Letters For Brother - 2 Letters Sent to Ken Irby '69 & '70 by larry goodell

Letters For Brother

Winter Solstice 1970 in Hogan-Kiva at Dome Valley, Placitas, New Mexico

2 Letters Sent to Ken Irby December â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;69 & April â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;70 Larry Goodell

This is a Supplement Or a Background to

Brother duende press 2014 & includes List of “Thing” Development Brother: http://issuu.com/larrygoodell/docs/gwb/1

many thanks to Ken Irby for being a wonderful patient reader and listener of my uncertain expositions trying to come to terms with the active performance of my poetry love in friendship larry 1st letter December ‘69 1-12 2nd letter April ‘70 12-24 for a description of the cover photo see page 9

11Dec69 Speed-Wash Coin-Op Silver Cue Bernalillo, NMex. used to be a pool hall the cue-stick sign out the door – still. Dear Ken ~ Yr letter today in a measure of disproportion I havent written you. Lenore in her white sailors pants & my high school tennis shoes – putting clothes in the dryer. an old Indian lady carrying her laundry to the back of this place Rainbow wide awake – hands & feet moving swimming this continent? on his back in paper diapers. the light comes in this laundromat thru glass bricks – they used to use often in the modern 40's 50's, scattered prisms on the string of Speed Queens. Joel is looking around at all the sights – blurred at this stage. Does talk, cry, but in a way I’ve never before been intimate with – so far except for a rash which has passed, & a few nights he was irritable – there’s been sleep for me (not so much for Lenore, she tries to sleep later) & quiet when we’ve all gone out together ~~ I want the thrust thru the word to the object behind it Meant to write ‘to’ either way, is central. I took from (someone is writing/) – Burroughs’ take. Arm (actually? sleeve) of a shirt (L. embroidered & added some ribbon bands) flashed down – thru the dryer window an arm thrust. & I lam more than willing to project this thing, bridge/barrier (American) magic/culture (Europe) ÷(in Call Me Ishmael, I’m reading further into this morning back & forth where nothing is synonymous & everything is interesting. I’m trying to pull back to make clear where I was (where I just covered ground?) on one hand & on the other ~~ the risk is in going on (giving into) ~ going back is like selecting a theme, the texture (of the/my mind) is so rich picking up a thread (Duncan, & his not wanting the thematics, yet what orders the Passage is there under the same (or different?) name

u where I pick up a thread (thrust thru the word to the object ~ or something pulls me thru is it merely ‘mystical’ – or rather the brother, the teacher – who? (various ~~ Amer Ind. I’m reincarnate (false). less-Snyder-neon, my elder brother (fact I don’t Literally have one is meaningless here) the shape of an “artifact” its use determined, at the line between a man & nature? 11Jan70 Placitas, N. Mex. Ken — back into what I started to you in the laundromat, I want the(to) thrust thru the word to the object behind it & on to as far as I got. magic is the object (for me, now in a simplifying strain) & culture is the word, come slipping from this to MAKING the object (finding what is innate in it?) is the magic, confused how words relate to it (hopefully, will come out of it, out of the making of it, will constitute the USE of it?) p. 11 of the [Joseph] Zavadil paper I sent you is central to the . . . . . . . . . which permits me to live now. vibration, throb, crud plop the CENTER (me) of the 6 (arbitrary) directions, laced with me now, these named objects – portion of a bear's skull (W), stone lion (N), stone wildcat (S), large quartz crystal (DOWN), & (here's the confusion, risk, worry, hole) the Song of the Priest represents the Eagle (UP). I don’t have the song, or thot I DID have the song. To have someone teach me their song in their language is again not my song. back up to carry the MAKING of the object over to the ARRANGING it, say placement among others — the Priest in the center of the jars & stones etc. then comes the song.

or shd., the Navajo who can do several sings, valued, honored for his prodigious memory, those old men at Zuni going on all night with the chant at the Shalako. my memory, experience, largely fragmentary. Drummond Hadley, who now lives in Santa Fe, when he gives a 'reading' it is all delivered from memory. I remember he got up & did one on the grass at the end of that Berkeley conference, '65 — & when [Ed] Dorn got up he said he didnt have a single poem in his head, they're all 'out there' (& was by that time tired of poetry). u so with a poor memory but able to make things with my hands including write things out nicely (some penmanship) when I choose, coming at this — (interim here, now 13th, couple days later) I allow myself to have the song written down in front of me & read/sing it/ but in the context I put myself in, still have no song. (back up to MAKING the object, finding what is innate in it – in the remarkable last 3 paragraphs of [Carl] Sauer's EARLY RELATIONS OF MAN TO PLANTS essay, 'a new symbiosis between plants and men was therefore in progress.’ in this symbiosis, men's shifting about, 'burning, deadening, or digging' this has something to do with what shape the object turns out to be made.

2. I brot a couple abalone shell pieces together with colored thread (the rainbow goes back thru a lady who gave me colored package thread from Mexico, etc. etc.) with Lenore's beads & feathers. doused in the spring water here & spit. (sent one to you.)

1. numbering is out of order inevitable with happenstance, fragmentary accumulations of my memory. one 1 was 3 sticks made into a 6-directions god's eye with my blood on it, HAPPENED they say during the hanging up of them in the kitchen (gifts for Christmas/ 64?) with two ‘figures’ hanging down & a bell at the heart of the eye.

