Our friend Steve Simpson attended the Dec. 17th memorial reading for Cid Corman at Beyond Baroque and gave a moving testimonial about Cid’s concern over the death of Steve’s dog. Steve is a carpenter and a friend to poets. He brought with him some beautifully printed broadsides of a Clive Faust poem written especially for this occasion. With thanks to Steve and Clive, here’s the poem:

Syllables to and from Cid

I hear y’call–is that beyond the grave?
“Beyond” you don’t believe in–nor I–
to send a call so far as that: we hope,

despair we hope, in gustings across the wind.

Those interested in obtaining a copy of the broadside may write to Steve at: 2616 Alpine Bl #9/ Alpine, CA. 91901, USA.

Ahadada Books wishes to thank Fred, Lola, and Pablo of Beyond Baroque for a great venue for a great reading! Thanks to everyone who showed up for the twin events. Catherine Daly, Bruna Mori, Dan Sendecki, Judy Skillman (a surprise!) and Jerome Rothenberg gave exemplary performances. Thanks too to the folks who stayed on to celebrate Cid. We heard some moving and insightful words about the man and his works.

Hopefully, Dan will have some video files to share with everyone soon.

A note of thanks to my buddy Ian Roberts of THE UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE and his wonderful family for their hospitality, to Catherine Daly’s husband, family, friends, and Wagner-loving Bird, Poe, for the great spread on the 18th of December, and to Judith Hoffberg for showing everyone around L.A. when I was heading back to Japan.

You’ve all “made a record in my heart” as Williams once said.

Listening to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s wonderful voice singing my all-time favorite song. This is the music–and the song–that I brought with me to Japan–and which I listened to over and over as I watched a new world, a new culture, and a new people, from my apartment window, the darkness stretching behind me. It was Antler and his good friend Jeff who first gave me this gift at my Milwaukee going away party, September, 1992. It filled the hours of my aloneness with sweet melancholy. I played it when I could not sleep in the middle of the night, the mind dizzy with memories. I hummed the tune to myself as I climbed the steep roads to my first school in Nagasaki. It also played as background to the night that I packed to move on to yet another place a year and a half later. So many years ago–and yet the music remains to remind me of those days of turmoil and of sadness–when I indeed had become lost to the world.