(nine muses books/ a small-scale poets' collective)
Note: this essay will be appearing in the Spring issue of Temple (Volume 3, Number 2), which is due out 1 April 1999. Temple is a quarterly one can subscribe to for $20 a year through its editor, Charles Potts, at Box 100,
Walla Walla WA 99362-0033 or tsunami@wwics.com. More information regarding Temple can be found at the Temple website:
http://www.wwics.com/~tsunami.
(Caveat Necessaire: I apologize in advance for vastnesses &
richnesses within the Seattle body poetique not evinced by
my ken here following. At the conclusion of this cavalier &
partial & manifestly biased overview, a complete list of all
nine muses offerings is appended, along with information on
how to contact nine muses books sole proprietor, margareta
waterman, formerly of that city.)
What do you do if you find yourself privy to certain of a great
city's sacred secrets; what makes a place a city, a city great,
what makes something a secret, a secret sacred? If you are new
to town, how even become integral, useful, engaged? I remember
when I was new to the city of Seattle, back in the early 80's,
there was a fitful and notably clumsy worrying in the air that
had very much to do with the question of greatness. An example:
somewhere in that same timespan, the poet Stephen Thomas asked of
the poet Joe Keppler why there was no great poetry being
accomplished. If memory serves, the question was alluded to in
print, perhaps in conjunction with projects then being initiated
by the city's then-signal independent poetry collective, the Red
Sky Poetry Theater. I remember reacting to the existence of that
question in that city at that time with acute discomfort: not at
all privy to any of Seattle's secrets due to the fact that I was
such a new guy, it seemed then, and seems still, that merely by
virtue of getting to overhear such a question, I was being
initiated in and made complicit with an awakening self-
consciousness that was both embarrassing and exhilarating--if a
public poet in and of the ville could voice such a query,
whatever did that say about the distort yearn & skew roiling
within what could only be identified as the spirit of the place?
My intuition told me that canary Thomas was sounding an alarm,
howsoever wannabe, as to the existence of soul and aspiration
deep in the creativity mines of a pre-microsoft Seattle.
Something was stirring, down deep in the bowels, else why would a
public poet flail his rhetorical arms so?
By the middle of 1985 I was gone from Seattle, after only two
years during which I'd met a full host of Seattle canaries, none
of whom ever had quite the temerity to voice so goofily riveting
a query as had the then-young Mr Thomas. Those other poets, I
suppose, were rather more distracted by the eerie & manifold
discomforts of divining the sacred secrets of actually being of
the poets' ilk in that community. One Seattle poet whose
acquaintance I'd not made by the time I left was margareta
waterman, and the reason for that was simple: margareta did not
get to Seattle until 1986. When she did get there, I have no
doubt she, too, wondered those new-guy questions: integrity,
utility, and engagement. As for other matters, of geatness,
secrecy, and the sacred, margareta knew exactly what to do, and
her actions were decisive: she founded nine muses books, a
personal, workable strategy of self-publishing that in no time at
all evolved into a working, poets' collective for both
performance and publication. Pursue the Sacred, Share the
Secret, yea, & as for ol' Generalissimo Greatness--nobody had
time for that jefe, oyez.
nine muses' modal operandi was (& remains, tho' now based in
rural Oregon) to take the work of a given writer, most typically
a poet, and expand the presentation of that writer's work to
include that which is physically tangible, rather as if to
demonstrate the radiant force of vision as it penetrates from the
ineffable down thru sweat & fibre: Word become flesh, as it
were. Consequently, nine muses books are designed to be
conceived objects as opposed to conveniently reproducible text-
only facsimiles. The task of calling attention to an actual
Sacred via the nine muses ethique meant not quite those
illuminated scriptures of Blake, nor of the medieval monks, nor
even of the visual burstnorm poetics so prevalent in some very
bright warrens of experimental quest this century. nine muses
was simpler, more direct: to make of the meantness of a made text
an object that is co-equally made, a deliberate physical vehicle
that serves the text rather as an enabling embrace. Unseen, one
might suspect this aesthetic to flirt with the precious, as in
"art book poetics", but the proof is in the making on the one
hand, and the finished project on the other. The ethique
typically has been collaborative: margareta's design expertise
oversees & suggests, combining with deft illustrative visual
improvisations inspired by the texts & accomplished by
sympathetic artists &/or artisans, all rooted in the intuitions &
instincts of the original poet-authors, who in all cases always
had the final say (& not infrequently execute their own visual
accompaniments). Notably, book & copyright ownership remain the
authors', while production equipment is held in trust for all.
