10 Year-ending Favourites: J. Spicer, R. Johnson, S. Wolven, L. Kostoff, R. Gleason, J. Hoberman, J. Tottenham, F. Rosemont, J. Brainard

Even Strange Ghosts Can Be Shared: The Collected Letters of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan), edited by Kevin Killian, Kelly Holt and Daniel Benjamin: A fascinating collection sent from Spicer to his gang of magic circleists, admirers, sycophants, acolytes, and acquaintances. Published in tandem with the reprinting of Spicer's lectures,  essential in themselves and never less than fascinating. Like Pound, one admires the the work, but is  appalled by the problematic aspects of the person behind the work: specifically, his racism, anti-semitism and misogyny. To his credit Benjamin, in a lengthy and fairly comprehensive introduction, does not shy away from addressing such matters. 

ARK by Ronald Johnson (Wesleyan/Flood): Originally published some twenty years ago. As an admirer of his RADIO OS, I've been waiting nearly that long to get my hands on ARK, a book I've long been hearing about. Thankfully it's been  reissued by Flood. The great critic, artist, essayist and story writer Guy Davenport would always insist that ARK is every bit as important a serial poem as Zukofsky's A, Pound's Cantos, Olson's Maximus Poems, Reznikoff's Testimony, etc..  And who am I to argue with that assessment.  In any case, Johnson's poetry will take you places you could never imagine.

                                "Over the rim

            body of earth                     rays exit sun

       rest to full velocity to eastward pinewheeled in a sparrow's

                                              eye"

                                                                          

Hundred Proof by Scott Wolven (High Frequency): After my first encounter with  Wolven- to my shame, he had for too long gone under my noir radar- I said, perhaps somewhat pretentiously, that he was the Isaac Babel of noir fiction. A  slight  exaggeration, perhaps. Nevertheless these stories, all uniformly excellent, are not only  hardboiled and condensed, but as tough and  unsentimental as any you are likely to come across. Taking place in post-industrial and rural America, the stories centre on those on the edge or simply on edge, taken to extremes by neo-liberal circumstances- whether loggers, cops, outlaws, poachers, petty criminals, gunsels or gunmen.  Accompanied by such  memorable lines as "He was sitting in a lawn chair by the picnic table, drinking a glass full of booze with bullets and ice in it." and "Hell is empty and the devil is here." All of which one might expect from  someone influenced by Jim Thompson. 

The Length of Days by Lynn Kostoff (Stark House):  After finishing  his 2014 Words to Die For, I remember mind-blurbing the book along the lines of a novel that might well be the product of the bastard child of George V. Higgins and Elmore Leonard. The same  could be said so for The Length of Days, with its sharp hardboiled prose, great dialogue, killer plot and a cross-section of characters, whether  righteous or sleazy. Set in, and examining, a town on the South Carolina coast during the 2008 economic crisis hit by a fire that has killed a number of prostitutes. The book moves seamlessly from the town's bars, restaurants and  massage parlours, to its arenas of personal and political corruption.  The Length of Days- Kostoff's first since the aforementioned Words To Die For- is a novel to savour, perhaps with a tumbler of whiskey at one's side. 

The Life and Writings of Ralph J. Gleason: Dispatches From the Front, by Don Armstrong (Macmillan).  Reading this is like being caught in a time warp,  back to San Francisco in the 1960s.  Armstrong recounts Gleason's life, interspersing it with extracts from three decades of writing, most of which  appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. An ever present figure, Gleason was less a critic than an advocate for whatever was new, interesting, or controversial, whether Miles Davis, Dylan, San Francisco bands,  local poets and  underground film makers, along with their occasional legal plights (Mime Troupe, McClure's The Beard, Lenore Kandel's Love Poems, etc.). All of which Gleason conveyed in a typically fragmented  manner. Not to mention  Jazz Casual, featuring an array of important jazz groups. At a  Left Coast Crime conference in Monterrey in the early 2000s, someone  asked which SF journalist personified the noir aspects of San Francisco. Various names were thrown about, but I was surprised  no one mentioned Gleason. The man who, in his trench coat and pipe, clearly patterned himself on Sam Spade, and whose thrice(?) weekly columns, was a must-read for anyone wanting  to know what was happening in the city.  It's all more or less there in Armstrong's book. Minus, of course, the pipe and trench coat,  and column inches, 

Everything Is Now- The 1960s New York Avant Garde- Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop, by J. Hoberman. (Verso) An interesting companion to the Gleason book, critic J. Hoberman turns in another one of his excellent cultural history books, this time centring on avant-garde culture in New York in and around the 1960s. West coasters like myself would read the Village Voice, then the East Village Other with avid attention, hungrily devouring columns by the  likes of Jonas Mekas, Nat Hentoff, LeRoi Jones/Baraka, for news of what  happening in the underground film or jazz scene. Back then we would look on with  envy, hoping those films, bands, groups, movies and plays would eventually come west. Eventually they mostly, they did, but often out of context, without the street culture that informed them. In Everything Is Now, Hoberman recreates those days with precision, never  missing a beat, a frame, or a column. An excellent piece of research and evocation of what was an exceptionally exciting era.