3. the 4 event poems– at first it was making things 4 using what I had around me. the accumulations of things in this room especially as you know. like those long poems starting October '64 ODE with their sightings, takes, of sorts, etc., the growth-set the poem took shape thru, the NEED FOR ACCURACY. the years before then frozen in a vague Dylan Thomas blur.

why do things take so long for me, I jumped to the strong Saturn trined to Jupiter & the Sun (oh my God just noticed that theyre in Scorpio, Pisces, Gemini – Joel, Lenore & me). but Saturn does pull me slow. meeting Creeley, bumping into an iceberg. pyramid. the word/phrase accurate to its sighted origin (inner or outer eye), got into the poem as the face/ physiognomy (that just came to me, then it was) set, net eliminating bullshit-America & told me in essence of it? (I'm far apace of the apocalyptic, the high-pitched — Lamantia, Hirschman, my friend Pearlman) tho my day is shot with tunings in — songs I sing at the steering wheel while driving, learned to cut them off often. BANDY MOTH just came to me, looked it up, aint there in the dictionary. Was thinking that on my upper side I was called butterfly & on my lower side, spider (the first at the Academy for Boys, tho not by the kids, by my teacher-friends, the second at NMMI by my students). Until Spicer's talk on dictated poetry, which opened me some way there, but more song-lie-in-itself than chant-blast, but is this true, don’t I go over the top of my voice when I read several of the poems in ORIENTAL BLUE STREAK, starting with that one PRAYER for Spicer. back to the event-poems, a lot of shuffling cards & reading them — the I Ching, Tarot strong with me somehow break thru the monologue of readings Vancouver/Berkeley/ Albuquerque (usually harsh institutional light & lectern etc.) FOR ME. Magic, & ceremony (which can form, direct it), gets into them. I am sighting back to a Zuni priest at the Shalako. I was sitting there with Ann Quin, & I'll never forget that man, eagle-nose, thin older man in like clean (Sears?) clothes TAKING A VERY LONG TIME TO TIE A RED FLUFFY EAGLE BREAST FEATHER TO THE HAIR ON THE TOP OF HIS HEAD. The 4 event poems have done more to my head than other things I’ve done, in that they brot together the years of watching Pueblo Indian dances, goings on, powerful peyote meetings at Tesuque & New Buffalo, brot this 'Indian' total environmental ceremonial absorption HEAD UP AGAINST & INTO poetry, quote 'my poems' — the work. THIS maze, here we are back to the object/word difficulty, the made thing which can equally be the object(s) & the song. 4

(now Monday, 19th Jan.) back to where I was numbering

(Tristano pushing it off into atonal, Parker bringing it back — beginning of VICTORY BALL, '49 Metronome All-Star session.) after finding out acequia willow is good prayer-stick wood — and an occasion (Steve Katona, arch-hippie of Placitas leaving for California where he's now cooking in some far-out school outside of San Francisco) I made him an amulet out of wood, shells from Big Sur, etc. — much willow cut & stashed down there by the old spring (which flows slowly, about 50 feet from the house). Then I performed a wedding in Cedro, N. Mex. — on the other side of the Sandias — Janie Stein (Lenore's good friend., & also from N.Y.C.) & Nicasio Romero (good friend of mine, from Roswell no less). Got into Waters’ BOOK OF THE HOPI about then. The tied-up amulet group for Steve (abt 3 pieces of wood) worked into a tied or untied group which I made for Lenore when she was pregnant. Like the yarrow stalks tied up except when you manipulate them. Like was it Parcheesi (now know the link to pachisi, Indian, therewith the cruciform & 4 directions, & the Aztec Patolli) the cup with dice? in it you shook up & threw, but the thing here is the pattern things fall in, as in jacks, pickup sticks, or more properly, divining & the Tarot. Especially the huge medicine man's bag (Navajo) which hangs in 11 cases in James Silva's Pottery House in Bernalillo. Items not catalogued & if so what more than 'ceremonial object' – what we need is interpretive ethnography (in the form of a teacher alive to/in a particular locale). The use (placement, procedure, song) gone out with the death of the man who knew it. The old men who die with their songs Ruth Kirk talks about in her ZUNI FETISHES, & the fetish in its clay pot home (where thru a hole it is fed every day) sometimes finds its way to a collector, sold by a relative say. All this personal magic, each man with his specialty — curing something say. & for the marriage, something after the Hopi paho (prayer stick with 2 sticks male & female), I made one — prototype male & female parts, then the priest part (the intermediary somewhat personal one), then the two personal parts, for the man & the woman, that were made separately kept apart, all brought together, tied up together at the wedding (then eating some bread then pouring wine taking a drink & Nicasio smashed the glass — this here the Jewish custom — or thrown against the north wall where 5

bad spirits enter – keep the demons out) feast & dope. wine. I must say Ken this wedding day was extraordinary, primarily due to the place & season. small village of Cedro, people had to walk down from hiway 10 since the road into it was impassable because of snow. & a small adobe with one of those crazy crooked windows up attic level. Wood fires in the stoves, an outhouse, a large gathering of people. Going out into the snow, coming back into warmth. A peculiar THING, New Mexican, a wedding of the other (20Jan) place/person far away ‘clan’ NY Jewish with New Mexican Chicano ‘hippie’, let’s say somebody moved here & ‘settled.”

Lenore. just brot in dried up Kentucky Wonder beans from the garden, took the bean poles down. She's taking the beans out of the dried shells for planting in the spring. I guess we'll be here tho I wanted to get off into something else, that is, a little house someplace where we cd have freer use of the land — we want some animals damn it, chickens, a goat, & a rabbit for Joel, etc. plus a much bigger garden, last year's was so fruitful. But that (as always gets back) demands my landing a job as teacher/ social worker/ something.

back to where I was numbering.

