even get Tag to tag along.

Oh, I also promised her that if she gets the Starbucks in their store to carry Jasmine Tea, I will show up for one of the open microphones events.

I'm so easy.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

INVOCATO to bite the dust

After serious consideration, I have decided to go ahead and take INVOCATO out of circulation this summer, concurrent with the release of THEOCRICIDE. Simple enough motive, I don't want overlapping works and there are a few pieces in the former I need for the latter...

On other fronts...have been in a strange groove these last few days, but it is not a bad space, just an out of body time, exploring new angles on my existence. I'm fine...I love these quiet moments before the storm, they remind me of Beethoven (channeling Gary Oldman in "The Professional")...and in that vain vein...

(inserting ear buds, cranking up the iTunes from "loud" to "paint peeling" "stone splitting" to "ridiculous")...writing live in 5...4...3...2...1...

transubstantiation, part three

A complicated phase in a greying haze,
alchemy in a flask you asked to hold.
Gold from base metals.
Love in the strangest places.
Faces that melt and run in a sun that shades the moon.
Soon is not enough, yesterday was missed
when we kissed the wind, sinned and thinned our sands
that run between fingers rigid for time.
Blocking fate, finding hate on a grate where heat pours,
scores of opportunities left behind,
blind to the kind chances we cannot rebuild as penance
for a dance of decades irrevocable.
Grief is no relief for the true conscience.

William F. DeVault. All rights reserved.

Nordette for Poet Laureate

snow.

it was 80 degrees two days ago.

today, we have snow.

well, such is life.

Got a finger-pointer from an old friend the other day, an email with a link that pointed me to independent confirmation that a "long lost" friend is alive and well. It is well. I don't have to be involved with people's lives who don't want me in them, but as long as they are happy, safe and well, I am at peace, of a sort.

I wrote last night, edits to my memoir and a few dark poems. Nothing really noteworthy.

I nominated Nordette Adams for POET LAUREATE OF THE BLOGOSPHERE. I had to...someone nominated me and Nordette seems the best candidate off the top of my head to beat me in the election. (For a time, after the dissolution of my first marriage, as the Panther was named 'Lauri", there was a joke online that I was...wait for the punch line..."the poet lauri ate" (sometimes abbreviated 'poetlauri8'. Heee.)

Why don't I want the job? I'm a hooker, not a pimp. I spread my legs of eloquence, I don't like being the marketing manager with the funny hat. Nordette is better at that than I am. Besides, the Pope doesn't want to be President. And I already have a perfecty fine sobriquet in ROMANTIC POET OF THE INTERNET.

I've heard from a few poets interested in my concept of a Church of Poetry. As an ordained minister, all I would have to do is sign here, initial here and put up a website to make it happen. Don't think that I won't (the surest way to get me anywhere, besides seduction, is to tell me it can't be done...everyone said that THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES as a single volume was impossible. I eat impossible things for lunch. I like the impossible.)

Amusing link of the day: Vampire Condoms. I might actually invest in some, one day, if I ever break out of my angst-ridden monk stage (you know that's going to happen, you just have to wonder who the poor/lucky woman is going to be...E.J., I hear, has a betting pool going on who and when. Put me down for twenty bucks, September, after I am exposed to the Santa Ana Winds again...) But I just thought it was an interesting product, if underdeveloped on its own website (and actually cheaper on other websites!)

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

In this age...

I'm okay. Just tired, so I won't bore you with more babble. Or shall I?

Comfort comes hard to me. The isolation of my discipline of my craft, of my faith, is sometimes too much to bear. But I am who and what I am, and to be less or different is to lie. Lie not just with wrds, but with my heart, my flesh, my soul, my legacy.

And so, I am alone. Better an uncomfortable truth than an easy lie. Better solitude than a false love's kisses.

I sat down earlier this evening with my manuscript for THEOCRICIDE. They're going to nail me to the wall over this one. The arrogance. The passion. The madness. The flourish. I can die after this one, although I'd like to finish the other several dozen still dancing in my head.

They'll forgive me when 101 GREAT EROTIC POEMS is released. Not completely, but enough. Enough. I am tired of accepting enough. I am tired of doing without or going 99% of the way because I am trying to set an example, to do the right thing. To build a path for those who need it.

I need to be writing more, focusing more, burning away more of the irrelevancies of my life. When all the photons run the same way, you get a laser. When all the talents, all the abilities, come to focus on a single point in space...