Service by John Tottenham (Serpent's Tail):  A would-be writer nearing his fiftieth year working as a bookstore clerk isn't  exactly unexplored territory, but in this case it's the tone that counts, and Tottenham's is as cynical as they get. Then there's its  depiction of  the more educated side of today's precariat,  someone as alienated from his labour as he is from  life in general. Made all the worse by the mocking of those around him, many of whom are busy climbing the ladder to success.  Even so Tottenham's protagonist, who rails gentrification as much as he does against the cultural idiots who surround him, isn't someone with whom one can easily sympathise.  There are moments when  Tottenham strains a bit too hard and his protagonist protests a bit  too much.  On the other hand,  it's not a million miles from reality. And no matter how much our protagonist can occasionally get on one's  nerves, this novel, which of course is the novel that its protagonist is writing, is as funny as it is political. Yet I couldn't but wonder if the problem was that the British-bornTottenham might actually be an Arsenal fan.  

Surrealism, Bugs Bunny and the Blues, Selected Writings on Popular Culture by Franklin Rosemont, edited by Abigail Susik and Paul Buhle. (PM). I first came across Cultural Correspondences back, if my memory serves me right, in the 1980s. I couldn't believe that there was someone with similar interests: politics, surrealism, poetry, the blues, comic books. Franklin Rosemont writes about all these things and more.  His writing on and editing of Andre Breton is legendary. Included here are chapters on Krazy Kat and T-Bone Slim (my favourites), Bugs Bunny, Joe Hill, Surrealism, jazz, etc..Though there are moments when one would like Rosemont to dig a bit deeper into his subjects, but the recognition of such might be more than enough. In any case, it's an even to have such a chunk of his writing collected in a single edition. 

Saint of the Narrow Streets (Soho/No Exit). The latest  in William Boyle's series of evocative Brooklyn-set novels. Dealing with ordinary people, with or without criminal tendencies, and families both functional and dysfunctional (sometimes all of the above at the same time), Boyle's micro world can both heart-breaking and knuckle-crackingly tense. Here deploying cross-cutting narratives and eras, Boyle once again demonstrates his adeptness at creating small-scale noir narratives. This one, set in Gravesend, 1986, takes place over eighteen years, focusing on three people, their secret and its repercussions. Boyle's geographical and cultural depiction of working class culture can sometimes be reminiscent of Daniel Fuchs's Williamsburg novels, albeit from a Italian-Catholic rather than Eastern European Jewish perspective; nevertheless, a neighbourhood that remains more old world than  gentrified. For anyone who can't get enough of Larry Brown or Willy Vlautin.   

The Complete C Comics by Joe Brainard (NYRB). If any book deserves a mass readership... Subversively funny, and drawn with a hand both adept and mocking of that very adeptness. It's hard to believe that these collaborations with the likes of Kenward Elmslie, Ron Padgett, Dick Gallup, Kenneth Koch, Barbara Guest, Frank O'Hara, Ted Berrigan, Bill Berkson, and John Ashbery were, for the most part, created more than a half century ago. With an introduction by Padgett and an informative essay by Bill Kartalopoulos, it once again illustrates Brainard's genius in what might well be my book of the year.

Monsters Old and New : Edward Wilson's Farewell Dinner For a Spy, etc.

Monsters Old and New

Edward Wilson is known- though perhaps not as known as he should be- for  a handful of fast moving and historically-based espionage  novels. What differentiates his fiction from his fellow genre travellers- e.g., Le Carré, McCarry, Ben Pastor, Robert Littell, Alan Furst- is his humane, but unapologetic, leftist perspective. Nothing all that radical, yet insistent, particularly when it comes to the relationship between an increasingly subservient Britain and an ever more powerful U.S.. In a sense, Wilson is a throwback to earlier spy novelists  like Eric Ambler and Graham Greene who were never afraid to openly display their anti-fascist tendencies. Another quality that makes Wilson different from others of his ilk, and, in fact, marks him as a true original, is that taken as a whole, his novels constitute a veritable history of the power relationship separating and binding the US and the UK, from the end of WW2  into  the 21st century. Drawing on  tropes from both past spy fiction as well as film noir, Wilson's novels, some eight in  number, range from the Vietnam-set A River In May to his most recent, the just-after-WW2 Farewell Dinner For a Spy. Coming at the reader in short, sharp segments, the novels span not only eras but continents, corridors of power, and even battle theatres. Through it all Wilson's compromised protagonist, William Catesby, burdened with an ambiguous relationship to the state, works for but sometimes against the prevailing political interests.   