'the crazy, logical middle-class Americans who live only to work, and have fallen out of Nature's grace' — from something Michael Duncan said, a guy who spent a quarter of a million buying land around Taos for people to live on. lives in a 1-room adobe there. last of October, L. expecting any time, I wanted to have some feathers on hand for when the baby arrived, to make some thing to give to friends. I told L. I'm going to find a dead jay. swung down by the Cottonwood up thru cedars, piñons, across the road & down thru the grape vines, began singing as I walked, eyes scanning the ground, God of the Whir Bird, Dead Bird, God of the Whir Bird, simple song with feet, down the terrain to my favorite arroyo, starts up east of here on the other side of the conical hill in back of this house & goes down where the water pipe crosses it & down skirting the old terrace our garden's on, north a ways before blending out to other arroyos just down from the garden the arroyo is slightly over yr head, yr previous tracks gone after any rain, purity of rocks, apache plume, sand, things in it 'untouched' where I found, literally was LED to this old basalt spearpoint, months ago. well into there singing my song, simply IN it —

'to the extent you channel in on, leaving it to separate out from, leaving you halfway between risk & trust ...' (in my notebook, Sept/'67) maybe I was entirely into trust WITH NO EVIDENCE OF PUSHING that I sang the song come to me & the dog rushed forward grabbed the dead jaybird I got it from him the scrub jay must have hit the bank of the arroyo a bit of blood on the side of his head. I brot the bird so soft & beautiful that sky blue to slate in the feathers, in, took the feathers I needed, took it out & buried it in the corn row. & made from willow, rainbow thread & one of the jay feathers something with Joel Ai Rainbow written on it, a week later. u

now to jump to December & after Janie & Nicasio's wedding, reading into the Hopi book (Waters), aborted attempts before to come to some understanding of a ceremonial calendar

(21Jan) as much as I'm drawn, much thru L's eye, to the Aztec — specifically the great Coatlicue now in the Mexican National Museum, which is most visually EARTH to me than any other representational experience. But what has this to do with prairie towns? or Roswell & Barstow. Being there doesnt erase Mexico, tho people live as tho that's possible. So Grandma & Grandpa & their kids moved southwest from Kansas to New Mexico & when down as far as Artesia, I'm sure it never crossed their minds to KEEP ON GOING SOUTH INTO MEXICO. You cross that border & whank! something's yanked out from under yr feet. But I can carry the fertility monster with me across the pavement of the University or into K-MART or the 'restored’ kiva at Kuaua or into the crowd of witches which surround you when you travel at night. Blank up against the face of the bouffant queen with her poisoned boobs & her clinical cunt or the bulging martini face of the king of business choking on his tie (when are they going to start killing themselves by sticking a pistol up their ass). Just read this bit to L. & she said 'but theyre doing just that & doing it to us, that's the problem.' So. What does any of my concerns have to do with 'the millions' or even the few people I can talk to. I believe in the clan as a nucleus of energy but then I'm thrown back into the good ole American cult of the individual. It's alright to sit quiet & 'do my thing' but to expect some co-operation is too much, boogie-man-ego-trip puts me in my place. So the vague ties with the Taos commune energy & the peyote fare, meetings, etc. — part of 'the movement' — happy that the flow over is now into many more people my age, at least the last wave of people whove moved into Placitas. Anyway, grow grow grow & I think it will be alright. ‘The entire course of the Hopi Road of Life is unfolded every year in an annual cycle of nine great religious ceremonies that dramatize the universal laws of life.' —Frank Waters 8

So I read about the Soyal, the Winter Solstice ceremony, & talked to Jim Welty who now owns the domes property south of Placitas. & he helped me get the hogan in shape. This hogan was built by Steve Katona with the help of Frank Olguin (Isleta Indian). (The two sunken kivas have treacherous roofs – & the round house (round adobe on top of the ground) is lived in) At this time the doctor found a swollen vein leading off from L/s uterus & she had to go to the hospital immediately, horrible day, finally finally got supervisor's permission for her to keep Joel with her in the room. So she was there for five days & they gave her anti-coagulants. I wd visit her then come back to the hogan, which I'll now call kiva (it is octagonal, has a hole in the ceiling, has the old ceiling made of wood poles laid across the ends of each other around & around forming a kind of dome of the wood poles & then the opening). Used oil drum stove at the side (didnt want to black up all that wood by building a fire in the center). Thrown back by so many things, I was between giving the idea up & going ahead on such a minute scale it seemed meaningless, but by this time I was so OBSESSED that on Dec 21st after coming back from the hospital & having a beer with some friends in the village I came home & started getting things together like mad, made the North & South Twins out of cottonwood root, took all this stuff & willow wood & the hunting knife Gino gave me & seeds grains etc I'd gotten from a friend who grows good things in the village & fire wood & got to the kiva. I had got it all straightened up beforehand, fresh dirt spread over the floor so that there was no footstep in it when I arrived — nothing but a simple prayer stick there. & spent the night, the stove not working right, smoking, cold, there working on the “chief's” altar & the “soyal” altar which you can see in this photo Lenore took later. (Soyal altar to left – not entirely visible in photo -- simply twigs with cotton on it to represent the mountain, snow on it, 4 pahos at its base & a bunch of squash & corn.) (See cover photo.) The “chief's” altar with the twins of the North & South, the basket of seeds to be blessed, & road leading to the door. In back to the right, a painting I, hastily as everything else did, of Germinator, the figure/kachina who visits the kiva in the middle of the night, comes down the ladder into the kiva to bless the seeds that will be used later, in the spring. & to far right a sun disk on a stick hanging on the wall, this he picks up, whirls as he dances. & a bag of seeds there under it — & had jars of every kind of seeds grains, cereals I cd find, almost all organic. There is where the young chick sits all night during the ceremony. This is all in Waters & I think you have the book, if you read that section you’ll see what was in my mind.

