Winter Solstice 1970 in Hogan-Kiva at Dome Valley, Placitas, New Mexico

Letters For Brother

2 Letters Sent to Ken Irby
December 69 & April 70
Larry Goodell
This is a Supplement Or
a Background to
Brother
duende press
2014
& includes
List of Thing Development
Brother: http://issuu.com/larrygoodell/docs/gwb/1
many thanks to Ken Irby for being a wonderful
patient reader and listener of my
uncertain expositions
trying to come to terms with
the active performance
of my poetry
love in friendship
larry
1
st
letter December 69 1-12
2
nd
letter April 70 12-24
for a description of the cover photo see page 9
2014 Larry Goodell
duende press
po box 571
placitas, new mexico 87043
larrygood@comcast.net
11Dec69
Speed-Wash Coin-Op
Silver Cue
Bernalillo, NMex.
used to be a pool hall
the cue-stick sign out the door still.
Dear Ken ~
Yr letter today in a measure of disproportion I havent written you.
Lenore in her white sailors pants & my high school tennis shoes putting
clothes in the dryer.
an old Indian lady carrying her laundry to the back of this place
Rainbow wide awake hands & feet moving
swimming this continent?
on his back in paper diapers. the light comes in this laundromat thru
glass bricks they used to use often in the modern 40's
50's, scattered prisms on the string of Speed Queens. Joel is
looking around at all the sights blurred at this stage.
Does talk, cry, but in a way Ive never before been intimate with so far
except for a rash which has passed, & a few nights he was
irritable theres been sleep for me (not so much for Lenore,
she tries to sleep later) & quiet when weve all gone out together ~~
I want the thrust thru the word to the object behind it
Meant to write to
either way, is central. I took from (someone is writing/) Burroughs take.
Arm (actually? sleeve) of a shirt (L. embroidered & added
some ribbon bands)
flashed down thru the dryer window
an arm thrust. & I lam more than willing to project this thing, bridge/barrier
(American) magic/culture (Europe)
(in Call Me Ishmael, Im reading further into this morning
back & forth
where nothing is synonymous & everything is interesting. Im trying to pull back
to make clear where I was (where I just covered ground?)
on one hand
& on the other ~~ the risk is in going on (giving into) ~ going back is like
selecting a theme, the texture (of the/my mind) is so rich
picking up a thread (Duncan, & his not wanting the thematics, yet
what orders the Passage is there under the same (or different?) name
1
u
where I pick up a thread (thrust thru the word to the object ~ or
something pulls me thru
is it merely mystical or rather the brother, the teacher
who? (various ~~ Amer Ind. Im reincarnate (false).
less-Snyder-neon, my elder brother (fact I dont
Literally have one is meaningless here)
the shape of an artifact
its use determined, at the line between
a man & nature?
11Jan70
Placitas, N. Mex.
Ken
back into what I started to you in the laundromat, I want the(to) thrust thru the
word
to the object behind it
& on to as far as I got.
magic is the object (for me, now in a simplifying strain) & culture is the word,
come slipping from this to MAKING the object
(finding what is innate in it?)
is the magic, confused how words relate to it
(hopefully, will come out of it, out of
the making of it, will constitute
the USE of it?)
p. 11 of the [Joseph] Zavadil paper I sent you
is central to the . . . . . . . . . which permits me to live now. vibration, throb, crud
plop the CENTER (me) of the 6 (arbitrary) directions, laced with me now, these
named objects portion of a bear's skull (W), stone lion (N), stone wildcat (S),
large quartz crystal (DOWN), & (here's the confusion, risk, worry, hole) the Song
of the Priest represents the Eagle (UP).
I dont have the song, or thot I DID have the song. To have someone teach me
their song in their language is again not my song.
back up to carry the MAKING of the object over to the ARRANGING it, say
placement among others the Priest in the center of the jars & stones etc. then
comes the song.
2
or shd., the Navajo who can do several sings, valued, honored for his prodigious
memory, those old men at Zuni going on all night with the chant at the Shalako.
my memory, experience, largely fragmentary.
Drummond Hadley, who now lives in Santa Fe, when he gives a 'reading' it is all
delivered from memory. I remember he got up & did one on the grass at the end
of that Berkeley conference, '65 & when [Ed] Dorn got up he said he didnt have
a single poem in his head, they're all 'out there' (& was by that time tired of
poetry).
u
so with a poor memory but able to make things with my hands including write
things out nicely (some penmanship) when I choose, coming at this
(interim here, now 13th, couple days later)
I allow myself to have the song written down in front of me & read/sing it/ but
in the context I put myself in, still have no song.
(back up to MAKING the object, finding what is innate in it in the remarkable
last 3 paragraphs of [Carl] Sauer's EARLY RELATIONS OF MAN TO PLANTS
essay, 'a new symbiosis between plants and men was therefore in progress.
in this symbiosis, men's
shifting about, 'burning, deadening, or digging' this has something to do with
what shape the object turns out to be made.
2. I brot a couple abalone shell pieces together with colored thread (the rainbow
goes back thru a lady who gave me colored package thread from Mexico, etc. etc.)
with Lenore's beads & feathers. doused in the spring water here & spit. (sent one
to you.)
1. numbering is out of order inevitable with happenstance, fragmentary
accumulations of my memory.
one 1 was 3 sticks made into a 6-directions god's eye with my blood on it,
HAPPENED they say during the hanging up of them in the kitchen (gifts for
Christmas/ 64?) with two figures hanging down & a bell at the heart of the eye.
3. the 4 event poems at first it was making things 4 using what I had around
me. the accumulations of things in this room especially as you know.
like those long poems
starting October '64 ODE with their sightings, takes, of sorts, etc., the growth-set
the poem took shape thru, the NEED FOR ACCURACY.
the years before then
frozen in a vague Dylan Thomas blur.
