Leo Connellan didn’t forget me. During my own down and out time in the middle of the break-up of my first marriage, Leo sent me a $100.00 bill to take the family out on him. It was a wonderful gesture, which I tried to repay much, much later (about 1996) when I wrote him a check for exactly $100.00 to buy a new suit for a reading. That’s the way we were. The money we gave each other was money “in the bank.” Leo also came through for me when I was starting Die Young Magazine with Skip Fox. He allowed us to be the first magazine to publish the fine poem Provincetown, available elsewhere on this site in the Die Young archives. In addition, he helped me get the nerve up to contact Karl Shapiro–yes, THE Karl Shapiro–in my bid to find a job. (And Mr. Shapiro kindly came through.) There are so many things this wild man, and extraordinary poet, did for me that I’ll never be able to write them all down.

Leo also managed to get me a reading tour–it was largely through him–back in April of 1991. It was a wonderful time, but it was also a bit of a disaster because of my health–it appears that I had a minor stroke (from what I found out from doctors, later on) the first leg of the journey at the University of New York at Oswego–and was still suffering the after-effects the following day: splitting headache, a feeling of not quite being myself, and numbness on my left side. The condition is called transient ischemic attack (tia), and I had been having minor black-outs for at least a year before the big one hit right before my Oswego gig. Anyway, by the next day, I was somewhat better and that day was when I read for David Axelrod’s class at Long Island University. I have before me as I write, an inscribed copy of Home Remedies, New and Selected Poems 1961-1981 (Cross-Cultural Communications Press, 1982) from this fine poet. It was one of the few volumes I brought with me to Japan. Here’s a poem from Home Remedies:

World Poem

It is zero but hot
inside our house and I
am absorbed in a jet of
cloud created by the vaporizer
we have bought. I aim it at
you across the dim-lit living
room and you complain, call me to
the screen. Plugged in, we watch
men circling in space two-hundred
thousand miles away: Picture
the earth full-blown, swirling
in darkness–the cloudy globe
we see in color from Apollo
and the serene vacuum that
surrounds three captured men.
Picture their vital signs
detected and transmitted to
us across decaying darkness.

Zero outside: we
keep within our capsuled
world, gazing at the
lunar sea, or across
the icy fields where
the fence posts are fangs
devouring the moon.

Just today David e-mailed my friend Dan Sendecki while we were conversing via instant messaging. How incredible all of this technology is that brings everyone together in a kind of cyber-heaven. Had someone told me in Dave Axelrod’s class after reading poetry and discussing the subject with his students, that 13 years later I’d be able to read, write, and speak Japanese, and would be publishing my memories and thoughts with one push of a button to hundreds of people in something called a “blog” I wouldn’t have believed it. In fact, I still can hardly believe that I’m living in the future.

From the Washington Post via the Daily Yomiuri:

Missing
Missiles
Worry
Officials

A beautiful fall morning in Shin-Urayasu. Coffee to (somewhat) clear the brain, and my strongest pair of reading glasses on. Here’s a marginal poem written as an annotation on the introductory page of Seascape: Needle’s Eye. Cid writes = horizon (GO) after the title.

Somehow we fit–edge to edge–
The way it always is and
has to be–things as they are–

even in the openness
or seeming so of “space”. One
Thing up against and into–

before you even know it–
another. We others
register what occurs and

in the event become
precisely what we seem–the
instances of poetry

1/Apr. 84.

There is yet another interesting note/poem on the page, which, alas, my poor eyesight (and Cid’s poor hand) does not allow a clean transcription, but which goes:

Poetry the last
piety. Pie-
ta. Good Aneas–

Narayama–a
country–a summit
of snow. Horizon

of power. The thing
miraculously
touches by breath of word.

The word “horizon” is questionable here, but it’s the best I can do.

A few more “marginal” poems and then we’ll move on.

On an unpagenated sheet in Oppen’s Collected:

Who lets me see
The stubborness of
humility.

Letting the words
break upon my rock
becoming shore.

And this from the same page:

Waiting for
the rain to
ease–to wait

upon the
sky–to watch
it yield the

sun–all that
undisguised
clarity.

And yet another:

Unless I so
turn it that it
turns upon
itself

and is
the turning
That in turn twists
you into this.

On the opposite page:

I have been foolish–
have trusted others
& been told by them

that I was foolish–
to have trusted them.
But so I am. Not

proud of it–warm
of my own nature
but also true to
it.

And this one, too:

nothing has changed–yet
as George always knew–
nothing remains the

same. As if you saw
but didn’t perceive
how the body looks.

All of these are dated 26 July 84.

Every page of Oppen’s Collected is heavily annotated, but I leave that up to the better sighted scholars of the future to look into more throughly.

Looking at Cid’s copy of Meaning a Life by Mary Oppen (Black Sparrow, 1978), we continue to uncover more evidence of Cid’s feelings for both George and Mary and their story. Cid apparently attempted to interest film makers in Meaning; A Life. A letter from Cid’s sister-in-law, Cis, on stationey from Barwood Films, tells Cid how he should create a synopsis of the story “that would make clear to them the potential that you see in this material.” She goes on to say that perhaps PBS or American Playhouse would be interested, but “It’s a long shot….”

At the bottom of the note Cid says that he sent the material 1 June 87 (25 pp or so).

To the best of my knowledge no copy of this material was found among Cid’s papers when we packed them up. (Check this.)

However, what appears to be a part of the material, or notes toward the working up of it, is in Cid’s characteristic hand, and it is a moving tribute to Mary and George Oppen:

“This is a love story–an incomparable one perhaps for that very reason–operating at such depth–it becomes a pervasive one–one that belongs not only to the principals involved but to those of us who are privileged to share in it and of it. It is a love story that is peculiarly American and yet moves beyond all borders and engages us in what can only be called and rightly called–poetry.

It is a true story–one that becomes true–one in which there are no good guys or bad guys–but people struggling to make a life & to make life into something like a meaning–it is therefore a story of love.”

More soon.