. All of this maddening to me, the limitations I felt. But this suddenly some entrance to the ceremonial calendar, by way of the winter solstice which does represent birth, keeping the songs going doing everything right so that when the night is over, & Orion has swung all the way over, the sun will come up & will be pulled back from the south on its way north again. I did have a time towards dawn when the rudiments (again maddening in how limited) there, around me, exhausted, & THERE WERE NO SONGS. I decided to stay in the kiva the next night also â&#x20AC;&#x201D; much more work to do, etc. felt cleaner etc. fixed the stove, there can be a leeway of several days, as I understand it. but for WHAT, anyway. that night with things set up & the place moderately warm I could just be there, mind you it was full moon too & keeping the hatchway open, that rectangle of moonlight as it moved across the kiva floor was incredible. & watching the starsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;aware of the movements of first the Pleiades & their relation to the 7 universes the Hopis traveled thru, so beautifully concretely sung by the priest in consecrating the chief's altar, which is itself of the creation of this world

— 1. laying the foundation of a house, 2. erecting the walls, 3. putting the beams & roof in, 4. plastering, 5. putting in the niche, 6. putting in wood sticks to hang articles on, & 7. (according to Waters) putting in the fireplace. & the 3 stars of Orion's belt are visible directly over the entrance hole. + + Wow. + I wanted friends to work with me, but it wasnt possible, maybe never I don’t know. I wanted someone to be “Germinator,” & the Girl to be there all night. I want something more than this dull yearly Christmas-Easter invasion of my inner spirit. I'm doubtful about the pseudo-Indian, paranoid about it, can be freaked out by visions (that peyote trip with Ann & Lenore for instance, with the demons of Mexico hot on our trail). But I know mostly when I'm on that line between trust & risk, when I'm not defaming, or acting, when I'm in fact on the ground — exactly as when I'm writing a poem & whatever it is carries it thru. It was that identical feeling I trusted to those nights—in that what I made with my hands seemed to ride the contact pure with the very rhythm & necessity of this earth. The fantastic realization that I am not an Indian and can be as proud, and do have a brother, which is my, participation in some life vision. The Gemini thing but more than that, the longing for the man, the feeling of ugly incompetence possibly moving/growing out into some full flesh of man. Aztec statues of Xipe Totec, the priest wearing the skin of the sacrificed victim, the hands dangling at the wrists of the priest, his lips protruding thru the victim-flesh lips. *** But the felt presence of this teacher figure, elder brother, (found as an archetype in Jung, becomes even the wise old man). That there is in the reestablishment of the orders of the earth, some learning to be done. I don’t know the guru, the Indian, yet this slow, ever so slow communication from the 'brother' does exist. So I cd project this to be the use of a kiva-like place in where I can set up in accordance with how information falls to me to be used, with every caution I can handle. So that the year does assume what it already is. Starting right here with

me & Lenore & Joel to whatever cooperation develops if any. & that the very framework, the things made & placed out, the body thru what movements the line of teaching accords it — that I am up against the face of NO SONGS. that there may develop some songs, that poetry, I’ve been so involved in so long, which is the root of this, may provide, may step back to its roots & yet from my own place in time. & music, however simply, develop. I'm going to cut this here. I’ve got to get this off to you. Too many words & confusions. Oh for God's sake I want lucidity. But doesnt come often to me. Have pushed thru the words to the objects (that is, some words, some objects). & now will the actual movement, dance, ceremony SPEAK? To not just TALK the ceremony etc., the dance, but to have it? Again, that silence when I was there in the kiva — with the place as it was as pure to the season as my information & trust allowed. With no music, no songs. The place I almost want most to be, & SEE WHAT HAPPENS? love, Larry P.S. many thanks for yr letter. In back of this since it came, knowing Olson’s death (no I hadnt heard). Kerouac & Olson recently. Have played that beautiful tape he made for Christmas, to Creeleys, about ‘62. P.S. – & Clayton [Eshleman] took the long poem DOWN [Directions Poems] for Caterpillar 13. Thanks for urging me to send it. L. & Rainbow send their love! (2nd letter) 7Apr70 Placitas Joel's 5 months old today, grown out of the small green crib we got from Buffingtons, have handed it on to the Belottis — & got handed on to us a big one, he's now sleeping in. At one end. Ken — into second cup of yarrow tree that is TEA when some fuckin Colonel & ugly wife pulled up, I hope this aint a prelude to a summer of people up here looking at the place. Kenner [Hertford] has finally listed the 50 acres w/house with a young realtor, $100,000. 12