Opposing Forces

One could say that Wilson's narratives exist both inside and outside a genre in which an assortment of ambiguities present themselves, or what, with a nod to Gramsci, might be called morbid symptoms. In fact, Wilson  has a special relationship to those symptoms and their accompanying monsters, having viewed them up front and political during his days in Vietnam where he served  as a Special Services officer.  Surely that must  have been a gargantuan learning curve, or, at any rate, a hard way to acquaint oneself with  the dark side of American foreign policy. Enough for Wilson to eventually renounce his American to become a British national. If nothing else  that experience gave him an opportunity to observe the last dregs of one empire and the rise and foam of another. No wonder Catesby's backstory  mirrors his own.  Both come from ordinary backgrounds. While Wilson, thanks to a U.S. Army scholarship,  was trained by the state, Catesby- his name conjuring up images of the 17th century Gunpowder plot- gained a scholarship to Cambridge.  Had Catesby not accepted that scholarship he  would probably never have been recruited by MI6, nor would he have married  into a family with near-establishment connections. His wife, for personal as much as  political reasons, also works for the intelligence service, in her case, MI6's domestic counterpart, MI5. Which means they are, to some degree, and however amicably, in competition, both at home and  in the field.  Despite the ground rules of their profession,  they still manage to exchange limited amounts of information, to the point that both husband and wife know more about the other's job than either let on. Less Prizzi's Honor than Nick and Nora Charles. Yes Catesby's marriage and murky job description only adds to his status: akin to a walking contradiction in search of a logical conclusion. One that seems dependent on the possibility of a socialist Britain, lest the country sinks into the mulch of the new American empire.  In the end, Catesby tries to be loyal to his country, but only so far as his politics allow; otherwise, it's a matter of negotiating a tricky  world of opposites and ambivalences, in which state crimes and duplicities, from the ideologically dubious to the morally ambiguous, proliferate. Which can't help but lead to conflicts of interest, no matter how deadly serious or seriously deadly they might be, handled both seriously and humorously, whether  at home or abroad, in the power drenched corridors of Whitehall or a bench in Green Park where Catesby's orders can be deconstructed by his relatively sympathetic superior.     

Reconciling the Irreconcilable

But, then, this is Spooksville where nothing is often not what it seems and oppositional forces gather as the novel progresses. Like other practitioners of his ilk, Wilson's truc is to portray fact through fiction, though that depends on whom and what he's describing. On the other hand, one might as well say he's out to portray fiction through fact. Whichever, flashing one's leftist credentials in front of reader inevitably places one's protagonist in  precarious and surprising positions. That is, if the intention is to dig into the contradictions of the state as Wilson does. And Catesby can't help but collide with the powers that be, and, no matter how much he would like to find some middle ground, is forced to decide whether to collude or not.  It's not that Catesby, having emerged from  WW2 with his anti-fascist ideals intact, needs to be more circumspect regarding the contradiction between work and  politics, so much as he might have been even more radical and hard-edged regarding his relationship to the state and, ultimately, the maintenance of a  mixed economy. However, thrown into the deep end, Catesby is too preoccupied to take a more extreme position, to question anything beyond the obvious, or to read  the relevant texts. It's more than enough for Catesby to simply read his surroundings and act accordingly.       

Wilson manages to  side-step those contradictions between his protagonist's employment and his politics by making Catesby a  marginal figure, both inside and outside MI6. Consequently, although he's working for the state, on the other hand he has been a Labour Party candidate for Parliament in the 1945 General Election, albeit in a safe Tory seat. It makes one realise that despite his employment, he could be, some forty years in the future,  be described as something akin to a Bennite (and perhaps Wilson  had in mind Benn's account of  how, after leaving Oxford as a reluctant member of the establishment, he turned down MI6 in order to go into politics, as if that were the only choice available for someone in his position at the time).  

Dictating the Past and the Future

As his orders change so does the novel's geography. Consequently, Catesby, in Farewell Dinner..., moves from   London and Whitehall to  post-war Marseilles and a world of striking dock workers, leftists and  CIA interventionists. From there Wilson airlifts the  novel to Laos, already, even in those post-war years, awash with drugs and fire power. Suddenly we are on the periphery of Wilson's first novel, and the author's experiences in those killing fields, the sole contribution of which would be, according to Catesby, drugs and napalm. And even there Catesby seems caught between opposing forces. Forced to play different roles for different factions, Catesby's allegiance remains constant. Which isn't to say he's not cynical. After all, it's a quality endemic to the region and his profession. Nevertheless, Catesby's  cynicism appears to be  more affected than real, more a disguise than deeply felt. At least that's the conclusion drawn from the chapters in which he is portrayed dictating  his past to his grand-daughter.  The two have a particular rapport, the latter believing the former's earlier life is important enough to one day be set down in print. And she's right. After all, what  Catesby relates is the book one's reading, as well as any other books about Catesby that might appear in the future, or perhaps even in the past. That his grand-daughter is not related by blood to Catesby only emphasises his belief  in what is possible, and  a modernity in which nurture, i.e., qualities of love, take precedence over  that of blood, birthright and privilege.     