That's something to behold. The principal behind the Tokamak fusion device was to focus many high-energy lasers at once on a single point in space. Light. Heat. Pressure. Fusion. Welcome to my frontal lobes.

I may lack the vigor of my youth, but I haven't slowed down that much. I am smarter, more experienced, more eloquent, more sure of myself. In the sphere of Venus I learned war, to steal from C.S. Lewis. Lessons both costly and painful, but to a purpose, to make me a better man/poet/friend/lover/person.

I merely allowed myself, in the words of Ani DiFranco, to get "distracted". But the distractions, the butterflies, were to the purpose as well. And I am...grateful...for them. Them and the lessons earned and learned.

I still get wounded when criticized. I still have the same insecurities when I encounter a woman that I find intriguing. I still have my doubts. And my flaws. I don't like being lied to, or about. I don't like faceless critics. I don't respect those who use others, determining that they are somehow more deserving of life and success. But couer rage embraces the doubts and you learn to reach into the dark and hot spaces to retrieve what was never lost but must be found.

Yourself.

I've gained more than I have lost, though I can still mourn the losses. Both physical and spiritual, fiscal and temporal, both the folded walls and the dispelled illusions. The rusty taste of lost trust, or false lust, of morsels and mould on a crust of bread.

The Church of Poetry, Take II

Okay, you get your wish. I'm taking this, of all days, to kick in a few doors.

This piece I wrote just minutes ago, as a comment on the blog of Bloggingpoet, concerning a 1991 article in Atlantic Monthly that declared poetry a dead art form. I cringe rereading it, as I found some typos!

Enjoi.

I stand resolute in my faith. Who is with me? The Amomancer calls.

Poetry can and does matter. We have failed, however, on two fronts. We have allowed a dilution of the faith, in our quest for broader acceptance (if you write poetry, you're a poet: and if you remove splinters you are a doctor? I don't think so...there is a distinction). And, we have retreated into our incestuous little circles of poets. One of the reasons I quit the reading scene in Los Angeles a few years back was I realized that nearly every "public reading" I was attending was attended by nothing but other people planning to read (and a few cute, but literarily untalented, poetry groupies...God love em!). This damned us two ways: 1. No new blood to expose to our beautiful disease and 2. No earnest feedback as everyone was so worried they might not get a standing ovation, they'd applaud a guy reading haiku naked (both obviously short forms).

Poetry is not JUST an art form, it is the simplest, most direct and most spiritual of the literary arts. It is found everywhere from the Bible to rap song lyrics. A 15 year old article in Atlantic Monthly is not going to convince me of what I knew in 1979 when I left the love of my life because she asked me to "give up this poetry thing".

Poetry is not a dead art form.

It may be suffering mutation, and as in all mutation, most will be unviable offspring, but with the advent of the internet and the subsequent Digital Renaissance, we have made mighty inroads. The POD revolution has tranformed the chapbook crowd to allow them to achieve worldwide distribution of their works, and websites have sprung up to allow poets their moment in the light. I coordinate my reading tours via email. I podcast. I blog.

I blog, therefore, I am. But just as mere existence is insufficient to purpose, so is merely casting the pearls before swine, peers and those previously mentioned poetry groupies insufficient to our needs. Not our wants, our needs.

Having had a website since 1996, having been labelled the Romantic Poet of the Internet by Yahoo that very year(five years after AM declared the artform dead), having hosted chats and classes on America Online, having taken control of my own books away from editors who do not believe in the faith of our fathers and mothers like Poe, Browning, Shelley, Stein, Buchowski and some guy who was a better playwrite than poet, having taught real world classes on this passionate craft and having found friends and lovers, peers and critics through this medium, all I can say is this:

Rise. The revolution is upon us. We need to band together, creating something more than a reading circle. I propose a manifesto that treats poetry as a religion, a link to the divine. It is, you know. And, despite lovers who lie, politicians who fail to deliver and churches that hide pedophiles, the church of poetry has never failed me.

I stand resolute in my faith. Who is with me? The Amomancer calls.

My website is not the prettiest, but I spend more time writing than formatting. I am not the handsomest poet to step to the microphone, but the propositions I get after my readings tell me I'm getting through, at least to those aforementioned women. I am not rich from my writing, but I am content that five hundred years from now, I'll still be read.