had disgusting encounter with the Colonel who wanted to bulldoze everything & turn it into a Levittown whatever that is, some development I guess, maybe it was that hard military humor where you needle (spike, fuck, kill) somebody words out from a redneck skinhead. "Whoever buys it will do what he damned pleases with it" in civilian clothes & saying I'm Colonel Dipshit tho you wdnt know it apology out of uniform they live in Placitas Heights I guess. So this shot shit out of my yarrow, my reading in deeply yr last letter & 'prose' gifts — & I went down to the garden, Lenore there turning the soft ground over, layer of horseshit on top & told her abt it, I was shaking. hopefully most events of looking the place over will be thru the realtor who isnt a bad guy I hope & Kenner's demands the place not be parceled etc. we plan our expanded garden nevertheless tho it will be the last summer on THIS earth. Kenner if he does sell the place will give us $2000 to help us buy some land, he is fantastic to offer that, simply knows our life. Annie had breast surgery, cancer, now just off radiation treatment, Kenner's eyes a bother, glaucoma, plus the full time of dealing with teenager with eye shadow. & vodka the only way out money could be a new freedom for them. /we'll see. floating up previous to the above & just as true — we'd PLANNED to leave with our last harvest, late summer, so the only difference is the place is going too! or something like that, it all works separately AND together which is where we're at. the PAHO. so phase out & in, Kenner's more or less definite gift a godsend, the articulation up from down under 'Everything happens to me.' Lightning [Hopkins]'s blues 'A sadness at going to bed without having written tenders the lovelorn hand and brings up rancor into the dream unremembered as a sadness upon waking.' from yr 'gists' 'a tiny spark of my own' rather than 'waiting for the random flashes of an uncertain thunderbolt' from Valery's ART OF POETRY I don’t think I can tie all this together — & that's suspicious this so often WANTING TO, that it comes out is enough. That you articulated up from . . . . . . How else wd we know? so Janie (L's good friend, married Nicasio Romero, my good friend from Roswell) just called, now on the phone with Lenore. & I realize 'we go honkytonkin round this town' Hank Williams on the phono the crucial reality is our friends here More than parents of course More even than Duncan say. of course which gets me back to being upset earlier today, got [John?] Martin's blurbs in 13

mail, the good poem/notes of [Irby’s] RELATION but plus, what upset me, [Robert] Duncan's thing on [Richard] Grossinger's OECOLOGICAL SECTIONS, & WHY this OE anyway when it's commonly Ecology? to know it really anyway is when you depend on it the land & know also that it may be raped from you between waterings. somehow this jumping on the bandwagon strikes me academic, more than that, Duncan's NOTES ON GROSSINGER'S SOLAR JOURNAL; OECOLOGICAL SECTIONS, reeks of the academy. Lenore says 'I'm just more interested in what people do rather than what they talk about' Where I realize talk ABOUT is key here, but anyway protest talking is doing, or, “I protest that talking is doing.” & she says what she means, what ! interests (not strong enough, DEMANDS her attention) is, say, the San Jose students BURYING a new Ford Maverick & somebody, ourselves, GROWING an organic garden. Which gets back to my suspicion that Io (I just got a copy from Grossinger, #7 in which I value most thus far yr piece of yr house there, Berkeley, I hope Sauer reads it) is . . . Ken I cant complete this WITH RESPECT, that is, ignorance is like pins in my back (part of my own death) but demands to almost thrust out, IO is academic hindsight. Id dig interviews with people with their hands IN SOMETHING other than their books, like with lobsterer Seavey. That interview, that man; Seavey STRIKES, but the Gross. following says nothing, to me. a series of how-to books, from building domes to keeping goats makes sense to me as ‘ecological’ direction, & that isn’t really necessary IF YOU REALLY WANT TO DO IT. When we have the place to keep chickens we can learn all we want to know from Walter & Nancy Stevens whove had chickens FOR YEARS (been brot up keepin animals & now their place over on Rio Grande Blvd. horses finches geese ducks chickens rabbits dogs cats), so the book how to keep chickens aint even necessary except for a government pamphlet say & that's suspect. So again the crucial thing is our friends here, who my God I hope we can turn to, know we can if theyre still alright when land-rape moves us on. No more patience with thinking it's OUT THERE whether at Black Sparrow (wherever Robert is now). You can only be less damaging to land-man balance by living OUTSIDE THE CITY, anyway. Unless you go to the incredible &

exhausting extremes of Ecology Action on Benvenue in Berkeley. But then that group has to do with changing people’s minds —propaganda— etc. necessary on the verge of killing ourselves (Lenore's breast milk high in DDT, my God), not putting that down. But changing TO WHAT. I don’t think people in big cities KNOW, without somehow going to the source of their food– where their fruit, vegetables, fish, meat come from & KNOWING THAT – & where it all goes – the DUMPS & sewage plants & KNOWING THAT. That it all has to be brot nearer & known intimately over several years to come to some change & that in the very KNOWING wd determine the what. Back to that fuckin skinhead Colonel. I see him the power-threat that's shaking at us. & all we've got is us, nothing at all to be glib about. Glibness in anything. So this all returns pulling at fragments – to ME. must eat, & off to pick up eggs at Nancy’s, different sizes but mostly large white & brown. & go to a class (I’m involved ONLY to get the monthly check + foodstamps we get) & then back, I’ll finish this.

8Apr 1st impressions are 1st impressions. General eyes. Wrap-up statement. I wonder how much [Charles] Olson's 'wonder boy' enlarged himself, so much in Creeley that almost engulfs Olson & reaches back to Valery. (& thru him back to Poe, return to the body-continent he wondered in notebook 24 March 'Creeley is the mind, Ginsberg the body of our poetry – that Gemini couple – 'limited?' C. thru his one eye, G. thru one sex.' then thot of Duncan wh0 holds them both, or wd. with ONE good eye (0n fellow Capricorn Olson). Curious twins & strike-offs for academic meditation. A place to knock the gods. Simply. & since knocking the gods is out of fashion academia is out of fashion. (Graves on Academus, 104.b) the clearest picture I have of people living in balance with the Earth goes back before June '68 to Roger & Susan Hilliard theyd split from doing light shows at Avalon lived N. over the hill from Placitas along tail end of Las Huertas a reservoir to swim in there they had a 3-room adobe had been in 6-Day School before coming out here, when I first visited them I was struck by their total revolving of all life/phases around into a new order, everything from their manner entire manner of living, bust-cogged reset their own modified & fulfilled 'macro-biotic’ preparation of food their own growing food (one a prize in the fair even) their own use of astrology charts tarot library of that developed from 6-Day School clothes mostly hand made all world phases of body-knowledge entered their lives & held solid & they had a little girl Serena — now they are in Boston, work for Ohsawa or is it Kushi, I get them mixed up, restaurant. I realize that Roger & Susan as I came to know them better, were a new order of us (I don’t know abt. now), where the hippie thing stayed in the cities it split into fashions & violence (as I type I keep leaving out letters) but where R. & S. and others got out where they cd work with the Earth (work with others over the THING — car, garden, house — is friendship, I keep feeling this,

