mutterings and ravings no. 59
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 01:20:31 -0700
Sender: Bibliofind News and Views <NEWS@BIBLIO.BIBLIOFIND.COM>
From: Harry Nudel <nudel-soho@MINDSPRING.COM>
Subject: m&r rashomon west
Nursing my wounds......lots of time...to miss me...........
In 1959 Ron Padgett was 17? "tending shop at the Lewis Meyer
Bookstore 3401 S. Peoria Tulsa," OK...when Ted Berrigan walked into lower
Eastside History.......Or history is the dream that we make of it...Joyce et al "history is
a dream (nightmare??) from which i'm trying to awake...The next morning after the saga of mon Ami the Saint and Gertrude &
daughters, and feeling rather lousy for berating the ugly daughter who I
didn;t even know...I'm walking to the St. Fair on E.10th ST...between 1$2
when I meet Gi turning the corner...Gertrude"s daughter, he tells me, is
selling books there & he doesn't want to see her....he's headed uptown...I
tell him i've been penning the saga of G...Lear...& him & Co...so I walks
over and kinds of mess around in the 10 or 15 boxes of
assorted...............................................G's Daughter sez
they're 2 dollars each & then she tells the next customers they're 1 dollar
each....so I pick the lower number and buy 20 to 30 books..4 copies of
David Henderson's 1st book as new, a catalogue of Land Art Project that
comes out of a community college in Pasadena (which I sell for 70 to the
major collector of conceptual and minimal art), a smattering of rare
poetry...rare to fine rare to sell...etc..a welsh novel...i've never had a
welsh novel (it sells in one day on the net) etc...Meanwhile I'm schmoozing with G's daughter...I can still remember
some of these books on the shelf..where they were 25 years ago...orphans in
the storm of history....among the poetry were some loose sheets of PENNY
POEMS...ABOUT 75...these get thrown in for a buck too.....She writez down
her phone no..i'm the customer of the day..and i'm going to see what's left
upstairs..Home, Jeeves, among the PENNY POEMS is one by Ron Padgett dated
1959...pre Ted...some romantic effluence...i've never seen or heard of this
before...the history of american poetry in the 60's is the history of Tulsa
Ok..where Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett and Joe Brainard came out of..to the
big city..the mean gem spa tenement low rent lower east side mimeod xeroxed
puerto rican drugged punked rock & roll rimbaudean streets..In the early 60's W.H. Auden also lived on e.8th ST... a suited
accented living shell of poetic manner...in his wildest f...ing young boys
up the a.. dreams could he have imagined that the histoy of 2oth English
century poetry would not be writ large in Cambridge or Oxford but in Tula
OK...Okie the great american heart and dream land..the land of the pure
products and speech of the native tongue..Auden lived in the dream of
history in a dead language in a dead poetry..barely kept alive by poseur
yearnings..The world spins on..faster...the U.of Tulsa collects English
Lit...they think this means Paul Scott or Evelyn Waugh...the greatest book
of documentary photographys comes out of WHERE....Larry Clark's TULSA...is
it all dream all accident....sure u bet..I visit Gertrude's daughter next
time...is there a next time, mon frere, bet on reality if they give odds
against...Drn..
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