Two web publications in one month from what may someday be my memoir book … long in progress.
Memoir is a tricky calling at best.All memory is fiction, remade in the moment of the cognitive process, and much fiction the same, with memories reappearing in altered states. Except when it isn’t and they aren’t.
Does anyone remember Walter Bowe? See my piece, “WAR, 1967,” in Construction Literary magazine at www.constructionlitmag.com
The piece from my earlier post –“A Berth in the Haven” (see below) made me search for Basil’s “Portrait of Carlos.” It’s dated 1970 – done when Paul Blackburn’s son Carlos was this baby, with his father’s curiosity and his mother’s lips. William Carlos Blackburn, if I’m not mistaken. Now a poet himself, published by Ugly Duckling Presse.
This was reproduced not only as the cover for the first issue of Mulch magazine in the spring of 1971, but Harry Lewis, one of the two other co-editors (Baz, Harry, and David Glotzer were the Mulch Men), had T-shirts made of the cover.
The printing came out blotchy; moreover the directness of the image just wasn’t 1970s taste. Bombed as both money-maker and attention-getter.
And this, our only slide, has yellowed. (The paper is still white, I hope.)
I stlll find it arresting just the same and am very pleased to have the section in Tim Trace Peterson’s EOAGH.
As for “War: 1967” in Construction magazine’s blog, David Plick, the editor, very kindly glossed the text so readers would know who I’m referring to when I say “Cubby” or “Gil” or whatever. And as for the Second Avenue subway, once again, it is no metaphor. The streets are full of rubble and the promises go on.
More to the point, as Occupy everywhere morphs, we have more promises about what was right and what was very not right with the great protests against U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
And as the guys sang:
…went down to the demonstration
To get my fair share of abuse
Singing, “We’re gonna vent our frustration
If we don’t we’re gonna blow a 50-amp fuse”
Sing it to me now…
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes well you just might find
You get what you need