And that's why poetry is not dead. Because as long as there a few true believers, the faith will get through the dark ages of cynicism and disillusionment.

I want every poet who reads this to call three local venues, just three. Ask to read during National Poetry Month. I don't care if it is a church, a school, a bar, an ice cream parlour or a brothel, I've read in them all. A slightly different crowd in each and mostly not poets. Thank God, and with each reading there are converts.

Last year I testified before the West Virginia State Board of Education about the need for "full spectrum" education. Let's get in the faces of the people who make decisions and make sure they know that there are poets alive in the world today, this is not just a "Dead Poet" society. If you're within driving distance of me and want me to show, let me know...I'll be there and we'll make 'em think that they're living in the end times before I leave town.

I stand resolute in my faith. Who is with me? The Amomancer calls.

Either answer or surrender the damn microphone.

Atlantic Monthly, your fifteen years of infamy are up.

no names, please

Happy anniversary. I hope and pray that, wherever you are, whatever your situation, you are happy, safe, strong and fulfilled.

Monday, March 13, 2006

William F. DeVault at AuthorsDen

Just thought I'd lay down a plug for the poet's works at AuthorsDen.

For those of you not familiar with the site, it is a place for writers of all levels and all genres to meet and both display and discuss their works. There are some pretty talented individuals on the site.

The poet has about 150 of his poems (some of which can be found now where else in the known universe), some of his articles (everything from a review of Frank Miller's Sin City to a piece on how redeye whiskey is made), and some stories on there (he has been working off and on for some time on a book about his experiences as a corporate consultant with companies like Perot Systems, Computer Sciences Corporation and CACI...he has some interesting tales to tell).

The link directly to his stuff is William F. DeVault at AuthorsDen.

A pet peeve of mine. A few years ago, a promo for the poet's site mentioned that, at the time, he had about 400 of his poems on his site. Somehow that got distorted to he had written 400 pieces (he has written about 13,000) and now when promo sites seeking cross-links clone that text, they just propagate an inaccuracy.

Such is the power of the World Wide Web.

everyday conversations

Just had lunch with Alan, my musically-gifted-most-ancient-of-friends. We discussed, in no particular order, the effect of global warming on the health of housecats, the danger of May-December romances, our eighth grade art teacher whom I wrote a tribute to in AEI's "Art&Soul" and the slow extinction of junk shops in and around Morgantown. Oh, and the confluence of musical and lyrical rhythm and cadence.

Typical day.

Some news phrases kicking around inside my head, looking for the layers of coating that turn a grain of thought sand into a pearl of poetry.

Maybe I shall write again, sooner or later. Probably sooner.

Wow...really out of it...maybe a brief nap. Usually this kind of phasing in and out means my preconscious wants a word with me. I wonder what it is, this time?

building a mystery by building a mystery

My friend and peer, Larry Jaffe, has a phrase: Unprotected Poetry. It carries a lot of firepower in these flesh and soul prophylactic times.

The phrase came to mind this morning when I received a cryptic email. Cryptic because I don't know who it was from...the email address I responded to it at was already deleted. But the author knows me. Not just through my works, but from closer range. They described things that only someone who has been both physically and emotionally intimate with me would know, to establish their credentials.

To someone as driven to recall every contact with an intimate, it made me able to reduce the list of possibe writers to a handful. I am not physically or emotionally promiscuous, and thus I know who I know.

Of the six women I narrowed it down to, I know, approximately where five of them are right now (not to the exact room and building, but their geographic whereabouts and, perhaps more importantly, their emotional whereabouts.) Three of the five could have written this letter, as well as the wild card.

This lowers the suspects for 7,000,000,000 to 4 rather quickly. Beyond that I won't hazard a guess, as I would probably be wrong, suffice it to say I am curious, but not insane about it. The author is either quite literate or spent a lot of time constucting the letter, or had help...I took some pride in the fact that I have generally allowed myself to only get involved with a better evolved genre of the fairer sex.

The letter itself was reasonably brief, a litany of issues this probably-former-lover has with, not the poet, but the man. Curiously enough, she invoked Sarah MacLachlan's "Building a Mystery"...which leads me in certain directions as to my suspect.

I had never actually sat down and read the lyrics to the song, so I did.

