Remembering a Great Storyteller

Richard Leck (February 17, 1933 – December 19, 2008)

Today we remember Richard Leck, who died peacefully on this date three years ago. Richard was a poet and a storyteller, an Army veteran from between wars, a Hudson County native (where he lived for over four decades), a resident of the East Village, and a veteran of the Greenwich Village café scene of the 1960s.

I met Richard when I was working at St Mark’s Bookshop and we quickly became friends due to his being such an entertaining customer. For the last two years of his life, we were collaborating on his memoirs (JUMPED, FELL, OR WAS PUSHED, still in progress), which he described as “comedy sociology.” Our writing project was a happy accident for each of us. Richard was waiting for someone to listen to all his stories and I was waiting for someone to tell me what had gone down in Jersey City (the city of my grandfather’s childhood) in the early part of the 20th Century. Whenever Richard talked, I took notes, and soon we decided to stop calling it “having coffee” and start calling it “writing a book.” I am hugely grateful for all that Richard and his stories taught me: How to listen, how to appreciate what you have, how to stay young and grow old gracefully, how to survive the rough patches with humor, how to figure out what's important and ignore the rest, how to forgive your own past, and especially how to tell stories. I learned more from absorbing his storytelling rhythm for two years that I ever would in any MFA writing program. Hell, maybe Richard Leck WAS my MFA program.

Richard was a very funny man. His literary memorial service had us all laughing like the best Irish wakes always do. Some small press superstars joined Words Like Kudzu Press to read from Richard’s stories and poems for the memorial, held at the Bowery Poetry Club in May 2009. Participants included Margarita Shalina (small press buyer at St Mark’s Bookshop and translator of Chekov’s The Duel, Melville House Press); writer Brian Cogan (Encyclopedia of Punk); novelist Arthur Nersesian (Akashic Books); poet Bob Holman (founder of the Bowery Poetry Club, poetry activist); poet Jackie Sheeler (Earthquake Came to Harlem, NYQ Books); poet Steve Dalachinsky (The Final Nite & Other Poems, Ugly Duckling Presse); writer Mike Faloon (The Hanging Gardens of Split Rock on Gorsky Press and editor of Go Metric Zine); and storyteller Tom Hendrickson (Whack & Blight Press).

Follow this link to listen to the readings from Richard’s memoirs and his poems:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF79DD06C41AB9E25

Follow this link to read an excerpt from Richard’s memoirs:
"You Could Make a Bet on a Street Corner as Easy as Buying a Newspaper"
Go Metric Zine
http://gometric.typepad.com/gometric/2009/04/you-could-make-a-bet-on-a-street-corner-as-easy-as-buying-a-newspaper-part-i.html

Read the Village Voice appreciation of Richard Leck here:
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2009/01/richard_leck_19.php

Technology and Literature This Week

I came across a very interesting trio of pieces this week concerning the intersection of (small press) literature and the digital age:

Monday, Exquisite Corpse editor Andrei Codrescu waxed eloquent on NPR about how the Kindle destroyed the sacred silence that exists between a reader and a new book:
"...not only you do not own the new book you paid for, the entire experience of reading is shattered by the presence of a mob that agitates inside your text like strangers in a train station."
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/07/134342235/E-Book-Tarnishes-The-Reader-Book-Relationship

Tuesday, a New York Observer article about Calamari Press/Featherproof novelist Blake Butler talked about how the writer has lived on the internet for the past 10 years, created a blog for other far-flung writers who were alone until HTML Giant united them in conversation, and decries stories that resolve, relationships and sex in literature, and the following: "The idea of the writer at all has become overrated," Mr. Butler said. "To think that you're this orchestrating wizard and that you have to have this story to tell and you have to have lived and seen crazy shit to be able to put it out there is absurd. To me it's just as crazy or scary or fucked up to go outside to the grocery store. You know?"
"Blake Butler and What Happens When a Novelist Lives on the Internet"
http://www.observer.com/2011/culture/blake-butler-and-what-happens-when-novelist-lives-internet

Today, Six Gallery Press poet Mike Bushnell blogs about phoning author and Black Sparrow poet Ed Sanders and what it was like to learn about poetry before the age of the internet:
"There are certain things that have happened in my poetic development that most likely would have taken less intimate manifestations if I had such an emoticoning outlet at my disposal."
http://www.iamaparty.com/2011/03/learning-poetry-before-internet.html

Poet Ed Steck's Underground Lit Collection

Poet Ed Steck has cleaned out his bookshelves and is selling his collection of underground lit, including a number of Allen Ginsberg titles, through Caliban Books in Pittsburgh. Check out these beauties:

Recent Acquisitions

Blink Ink issue #5
Journal of micro-fiction
http://www.blink-ink.com/

We’ll Never Have Paris, issue #7: Modern Fire
Zine of narrative non-fiction
http://neverhaveparis.blogspot.com/


Tel-Tales # 1: Cut Lines and Intricate Minds
Comic by Donald and Daniel Zettwoch
http://www.copaceticcomics.com/comics/1220


Salmon Poetry titles by Alan Jude Moore
Strasbourg:
http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details
and
Black State Cars:
http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details

Itinerant Poetry Booksellers Will Stalk You at AWP

Exciting news: "Berl's Poetry Book Shop" is the name of a bookstore seeking a home. Until they find a brick and mortar space, poets/
proprietors Farrah Field and Jared White will be itinerant booksellers, hawking their wares at craft fairs around New York (such as Brooklyn Flea) and elsewhere.