With regard to chronology, in August of 1987 margareta waterman
debuted as a performance artist at the Seattle Center, under the
aegis of Roberto Valenza's Alternative To Loud Boats open
community poetry festival. She was still an independant
operator, and the text of her performance was independantly
published that year as "THE SEED OF OSIRIS," which book included
illustrations from several artists: Gretchen Armstrong, Carol
Barth, Van Medcalf, Karen Worden, photographer Don Smith, and
margareta herself. That very willingness to collaborate was a
seed quick to grow. The text itself rewrote a myth, from the
Egyptian, that the goddess Isis searched the earth for the
fourteen dissembled pieces of the god Osiris. Having made her
first book as an independant operator, margareta launched nine
muses books with her next chapbook, 1988's "ELEUSINIAN THEATRE."
It is possible to think of margareta's personal output over the
following dozen years as the playing out of the promise of this
rewritten myth: to date, she has published eleven of her own
books through her nine muses imprint, a number that tracks
inexorably toward that mythic fourteen, no? After all, nine
muses, although having removed itself from Seattle to rural
Oregon in the mid-90's, continues to publish. As for the
fertility of the Seed, since she expanded beyond the personal,
starting with Martina Goodin's nine muses c-bk in 1990, "an
ordinary housewife," her publishing collective's output is itself
sixteen books deep. That's close to thirty books from nine muses
in a dozen years, not to include two large postcard series, two
performance cassettes, broadsides, and a video documentation
series.
Although waterman's output of frequently myth-oriented poetry
comprises the core of the nine muses list, a critical
consideration of her thematic achievements as a poet are the
substance of some further, future study, one quite beyond the
range of this entry of mine. It is crucial herein, however, to
call attention both to her inspiring outreach to other poets and
artists, and to the design elan she wielded as an inspiration to
those she attracted to her project. I think of three
breakthrough books she authored, the first of which is 1991's
"CRACKED CRYSTAL, jazz poetry in three sets." It is her largest
chapbook up to that time, at 64 pages, and it includes a wrapping
strategy that allows for a non-attached, flat-spine cover. The
book is illustrated by brushstroke evocational abstracts painted
by saxophonist/painter Wally Shoup. The artwork is intimate with
the text to the point that a seamlessness is bodied forth, a true
visual/poetics duet-improvisation. Later that same year, she
equals the achievement with "walkin' occam's razor," in which
artist Dennis Widstrand creates a scrolling book-length, page-to-
page visual comp of uncommon technical precision wedded to a
grounded sense of profound esthetic integration. The book is so
stunningly successful that Widstrand's own commentary, appended
on the inside of the back cover, mustneeds be quoted from: "the
illustrations for walkin' occam's razor are intended to establish
a moving line of reference, as in musical notation. a visual
counterpoint to the words and their meaning rather than fixed
reference points. the making of this book was in two stages. in
the first I familiarized myself with the poems, finding the
rhythms, extracting the mood, extrapolating the form. the
symbolism is abstracted from the meeting of the elements of
nature and machine. the second stage involved realizing these
elements into an organic visual form, first in terms of rhythm
and space, and then, more gradually, the details of symbolism.
the visual scroll is an audio visual reference. a sound code to
accompany the voice. the rhythms and pulses are implied in the
periodic frequency of the illustrations, the harmony by the
density of the illustrations, the melody by the silhouette." A
triad of breakthroughs is achieved; waterman's 1993 chapbook,
"lady orpheus," completes the artist/poet collaborative thrust
with the charcoal art accompaniment of Roberto Valenza. Again,
it is a book that would be unimaginable were it separated from
its interpenetration of visual and written elements. Seamless.
