Curtis Faville, as you must have realized by now, is an old friend, someone I’ve known since we attended UC Berkeley together circa 1970. Curtis' selected early poems, Stanzas for an Evening Out remains one of the great books of the 1970s. If he had not abandoned writing (temporarily as it turned out) at the time I was editing In the American Tree, his long poem “Aubade” would have been included. Nowadays, Curtis runs Compass Rose Books, a rare book business.
RealPoetik is an email poetry zine sent out, I think, once a week. Along with Halvard Johnson’s Poems by Others, the one other email zine I read regularly, it’s been a constant source of interesting work over the years. RealPoetik has been edited by a number of folks over the years. These days it’s in the able hands of Kirby Olson, who first got to know Curtis through the comments boxes on my blog. To get on the RealPoetik list, drop a note to owner-realpoetik@scn.org or to Kirby directly at olsonjk@delhi.edu.
Here is the RealPoetik Faville issue, which was published on April 21.
Curtis Faville is known to many in the poetry community as an articulate and erudite discussant on Ron Silliman's enormously popular blog – http://ronsilliman.blogspot
The Wheel
The unconceived stand ranked as if in gallery
lobby to be realized, love¹s abortion
that left them along the way, unrejected
Platonic in barren infinitesimal spaces
The game fixed by chance, we hardly imagine
their agon, brief as mayfly daydreams
that hover whirring above the wimpling
stream, windswept cylinder of flux
Dreams of the same rehearsal fascinate
divert the curse of nations, migrations
through winters of compulsion
to a simple lust: the word made fresh
__________________
Near
Hovering traceries of maple cloister
the misted grey air north of
spongy track at meadow¹s edge
towards medieval fastnesses, forest echoes.
.
Stones of
riddle: How placed in tandem
to earth and force, the cradle of
valor was thrust up amongst peasant
and peregrine equally to a pitiless aftermath.
.
Light clings to covert among smooth
boles, occasional bird whirrs
crisply at day¹s edge, autumnal burns
flickering along a doomed horizon as
nearer we draw even¹s conjuring fire.
___________________
These are from the first bound copy of my new book, called Metro [Privately Printed, 2005].
These are chosen at random from that book:
___________________
GIN LIKE WATER
gin like sound
.
materiality, the fly
is BLACK &
FUZZY
.
S P E L L I T
spills from the box
.
C H I N E S E
brush strokes on water
.
ORANGE AS
persimmons in season bitterly sweet
yet cloying
.
S I L V E R H A L I D E S
hay barn dust thru boards' particled light
.
lip liner on the sunset
.
WILDE WILDE WEST
imagine Oscar in
_________________
I graduated from
Curtis Faville
Kensington
