I told Anne Waldman earlier this week that I thought my best teaching at Naropa when I was here last in 1994 consisted simply of giving Mary Burger contact information for Kevin Killian & Dodie Bellamy. Mary was already so fully formed in her own sense of aesthetics that she was much more a force of nature than a mere “student.” I do think it’s not all that uncommon for a program like Naropa to attract young writers so advanced that any real distinction between them & the faculty here seems silly. One good example of this phenomenon this year is Michael Koshkin, whom you may already know from his blog, his press, Hot Whiskey (co-run with his partner Jennifer Rogers), and his poetry which has appeared in many venues.

One such venue that I just got hold of this week is Parad e  R ain, a gorgeous (two signatures, hand-stitched!) chapbook published by Big Game Books of Washington, DC. As the curious gaps in the title hint, Parad e R ain is an homage of sorts to the late Ronald Johnson (the “R.J.” of Koshkin’s dedication), the book having been composed along Johnsonian lines from Milton’s Paradise Regained. I say “of sorts” because Koshkin has a sense of play and wit about everything he does that Johnson himself was unable or unwilling to permit in his own poems, often fascinating constructions that always seem to remind you of their serious intent.

Parad e  R ain, as a result, reads closer to what you might expect had Johnson had a mind meld, that old Vulcan mode of cultural transmission, with Ron Padgett or Ted Berrigan. In addition to being fun to read – I devoured it aloud in a single sitting – the whole idea is a fascinating project, something that is hard, if not outright impossible, to attempt if you’re too close either to the poets in question or to their work. I feel reasonably sure that Koshkin never met either Berrigan or Johnson (& don’t know about Padgett), but recognize full well that, as slightly as I knew Johnson & Berrigan, I couldn’t envision attempting this sort of project with them, or, for that matter, with anyone younger than, say, Pound & Stein (imagine Stein revising “Cantico del Sole”!).

Projects like this hardly ever become one’s “real” writing. Instead, not unlike translation, it’s a method of examining the materials & practice of others, both the process and, in Johnson’s case, his sources as well. What I don’t have in front of me is Radi Os itself, but I certainly don’t recall the same sense of glee I find here. For some people, I’m sure that would be a negative, but I’m not in that camp. Johnson’s decision to hold his tone close to that of Milton’s is a decision, right for him no doubt but hardly the only choice possible under the same circumstances. Koshkin’s very different choice shows an ease toward found materials that the generation born in the 1930s (& not just Ron Johnson) never had. Koshkin, like Mary Burger in 1994, is the real deal. Keep your eyes open for his name. You’re going to be seeing it a lot.