3
why do things take so long for me, I jumped to
the strong Saturn trined to Jupiter & the Sun (oh my God just noticed that theyre
in Scorpio, Pisces, Gemini Joel, Lenore & me). but Saturn does pull me slow.
meeting Creeley, bumping into an iceberg. pyramid.
the word/phrase accurate to its sighted origin (inner or
outer eye), got into the poem as the face/ physiognomy (that just came to me,
then it was) set, net
eliminating bullshit-America & told me in essence
of it?
(I'm far apace of the apocalyptic, the high-pitched Lamantia, Hirschman, my
friend Pearlman)
tho my day is shot with tunings in songs I sing at the steering wheel while
driving, learned to cut them off often. BANDY MOTH just came to me, looked it
up, aint there in the dictionary. Was thinking that on my upper side I was called
butterfly & on my lower side, spider (the first at the Academy for Boys, tho not by
the kids, by my teacher-friends, the second at NMMI by my students).
Until Spicer's talk on dictated poetry, which opened me some way there, but
more song-lie-in-itself than chant-blast, but is this true, dont I go over the top of
my voice when I read several of the poems in ORIENTAL BLUE STREAK, starting
with that one PRAYER for Spicer.
back to the event-poems, a lot of shuffling cards & reading them the I Ching,
Tarot strong with me
somehow break thru the monologue of readings Vancouver/Berkeley/
Albuquerque
(usually harsh institutional light & lectern etc.) FOR ME.
Magic, & ceremony (which can form, direct it), gets into them. I am sighting back
to a Zuni priest at the Shalako. I was sitting there with Ann Quin, & I'll never
forget that man, eagle-nose, thin older man in like clean (Sears?) clothes TAKING
A VERY LONG TIME TO TIE A RED FLUFFY EAGLE BREAST FEATHER TO
THE HAIR ON THE TOP OF HIS HEAD.
The 4 event poems have done more to my head than other things Ive done, in
that they brot together the years of watching Pueblo Indian dances, goings on,
powerful peyote meetings at Tesuque & New Buffalo, brot this 'Indian' total
environmental ceremonial absorption HEAD UP AGAINST & INTO poetry, quote
'my poems' the work.
THIS maze, here we are back to the object/word difficulty, the made thing which
can equally be the object(s) & the song.
4
(now Monday, 19th Jan.)
back to where I was numbering 4.
(Tristano pushing it off into atonal, Parker bringing it back
beginning of VICTORY BALL, '49 Metronome All-Star session.)
after finding out acequia willow is good prayer-stick wood and an occasion
(Steve
Katona, arch-hippie of Placitas leaving for California where he's now cooking in
some far-out school outside of San Francisco) I made him an amulet out of wood,
shells from Big Sur, etc. much willow cut & stashed down there by the old
spring (which flows slowly, about 50 feet from the house).
Then I performed a wedding in Cedro,
N. Mex. on the other side of the Sandias Janie Stein (Lenore's good friend., &
also from N.Y.C.) & Nicasio Romero (good friend of mine, from Roswell no less).
Got into Waters BOOK OF THE HOPI about then. The tied-up amulet group for
Steve (abt 3 pieces of wood) worked into a tied or untied group which I made for
Lenore when she was pregnant. Like the yarrow stalks tied up except when you
manipulate them. Like was it Parcheesi (now know the link to pachisi, Indian,
therewith the cruciform & 4 directions, & the Aztec Patolli)
the cup with dice? in it you shook up & threw, but the
thing here is the pattern things fall in, as in jacks, pickup sticks, or more
properly, divining & the Tarot. Especially the huge medicine man's bag (Navajo)
which hangs in 11 cases in James Silva's Pottery House in Bernalillo. Items not
catalogued & if so what more than 'ceremonial object' what we need is
interpretive ethnography (in the form of a teacher alive to/in a particular locale).
The use (placement, procedure, song) gone out with the death of the man who
knew it. The old men who die with their songs Ruth Kirk talks about in her ZUNI
FETISHES, & the fetish in its clay pot home (where thru a hole it is fed every day)
sometimes finds its way to a collector, sold by a relative say. All this personal
magic, each man with his specialty curing something say.
& for the marriage, something after the Hopi paho (prayer stick with 2 sticks -
male & female), I made one prototype male & female parts, then the priest part
(the intermediary somewhat personal one), then the two personal parts, for the
man & the woman, that were made separately kept apart, all brought together,
tied up together at the wedding
(then eating some bread then pouring wine taking a drink & Nicasio smashed the
5
glass this here the Jewish custom or thrown against the north wall where
bad spirits enter keep the demons out)
feast & dope. wine. I must say Ken this wedding day was extraordinary, primarily
due to the place & season. small village of Cedro, people had to walk down from
hiway 10 since the road into it was impassable because of snow. & a small adobe
with one of those crazy crooked windows up attic level. Wood fires in the stoves,
an outhouse, a large gathering of people. Going out into the snow, coming back
into warmth. A peculiar THING, New Mexican, a wedding of the other
(20Jan)
place/person far away clan NY Jewish with New Mexican Chicano hippie, lets
say somebody moved here & settled.
Lenore. just brot in dried up Kentucky Wonder beans from the garden, took the
bean poles down. She's taking the beans out of the dried shells for planting in the
spring. I guess we'll be here tho I wanted to get off into something else, that is, a
little house someplace where we cd have freer use of the land we want some
animals damn it, chickens, a goat, & a rabbit for Joel, etc. plus a much bigger
garden, last year's was so fruitful. But that (as always gets back) demands my
landing a job as teacher/ social worker/ something.
6
back to where I was numbering. 5.