if it's not that thing it's say the meal/feast or drinking/smoking together of course, that thing as focal point almost as EXCUSE for friends to get together — my God could extend this to poetry as it functions formally as that focus which you can look at/hear together & in this sense it comes clear it's most powerful form when it's focus for 2 or more people that is NOT when it's read by one silent from the page I know this is debatable but even the debate requires 2 or more people preferably near each other & we're back around the fire WHERE THE MOST HEAT IS. I can deplore things like in notebook 22Mar 'surrounded by people who have a DEAD sense of LIFE’ but whatever is the focus of our getting together our getting together is more immediate than published poetry etc. by people I know who don’t live here – just saying the obvious that the warmth is not as immediate by mail no matter how intense the friendship/love but dissipates like a masturbation ghost-partner or a favorite memory sequence with lots of miles on it.) ‘but where others got out where they cd work with the Earth’ & that in SEEING it, growing things keeping animals brot the source of EVERYTHING to the doorstep, here in one of my favorite memory sequences, again Roger & Susan & their place, goats, naked swimming Joe & Olivia's marriage there etc. & this is my basic hangup, felt the Orient-Indian foreign, put everything off into the Future, Roswell carried over into me always outside of me, yearned for, ache & ache, as you near the source the 'problems' begin to dissolve tho I'm talking about a healthy man '. . .there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.' from THE GREAT GATSBY Lenore now curiously but bothered throbbing from a sore toe, cut the nail back too much she thinks. Rainbow [Joel] in his plastic 'papoose' dealing hands awkwardly move to pick up a rattle & the ring of it to his mouth a loud AAAAAAAAAAHHHH! & cough 20 till 10 at night. 'Every particular is an immediate happening of meaning at large.’ Duncan. As seen in yr woodwork often in yr poems, to me. The extensions of that where do you get to, to wood & Earth shape sprouts & decomposes, but then take some plastic thing where does that get you, the extensions from a factory to some stinky lump.

Or Gino [Sky] his woodworking shaping & fitting beautiful things. The more you do yrself the more speech is re-formed. ‘To see is to re-form all speech.’ ( Louis Zukofsky). I remember well tho ignorant of BOTTOM, not having it, is good to use when some kid comes up with this 'Ive given up words' bit. The more the so-called terminals are KNOWN the more they come together & charge (something like Clayton's closed circuit drawing, a circle) mine wd be the PAHO which I find in vision personal 'firstcock & firstcunt also twins, also our father & mother' from the II, 6 of THE PANELS OF SALCAMATHUA, [Robert] Kelly. I wd say also twin brothers or sisters, allowing in my teacher or my student OR if its split divinity (identity) is retained, 'the brother-sister-first-god source' in each of us or to throw in MERCURIUS from alchemy, the male-female. 'a fuckin morfidite?' + & - which is counterpoint, can be Burroughs' 'take' — the thing as taken plus something from what you were in before you were taken creates A SPARK, may be the Earth's answer to Valery's request, how to get the spark, not wanting to wait for the rainbow LIGHTNING or putting my finger down on something (poking my nose in) & that matched with where I was=where I am (the UNIversity as a bunch of monomaniacs with split-brains/bodies...) constantly I'm hearing the underlying noise or what the other hand is doing . . . walking left right. . . when walls are process & you see thru them . . . when you extend the woodwork left & right (it runs) past & present (future?) cant you also see (a straight line) THRU it what is behind it & isn’t that the medium (resting place) between Up & Down (Sky & Earth)? & you have seen all (at least a bit of the Wheel) & the Secret (beyond the Secret) is revealed ? which is how I see it here, the 6 directions with me as center male-female (energy) the point.

so yr prose is dream-walking to me 'the passage waking' & when we grew okra last summer I'd carried with me since 1950 what Bill Waldrop said: 'okra has a beautiful flower' carried it with me TO SEE AT LAST I'd never seen an okra flower & saw it for the first time WHEN I ate the okra (fried usually or in L.'s gumbo) THE INCREDIBLE EXTENSIONS OF THINGS PLANTED WORD 'PLANTED’ IN TIME GROW INTO (BECOME) (DIE INTO) THEIR OBJECTS THINGS charged. Terry Sewards (English, brot up in Columbia, engineering background) guided me thru tearing my VW ALL THE WAY DOWN (at least the engine) revealed the crankshaft, incredible driving all that time, it, before seeing it the secret revealed, the same old thing there is no secret except the more you DO the more that fact is revealed & brings me back to the real possibility of our getting some land & the BUILDING ON or BUILDING a house. When Jeff Sheppard was here said drugs told him 'to have a son' that planted I HAD A SON. !

dream | projecting itself on 'reality’ which is the waking-walking..... you talked about accumulations in (of) experience, as in TALE OF GENJI I see this in this room Ken, the place is LOADED with THINGS as you know (think so much, of a story teller's string with objects tied along it so as the teller felt along the string & came to an object it wd remind him of the 19

next episode in the story â&#x20AC;&#x201D; this is in the Africa exhibit in Natural History Museum in N.Y.C.)

