Carl Thayler died last Sunday at the age of 72. He was a poet whose work I always associated with that of Paul Blackburn, what one might think of as the New York side of Black Mountain. Thayler wasn’t in New York all that long, as it turned out, acting on the stage during the 1950s – a Hollywood lad, Thayler also appeared such films as High School Confidential, something I hadn’t known until I read his obit in the Wisconsin State Journal. The first comment about Thayler on his website is from the historian of the Harley Davidson company. Pavement Saw & Skanky Possum did relatively recent books, but he’s another example of a poet whose writing cries out for that honkin’ big collection that will make everybody sit up & take notice. You can actually find a decent amount of his work up on the web, including a number of poems in Jacket. But the one I looked for when I heard he had died is what I take to be an elegy of sorts, entitled “Pee Wee Distarcy” after a midget car racing driver of the 1940s & early ‘50s. It was originally in Caterpillar 6, and is in the Caterpillar Anthology on the page immediately preceding Harvey Bialy. Reading this poem, try to hear those line breaks & how hard they are compared with the work of Jimmy Schuyler & Alan Dugan I ran here the other day. Then think about how Thayler uses free floating periods & open parentheses as a visual scoring of the poem’s oral pace. That’s becoming a lost art.

It begins with a hole
being no decision but
like the cat puts his foot into
your coffee, is
the trail to the prey

these simple maneuvers   .   Pee Wee
like Falstaff
a reconciled hemisphere
with injury so swollen & robust
obscene Graces
surround him

a fat man   .   never won a race
slops over
the stain comes to the shirt
too quickly, is
a trail thru to the heart

I mean it is a world
of hard knocks & he
ripped 40 feet of fence out to die   (
the toilet so situated & occupied
when hit
a bare ass thru flames moving out   .   Pee Wee

it was contempt
moved through fire

in passing through
is love

 

Θ Φ Θ

 

Tomorrow, David Shapiro & I will be reading at the Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery) in Manhattan at 4 PM. Do come if you can.