'the crazy, logical middle-class Americans who live only to work, and have fallen
out of Nature's grace' from something Michael Duncan said, a guy who spent a
quarter of a million buying land around Taos for people to live on. lives in a
1-room adobe there.
last of October, L. expecting any time, I wanted to have some feathers on hand for
when the baby arrived, to make some thing to give to friends. I told L. I'm going to
find a dead jay. swung down by the Cottonwood up thru cedars, pions, across
the road & down thru the grape vines, began singing as I walked, eyes scanning
the ground, God of the Whir Bird, Dead Bird, God of the Whir Bird, simple song
with feet, down the terrain to my favorite arroyo, starts up east of here on the
other side of the conical hill in back of this house & goes down where the water
pipe crosses it & down skirting the old terrace our garden's on, north a ways
before blending out to other arroyos just down from the garden the arroyo is
slightly over yr head, yr previous tracks gone after any rain, purity of rocks,
apache plume, sand, things in it 'untouched' where I found, literally was LED to
this old basalt spearpoint, months ago. well into there singing my song, simply
IN it
'to the extent you channel in on, leaving it
to separate out from, leaving you halfway between
risk & trust ...' (in my notebook, Sept/'67)
maybe I was entirely into trust WITH NO EVIDENCE OF PUSHING that I sang
the song come to me & the dog rushed forward grabbed the dead jaybird I got it
from him the scrub jay must have hit the bank of the arroyo a bit of blood on the
side of his head. I brot the bird so soft & beautiful that sky blue to slate in the
feathers, in, took the feathers I needed, took it out & buried it in the corn row.
& made from willow, rainbow thread & one of the jay feathers something with
Joel Ai Rainbow written on it, a week later.
u
7
now to jump to December & after Janie & Nicasio's wedding, reading into the
Hopi book (Waters), aborted attempts before to come to some understanding of a
ceremonial calendar

(21Jan)
as much as I'm drawn, much thru L's eye, to the Aztec specifically the great
Coatlicue now in the Mexican National Museum, which is most visually EARTH
to me than any other representational experience. But what has this to do with
prairie towns? or Roswell & Barstow. Being there doesnt erase Mexico, tho people
live as tho that's possible. So Grandma & Grandpa & their kids moved southwest
from Kansas to New Mexico & when down as far as Artesia, I'm sure it never
crossed their minds to KEEP ON GOING SOUTH INTO MEXICO. You cross that
border & whank! something's yanked out from under yr feet. But I can carry the
fertility monster with me across the pavement of the University or into K-MART
or the 'restored kiva at Kuaua or into the crowd of witches which surround you
when you travel at night. Blank up against the face of the bouffant queen with her
poisoned boobs & her clinical cunt or the bulging martini face of the king of
business choking on his tie (when are they going to start killing themselves by
sticking a pistol up their ass).
Just read this bit to L. & she said 'but theyre doing just that & doing it to us, that's
the problem.' So.
What does any of my concerns have to do with 'the millions' or even the few
people I can talk to. I believe in the clan as a nucleus of energy but then I'm
thrown back into the good ole American cult of the individual. It's alright to sit
quiet & 'do my thing' but to expect some co-operation is too much,
boogie-man-ego-trip puts me in my place. So the vague ties with the Taos
commune energy & the peyote fare, meetings, etc. part of 'the movement'
happy that the flow over is now into many more people my age, at least the last
wave of people whove moved into Placitas. Anyway, grow grow grow & I think it
will be alright.
The entire course of the Hopi Road of Life is unfolded every year in an annual
cycle of nine great religious ceremonies that dramatize the universal laws of life.'
Frank Waters
8
So I read about the Soyal, the Winter Solstice ceremony, & talked to Jim Welty
who now owns the domes property south of Placitas. & he helped me get the
hogan in shape. This hogan was built by Steve Katona with the help of Frank
Olguin (Isleta Indian). (The two sunken kivas have treacherous roofs & the
round house (round adobe on top of the ground) is lived in)
At this time the doctor found a swollen vein leading off from L/s uterus & she had
to go to the hospital immediately, horrible day, finally finally got supervisor's
permission for her to keep Joel with her in the room. So she was there for five
days & they gave her anti-coagulants. I wd visit her then come back to the hogan,
which I'll now call kiva (it is octagonal, has a hole in the ceiling, has the old ceiling
made of wood poles laid across the ends of each other around & around forming a
kind of dome of the wood poles & then the opening). Used oil drum stove at the
side (didnt want to black up all that wood by building a fire in the center).
Thrown back by so many things, I was between giving the idea up & going ahead
on such a minute scale it seemed meaningless, but by this time I was so
OBSESSED that on Dec 21st after coming back from the hospital & having a beer
with some friends in the village I came home & started getting things together like
mad, made the North & South Twins out of cottonwood root, took all this stuff &
willow wood & the hunting knife Gino gave me & seeds grains etc I'd gotten from
a friend who grows good things in the village & fire wood & got to the kiva.
I had got it all straightened up beforehand, fresh dirt spread over the floor so that
there was no footstep in it when I arrived nothing but a simple prayer stick
there.
& spent the night, the stove not working right, smoking, cold, there working
on the chief's altar & the soyal altar which you can see in this photo Lenore
took later. (Soyal altar to left not entirely visible in photo -- simply twigs with
cotton on it to represent the mountain, snow on it, 4 pahos at its base & a bunch
of squash & corn.) (See cover photo.)
The chief's altar with the twins of the North & South, the basket of seeds to be
blessed, & road leading to the door. In back to the right, a painting I, hastily as
everything else did, of Germinator, the figure/kachina who visits the kiva in the
middle of the night, comes down the ladder into the kiva to bless the seeds that
will be used later, in the spring. & to far right a sun disk on a stick hanging on the
wall, this he picks up, whirls as he dances. & a bag of seeds there under it & had
jars of every kind of seeds grains, cereals I cd find, almost all organic. There is
where the young chick sits all night during the ceremony. This is all in Waters & I
think you have the book, if you read that section youll see what was in my mind.