The View of a Cultural Entryist

Beyond tracing the history of post-war Britain, Wilson's books are, for the most part, about power: who has it and who only thinks they have it. Which invariably leads to an investigations surrounding  the politics of  corruption and class conflict. "Was it possible to be a good spy and a decent human being?" Catesby asks himself in Farewell Dinner.... It's a conundrum that comes in one form or another in every Wilson novel. After all, it might be a binary world for some, but for Catesby there are more than enough shades of grey to go around. It's an attitude that  keeps Wilson's fiction interesting and prevents  it from ever falling into the nether-regions of pastiche, even if the latter seems to go with the territory. Another factor separating Wilson from other stylists, is his mock-parody of the class system, particularly when it comes  to language and the over-used term  "British humour." This is most evident in various bits of repartee:  between Catesby and his wife; and between Catesby and his MI6 superior Henry Bone. As  entryists, Wilson and his protagonist, are hooked, perhaps excessively so, on the culture's tics and eccentricities, whether through humour or understatement, in which more is meant than is being said, the sort of thing that Le Carré is so adept at and comfortable in portraying. And perhaps it really does take someone on margins to note, as does entryist-manqué William Gibson in Pattern Recognition,  that "The British have evolved passive-aggressive leverage in much the way they've evolved irony." In Wilson's hands, that humour and passive-aggressive understatement is pervasive enough to allow Catesby to cross political and class lines, a useful ability  for a spy who lives and works in a world of spies, who spies on others as much as he is spied upon.     

Amongst other oppositional forces embedded in his work, none is more apparent than the manner in which patriotism is set against nationalism. Loyal to the British state in its fight against fascism and the possibility of establishing an independent social democracy, Catesby makes it clear he is neither a nationalist nor a royalist. As well as being ambivalent about spying for  the British state, he exploits his position when and where necessary, which means engaging in  a certain amount of dirty work  if that's what it takes to intervene in or bear witness to any crimes committed in his name and those aspects of the country that he loves. Through it all, and despite the best efforts of the CIA and the local mafia, Catesby remains an idealist with a hopeful eye on the future. That idealism and those aspects have much to do with Catesby's background, having grown up in  Lowestoft, the village in East Suffolk. Having referred to it  throughout the book, it's clear that Catesby takes no small amount of pride in his working-class, semi-rural roots.  As for Wilson, even though he has turned his back on America, he seems to retain an affection for  his home town of Baltimore,  its past (the home Dashiell Hammett, Poe, Mencken, etc.) and its working class culture (the site of the first American General Strike). Not surprisingly, his relationship to that part of the world, manage to seep into the pages of Farewell Dinner... When the corrupt Lester Roach chides a fellow American agent for sounding British, the latter says, "It's because I'm from Maryland." Indeed, it's a mid-Atlantic attitude that gives Wilson permission to take things a step further when it comes to putting a particular spin on the  politics of the British Intelligence Services and its relationship to an America whose obsession with anti-communism is about to threaten the world. All indicative of the oppositional couplings deployed by Wilson, whether MI6 and the CIA, MI5 and MI6, marriage, class, or simply the old and new. 

Undiminished Rage

Stylistically speaking, Wilson might not bring anything that's new to the genre. But that'a not his intention. What  he manages to do is politicise a genre whose politics is normally submerged within the confines of the state, which is to say narratives about networks of old boys, colonialists, neo-liberal idealogues and bad apples, but rarely addresses the nuances of systemic abuse. At the same time, Wilson's fiction wouldn't be so effective if it didn't tempt inquisitive readers to make their own investigations (yes, according to a Politico article, Putin, as stated in Farewell Dinner..., did supply the Red Army Faction with weapons and money). As Frederic Jameson has noted in reference to Ben Pastor, espionage fiction,  to be effective, has to engage politically, and, in doing so, heighten conflict and establish a degree of complicity. That Wilson foregrounds  ambiguity and complicity to the degree that he does,  allows Catesby to subvert  the usual  espionage narrative. Unlike Le Carre's Smiley (at best a liberal), Furst (ditto),  Pastor's Bora (a patriot but neither a nationalist nor a fascist), Philip Kerr's Gunter (ditto), Catesby's loyalty remains double-edged:  a socialist at a time when, unlike in America, is was hardly an unpopular position to take. It's not so far from the type of novel crime writer Jean-Patrick Manchette sought to accomplish at the end of his life,  espionage fiction (e.g., the posthumous Ivory Pearl) that depicts how crimes  trickle down from the state to the street. Not only anti-fascist but anti-bourgeois, particularly regarding a certain type of spy and functionary.  Cohabitating with drug dealers crooks and arms salesmen, Catesby is able to find allies amongst workers, revolutionaries, as well as maverick colleagues in  MI6. Of course, Catesby's pursuit of  monsters will remain unresolved. With an unflinching view of the world when it comes  Vietnam,  the Bay of Pigs and Britain's war in the Malvinas, Thatcher war on the working class, the plot to overthrow Harold Wilson, Cambridge spies, etc., Catesby does his best  to hold history to account. But clearly it's too much for any one  protagonist to handle. Likewise,  any one author. But Wilson, whose anger underpins every novel he's written,  does what he can.  As  Catesby says to his grand-daughter, "I hope your rage never diminishes." Hopefully that applies to Wilson's future novels, drenched, as they are in, in the blood and intrigue of recent history. 