When someone tells you "this painting could be you" you want to see the painting. When someone who knows at least an aspect of you tells you that a certain song haunts them as it describes you, as she recalls you, perfectly, you will listen to the song and dissect it like an unfamiliar piece of fruit, offered as a dessert item on a plate. Hoping it is not poisonous and tastes nice.

Perhaps this woman has me to rights, perhaps I am so many layers of contradictions that I am not possible. Perhaps, to steal from some guy also named William "there are more things in heaven and in Earth..."

The letter itself was not damning, there was a sense of gentle prodding to it, as though the author felt I needed to get on with things. I hope, whoever she is, that she has her life together and she is at peace and that her words were offered with the same love and concern that I would hope all who have known me know I would show them.

But I promise I will reread her letter and consider her words. An unprotected poet needs to know all that he can.

phone sex poetry and Santa Ana Winds

I had a fantastic day, yesterday.

I identified some poets I'd like to have featured on my podcast FROM OUT OF THE CITY. Including one young poet who wrote a poem about phone sex (or cyber sex, if you prefer) that matches or transcends my own AT A DISTANCE, UNDETERMINED. These are exciting times (on many planes)...more on this crew later. Hey, I've got an "explicit" tag on Apple's iTunes Music Store, might want to actually take it out for a spin from time to time.

Made the acquaintance of some previously unencountered poets, always loads of fun. I don't read too much poetry (trying to avoid the "Mozart effect"), just enough of a given poet to discover their "voice" (the most essential difference between "writing poetry" and "being a poet"). I found mine early, or it found me, I was lucky. I always liked what Benjamin Disraeli said "When I want to read a good book, I write one." After a season of having a hard time finding talent for the show, a welcome respite.

More mundane to most, but not to me, was the return of THE WEST WING to begin its death-spiral on NBC. It will be missed, but if last night;s episode, full of romantic interludes and political campaign intrigue and world events was any indication of the way this lion of a show will roar out, I'm very pleased. (Yes, I am a J/D 'shipper, what romantic could not be?)

WVU made it to the NCAA basketball tourney...6th seed in the Atlanta regional. If they play to capability, there are few teams to match them. But, lately they've been a bit flat (maybe saving it for March Madness? I don't know...we shall see...)

Thunderstorms in the forecast today. Bring 'em on...I write best in chaos.

Spoke to my ex yesterday. I told her that when we go to my daughter's wedding in September, I want to take my sons to the high desert at Joshua Tree for an outing (she's welcome to accompany us, but I figured she'd be busy...and I've been told I am an invitee to the event, not a participant, so...might as well at least babysit). I love that area, and I wanted to share it with Dante and Elric. Plus, I need to jack into it again. Every day that I am away from the Santa Ana Winds, I lose a little of myself.

Perhaps those are the "winds of an old rage" from my poem HORIZON. Joshua Tree is east of Los Angeles...hmmmm.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

post deleted

...post deleted by author because he doesn't think the world is ready for something that honest...

tiny red flowers

I once dreamed of flowers
tiny red
flowers
like solferino buttercups
blooming from my fingertips
as I touched a pillow
where no one slept
no one wept
for an absent lover

in the absence of
honest hearts
feeling joy and pain
the poets are there
opening their hands
to make fields of bright flowers
to wake the wind
and draw the sun out
of hiding

the flowers were perfect
like the little
paper
blossoms
you get from dropping
sea shells
into passive glasses
of tapwater
to see what happens next


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

Cheating justice

Milosevic is dead.

Not a huge surprise. We all die, the good, the bad, the unsung and the famous.

What troubles me is the media reaction, interviewing people angry that he died and "cheated justice".

Justice isn't revenge. Anyone who thinks that way has no business in the judiciary, in politics, really anyplace except the front row of the religious edifice of their choice, trying to learn a few things about how the world should work.

We can't surrender to anger, to hatred. To say a man who lived out his last months in jail and died there has avoided justice because we didn't get to see him twitch at the end of a rope or strapped on a gurney is perverse, pandering and unacceptable. I can't see Jesus, or Buddha or any significant religious figure or social philospher of the last 10,000 years of human history backing that lowest-common-denominator wretched plea for blood.

What breeds the Milosevics, the Hitlers, the Bin Ladens, is our inability, as a species, as a polyglot of societies, to rise above our anger, our rage, our thirst for a retributive scale bathed in blood. Name calling and twisting words like "justice" into personal vendetta is counter-productive and wasteful.