Intimate. Mixed media resonant. The flat-spine / chosen-papers /
visually-amplified enabling embrace of her technique is placed
before the town as a resource. Having thus repeatedly
demonstrated collaborative, integral, conceived-object
bookmaking, margareta has challenged the future of her
collective.
In two years, she reaps a notable reward when Arizona resident
Gary David enters into the mix with his set-in-New Mexico
chapbook, 1995's "TIERRA ZIA." The book delves into the imminent
arrival of Zia, father Gary & mother Anita's first child. It is
a sand-colored book of principally spiritual poetry set in a
world of dry, scintillating light. Illustrated with pen & ink
drawings by native american artist Dawn Senior, the ancient
ancestral world of northern New Mexico is channeled as the
poetry's accompanying Spirit. When Zia arrives, mid-book, it is
into a world thrice-factored: primordial timelessness, Anasazi
ancestral ruins, and now-time secular abomination. In his
handling of each of these elements, Gary David emerges as a poet
of uncommon precision and breadth, and as one who believes
wholeheartedly in the promise of poetry's deepest orders to
consecrate the individual soul beyond a bio-blasted circumstance.
Its mere 40 pages is no indication of its fabulous range: from
poem to poem, the poet moves without a lapse, condensing the
quotidian & the breathtaking, history & nature, topography &
appetite. It is a book to carry for a lifetime. By way of
quotation, two poems, both fierce, one questing, the other
loving, both having to do with birth:
BLEEDING BLUE FIRE
Last night I lay in a concrete cage
no larger than those cardboard shacks
the homeless build beneath the thunder
of urban bridges. Cobwebs and cracks
snaked with urine, its bed chilled
my haunches like a morgue's slab.
Naked and dusty, a low-watt lightbulb
my only heat. No window. Smells
of musty breath and bread mold
crept across my pillow. Rats
with gray armadillo scales kept
running on my chest. All night
I lay in a concrete cage.
Today I'm trapped in the distance
the Sangre de Cristo brings to my eyes.
In waves, sapphire on indigo, they lift.
There must be justice somewhere
I whisper - somewhere within
their arms of spruce and fir.
Beyond cloudy mountains bleeding
blue fire through canyons of sky
there must be a clearing -
some quiet place
the sun is born.
... a poem conflating secular & primordial elements with the
most basic spiritual desire. But how much more loving &
excruciating is the actual scene of Zia's birth:
THE RIVER WITHIN THE TREE
birth poem for Zia Ann
Between the wave of each contraction
your mother had gone so far away
tiny clouds hung on the horizon
of her eyes.
Belly bulging like the burl
of a great elm, she rooted herself
and bore down. The weight
of the whole watery world
inside, her trunk split and
a river poured out.
Upon the shore of afternoon
you tumbled, gasping the blue
puddle of sky at your chin.
You've come from so far away.
From deep within
the oldest forest of wings
your heart would ever dream, you drifted
nine rippling moons
downstream - drawn here
by the conchshell call
of a song-drunk sun.
Love, the name of the river
is yours alone. The tree of the world
is ours together: the Great Mother.
Listen! Before she leaves
her perch, a yellow bird warbles
softer than the water
I weep on your cheek.
The branch springs back, quick
as new wings swirling
in the swelling flock
of her tears.