9
.
All of this maddening to me, the limitations I felt. But this suddenly some
entrance to the ceremonial calendar, by way of the winter solstice which does
represent birth, keeping the songs going doing everything right so that when the
night is over, & Orion has swung all the way over, the sun will come up & will be
pulled back from the south on its way north again.
I did have a time towards dawn when the rudiments (again maddening in how
limited) there, around me, exhausted, & THERE WERE NO SONGS.
I decided to stay in the kiva the next night also much more work to do, etc. felt
cleaner etc. fixed the stove, there can be a leeway of several days, as I understand
it. but for WHAT, anyway.
that night with things set up & the place moderately warm I could just be there,
mind you it was full moon too & keeping the hatchway open, that rectangle of
moonlight as it moved across the kiva floor was incredible. & watching the
starsaware of the movements of first the Pleiades & their relation to the 7
universes the Hopis traveled thru, so beautifully concretely sung by the priest in
consecrating the chief's altar, which is itself of the creation of this world
10
1. laying the foundation of a house, 2. erecting the walls, 3. putting the beams
& roof in, 4. plastering, 5. putting in the niche, 6. putting in wood sticks to hang
articles on, & 7. (according to Waters) putting in the fireplace. & the 3 stars of
Orion's belt are visible directly over the entrance hole.
+
+ Wow.
+ I wanted
friends to work with me, but it wasnt possible, maybe never I dont know. I
wanted someone to be Germinator, & the Girl to be there all night.
I want something more than this dull yearly Christmas-Easter invasion of my
inner spirit. I'm doubtful about the pseudo-Indian, paranoid about it, can be
freaked out by visions (that peyote trip with Ann & Lenore for instance, with the
demons of Mexico hot on our trail).
But I know mostly when I'm on that line between trust & risk, when I'm not
defaming, or acting, when I'm in fact on the ground exactly as when I'm writing
a poem & whatever it is carries it thru. It was that identical feeling I trusted to
those nightsin that what I made with my hands seemed to ride the contact pure
with the very rhythm & necessity of this earth. The fantastic realization that I am
not an Indian and can be as proud, and do have a brother, which is my,
participation in some life vision. The Gemini thing but more than that, the
longing for the man, the feeling of ugly incompetence possibly moving/growing
out into some full flesh of man.
Aztec statues of Xipe Totec, the priest wearing the skin of the sacrificed victim,
the hands dangling at the wrists of the priest, his lips protruding thru the
victim-flesh lips.
***
But the felt presence of this teacher figure, elder brother, (found as an archetype
in Jung, becomes even the wise old man).
That there is in the reestablishment of the orders of the earth, some learning to be
done. I dont know the guru, the Indian, yet this slow, ever so slow
communication from the 'brother' does exist.
So I cd project this to be the use of a kiva-like place in where I can set up in
accordance with how information falls to me to be used, with every caution I can
handle. So that the year does assume what it already is. Starting right here with
11
me & Lenore & Joel to whatever cooperation develops if any. & that the very
framework, the things made & placed out, the body thru what movements the line
of teaching accords it that I am up against the face of NO SONGS. that there
may develop some songs, that poetry, Ive been so involved in so long, which is
the root of this, may provide, may step back to its roots & yet from my own place
in time.
& music, however simply, develop.
I'm going to cut this here. Ive got to get this off to you. Too many words &
confusions. Oh for God's sake I want lucidity. But doesnt come often to me.
Have pushed thru the words to the objects (that is, some words, some objects). &
now will the actual movement, dance, ceremony SPEAK? To not just TALK the
ceremony etc., the dance, but to have it?
Again, that silence when I was there in the kiva with the place as it was as pure
to the season as my information & trust allowed. With no music, no songs. The
place I almost want most to be, & SEE WHAT HAPPENS?
love,
Larry
P.S. many thanks for yr letter. In back of this since it came, knowing Olsons
death (no I hadnt heard). Kerouac & Olson recently. Have played that beautiful
tape he made for Christmas, to Creeleys, about 62.
P.S. & Clayton [Eshleman] took the long poem DOWN [Directions Poems] for
Caterpillar 13. Thanks for urging me to send it.
L. & Rainbow send their love!
(2
nd
letter)
7Apr70 Placitas Joel's 5 months old today, grown out
of the small green crib we got from Buffingtons, have
handed it on to the Belottis & got handed on to us
a big one, he's now sleeping in. At one end.
Ken
into second cup of yarrow tree that is TEA when some fuckin Colonel & ugly
wife pulled up, I hope this aint a prelude to a summer of people up here looking at
the place. Kenner [Hertford] has finally listed the 50 acres w/house with a young
realtor, $100,000.
12
had disgusting encounter with the Colonel who wanted to bulldoze everything &
turn it into a Levittown whatever that is, some development I guess, maybe it was
that hard military humor where you needle (spike, fuck, kill) somebody words out
from a redneck skinhead. "Whoever buys it will do what he damned pleases with
it" in civilian clothes & saying I'm Colonel Dipshit tho you wdnt know it
apology out of uniform they live in Placitas Heights I guess.
So this shot shit out of my yarrow, my reading in deeply yr last letter & 'prose'
gifts & I went down to the garden, Lenore there turning the soft ground over,
layer of horseshit on top & told her abt it, I was shaking.
hopefully most events of looking the place over will be thru the realtor who isnt a
bad guy I hope & Kenner's demands the place not be parceled etc. we plan our
expanded garden nevertheless tho it will be the last summer on THIS earth.
