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    After Words
    After Words
    After Words
    Ebook160 pages1 hour

    After Words

    By Stan Rogal

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The idea for this collection was to offer a tip of the hat to people whose lives and/or works have influenced the author. Each piece is forwarded by a short background story as well as an epigram which provides some descriptive entry and flavour. The key was to construct these pieces in the author's own style and voice and not fall into simple mimicry. Many names have been encrypted into the pieces as fractured homonyms, a sort of pun for the astute reader.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGuernica
    Release dateJul 1, 2014
    ISBN9781550718621
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      Book preview

      After Words - Stan Rogal

      Stan Rogal

      GUERNICA | ESSENTIAL POETS SERIES 213

      TORONTO – BUFFALO – BERKELEY – LANCASTER (U.K.)

      2012

      To Marja Moens and Heather Cadsby, who told me

      I’d discovered the chink in the armour

      when they decided to publish my first collection of poetry

      with Wolsak and Wynn, way back when – many thanks!

      Contents

      MILTON ACORN

      Island

      ANTONIN ARTAUD

      Theatre Of Cruelty: Audition Piece

      MARGARET ATWOOD

      Circa 1970

      Heady

      JOHN BARLOW

      Gate Crasher

      DJUNA BARNES

      Go Down, Matthew

      JOHN BERRYMAN

      Delusions Etc

      Henry’s Lament

      HUMPHREY BOGART

      Rick’s American Café

      RICHARD BRAUTIGAN

      Have You Ever Been There?

      It Was Your Idea To Go To Bed With Her

      CHARLES BUKOWSKI

      warm exes

      foolheart

      WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

      Disclaimer

      ITALO CALVINO

      Broken Telephone

      RAYMOND CARVER

      Head Above Water (Barely)

      Running Dogs

      MONTGOMERY CLIFT

      Cliffed

      LEONARD COHEN

      Suzanne Holds The Mirror

      The Singer Must Die

      STANLEY COOPERMAN

      Kitsilano Beach

      JULIO CORTAZAR

      The Little Corpse

      DON DELILLO

      Say It

      T. S. ELIOT

      They Called Me The Hyacinth Girl

      Pinned

      MARIANNE FAITHFULL

      A Child’s Adventure

      JUDITH FITZGERALD

      Once In A Blue Moon

      SIV CEDERING FOX

      When The Night Is Still

      MERLE HAGGARD

      The Outsider

      DEBORAH HARRY

      Poets’ Problem

      TED HUGHES

      You Are Beautiful

      JACQUIE JACOBS

      Sanguine Odalisque

      FRANZ KAFKA

      The Trial

      Castle Keep

      JACK KEROUAC

      Subterranean Blues

      SØREN KIERKEGAARD

      Either/Or

      KAREN MACCORMACK

      re: placement

      rob mclennan

      Red Earth, Black Moss

      bpNichol

      Forwards

      ANAÏS NIN

      Delta Of Venus

      ARTHUR RIMBAUD

      Desolation Angels

      ANNE SEXTON

      Her Kind

      Lullaby

      WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

      Sonnet 116

      Enter Two Clowns

      SAM SHEPARD

      Escape

      JACK SPICER

      Alias

      Seppuku

      LUCINDA WILLIAMS

      Ballad Of The Hot Blood Blues

      WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

      1. The Red Wheelbarrow: Re(Vision)

      2. The Red Wheelbarrow: redux canadiana

      3. The Red Wheelbarrow: coda

      Acknowledgements

      About The Author

      Copyright

      When I begin to write after a rather long interval,

      I draw the words as if out of the empty air.

      If I capture one, then I have just this one alone

      and all the toil must begin anew.

      – Franz Kafka

      The poem of the mind

      and the act of finding what will suffice.

      – Wallace Stevens

      After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts

      that trail along the floor.

      After this, and so much more?

      It is impossible to say just what I mean!

