Re: Poets Joe Green, Jeet Thayil, Mark Lamoureux to read at Wordsworth in Harvard Square

Another two blasts from his Purdey & Purdey
from Ye Olde Warrior Jew Zippy Wordy

On 11/18/03 10:29 AM, in article
[EMAIL PROTECTED], "joe green"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> If only  Berryman had known.  He was probably thinking about his Dad,
> however -- and thinking metaphorically.
> 
> I'll be reading the poems of Rin Tin Tin and the Lonliest Ranger.
> 
> It all began January last year.  I was at home composing an anti-war
> limerick for the Poets Against the War cotillion.  Working on that
> last line which, as everyone knows, is usually the hardest.  Suddenly,
> behind me, in a strange Eastern European accent I heard a voice give
> me the perfect last line.  I turned around angrily – thinking that,
> once again, Andrei Codrescu had invaded the sanctity of my home.  But
> he wasn't there – there was only my dog Abe looking at me with a
> smirk.  He's a Viszla – Huingarian vampire hunter dogs.  He gave me a
> meaningful look and I knew just what to do.  Got some duct tape, a
> pen, paper.  Duct taped the pen to his paw and the automatic writing
> began.  Soon I was in contact with the spirits of two great American
> icons – Rin Tin Tin and the Lonliest Ranger.  Flew with Abe to NYC
> where, in the sad courtyard behind the pound in Brighton Beach, Abe
> dug up Rinty's and Lonliest's manuscripts.
> 
> About Rinty:
> 
> We know about Rinty and the movies.  I'll skip that.  What is not so
> well known is that he was an excellent jazz guitarist.  He met Billie
> Holiday in the Fifties.  They fell in love.  No one knew. Intellectual
> love. He went mad with grief after her death and -- because all dogs
> know the essential existentialist insight -- decided to create himself
> anew by joining the Cuban revolution.
> 
> It doesn't work -- he tries to establish serious theatre in Cuba and
> overcome the typecasting he has suffered from all of his life.
> 
> Oh, during the first flush of revolutionary joy audiences accept him
> (he thinks) as Puck in his Marxist version of "A Midsummers Nights
> Dream" but soon he is reduced to playing bit parts in proletarian
> dramas and then its not long before there is no place for him in the
> State Theatre.
> 
> (Or…well, the reader will have to decide for herself if Rinty's poem
> "RinTinTology"  is fiction…)
> 
> He works as a street performer for a bit -- usually as Lenin -- for
> the Soviet visitors Castro welcomes to the island but then is arrested
> for anti-revolutionary activity when he tires of doing Lenin and tries
> a stint as Trotsky. After his release he makes his living --such as it
> is -- teaching the mambo to canine candidates for the Cuban National
> Circus and peddling marijuana to vacationers from Bulgaria.
> 
> In 66 he makes his move and escapes to NYC disguised as Chiquita
> Banana (he never says what happened to the young girl on the cruise
> ship who had been playing the part) and almost at once falls in with a
> crowd of drunken stand up comic wannabes and, while stoned and driving
> a dunebuggy along the beach runs down and kills poet Frank O'Hara.
> 
> ((O'Hara died of injuries he received when he was hit by a vehicle on
> the beach at Fire Island, on Long Island, New York).
> 
> He flees to Cuba.
> 
> He is caught and sentenced to prison again where he is released by
> Castro -- one of the hardened criminals Castro sends to the US --
> where, after many adventures, he attains his dream and is acclaimed as
> the "Hamlet of his Generation" by NY theatre critics.
> 
> He gives it all up again and travels in Texas and Mexico playing
> country guitar and getting in fights arguing over whether Fredric
> Remington or De Kooning is the best artist.
> Gives that up and moves back to NYC.  His poetry begins to be known
> 
> And then, of course, destroyed by his own loathing of his being in
> time as a dog -- which is the essential cause of his typical racism
> and paranoia -- all he has left -- loveless and writing this memoir in
> the pound in Brighton Beach where he will be euthanized -- are
> memories of his betrayals and regrets that overwhelm everything else.
> 
> Here is his poem in which he claims to have well... killed
> JFK...though it was probably only written as a kind of compensation
> for not getting Leslie Howard's part in "The Manchurian Candidate."
> 
> RinTinTology 
> 
> I never met Django
> Never really wanted too, I guess
> We would have "eyed each other warily"
> Like the time I met Senator Jack Kennedy
> Was it 57?
> In the Cozy Cole me playing there
> Jack with Sammy
> Sammy told me he was nervous.
> Jack working on his charisma thing
> And me.. height of my fame
> Billy there Jack wanting her to come to his table
> Her not noticing and me looking at her
> Playing "Vous et Moi"
> Sammy said "Man, come on down see who's here."
> So afterwards I sit down next to the Senator
> He in black glasses smoking a Kool
> Undercover or something
> Billie came over.  She said she liked the man
> Afterwards, knew his Daddy… called him
> Mr. Death.  "That boy has troubles"
> She said.  "He was just nervous meeting me"
> I told her.  She could see that.
> Anybody could.  "He eyed you warily
> Behind those shades"  We laughed.
> Forgot about it.  I had something he wanted.
> And he had something…something…
> Held back… connection to.. as if he knew
> About us, about me and Billy,
> Something he said.  Joking about Howard Hughes.
> Sammy told me Jack laughed afterwards.
> "Said he was nervous.  Something strange.  Didn't
> Know why."  
> 
> In 63 in August Castro "eyed me warily."
> A little moonlight, bourbon on his breath,
> Backstage, the little moon a paper one
> For "Midsummers Night Dream." A wood near
> Athens and I had transformed it, a bit of Brecht,
> All of Shakespeare, Theseus nervous knowing
> That Quince knew, Flute knew, Bottom breaking
> the frame, declaring the revolution and me as Puck
> Leaping, flying off that stage, like Peter Pan
> TO FIDEL he standing up, smiling,
> Me kneeling with the flowers but he
> Afterwards backstage distant and cold wondering I thought
> If the applause was for him or me.
> 
> Che was very nice, however.
> Speaking one word… one word.
> "Rosebud."
> And I was in Dallas next was in Dallas then.
> 
> If I could play great jazz guitar
> No hands…only paws.
> Why couldn't I
> Slowly, hold breath, there he is
> Pull the trigger
> Of a Manlicher-Carcano 6.5mm rifle?
> 
> .....
> 
> 
> And a link to an illustration of :
> 
> "Leaping, flying off that stage, like Peter Pan
> TO FIDEL he standing up, smiling,
> Me kneeling with the flowers but...
> 
> 
> http://blackyak.com/forbidden/rintycastro.gif