Walking Wounded: The Horse by Willy Vlautin

The plot  is basic enough: a sixty-plus year old mentally precarious alcoholic,  ex-country musician/songwriter who lives alone in the mountains with barely anything to sustain him, finds a blind horse standing alone in the snow and only a bottle of tequila to accompany him, walks thirty miles to get help. Unlike the protagonist in Vlautin's boy-and-horse novel Lean On Pete, Al, seemingly at the low end of an  increasingly chaotic life, knows nothing about such animals nor  much of anything  other than playing the guitar and writing heart-wrenching songs.      

Of course, as we have come to expect with Vlautin,  it's not the plot so much as  the tone and the empathetic quality of the fiction, that matters.   In The Horse,  Al  is as fragile and vulnerable as anyone Vlautin has portrayed. But, then, this is an author who has a particular  affinity for, and vested interest in, broken people. As well as the ability to place them into a supremely readable narratives that plucks  at the heartstrings, while producing sentences and sentiments soaked in honesty, human foible, misfortune and, ultimately, grace.  

Admittedly, I came late to Vlautin's downbeat yet invigorating fiction. At first I couldn't believe anyone could write like that, with their heart so plainly on their sleeve, without a place to hide or mask to hide behind. And to accomplish all that without, it seems, any formal literary education (no doubt to Vlautin's advantage).  It didn't me  long to appreciate Vlautin's  not only his novels but his music (Richmond Fontaine, The Delines), the latter being  every bit  as moving as his fiction, and, at times, almost indistinguishable.   

The Horse is the first time Vlautin has  incorporated the world of music into his fiction. Naturally,  it's a hard luck story, with characters that fail or fall, and mistreat others no more than they mistreat themselves. Yet it never becomes maudlin nor revels in  self-pity or mock-Bukowski braggadocio. That's because Vlautin's broken people are simply trying to do their best to get through life in a world that, thanks to the various economic and political currents, has grown  increasingly harsh. Beyond what, to me, is most impressive is that  Vlautin can accomplish all that without any  trace of cynicism or bad faith.

But Vlautin's novels, for me,  exist in a kind of blur.  I can't honestly say that I remember the plots to any of them in any detail,  just their broad outlines. But, then, perhaps that goes without saying, because, for Vlautin, plots only exist as a kind of wrapping in which he enfolds his characters. Which might be why my favourite Vlautin novel is always the one I'm currently reading. Yet The Horse could well be my all-time favourite. Maybe because it stands as a paean to working musicians, and a glimpse into what might go into  the writing of a song- the experiences, the pain as well as the pleasures. Though some might cite the various lists of Al's song titles- sometimes spread over an entire page if not more-  as unnecessary,  I found the titles more like lines of poems that comprise Al's life, a summary that explains a lot without explaining anything at all.  

At the end of the novel, in  the acknowledgements, Vlautin gives a nod to his brother, and the musical education he received from him. Just more evidence that there is barely  any distance or difference between Vlautin the writer, Vlautin the musician and Vlautin the person. A rare quality in what has become an increasingly distorted and pre-packaged world. 

BELIEVING IS SEEING: On Writing On Dangerous Ground

What Is Noir?

Is more than darkness. Is

Corruption of the heart. Is

behind closed doors, board-

room or street. Is fucked

Whether you do, don’t sing, 

Moan, sniff or shoot. Is a

ticket to all we have, never

enough. Is greed, lust, a fatal

kiss, the banker, cop, criminal, or

any other poor sucker who

screams for mercy. Is a

dream of autonomy, femme

fatality causality, breathing,

“Hey, baby, let’s take it all.”

Is a corpse, a handful of dust

and ultimately who cares, if 

the only punishment is death.

I began writing On Dangerous Ground, a book, for the most part,  comprised of 50 poems based on classic examples of film noir, sometime around 2012. At the time I’d no idea I’d be working on the book intermittently over the next ten years. I knew I wanted each poem to be accompanied by an image from the film that was being considered. My intention was to write solely about the images, what they contained and implied. But it wasn’t long before I found myself shifting from that remit, deploying, instead, the images more as starting points, which, in turn, allowed me to move outwards, into the world surrounding those images. Which is why the images became a kind of memory theater, setting off thoughts, reactions, rants and investigations, coherent or otherwise. A tangential process that dependent not only on the images, and how, as a viewer, I responded to them, but on various aspects of the films themselves: dialogue, lighting, set designs, and the role directors, screenwriters, cinematographers and producers. While some might take the poems simply as eccentrically humorous, fractured and perhaps contentious reviews and reactions, the intention was, on the one hand, to comment on the world around the films, and, on the other hand, to invite the reader to launch his or her own investigation into this or any subject that might reveal as much as it hides. 