      – T.S. Eliot

      MILTON ACORN

      I’ll be honest, I shied away from the poetry of Milton Acorn for the longest time. Why? Because my only association with either him or his work was through the titular People’s Poet/ry movement and its gamut of contests and anthologies which served to produce what I thought was some of the worst poetry ever written: trite, clichéd, simplistic, flat, sentimental, boring and usually (actually) prose broken into short lines on a page so as to resemble a poem (not all, of course, cream rises and so on, and me not wanting to paint the entire picture with a single wide bleak brush, though …)

      To each their own and one person’s junk is another’s treasure, yes, but … really … I didn’t (don’t) get it.

      Taking a poetry course at York University I was introduced to the work and life of Gwendolyn MacEwen and her tumultuous affair/relationship/marriage with a certain Milton Acorn and I thought – crazy! What a wild mad disturbed pair. And she loved him first and foremost for his poetry. Maybe it was time to check out the bastard and see what the appeal was.

      What I discovered was a poet who had set the bar high; whose inner voice was powerful and whose study and range was vast and deep – I’ve tasted my own blood – a line from Arthur Rimbaud. Say no more.

      He left shoes that are tough to fill by any so-called People’s Poet.

      Island

      after Milton Acorn

      I worry about the shape of my skull

      Grimly outlined by the salt squall

      in such grey matter it hung

      uncertain

      to the finish, as:

      what might come of it?

      Here, &, alive at the margins (barely)

      the famous writer, pensive, now stops & lights a cigar.

      Delivered on a plate to a vengeful Salome?

      Split apart by wisdom’s leggy kick?

      Gone to line mackinaw men with a fine-combed tooth?

      No carpenter with a cross to bear

      could drive the nail

      so deep as this beerfog boy

      nor cause such unholy stir

      that shivered timbers of Trotskyites & Snarks the same.

      Who had been known to give skull to a minor

      took serious to heart.

      Boldfaced, fer sure, brass-balled & backwoodsy

      with a sprawl of crags, crevasses &

      thick underbrush ghosted down for the count.

      Boo!

      Call him Ishmael. Call him Shadow-maker.

      Who’d’ve sparked a fine grave roller if provisioned a

      rat’s ass

      chance, instead, was bushwhacked; cut off at the neck

      & made a bust.

      Through no fault, save, to preserve a mean reputation,

      meaning, apart the common red dirt that conjures

      an island

      from this twisted wreckage

      (say: pee-eye, say: spud, say: Minago)

      sprung a low brow cast of dead fish; so-called people’s

      poets

      with little taste for blood – their own or any other reckless

      spill, &

      beyond the uneasy drift of smoke & ash from the

        vacant socket

      pronounced a breed of missionary position

      set to bugger waters generations to follow

      with their thin colourless milt.

      ANTONIN ARTAUD

      Speaking of crazy, mad bastards – actor/playwright Antonin Artaud ended in an asylum for the insane and died from cancer of the bunghole, apparently one of the most painful types of cancers anyone can suffer through. His one written play was titled Spurt of Blood and was a mere five minutes long. He spent years attempting to produce Les Cenci in a manner that would break down the barriers between audience and actors and was vilified from all directions. Unbelievably handsome in his youth, he soon wasted away due to drugs and sickness (think Chet Baker).

      Any wonder why he called his theatre the Theatre of Cruelty?

      He attempted to create works that depended less on text and more on the visceral and emotive aspects of live theatre. He ultimately failed, BUT … it was a grand failure.

      What I attempt to do with this monologue is to fill the stage with a busted narrative that depends more on imagery than provide a linear meaning while at the same time have the actor perform actions that have little or nothing to do with the text – ear and eye candy to be assimilated and deciphered by the brain and heart of each individual audience member.

      Theatre Of Cruelty: Audition Piece

      after Antonin Artaud

      No more masterpieces

      A young soldier stands in a halo of light and speaks to the audience. It’s as if he’s looking in

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