Also outstanding among nine muses poets is Roberto Valenza, whose
three separate titles each delineate another aspect of his many-
years residence in Nepal, under spiritual apprenticeship to
Tibetan Buddhist monks. When Valenza's teacher, the beloved
Chokyi Nyima, finally advised Roberto, "Go back to your own
country, they need you there," it was with these three texts
(among, no doubt, many others) that he returned. In addition to
their poetry, his books include a sampling of his Nepal
photographs and are illustrated further by direct reproductions
of the charcoal art he learned under the monks' tutelage. As
these are hair-raising accounts of spiritual awakening in a far
land, I find it exceedingly discomfitting to quote only for
effect... that aside, here are two personal favorites from out
of the estimable many, notable as much for their colloquial pith
(always characteristic of Valenza) as for their cosmic lividity:
I love my singing teacher (guru)
He tells me without art
Man is a beast
So we sing
and if someone blows us up
the pieces
will sing.
*
Then I saw the king in the stone corral,
sniffing at a spotted cow.
He got up on her, all his
wonderful fur feathers flying loud.
As he walked along alone
all else moved in the necessary
pattern he was inventing.
He squatted like a dog, he lifted up
his huge earth colored tail,
he shit yak shit
the color of autumn.
Buckskin Brown Bull is him
the center of the yak mandala.
Big Bull Yak whose shade trees
are the Himalayas
*
Both of the preceeding are from RV's 1st nine muses c-bk,
poems for the glancing eye. Almost enough to say that Roberto
did return, & has been an acutely generative presence in Seattle
now for at least fifteen years. His books are idio-Valenzaic
cantorings, fully devout, their accessibility a result of its
author's having adhered to Herodotus' advice, to "seek for
oneself evidence of what was said"... Seek the Sacred, share the
Secrets, indeed.
One of the truest sons of the spirit of Red Sky is poet/performer
Michael Hureaux, who was, when I first met him at Red Sky
readings in 1983, that collective's tyro extraordinaire, a
vigorous quick study of a poet who always surprised and was never
not extremely curious & receptive. Michael's performative elan
is well documented on the muses/Manifest videos, where he is
revealed to be Seattle's Black heyoka of improv, always getting
it wrong in a way only inspired clowns do, which is to say right
with a twist straight up & faraway. By the time Michael came to
nine muses, he'd already taken a lifetime of poetry-investigative
risks, and his three titles for the muses pair with Valenza's as
accounts of remarkable awakening & achievement. Although I was
aware that Michael was alert to composition by visual field
through having published his work in W'ORCs/ALOUD ALLOWED,
his books take dvantage of the design & lay-out resources of the
nine muses collective by using unusual self-styled graphics.
Michael was margareta's willing student in matters of design,
quickly enough finding his own expedient graphic sensibility, at
once ragged, searching, and unsettled. Both thematically &
technically, he is as surprising on the page as he is on stage:
his lines enjamb the colloquial & the musical, and his content
riffs with bravest appetite thru mythic contexts at once Alaskan,
African, Pacific North-western, & utterly & indeedy Mike:
"sheekatay sheekatong chi kon kon kateng // sheekatay sheekatong
chi kon kon kateng // in the Fairbanks summer kon kon kateng // I
think of Ms. Jay tong chi kon kon kateng // she ate clam
sandwiches chi kon kon kateng // in the dark of a practice room
kon kateng // with sandalwood incense burning kateng // at the
summer music camp chi kon kon kateng // at the Universidad chi
kon kon kateng // of Allah's Ka chi kon kon kateng // sheekatay
sheekatong chi kon kon kateng // sheekatay sheekatong chi kon kon
kateng" yea, & the poem goes on, you bet. But Michael sings far
fiercer lays, as in his rending four-part meditation, "X at the
Crossroads/X in Zombieland", from his muses c-bk,
hallelucinations --
1. Come look
X is the sable ancient with scarred legs. X is
the whirlwind you look for them in.
X is the polyrhythmic treble that waylays
the inapropos curve and the whole nine yards.
X is alchemy in the tenement, a mule kicking down the lattice, black lace
bedsheets under a displaced femur. Come look.