As I rewatched the films, and began writing about them, I found myself viewing them in a different light, as artefacts to be acted upon rather than packaged commodities existing in a static environment. And so  the writing of On Dangerous Ground became a two-way process: the films activated the poems, but the poems reanimated the films, allowing me to go wherever I liked with them, from glossing the surface to drilling down into them, addressing subjects like crime, guilt, innocence, bourgeois values, late capitalism, and gendered space. 

Given that much of my past writing- thirty years in the trenches of noir fiction and film- why suddenly turn to poetry as the basis for my investigation? Admittedly, at first glance, it’s a slightly off-the-wall direction to take. But, for me, it was fitting. Primarily because, prior to writing about noir fiction and film, as well as writing novels that inhabited that terrain, poetry had been my first port of call. Not that my relationship to poetry  hasn’t, over the years, succumbed to a series of disgruntlements and separations. Blame it I guess on the term “poet,” and the bad faith it often entails, or absolutist dictums as Pound’s about poets being the antennae of the race (about which one can only ask, what race might the great poet have been referring to?). Even so my relationship with poetry was never to escalate into anything approaching a full-fledged divorce.  And so I still carry the baggage, if not the scars, stretching back to the mid-1960s, in Los Angeles, then San Francisco, with various publications and a range of mentors, from the academic-  Henri Coulette, Philip Levine, Jack Gilbert- to the peripatetic- Michael Michael McClure, Charles Olson, Amiri Baraka and Ed Dorn. Though in recent years any interest has seems to have veered towards the more linguistically-oriented, such as Clark Coolidge, Michael Gizzi, and Tom Raworth, not to mention political screeds by the likes of the  wonderful Sean Bonney and Keston Sutherland.  

In spite, or maybe because of that, I’ve always felt there exists a relationship, however tenuous, between poetry- at least the  kind I tend to favour, that moves outwards into the world while conveying a degree of linguistic wit- and film noir. By negotiating that thin line that separates romanticism from fatalism, film noir can often be said to be as poetic as it is stylised. One need look no further than the obvious, films like Robert Wise’s The Set Up (1949) and Nicholas Ray’s Party Girl (1958), both of which were originally rhymed narrative poems by Joseph Moncure March, or, for that matter, Abraham Polonsky’s Force of Evil (1948), whose screenplay was written in blank verse. It could even be said that poetry and film noir share certain elements: they rely on set formats, tend to manipulate narrative coherency, and often proceed by implication rather than by anything more blatant. As for the doomed film noir protagonist, it’s not unusual for him, and it is usually him, to have the temperament of a thwarted poet, from the sadistic cop Jim Wilson (Robert Ryan) in Nicholas Ray’s On Dangerous Ground (1952) to the soda shop gangster Shubunka (Barry Sullivan) in Gordon Wiles’s The Gangster (19470, While, Slavoj Zizek, in his essay from the 1990s, “From Courtly Love to the ‘Crying Game,’” insists that film noir’s proverbial femme fatale can be traced back to the Troubadour poets and their objects of obsession, though few of the latter could have been as deadly as Kathy (Jane Greer) in Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past (1947) or Margot Shelby (Jean Gillie) in Jack Bernhard’s Decoy (1946). 

Added reason why On Dangerous Ground was a logical step from my previous books like Pulp Culture and Heartbreak & Vine, Cry For a Nickel Die For a Dime and Days of Smoke. Of course, it could be that the transition seems unusual only because there are few, if any, poetry collections that centre on film noir. On the other hand, there’s no shortage of poets who’ve established a working relationship with such films. Amongst those influenced by the genre one could name poets like Alice Notely, Robert Polito, Geoffrey O’Brien,, Nicholas Christopher, and, moving back in time, Weldon Keyes and Kenneth Fearing. Even Raymond Chandler began his writing career as a young man composing doggrel for the Westminster Gazette, while the great Dorothy B. Hughes garnered the Yale Prize For Younger Poets long before she wrote such classics as In a Lonely Place or Ride the Pink Horse.  

On Dangerous Ground opens with an epigraph from Edward Dorn’s hilarious mock-epic of the west Gunslinger- “Ontology! I’m just/telling you a story/about this projector, that’s all.” Metaphorically-speaking, that’s the idea behind the poems in On Dangerous Ground. Which is to say, the images project the poems and their derivatives onto the page, in a manner not dissimilar from the way Gunslinger’s  literate projector is meant to turn images into text. At least that’s the idea, however fanciful and playful that process might be.  Though such an enterprise isn’t without its pitfalls. After all, Dorn’s projector is literate, not literal. Likewise, On Dangerous Ground makes no pretence at being objective, much less literal. If objectivity were the end result of such a projector, it’s function would be limited to turning film noir images into either prurient prose or stale criticism. Rather, On Dangerous Ground seeks to take those images and manipulate them for all they’re worth. Albeit in an era of algorithms and AI, where subjectivity remains the name of the game, and illiterate projectors threaten to proliferate beyond control. 