Kenner if he does sell the place will give us $2000 to help us buy some land, he is
fantastic to offer that, simply knows our life.
Annie had breast surgery, cancer, now just off radiation treatment, Kenner's eyes
a bother, glaucoma, plus the full time of dealing with teenager with eye shadow. &
vodka the only way out money could be a new freedom for them.
/we'll see.
floating up previous to the above & just as true we'd PLANNED to leave with
our last harvest, late summer, so the only difference is the place is going too! or
something like that, it all works separately AND together which is where we're at.
the PAHO.
so phase out & in, Kenner's more or less definite gift a godsend, the articulation
up from down under 'Everything happens to me.' Lightning [Hopkins]'s blues 'A
sadness at going to bed without having written tenders the lovelorn hand and
brings up rancor into the dream unremembered as a sadness upon waking.' from
yr 'gists' 'a tiny spark of my own' rather than 'waiting for the random flashes of an
uncertain thunderbolt' from Valery's ART OF POETRY
I dont think I can tie all this together & that's suspicious this so often
WANTING TO, that it comes out is enough. That you articulated up from . . . . . .
How else wd we know?
so Janie (L's good friend, married Nicasio Romero, my good friend from Roswell)
just called, now on the phone with Lenore. & I realize 'we go honkytonkin round
this town' Hank Williams on the phono
the crucial reality is our friends here
More than parents of course More even than Duncan say. of course
which gets me back to being upset earlier today, got [John?] Martin's blurbs in
13
mail, the good poem/notes of [Irbys] RELATION but plus, what upset me,
[Robert] Duncan's thing on [Richard] Grossinger's OECOLOGICAL SECTIONS, &
WHY this OE anyway when it's commonly Ecology? to know it really anyway is
when you depend on it the land & know also that it may be raped from you
between waterings.
somehow this jumping on the bandwagon strikes me academic, more than that,
Duncan's NOTES ON GROSSINGER'S SOLAR JOURNAL; OECOLOGICAL
SECTIONS, reeks of the academy.
Lenore says 'I'm just more interested in what people do rather than what they talk
about' Where I realize talk ABOUT is key here, but anyway protest talking
is doing, or, I protest that talking is doing. & she says what she means, what !
interests (not strong enough, DEMANDS her attention) is, say, the San Jose
students BURYING a new Ford Maverick & somebody, ourselves, GROWING an
organic garden.
Which gets back to my suspicion that Io (I just got a copy from Grossinger, #7 in
which I value most thus far yr piece of yr house there, Berkeley, I hope Sauer
reads it) is . . .
Ken I cant complete this WITH RESPECT, that is, ignorance is like pins in my
back (part of my own death)
but demands to almost thrust out, IO is academic
hindsight. Id dig interviews with people with their hands IN SOMETHING other
than their books, like with lobsterer Seavey. That interview, that man; Seavey
STRIKES, but the Gross. following says nothing, to me.
a series of how-to books, from building domes to keeping goats makes sense to
me as ecological direction, & that isnt really necessary IF YOU REALLY WANT
TO DO IT. When we have the place to keep chickens we can learn all we want to
know from Walter & Nancy Stevens whove had chickens FOR YEARS (been brot
up keepin animals & now their place over on Rio Grande Blvd. horses finches
geese ducks chickens rabbits dogs cats), so the book how to keep chickens aint
even necessary except for a government pamphlet say & that's suspect.
So again the crucial thing is our friends here, who my God I hope we can turn to,
know we can if theyre still alright when land-rape moves us on.
No more patience with thinking it's OUT THERE whether at Black Sparrow
(wherever Robert is now). You can only be less damaging to land-man balance by
living OUTSIDE THE CITY, anyway. Unless you go to the incredible &
14
exhausting extremes of Ecology Action on Benvenue in Berkeley. But then that
group has to do with changing peoples minds propaganda etc. necessary on
the verge of killing ourselves (Lenore's breast milk high in DDT, my God), not
putting that down. But changing TO WHAT. I dont think people in big cities
KNOW, without somehow going to the source of their food where their fruit,
vegetables, fish, meat come from & KNOWING THAT & where it all goes the
DUMPS & sewage plants & KNOWING THAT. That it all has to be brot nearer &
known intimately over several years to come to some change & that in the very
KNOWING wd determine the what.
Back to that fuckin skinhead Colonel. I see him the power-threat that's shaking at
us. & all we've got is us, nothing at all to be glib about. Glibness in anything.
So this all returns pulling at fragments to
ME.
must eat, & off to pick up eggs at Nancys, different sizes but mostly large white &
brown. & go to a class (Im involved ONLY to get the monthly check + foodstamps
we get) & then back, Ill finish this.
15
8Apr
1st impressions are 1st impressions.
General eyes.
Wrap-up statement.
I wonder how much [Charles] Olson's 'wonder boy' enlarged himself, so much in
Creeley that almost engulfs Olson & reaches back to Valery. (& thru him back to
Poe, return to the body-continent he wondered in notebook 24 March 'Creeley is
the mind, Ginsberg the body of our poetry
that Gemini couple 'limited?'
C. thru his one eye, G. thru one sex.'
then thot of Duncan wh0 holds them both, or wd. with ONE good eye (0n fellow
Capricorn Olson).
Curious twins & strike-offs for academic meditation. A place to knock the gods.
Simply. & since knocking the gods is out of fashion academia is out of fashion.