Look for Farrah and Jared at AWP this weekend, where they will be seeking your poetry books (especially handmade chapbooks) to sell. If you're not at AWP, contact them through their blog: http://www.blogger.com/profile/03968672357168522423

Brooklyn will soon join Boulder, Cambridge, and Seattle in having the nation's few bookstores dedicated solely to poetry:

In January, the nation's third poetry-only bookstore opened in Boulder, Colorado:
Innisfree Poetry Bookstore and Cafe
http://www.innisfreepoetry.com/

Groiler Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts has been open since 1927:
http://www.grolierpoetrybookshop.org/

Open Books in Seattle is the only poetry-only bookseller on the West Coast:
http://www.openpoetrybooks.com/

Beltway Poetry Quarterly at AWP

Today I stumbled across a great little interview about DC's poetry legacy with Beltway Poetry Quarterly editor, Kim Roberts. Roberts has organized a BPQ panel for AWP called "Four by Four: Beltway Poetry Quarterly Celebrates the Poetic Lineage of the Capitol City." The panel will happen on Saturday, February 5th at 1:30pm. Roberts reminds us how many poets were once based in DC, including Walt Whitman, Ambrose Bierce, and Paul Lawrence Dunbar, and points out that:

"The Harlem Renaissance got its start in DC (not in New York--despite the name that movement now goes by), which brought to our city Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and others."

The panel will feature four contemporary DC poets discussing four historical DC poets: Living writers Regie Cabico, Brian Gilmore, Kim Roberts, and Dan Vera will discuss past literary lights Georgia Douglas Johnson (1920s-30s), Sterling A. Brown (active in the 40s and 50s), May Miller (60s and 70s), and Essex Hemphill (70s and 80s).

Kim Roberts will also be signing her own book of poems at AWP, The Kimnama, published on DC-based poetry press, Vrzhu Press.

Please see the original interview between Roberts and Joshua Gray here: http://www.examiner.com/poetry-in-washington-dc/beltway-poetry-quarterly-pairs-local-dc-poets-at-awp

Book Giveaway Follow-up: Liveblogging the Coin Toss

I still have to decide who wins the free copy of James Jay's wonderful poetry book, The Journeymen (Gorsky Press), generously donated by Mike Faloon. Margaret Bashaar and Ron Kolm are the two contenders, and there's no way I can subjectively choose--they are both poets I admire, both writers full of energy and enthusiasm for the small press.

To solve this dilemma, I have enlisted poet, publisher, and bookseller, Kristofer Collins, to witness a coin toss. See the comments for the results and Kris' confirmation.

Heads, Margaret Bashaar wins....

Barefoot and Listening, poems by Margaret Bashaar (Tilt Press)

Tails, Ron Kolm wins....

Dreamscapes, poems edited by Ron Kolm, Jennifer Ross and Paul Meyers (Autonomedia)

And the winner is.......[See comments]

Small Press Holiday Recommendations: Day 20

I’m really surprised that only one person on my seasonal blog has recommended INFERNO: A POET’S NOVEL by Eileen Myles (OR Books), because it’s definitely been the most talked about and enthusiastically recommended book among my Facebook friends and acquaintances. Many of these recommendations have just been in the form of: Buy it. NOW. Others have been a bit longer winded, like, “Buy this book for every female artist you know.” Still others have paraphrased ideas from the book in their status line, like “Eileen Myles writes that she knew she was probably a lesbian, but wanted to become a poet first.” I really liked a concept that one writer paraphrased: “Eileen Myles’ Inferno reminds us that for a scene to be COOL, there must be mixing of the classes. There's a cash transaction to support the artists, but the artists come with gifts, fresh from the struggle to live.” (Since Myles often writes about her working class background but most artists I know do everything they can to wish away their dayjobs, I remembered this in my mind as “Artists need to learn how to earn a living, because part of their job is to depict the struggle to live.”)

One of my newest Facebook pals talked to Eileen Myles about writing and publishing the book, here: BombBlog podcast—Eileen Myles and Jackie Wang.

INFERNO is available mainly from the publisher, OR Books, or from select independent bookstores. I just bought my copy from my favorite New York bookstore and am anticipating its arrival on my doorstep. I can't wait.

http://www.orbooks.com/our-books/inferno-a-poets-novel/