(the PAHO I did for L.'s birthday with its lines hanging from string) when the object calls to mind a story I know for instance the church fan over my head showing the last supper, picked up from an old church they were tearing down across the street from Ron & Michelle Caplan in Pittsburgh, on the back it advertises a funeral home the organ was donated by Dale Carnegie in 1905, got some of the organ pipes ~ which IS the Christian temple the temple was SOLD, & what I salvaged was pieces of the 'market place' moved in taken over not even a prostitute left the sex-act disappeared * knowing fuck as God-Presence, the presence of a fuck-god, god as fuck-presence >paho< & realizing a good while ago my enforced asceticism (=intellectual goonybirdism) before I knew Lenore I looked around my rooms & everywhere was an altar, each center the eyes fell to, each table-top, each dramatic little fuck-entry everyplace things arranged in orgasmic bunches now as I scan the walls there is a remarkable procession of STANDING figures eye level many separately looking into this room from the walls several dual objects too & there is ONE main altar 20

on brick from Golden, N. Mex., Lenore’s Chipucuaro clay figure (if authentic 5oo BC, W. Mexico sits on it, in back of it is [Walter] Chappell's photo of a man's hands just under the surface of stream water near Lama, N. Mex.

fossils (crinoids etc.) from here + L's barnacle from Virginia & a paho I’ve just made. •• simply that energies lying scattered afield now are brot together as focus, my life-brother & man-woman 'personal' vision, the paho, when I make it out of willow, seeds, cotton, metal, yarrow, chamisa, mud from the water level of the pool-stream, feathers, sweat & oil, smoked over, etc, I AM MAKING MY VISION & that one area of the room, North side is focus for the procession of figures kachinas priests funny mudmen, dolls, animals, the cat, the people, me here. my possessions are possessed. Roger & Susan, their lives as lived prefigure all these things published now — ecological echolalia, what I meant by IO being academic hindsight, to me.

The way some people live is more powerful prefiguring, the top of the pyramid, the particular which extends out to the bottom hindsight in the 'future' — & grabs me again when Kelly TALKS OF — 'The bearded dancers abstain from work' or 'A llama is sacrificed...' or 'fish in a basket fish in a net' or hundreds of examples, I cant see him dancing or sacrificing or fishing or . . . . . . . . Which is exactly where I was in the hogan-kiva winter solstice having DONE everything but with NO SONG, but IN REVERSE I was there & consider myself, from Kelly. but there must be RECORDERS, somebody has to say WHAT is BANGING ON THE WINDOWS (the sunflower head from last summer, hung there, the birds visit for seeds) why am I saying so much about a simple matter, Ken? I now recognize what I CAN do & I am utterly astounded it extends all the way into a ceremonial calendar Gino wrote me '. . . seems to me is strictly GEOGRAPHICAL to use an old word. except for maybe 2 or 3 major celebrations with the earth cycles the rest would depend on the climate, land, geographical. Here: in Slunson Munch by the Sea one I think would be when the salmon come into the bay.’ my winter-solstice retreat, no end to it, but answered or came out 19 March in the ‘Kiva’ of the Education Complex at the University. I told [Stephen] Rodefer I wanted to read so he set it up. Lenore finished the 5 'directions' drawings, we got cloth different colors for the Aztec directions, slides of Coatlicue, Xipe Totec, & Huehueteotl the Old Fire God, & borrowed & made candle holders. It turned out the dimmest the lights cd be made was too bright, so they went off after we cleared the room of much of the 'education' paraphernalia, got the chairs out of the center pit area, the room is round as you probably know, & arranged the drawings under glass on the different cloths & put candles around. I started with the PAHO for Lenore (her birthday the next day, 1st day of Spring) 22

– this & the others, the texts at least are in this bunch of poems I'm sending, you already have the directions ones. Then I read the 7 directions poems for the first time together, carried a candle with me reading NWSE then NW for UP & SE for DOWN then back to the pit & the drawings for CENTER.

After that a break & people came down to see the drawings closer. Then read IT, LOOP FOLD, BE CAREFUL & (new poem called swastika peace symbol) (time to fix the typewriter – – – ÷ 10APR) Then I turned on the lights & with the help of some of the audience who read from books & some pre-written things, I went thru the FOOL, which Ive done several times before, worked out good since in last phase seeds & spices got scattered all over the drawings — so /enuf of this worrying me to have gotten so centered in broadcasting myself here.