And so the poems in On Dangerous Ground become increasingly convoluted, which, all else being equal, might reflect  the apparent contradictions regarding the machinery of Hollywood and its place in the structure of corporate America. It also points towards why the images, in pursuit of those contradictions, seek the uniformity of a block form, once referred to as a rhetorical figure. It’s a form mostly influenced by how the poems appear on the page, though never at the exclusion of breath, rhythm, sound, justified line breaks and other impingements and internalities. To be sure, giving the appearance of poetry while casting doubt on whether it is or isn’t. All this to avoid anything resembling the obviously poetic or constructed. At the same time, it’s something of a ruse. Because what looks like poetry might, in fact, be prose if it were not something called poetry. However much the poems embrace or reject their status, in the end it comes down to language and its deployment, what Robert Duncan used to call tone-leading. Though in this case nothing quite so highfalutin: just words and phrases that grind out further words and phrases, not excluding puns, irreverent asides and exploratory gestures, that leads to something that might resemble meaning, be it nuanced or otherwise,. What makes film noir amenable to this approach is its range of possible interpretation. Hopefully not unlike the poems themselves, embedded in their own interpretive, jazz-inflected whirlwind, political for some, though perhaps mere pop-corn inducing enjoyment for others.  

Why title it On Dangerous Ground?  Besides it being one of my favourite movies, film noir, from the end of WW2 to the end of the 1950s, really did find itself, cognisant or not, trespassing onto dangerous ground. By which I mean so many of those films reflected and questioned the values of the era, from consumerism to the paranoia regarding the cold war and the bomb to fear of women in post-war society. Created, in large part, by leftists (Nicholas Ray, Jules Dassin), soon-to-be black-listed writers and directors (Joseph Losey, Abe Biberman, Dalton Trumbo, John Berry), and European exiles, influenced by German Expressionism (Jacques Tourneur, Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak), their movies might have been screened in black and white, but the world they depicted was anything but. At least not in hands of such cinematographers as John Alton, Burnett Guffey and Nicholas Muscuraca; or screenwriters like AI Bezzerides, Daniel Fuchs and Ben Hecht.  But this was back when film noir had license to embrace its rough edges and romantic notions regarding the criminal, the cop, the private eye, the musician, the psychopath, the patsy, the autonomous woman, and other such subjects, a genre that  yet to be categorised, commodified and eventually stripped of its populist concerns and politics, . 

A word about the films selected for the book. For the most part, they are obvious choices, with one or two outliers. Films that might appear in anyone’s list of noir favourites. The collection as a whole is bookended by two poems unrelated to any specific film: one which introduces the book and the final poem which reminds the reader there is always, as Columbo was wont to say, “One More Thing.” Though, full disclosure, there’s a clear discrepancy between the poem that opens the book- in this essay entitled “What Is Noir?” but, in the book simply called “Preface”- and the subsequent poems in the collection. As well as serving as an introduction, the primary function of “Preface” is to preempt the question that comprises its title in this essay, one that’s asked wherever the subject of noir fiction or film is discussed. Moreover, it’s the sort of poem, with its late-night, tough-guy attitude, one might might expect to find in a collection of film noir poetry. Despite its loyalty to the usual tropes, the poem is really an act of misdirection, to entice the reader- the sort who might admire films like Kiss Me, Deadly and Detour and such writers as Himes, Goodis and Thompson, but who has never delved all that deeply into poetry- to turn the page and be surprised, perplexed or interested in the linguistic onslaught that follows. All of which is played to the hilt, right up to the final page, when, once again, the screen goes blank, and the reader, formerly the viewer, is left to their own devices.

“Heat, Sleep, Steal, Night, Knife, Goodbye. This one

goes out to who would remain anonymous, their

ships lost at sea. Continents long since absent,

as insomniacs out of the past darkly. Falling

adjectives like confetti between more frames

per  second than reality can ever hope to count.”