(Graves on Academus, 104.b)
the clearest picture I have of people living in balance with the Earth goes back
before June '68 to Roger & Susan Hilliard
theyd split from doing light shows at Avalon lived N. over the hill from
Placitas along tail end of Las Huertas a reservoir to swim in there
they had a 3-room adobe had been in 6-Day School before coming out
here, when I first visited them I was struck by their total revolving of all
life/phases around into a new order, everything from their manner
entire manner of living, bust-cogged reset their own modified & fulfilled
'macro-biotic preparation of food their own growing food (one a prize in
the fair even) their own use of astrology charts tarot library of that
developed from 6-Day School clothes mostly hand made all world
phases of body-knowledge entered their lives & held solid & they had a
little girl Serena
now they are in Boston, work for Ohsawa or is it Kushi, I get them mixed up,
restaurant. I realize that Roger & Susan as I came to know them better, were a
new order of us (I dont know abt. now), where the hippie thing stayed in the
cities it split into fashions & violence (as I type I keep leaving out letters) but
where R. & S. and others got out where they cd work with the Earth (work with
others over the THING car, garden, house is friendship, I keep feeling this,
16
if it's not that thing it's say the meal/feast or drinking/smoking together of
course, that thing as focal point almost as EXCUSE for friends to get together
my God could extend this to poetry as it functions formally as that focus which
you can look at/hear together & in this sense it comes clear it's most powerful
form
when it's focus for 2 or more people that is
NOT when it's read by one silent from the page
I know this is debatable but even the debate requires 2 or more people preferably
near each other & we're back around the fire
WHERE THE MOST HEAT IS.
I can deplore things like in notebook 22Mar 'surrounded by people who have a
DEAD sense of LIFE but whatever is the focus of our getting together our getting
together is more immediate than published poetry etc. by people I know who
dont live here just saying the obvious that the warmth is not as immediate by
mail no matter how intense the friendship/love but dissipates like a masturbation
ghost-partner or a favorite memory sequence with lots of miles on it.)
but where others got out where they cd work with the Earth & that in SEEING it,
growing things keeping animals brot the source of EVERYTHING to the doorstep,
here in one of my favorite memory sequences, again Roger & Susan & their place,
goats, naked swimming Joe & Olivia's marriage there etc.
& this is my basic hangup, felt the Orient-Indian foreign, put everything off into
the Future, Roswell carried over into me always outside of me, yearned for, ache
& ache, as you near the source the 'problems' begin to dissolve tho I'm talking
about a healthy man
'. . .there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so
profound as the difference between the sick and the well.'
from THE GREAT GATSBY
Lenore now curiously but bothered throbbing from a sore toe, cut the nail back
too much she thinks. Rainbow [Joel] in his plastic 'papoose' dealing hands
awkwardly move to pick up a rattle & the ring of it to his mouth a loud
AAAAAAAAAAHHHH! & cough 20 till 10 at night.
'Every particular is an immediate happening of meaning at large. Duncan. As
seen in yr woodwork often in yr poems, to me. The extensions of that where do
you get to, to wood & Earth shape sprouts & decomposes, but then take some
plastic thing where does that get you, the extensions from a factory to some stinky
lump.
17
Or Gino [Sky] his woodworking shaping & fitting beautiful things. The more you
do yrself the more speech is re-formed. To see is to re-form all speech. ( Louis
Zukofsky). I remember well tho ignorant of BOTTOM, not having it, is good to use
when some kid comes up with this 'Ive given up words' bit.
The more the so-called terminals are KNOWN the more they come together &
charge (something like Clayton's closed circuit drawing, a circle)
mine wd be the PAHO which I find in vision personal
'firstcock & firstcunt
also twins,
also our father & mother'
from the II, 6 of THE PANELS OF SALCAMATHUA, [Robert] Kelly.
I wd say also twin brothers or sisters, allowing in my teacher or
my student OR if its split divinity (identity) is retained, 'the
brother-sister-first-god source' in each of us or to throw in MERCURIUS from
alchemy, the male-female.
'a fuckin morfidite?'
+ & - which is counterpoint, can be Burroughs' 'take' the thing as taken plus
something from what you were in before you were taken creates A SPARK, may
be the Earth's answer to Valery's request, how to get the spark, not wanting to
wait for the rainbow
LIGHTNING
or putting my finger down on something (poking my nose in) & that matched
with where I was=where I am
(the UNIversity as a bunch of monomaniacs with split-brains/bodies...)
constantly I'm hearing the underlying noise or what the other hand is doing . . .
walking left right. . .
when walls are process & you see thru them . . .
when you extend the woodwork left & right (it runs) past & present (future?)
cant you also see (a straight line) THRU it what is behind it & isnt that the
medium (resting place) between Up & Down (Sky & Earth)?
& you have seen all (at least a bit of the Wheel) & the Secret (beyond the
Secret)
is revealed ?
which is how I see it here, the 6 directions with me as center
male-female (energy)
the point.
18
so yr prose is dream-walking
to me
'the passage waking'
& when we grew okra last summer I'd carried with me since 1950 what Bill
Waldrop said: 'okra has a beautiful flower' carried it with me TO SEE AT LAST
I'd
never seen an okra flower & saw it for the first time WHEN I ate the okra (fried
usually or in L.'s gumbo)
THE INCREDIBLE EXTENSIONS OF THINGS PLANTED WORD
'PLANTED IN TIME GROW INTO (BECOME) (DIE INTO) THEIR
OBJECTS
THINGS
charged.
Terry Sewards (English, brot up in Columbia, engineering background)
guided me thru tearing my VW ALL THE WAY DOWN (at least the
engine) revealed the crankshaft, incredible driving all that time, it,
before
seeing it
the secret revealed, the same old thing there is no secret
except the more you DO the more that fact is revealed
& brings me back to the real possibility of our getting some land & the BUILDING
ON or BUILDING a house.
When Jeff Sheppard was here said drugs told him 'to have a son' that planted
I HAD A SON.