Ginsberg & Corso read together for the first time in 8 years, think they just happened to be around at the same time, this was 23Mar, UNM Associate Students brot Ginzy. I got upset over it, started out cool, hadnt heard Corso or seen him, he read a thing to Kerouac then Allen read & they traded back & forth while some Japanese poet/singer [Nanao Sakaki] sat as bearded yogi at the side, then Corso began to come out death-wish sour, hadnt been in with the 60's, just the 50's, main thing he didnt have anything new to read really, & Allen had all this stuff which I was dying to hear (& many of the thousands of others) so the whole thing went downhill, with Corso interrupting Allen, etc. finally one time Allen said 'let me finish my poem' Allen as always was perfectly decent. So the Japanese guy & Allen did some chants & that was it. Allen's reading here in 68? was electric bomb-shell ending up in T-Bird [Thunderbird Bar in Placitas] etc. Well not this time. I did make him a paho & left it at Rodefers with a little note. Tonight Edward Field reads but dont know if I can make it â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Joel had his 3rd DPT shot plus polio this time, so will have to be 'babied' tonight, probably be just fine tomorrow. So far he seems chipper, but last time he got the shot the poor kid was miserable a day & a half after. Diptheria, Whooping Cough, Tetanus. 11 Apr DID hear the last half of Field's reading, Frankinstein & other 'photoplays really poem-entertainments read mostly to the large young-kid audience, much of some free school was there, & 'hippies' etc. u THE SEEDS is later than the other poems, we're planting more than the list but that's okay, golden bantam corn, swiss chard, brussels sprouts, copenhagen market cabbage, etc. u but frazzled here feeling dispossessed, & dust storm today to boot. love, Larry things to do mounted heavy on ray head look for excuse to go out have dinner etc. with friends today stoned almost all day from a few tokes over at friends in Placitas. Joel's in his red socks & takes walking steps when you hold him standing up.

Notebook #9 Jul1969-Feb1970 - lg

duende press po box 571 placitas, new mexico 87043 larrynewmex@gmail.com

List of “Thing” Development Larry Goodell “Cycles,” a long poem on a paper loop to be read and finished anywhere, 15Oct66 (published in Cycles, 1966) A New Land, a poem-novel, to be read aloud, 1967-68. 13, Halloween poem on 13 IBM cards to be shuffled & read. Oct 67. A Bag for the 6 Directions, Nov67. A one-liner on each of six cards, the cards placed in an empty room, one on each wall, floor & ceiling. presented at Rodey Theater Reading 3 Nov67. Wherever She Blows at Old Town Studio March & April, 1968. “Theatrical Poetry - Mime - Mixed Media” by the Universal Mind Dance. At one point poems on paper torn apart as being read. Iris Leaves & Off-Center calligrams, May68. drawing/diagram/poems. mMaking It 15May68, Larry Morris’ class, 68. stacked boxes with 7 different “definitions” of poetry acted out by poet & audience, mThe Fool 21May68, Steve Rodefer’s class. Poet acting out aspects of human history silently while audience read texts from cookbook to poems on scrolls & objects. (Mexico Jul68) Word Mandala 19Sep68. Magic Box #1 & #2, Amulets, Sep68. The Staff itself (6 ft cottonwood) materializes 1Nov68. mThe President, 13Nov68, New York House, Placitas. “Event” poem enacted in Placitas with masks & texts for the participating audience. mThe News, 29Jan69, University of Albuquerque, shuffle poems read from painted oatmeal boxes. (1st Garden, Apr-May69) Holy of Holies, June69 (unfinished) Headband – thing and words, Jun69. Poem written for the preparation of a headband. mNWSE Up Down Center, Aug69-Nov70, UNM. collaboration of Lenore Goodell drawings set out on floor and poems by me as I moved around to the directions. published in Caterpillar. mPaho, Mar70. Poem with each line hanging from a string wound around paho, unwound and read as unwound. UNM m Brother, Oct70 – Dec70. Harvest mask, staff, balloon, infinity sign on forehead,

FART the name of God. Gray mask in dream, Yellow snake in Olson dream. “I am an animist.” Space Helmet headress poem, Jan71. Hand movement to cunt-bush poem drawing. Poem of pumpkin with pumpkin aura seen & drawn & turned into headdress to present the poem Sun disk with poem on it, with snake headdress, willow necklace, & Babylonian sun priest robe, and drawing of upper “middle class” couple. Digging sticks poem Hand touching & poem. Song, Arrow Poem. Cloth Poem to Lenore with beans & seeds in it. Rolled up Poem in a bottle. Tunnel object sighting poem. “Delight.” Christmas Cupidoll poem with rattles & chant. Tree ornament poem. “Om Phallus Cunt Ease,” poem for a birth, with spider woman & twins cottonwood root carved figures. (Winter Solstice in Kiva/Hogan, 1970) Poem to be Burnt, 19Jan71 Onion in white box, 7Feb71 Dead White Christian, 16Mar71 (poems with drawings only) Poet’s Curse Poem (beating rock with sticks) 12Mar71 mStaff of Ometeotl poems with elaborate cloth backings & hung on cottonwood staves, with oval magic box-table with compartment of masks & needed items for specific poems in the series. mBowl of Ometeotl. even more elaborate with large hanging backdrop of cloth Sandias, several costume changes and all poems on different shaped backing. Cloth arcs with stuffed yoni-lingam in the middle on floor. mBook of Ometeotl. attempt to return to the “book” with poems with furor necessary accouterments. mBlue Spaceman, Apr-May73. with procedural statement, large round cloth covered blue box with breast cover & dangling fish. inside are masks & muscle shirt (made for me by Lenore), and 7 dildos different lengths with silk condoms. mFace of Velma, Dec73-Feb74 mThe Garden of Ourselves, 26Apr-27Jul74 mMom Dass, 13Aug74. Poem with wig and dress and hand-held mirror with poem on back. mDried Apricots, Dec74-Jan75. Several booklets, one a play, one secretive only for men. mHot Art & Other Plays Alfalfa, 5Oct75, Left & Right 12Oct, Captain Armor 14Oct, Hot Art, Body Palace 21-22Oct, The Football Game 24Oct, A Fifth Apart, 23Jan76 (continuing, including poems with watercolored backs hung on clothesline). larry goodell

Letters For Brother

Winter Solstice 1970 in Hogan-Kiva at Dome Valley, Placitas, New Mexico

2 Letters Sent to Ken Irby December â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;69 & April â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;70 Larry Goodell