(from “One More Thing”)

(an edited version of this appeared in On the Sea Wall, which you can find here)

Inside the Mind of an Improvisor- The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins, edited by Sam V.H. Reese (NYRB Books)

The great tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins will be 94 this September. Until a few years ago when pulmonary fibrosis forced him to retire from playing music, he was arguably the preeminent improvisor in jazz, and had been so for a number of decades. Ironically, Rollins, who grew up in Harlem, his parents having relocated there from the Virgin Islands, has always been not so much a loner as the music's supreme individualist, insisting, over his long career, on going his own way, whether that meant honing his chops on Brooklyn Bridge, cutting his hair Mohican-style, appearing as a cowboy and recording I'm An Old Cowhand on his 1957 album Way Out West, or his penchant for solo performes. Ironically, even though he has played  alongside just about every in-demand post-WW2 musician, Rollins, unlike  Coltrane, Coleman, Miles, etc, is perhaps singular in not being associated with a stable group of musicians.  In other words, there is no definitive Sonny Rollins quartet or quintet that comes to mind when thinking of his music. As pianist and writer Ethan Iverson has pointed out, Rollins' bands are not his music. 

"It happens all the time, I know- but it's not going to happen to me.You guys have forgotten that you are here to play for me. You're supposed to be playing for me. Accompanying me. Helping me to do something." 

More evidence of Rollins' individualism, someone who was constantly testing the waters, changing line-ups according to the occasion and the evolution of his music.  Through it all the one constant feature of his music has been his increasingly powerful sound, straight out  of the islands through Harlem, influenced by Coleman Hawkins ("My musical idol.") as much as Louis Jordan or Charlie Parker. Not to mention a unique sense of improvisation and timing, and a wealth of material- his own as well as the Great  American Songbook, to dip into at a moment's notice. One can literally listen to Newk for hours without hearing a single cliché save those he emits with a sense of humour and irony.    

"There is today in existence a fraternity of people. People who were all irrepressibly drawn to the 'horn of horns,' 'the instrument of instruments,' the saxophone. Within its proportions we saw a better and more beautiful world. We saw, and see the means towards a better human being; towards the perfection of ourselves."

The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins, edited by Sam Reese (to be published in April 2024), provides an insight into what makes this incredible musician  tick. The notebooks, which begin in 1959 and end in  2010,  cover the greater  part of his musical career.  Naturally, much of it is about music- some of which might be  hard to grasp by non-musicians- but many of the entries veer off into other interesting and unusual directions, taking in matters  spiritual, political, dietary, physical (breathing and playing exercises, yoga, fasting), medical (the effect of dentistry  on his playing), and cultural. There are also various personal reminders to himself as well as letters to such dignitaries as Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton. With such a range of interests and intellectual depth, it's not surprising that Rollins, aware that everything changes and all things must come to an end, would be humble enough to accept his transition into retirement. 

"The idea of 'teaching' music in the prescribed manner is our attempt to present people with a view of that finer side of their nature which  is akin to such things as trees, grass, sky, among other natural phenomena."  

Are there any similar notebooks by jazz musicians? Off-hand, I can't think of any. Though what did come to mind while reading The Notebooks... were those two pieces of paper on which Thelonious Monk wrote out guidelines (see below) for his, or any, musicians. Then I thought about Ornette holding forth in Stephen Rush's Free Jazz, Harmolodics and Ornette Coleman. The only other comparative book  that comes to mind is the more conventionally organised  A Power Stronger Than Itself by AACM musician and composer George Lewis. However, Rollins' Notebooks is more substantial than Monk's wonderful instructions, easier to grasp than either Rush's book, and  easier to read than Lewis's incredible history of the AACM and American Experimental Music.  

"Someone once said 'the easiest way is not always the best way.' Although no doubt this quotation  was well intentioned it is in fact only half correct. In truth and in all practical applications...the easiest is the best way."

In the end, The Notebooks show Rollins to be what we have long expected- a person of  intelligence, with a wide range of interests, and no small amount of wisdom. The world is lucky to have been graced by his music- from his playing with Bud and Richie Powell, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Max Roach, Horace Silver, Miles Davis, and Thelonious Monk to  Herbie Hancock, Tommy Flanagan, Jim Hall, Don Cherry and Bill Higgins. Actually, it's hard to imagine a world in which Sonny Rollins' music does not exist.  Of course, as with anyone's notebooks, you have to have some interest in, and appreciation of, the person making those entries. But since Rollins remains one of the best known  names in  jazz, there should be no shortage of listeners ready and willing to turn the pages of this volume that weighs in at only slightly more 150 pages.  With all that it includes, it's  the ideal book  to read before, after, or alongside  Aidan Levy's biography, Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins, along with your favourite Sonny Rollins tune playing in the background.   

"No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up."

"'Technology is the means of going backwards faster.'- Huxley"

"I like to play and let the crowd settle and then lull and then wake them up with something outrageous... [So] that just when they begin to lose interest I shock them back to reality... the reality of me, me and my sound, my communication through ancient ritual sound."

        "Invested with sanctity

            (Schopenhauer)

            Phenomenology

            Ideologs

            (Ide-a-logs)

            Polemical

            Geo-political

            Mitigate

            Metamorphosis

            Antipathy

            Antithesis

             The order has been whispering to me at just such times as I would lose vision. 

             Reaching me in a deeply personal revelation of a universal principle, testifying

             to the impersonality of character which I seek."

Monk's Advice to Musicians