!
dream |
projecting itself on 'reality
which is the waking-walking.....
you talked about accumulations in (of) experience, as in TALE OF GENJI
I see this in this room Ken, the place is LOADED with THINGS as you know
(think so much, of a story teller's string with objects tied along it so as the
teller felt along the string & came to an object it wd remind him of the
19
next episode in the story this is in the Africa exhibit in Natural History
Museum in N.Y.C.)
(the PAHO I did for L.'s birthday with its lines hanging from string)
when the object calls to mind a story I know
for instance the church fan over my head showing the last supper, picked
up from an old church they were tearing down across the street from Ron &
Michelle Caplan in Pittsburgh, on the back it advertises a funeral home
the organ was donated by Dale Carnegie in 1905, got some of the organ
pipes ~ which IS the Christian temple
the temple was SOLD, & what I salvaged was pieces of the 'market place' moved
in taken over not even a prostitute left the sex-act disappeared
*
knowing fuck as God-Presence, the presence of a fuck-god, god as fuck-presence
>paho<
& realizing a good while ago my enforced asceticism (=intellectual goonybirdism)
before I knew Lenore
I looked around my rooms & everywhere was an altar, each center the eyes
fell to, each table-top, each dramatic little fuck-entry everyplace things
arranged in orgasmic bunches
now as I scan the walls there is a remarkable procession of STANDING figures
eye level many separately looking into this room from the walls several dual
objects too
& there is ONE main altar
20
on brick from Golden, N. Mex., Lenores Chipucuaro clay figure (if
authentic 5oo BC, W. Mexico sits on it, in back of it is [Walter] Chappell's photo of
a man's hands just under the surface of stream water near Lama, N. Mex.
fossils (crinoids etc.) from here + L's barnacle from Virginia
& a paho Ive just made.

simply that energies lying scattered afield now are brot together as focus, my
life-brother & man-woman 'personal' vision, the paho, when I make it out of
willow, seeds, cotton, metal, yarrow, chamisa, mud from the water level of the
pool-stream, feathers, sweat & oil, smoked over, etc, I AM MAKING MY VISION
& that one area of the room, North side is focus for the procession of figures
kachinas priests funny mudmen, dolls, animals, the cat, the people, me here.
my possessions are possessed.
Roger & Susan, their lives as lived prefigure all these things published now
ecological echolalia, what I meant by IO being academic hindsight, to me.
21
The way some people live is more powerful prefiguring, the top of the pyramid,
the particular which extends out to the bottom hindsight in the 'future'
& grabs me again when Kelly TALKS OF
'The bearded dancers
abstain from work'
or
'A llama is sacrificed...'
or
'fish in a basket
fish in a net'
or
hundreds of examples, I cant see him dancing or sacrificing or fishing or . . . . . . . .
Which is exactly where I was in the hogan-kiva winter solstice having DONE
everything but with NO SONG, but IN REVERSE I was there & consider myself,
from Kelly.

but there must be RECORDERS, somebody has to say WHAT is BANGING ON
THE WINDOWS (the sunflower head from last summer, hung there, the
birds visit for seeds)
why am I saying so much about a simple matter, Ken?
I now recognize what I CAN do & I am utterly astounded
it extends all the way into a ceremonial calendar
Gino wrote me '. . . seems to me is strictly
GEOGRAPHICAL to use an old word. except for maybe 2 or
3 major celebrations with the earth cycles the rest would
depend on the climate, land, geographical.
Here: in
Slunson Munch by the Sea
one I think would be when the
salmon come into the bay.

my winter-solstice retreat, no end to it, but answered or came out 19 March in the
Kiva of the Education Complex at the University. I told [Stephen] Rodefer I
wanted to read so he set it up. Lenore finished the 5 'directions' drawings, we got
cloth different colors for the Aztec directions, slides of Coatlicue, Xipe Totec, &
Huehueteotl the Old Fire God, & borrowed & made candle holders.
It turned out the dimmest the lights cd be made was too bright, so they went off
after we cleared the room of much of the 'education' paraphernalia, got the chairs
out of the center pit area, the room is round as you probably know, & arranged the
drawings under glass on the different cloths & put candles around.
I started with the PAHO for Lenore (her birthday the next day, 1st day of Spring)
22
this & the others, the texts at least are in this bunch of poems I'm sending, you
already have the directions ones. Then I read the 7 directions poems for the first
time together, carried a candle with me reading NWSE then NW for UP & SE for
DOWN then back to the pit & the drawings for CENTER.
After that a break & people came down to see the drawings closer.
Then read IT, LOOP FOLD, BE CAREFU L &
(new poem called swastika peace symbol)
(time to fix the typewriter 10APR)
Then I turned on the lights & with the help of some of the audience who read
from books & some pre-written things, I went thru the FOOL, which Ive done
several times before, worked out good since in last phase seeds & spices got
scattered all over the drawings so
/enuf of this worrying me to have gotten so centered in
broadcasting
myself here.
23
Ginsberg & Corso read together for the first time in 8 years, think they just
happened to be around at the same time, this was 23Mar, UNM Associate
Students brot Ginzy. I got upset over it, started out cool, hadnt heard Corso or
seen him, he read a thing to Kerouac then Allen read & they traded back & forth
while some Japanese poet/singer [Nanao Sakaki] sat as bearded yogi at the side,
then Corso began to come out death-wish sour, hadnt been in with the 60's, just
the 50's, main thing he didnt have anything new to read really, & Allen had all
this stuff which I was dying to hear (& many of the thousands of others) so the
whole thing went downhill, with Corso interrupting Allen, etc. finally one time
Allen said 'let me finish my poem' Allen as always was perfectly decent. So the
Japanese guy & Allen did some chants & that was it.
Allen's reading here in 68? was electric bomb-shell ending up in T-Bird
[Thunderbird Bar in Placitas] etc. Well not this time. I did make him a paho & left
it at Rodefers with a little note.