Live your lives for something more than reaction to the evil of others. Choose, not evil for evil, which you then label "justice", but good. Don't listen to talking heads paid big bucks by detached corporate fund shufflers when they try to tell you what you know, in your soul, is wrong.

I'm not saying someone like Milosevic deserves better.

I'm saying that we do.

Shame on the media, and I feel sorry for those so twisted by their own pain they can't break out of it, can't evolve to something more sacred, more human, more just. That there are those who would sensationalize their pain to sell toothpaste is an injustice.

I knew someone...

Thumbnails of some people I've known:

I knew a woman once who was so mad at her father that, when she got married, she told the County Clerk she didn't know who her father was.

I knew a man who was jumpmaster in the military and lost a finger. To a power tool, working at home.

I knew a woman who declined a contract with a major modeling agency and married her boyfriend when she was nineteen because all of her friends from school had already gotten married.

I knew a man who tired to commit suicide by shooting himself in the hand.

I knew a woman who, when pregnant, married the only guy in town who proposed. And he was about the only man she knew who hadn't slept with her. He wanted to do the right thing for a friend, she wanted a husband.

I knew a man who lived the last year of his life, after being diagnosed with AIDS, on Coca Cola and vitamin shots. He was buried wearing a vampire cape.

I knew a woman whose teenage daughter was taught by her ex-husband how to copy her mom's email files, so he could see whom his ex-wife was talking to.

I knew a man who believed that because it is mentioned in the Bible that Jesus wept, but not that he laughed, it was a sin to laugh.

I knew a woman who shaved her head because the man she wanted wouldn't become her lover.

I knew a man who smeared his entire body in peanut butter, jelly, ketchup and mustard and marched in a parade.

I could go on, but I was just reflecting on some of the people I've known. A tiny, tiny fraction of those I've known.

Introspection is a strange, strange serpent.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

okay, let's tear this up

dance in the sky/lyric

split second timing
turn on and dime and
find the prime number at the top
burn the walls to the ceiling
leave the world reeling
don't dare start unless you can't stop

climb the wire
light the fire
and dance naked in the sky
live like a goddess
no time to get modest
it's a crime if you just try to get by

show me a reason
to know that your teasin'
is an invitation to dance in the sky
I don't like to take chances
on third string romances
just tell me when and I'll never ask why

climb the wire
light the fire
and dance naked in the sky
come, don't you falter
take me to your altar
for the right set of lips I would die


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

If you have to ask, you don't need to know...

New works, book title odds and a kiss is still a kiss

THE TASTE OF A SHY SMILE is getting good responses from fellow writers, fans and readers...as is this week's podcast (haven't taken the time to listen to it, yet? How tragically unhip and illiterate of you, monkey boy!)...I am grateful, as always.

The temperature is being turned up to consider RONIN IN THE TEMPLE OF APHRODITE for the title of my next book. Long shot, kids, THEOCRICIDE was chosen for more than just its stylish perversity, it also ties into the concept of the entire book. You'll see...Daddy is not quite as barking mad as you may think. In fact, odds are good I'm the most sane person in the room.

And right now, that's you and me. Did you think I didn't keep track of where my hits come from? Don't worry, I won't tell.

Anyway, I am keeping RONIN... out of the new book, as I am saving it to headline its own book, probably next year (2007) with a unifying theme of romantic detachment. Let's face it, with my catalog, if I never write another word, you could release a book the size of THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES every year for the next two decades without having to duplicate a poem.

Pretty bitchin', no?

In fact, one of my long term goals is to release nearly every worthy poem in a book the size of TCPC, so that one could, if one was so inclined, have a very tidy bookshelf of just my works.

Other potential future book titles: 101 GREAT EROTIC POEMS, 101 GREAT METAPHYSICAL POEMS, ALCHEMY OF THE HEART, POEMS FROM HELL, RONIN IN THE TEMPLE OF APHRODITE, LOVE IS AN HOWLING BEAST, LESSER GODDESSES UNKISSED, DREAMS OF THE DAMNED, COURTESANITY and RETURN OF THE AMOMANCER.

and those are just the ones I admit to, and do not include any novels (or my viral memoir)...and are predicated on my survival to complete these projects. I won't stop, I found the switch and it was such a bitch to activate the whole machine I would never turn it off if I knew how...I'd go critical mass and explode. Too messy.