Here are the burgundy onyx sons of the chase.
Here are the kokomoed genesis eyed daughters of the hunt.
Here they are bebop zootriding the subterranean rails of escape.
Here they are fighting and dying for a sandcastle on the Carolina coast, 1863.
Here they are challenging dogmatized sobriety and gassed daddy dealings.
Here they are on the Middle Passage, 300 to a hold, saltwater to wash out
the splintered bedsores. Here they are.
See them face up in cicada sequence. See them screaming and
glorifying jackboots in the plasma'd gutters.
See the hematite rain changelings. Elleggua / Toussant. Oya / Sojourner.
Yemaya / Fannie Lou. Osian / Martin. Shango / Malcolm. Ogun / Marcus.
Oshun / a sister called Souljah. See the hematite rain changelings
on the morning of the great getting up standing up day.
2. Ghosts who walk
Captain Zombie walks his beat at the Dan Ryan station
in Chicago's southside. Loup Garou is at his side,
wire cage around his jaw. Passersby tread heavily
and eat will o' the wisps. Captain Zombie is the mayor
of Seattle. He has a house in Mt Baker. Loup Garou
is at his side, a federal badge pinned to his lapel. Passersby jog swiftly
and eat shit. Captain Zombie has a subscription to the New Republic.
He has a degree in thorazine and electroshock therapy. Loup Garou
is at his side. He has a new age outlook and munches granola
as he opens the ovendoor to help passersby inside. Somalia appeals
to Captain Zombie for assistance and he sends wienies to the barbeque.
Los Angeles asks Captain Zombie for help and he puts barbwire
in the nurseries. Seattle calls to Captain Zombie for aid and he
appoints parents to jail their children. Loup Garou watches to
see what happens.
3. Experts
Some experts speak of the heights of barbarity, other experts speak
of barbarity's depths. The hour is late in Les Zombies' day,
so their subjects hear a lot about their retrograde propensity.
Captain Zombie patrols their neighborhoods with cop cruisers
full of blow-dried cro-magnons. These are the captain's children,
raised on gunpowder broth and mediated mucus that told them
Batman always gets the Joker, Kojak cleans out the bad guys
in an hour, and for the all time low price of $39.93, one can
receive a penis enlargement kit personally autographed by Hugh Hefner.
They cow to the Dow and sing grand salaams.
"Buy low, sell high, bye bye buy the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights.
Support our Blitzkrieg. Blondes have more funk. Some of my best friends
are special interest groups." Meanwhile, the kiddy show hosts
are jumping off of balconies and gassing themselves in their garages.
Welcome to the New World H'ors Doeuvres, where when they say
eat your heart out, that's exactly what they mean.
4. Masquerade
Everyone has a costume, a persona, a mask, a form.
It is us as knave, as whatnot, as Crow, as Coyote.
It is us as Loki, as Iktomi, as Arjuna questioning Krishna,
as Pele lindyhopping with Shango in the volcanic Philippines,
as Stalin working the gypsy twist with a handful of red and black
aces and eights, it is us going down as death.
It is us as God with a loaded revolver in his hand, as God with a draped
automatic in her heart. A grain of lie in the truth, a grain of truth
in the lie. It is us as Dessalines hanging the French. It is us as
Legba hiding from Mawu, the Mother of Creation. It is us
as Baron Cimitiere, granite cross under our hats.
It is us as Erzulie, primping and perfuming in the smoked glass.
We are fire, we are smoke, we are confusion driving and riding
the chariot in the morning. Trick star. We are knowledge
riding and driving the chariot in the evening. Trickster.
We are breath. We are engagement, we are life come up as foxglove.
We are knowledge made into confusion made into jest made into
implosion made into resolution made rich destitution made hoary
made harried made beautiful made formidable made oceanic
made organic made orgasmic made insufferable made ungovernable
made infinitesimal made magnanimous
made beatific made behemoth
made Black made Africa.
Beware.
*