Tonight Edward Field reads but dont know if I can make it Joel had his 3rd
DPT shot plus polio this time, so will have to be 'babied' tonight, probably be just
fine tomorrow. So far he seems chipper, but last time he got the shot the poor kid
was miserable a day & a half after. Diptheria, Whooping Cough, Tetanus.
11 Apr
DID hear the last half of Field's reading, Frankinstein & other 'photoplays really
poem-entertainments read mostly to the large young-kid audience, much of some
free school was there, & 'hippies' etc.
u
THE SEEDS is later than the other poems, we're planting more than the list but
that's okay, golden bantam corn, swiss chard, brussels sprouts, copenhagen
market cabbage, etc.
u
but frazzled here feeling dispossessed, & dust storm today to boot.
love,
Larry
things to do mounted heavy on ray head look for excuse to go out have dinner etc.
with friends today stoned almost all day from a few tokes over at friends in
Placitas. Joel's in his red socks & takes walking steps when you hold him standing
up.
24
Notebook #9 Jul1969-Feb1970 - lg

duende press
po box 571
placitas, new mexico 87043
larrygood@comcast.net
List of Thing Development
Larry Goodell
Cycles, a long poem on a paper loop to be read and finished anywhere, 15Oct66 (published in
Cycles, 1966)
A New Land, a poem-novel, to be read aloud, 1967-68.
13, Halloween poem on 13 IBM cards to be shuffled & read. Oct 67.
A Bag for the 6 Directions, Nov67.
A one-liner on each of six cards, the cards placed in an empty room, one on each wall, floor
& ceiling. presented at Rodey Theater Reading 3 Nov67.
Wherever She Blows at Old Town Studio March & April, 1968.
Theatrical Poetry - Mime - Mixed Media by the Universal Mind Dance.
At one point poems on paper torn apart as being read.
Iris Leaves & Off-Center calligrams, May68. drawing/diagram/poems.
mMaking It 15May68, Larry Morris class, 68. stacked boxes with 7 different definitions
of poetry acted out by poet & audience,
mThe Fool 21May68, Steve Rodefers class. Poet acting out aspects of human history silently
while audience read texts from cookbook to poems on scrolls & objects.
(Mexico Jul68)
Word Mandala 19Sep68.
Magic Box #1 & #2, Amulets, Sep68.
The Staff itself (6 ft cottonwood) materializes 1Nov68.
mThe President, 13Nov68, New York House, Placitas. Event poem enacted in Placitas with
masks & texts for the participating audience.
mThe News, 29Jan69, University of Albuquerque, shuffle poems read from painted oatmeal
boxes.
(1
st
Garden, Apr-May69)
Holy of Holies, June69 (unfinished)
Headband thing and words, Jun69. Poem written for the preparation of a headband.
mNWSE Up Down Center, Aug69-Nov70, UNM. collaboration of Lenore Goodell drawings set
out on floor and poems by me as I moved around to the directions. published in Caterpillar.
mPaho, Mar70. Poem with each line hanging from a string wound around paho, unwound and
read as unwound. UNM
m Brother, Oct70 Dec70. Harvest mask, staff, balloon, infinity sign on forehead,
FART the name of God. Gray mask in dream, Yellow snake in Olson dream.
I am an animist.
Space Helmet headress poem, Jan71.
Hand movement to cunt-bush poem drawing.
Poem of pumpkin with pumpkin aura seen & drawn & turned into headdress to present the
poem
Sun disk with poem on it, with snake headdress, willow necklace, & Babylonian sun priest
robe, and drawing of upper middle class couple.
Digging sticks poem
Hand touching & poem.
Song, Arrow Poem. Cloth Poem to Lenore with beans & seeds in it.
Rolled up Poem in a bottle.
Tunnel object sighting poem. Delight.
Christmas Cupidoll poem with rattles & chant.
Tree ornament poem.
Om Phallus Cunt Ease, poem for a birth, with spider woman & twins cottonwood root
carved figures.
(Winter Solstice in Kiva/Hogan, 1970)
Poem to be Burnt, 19Jan71
Onion in white box, 7Feb71
Dead White Christian, 16Mar71 (poems with drawings only)
Poets Curse Poem (beating rock with sticks) 12Mar71
mStaff of Ometeotl
poems with elaborate cloth backings & hung on cottonwood
staves, with oval magic box-table with compartment of masks & needed items for
specific poems in the series.
mBowl of Ometeotl. even more elaborate with large hanging backdrop of cloth Sandias,
several costume changes and all poems on different shaped backing. Cloth arcs with stuffed
yoni-lingam in the middle on floor.
mBook of Ometeotl. attempt to return to the book with poems with furor necessary
accouterments.
mBlue Spaceman, Apr-May73. with procedural statement, large round cloth covered blue box
with breast cover & dangling fish. inside are masks & muscle shirt (made for me by Lenore),
and 7 dildos different lengths with silk condoms.
mFace of Velma, Dec73-Feb74
mThe Garden of Ourselves, 26Apr-27Jul74
mMom Dass, 13Aug74. Poem with wig and dress and hand-held mirror with poem on back.
mDried Apricots, Dec74-Jan75. Several booklets, one a play, one secretive only for men.
mHot Art & Other Plays
Alfalfa, 5Oct75, Left & Right 12Oct, Captain Armor 14Oct, Hot Art, Body Palace 21-22Oct,
The Football Game 24Oct, A Fifth Apart, 23Jan76
(continuing, including poems with watercolored backs hung on clothesline).
larry goodell
Winter Solstice 1970 in Hogan-Kiva at Dome Valley, Placitas, New Mexico
Letters For Brother
2 Letters Sent to Ken Irby
December 69 & April 70
Larry Goodell