Hmmm...good name for a future muse: courtesan. Any volunteers?

first, a brief commercial...then...

commercial...Yes, I put a link to my CafePress store on my website...if you want official merchandise (t-shirts, mugs, etc)featuring my books and works, check it out...there's also a special running through the 14th of this month...end of commerical.

and now, ladies and gentleman, fallen and risen, I give you...something new...

the taste of a shy smile

sliding by
the sky
we touch on
several planes
in wavelengths
beyond violet and red
the past is dead
and serves
the purpose
of conduit
to deliver
us
to this moment
suspended
between what was
and what is possible
which is
everything
yet to be explored
not ignored
like opportunities
for joy
by cold and craven players
in fading photographs
and memories

I know things
that toe rings
and a hint of jasmine
can't communicate
fate and hate
are not sibling or regent
and we prevent
our own happiness
in cowardice
and a curious logic
that begs the tragic
refusal to love
because we know we are
unworthy
but that doesn't stop God
or poets
and the taste
of a shy smile
should be immortal


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

Friday, March 10, 2006

Barnes & Noble vs. Books A Million

Tag and I spent the evening out at Barnes & Noble, the new one near Morgantown...it will do, it will do. We're working to set up a reading there next month and will be negotiating for them to carry some of my books.

Besides, the clerks were clever, literate and attractive. Works for me. Tag and I have already picked out our wives.

Buh bye BAM.

offensive words and a general amnesty

Yesterday I was sitting in the cafe at Books-A-Million (what do they call it, "Joe Muggs" or something like that?) with Tag, discussing distribution strategies on his forthcoming book MIDNIGHT MUSE IN THE CONVENIENCE STORE (I am not kidding, that is its title...) when a youngish clerk came up to us, whom we have engaged in conversation before and asked us what the most offensive word we could think of was.

He was bored and making a list to gauge public opinion, or something like that. The three of us then launched into a discussion of various profanities and racial/gender epithets that seemed to lack for only Denis Leary to make it truly arch (those of you who saw the "name calling" episode of RESCUE ME will understand what I mean).

This morning, it occurred to me what would most offend me, although having lived a life largely above the water line and having taken a lot of verbal abuse, some deserved and some based on slanders or misconceptions. Not a concept or curse based on race or gender, height, weight, national origin or sexual orientation, none of which I would have any say over anyway if I wasn't an overweight straight white male of French extraction and average height (but with superb cholesterol levels, I might say).

No, to be called an "ingrate" would probably be the bottom for me.

I know there are times I haven't said "thank you" quickly or loudly enough, but I'm talking about people with a sense of entitlement who seem to feel that anything you do for them, you were supposed to do anyway. It cuts to the core of my personal theology, which is based, not on attempts to "get into Heaven" but to demonstrate gratitude for the life given. The tale of the frog and the scorpion. I figure I get little enough right in this life, I'd just like to be patted on the head once in a while when I go out of my way, when I put it on the line...not expecting a payback or a payoff, just hoping for a 'thank you'.

And because that is something I should have control of in my own life, the attitude of gratitude, I think being accused of that is about as low as I can cut it for someone. Yes, there are situations where I or others are reacting to bad information, and there will always be misinformation in the world, some of the nastiest personal attacks I have come under have been from decent people going on bad intelligence, and I don't like that, but I deal with it as best I can. Maybe it is correct to say I cut people too much slack, allow too much the rationale, the benefit of the doubt, excusing conduct that most would not. Maybe I shouldn't, but having been misjudged myself, I don't really want to be guilty of it. "Misjudge not, that ye be not misjudged"?

So, I'm going to try and live up to a general amnesty to everyone in my past.

I have the intellectualization of it, I'll work on the emotional component, and we'll take it from there, 'kay? And, if along the way, you feel I have not shown the gratitude I should have for actions you have taken in my behalf, or on behalf of others (as I am grateful for when you help others to their feet, as well) let me just apologize here and promise I'll try a little harder to be a little better. I'm still going to speak the truth, as I perceive it, but I'll try to be a little more forgiving.

Thanks, for hearing me out. I'm grateful for your time.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

This Week's Podcast is out early

Okay, I listened to the final edit and was so happy with it I rushed this week's show to the server...

