Ramon Guthrie. Maximum Security Ward and Other Poems (Persia Books). I particularly like his last series of poems, written while fighting the cancer that eventually killed him–esp. a moving poem on prehistoric cave paintings called “The Making of the Bear,” which tells of the struggle of the artist to create something that will endure, even if it’s in total blackness and cut off from the world by a flooded chamber. It goes, in part:

I found the cave was easier going this time,
but the torrent sucked and swirled up to the ceiling.
I moved half into it to test its tug.
It grabbed me, pulled me under. The bladder buoying me,
I found a shallow dome that let my nose just clear
the water. Strange, there with death so sure, I thought
not for my women nor their young but for the bear
that I would leave unfinished. Him I commended
to the spirits of the dark….

[And it ends like this]:

There
in that total lack of light
is where my bear is.
No one will ever see him
but he still
is there.

Guthrie died on Nov. 22, 1973. This is one gentleman I would have liked to have spoken to. I was just publishing my first small booklet of poems at that time.

More favorites: Cormac McCarthy–Almost anything, but especially his Outer Dark. Too bad the movie version of All The Pretty Horses was turned into such a farce. I still recall the ridiculous scene in which a poker-faced Mexican executes a fancy dance step while staring down the young protagonist of the story.
Leo Connellan. New and Collected Poems. (Paragon House). Leo was a long-term associate of mine–part good guy, part bug-bear. I first read and reviewed Crossing America in 1977 for Charles Plymell’s Northeast Rising Sun magazine, and that began our connection. Leo was a type-writer ribbon salesman at the time, but I arranged a tour of Maryland colleges for him to bring in some much-needed dough. What I didn’t suspect was that Leo was in the grip of alcoholism and he proceeded to offend just about everyone he met, including my fiance at that time, and almost all the hosting professors. After a friend and I saw him off at the bus station, with a six-pack under his arm and a pint in his pocket, I swore I’d never talk to him again, but around 1983, I wrote. Leo had licked the addiction, and was busy writing the poems that would become The Clear-Blue Lobster Water Country. We were buddies after that. More about my late friend Leo Connellan and his powerful narrative poems in the future.
Roy Fisher–Poems 1955–1987.
Frank Wedekind. Spring Awakening.
Cyril Tourneur, The Revenger’s Tragedy. Just reading it again.
Emily Dickinson. Of course!
Gertrude Stein. Ditto. For poetry her “Tender Buttons” and “Portraits.”
Lew Welch. His Selected is his best. I especially like “Wobbly Rock” and “The Song of the Turkey Buzzard.” His letters are good too, and his book on writing poetry is a must. More on him later.
David Meltzer. Almost everything he writes.
Sharon Doubiago. Ditto.
Weldon Kees. Ditto.
Herman Melville. Besides the obvious, Pierre, Or, The Ambiguities–a flawed masterwork, and a crazy prose poem that has, in parts, the intensity of another favorite–
Insidore Ducasse. Maldoror, and Poesies. Esp. The Lykiard translation.
In Art:
Franz Marc.
Emile Nolde. There’s currently a Nolde exhibit in Tokyo that I hope to see this week.
Frank Auerbach.
The mezzotints of Yozo Hamaguchi. Exquisite! I had a chance to see a major restrospective of his work two years ago and the glowing colors of his cherries and those delicate butterflies highlighted against the subtle gradations of color in his backgrounds stay with me yet.
I highly recommend all of the writers and artists in this list! More to come.