Radio City of Legends is the place to go if you want to listen to this twenty two minute slice of manic metaphysical meandering. It just really came together so nicely, I was even brave enough to extend some musical interludes...

as usual, infinite thanks to www.archive.org for providing the server and bandwidth

a special thank you to fellow Morgantown High School alumnus Kathi (Kirk) Elkins for inadvertently helping me select this week's unifying gestalt, her kind words of encouragement have helped me in dealing with some of the more bruised aspects of my worldview. Thank, Kathi, your husband (Randy) is a fortunate man. Tell him I said so.

Special, special thanks to Brigit, for giving me an emotional lift when necessary. Some people stay in touch, you know (snort).

As always, thanks to Alan MacDonald, whose lessons on music theory will eventually penetrate my thick skull, until then I will just do the best I can with my tin ear and knack for words.

Special, special, special thanks to my old flame Nancy, who was the genesis of THE TRINITY CYCLE, which caps this show bravely and nicely.

As always, to my daughter, Peri, her fiance, Brian, and my sons Elric and Dante (I'm not kidding, these are real names...I know, who the heck names their kid Brian?) whom I all love, thanks, there are days that without you in my sphere, there would not be a me. And thanks to Jan, who has done such a fine job raising the offspring of a madman.

Oh, and my unknown goddess? Don't worry...this fire is barely sparked.

the mix is in

Just finished the final mix for the show. argh. brain cramps. I know I should have my friend Alan, the brilliant musician that he is, handle the musical chores but, to be honest, I couldn't afford him.

Rest assured that, at very least, my constructions are at least earnestly from my own tastes and style. And, when you listen to the show this week (I know you will, thousands do every week) pay attention to the subtle percussion line backing THE TRINITY CYCLE. I shift types of percussion between poems to give them all their own landscape.

I just got a marvelous letter from a former lover, discussing literary matters. We've had our ups and downs and a reconciliation in the real world is impossible (complicated to the Nth degree, cubed) but we remain collaborators. She is assisting me with the polishing of my novel, I am assisting her with her writings. She inspired the female lead in the book I am attempting to have out this year, so pay attention. Long time readers, yes it is the Goddess herself, Brigit, you din't think I'd stay angry at her forever, did you? I don't waste much time in forgiving people, I have enough baggage without being the bad guy.

Okay, no more pissing and moaning about the lack of romance in my life, I promise. Those who are of interest to me are either unavailable or disinterested, and I'm not into selling myself. If I ever get real lonely, there's always the poetry groupies, but I hate reducing my lovelife to a shadow. I'd rather just find one worthy and spend the rest of my life making her as delirious happy as humanly possible.

Is that so much to ask? In this graceless age, probably. But don't think the Amomancer isn't going to try.

(throwaway poem)

you can try. you can die.
you can grovel. or just fly.
patchwork wings of
leather and feathers,
solar sails the size of
gas giants and
no brakes.
I have to
run into planets
to slow down.

William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

sorbet moments between ronins and trinities

I just listened to the first edit of the music for the show...it needs some tweaking, but this is certainly the most ambitious piece we've assembled. It includes a "sorbet moment" of just over two minutes, between RONIN IN THE TEMPLE OF APHRODITE and THE TRINITY CYCLE where I keep shifting in and out of musical archetypes to cleanse the mind's palate. Watch for the church organ and the honky tonk pianos I distorted the soundwave on...as well as the harp and the rambling guitar.

When I play, I play. The work is right now at 19:04...final shaping of the gaps between individual works in the cycles may yet change that, but it should come in under 20 minutes, throw in the show's intro and extro and a bit of babbling filler for moi, including perhaps even some acknowledgements, and we have about a twenty five minutes show (I got hate mail over how short last week's was...hey, just because I'm not using it right now doesn't mean you can threaten cut it off and sell it on eBay...)

Got a pep talk email from an old high school friend this morning. I think she's acutely aware of how isolated I feel right now, she was mostly noting that my romantic dry spell won't last forever, that there are women in the world who appreciate romantic geniuses. (I've been demoted from godlike figure to genius? I've been too long away from the high desert... need.... some... Santa... Ana... winds...)

Yes, those women just all happen to be right now about 2500 miles away (that's not true...but I had to be glib and superficial or you wouldn't respect me).

I'll be fine, it's like sitting in the dentist's chair...you don't enjoy the moment, but you know it needs to be done (now Bette Midler's "Doctor Longjohn" is wedged in my head....noooooooooooo!)

Back to the spinning wheel...got a room still full of straw.

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