Ah PW: his giggle, his grumpiness, if he weren't Irish I'd've sworn he was Jewish, a grand kvetcher. But also in the Jewish mode, a joyful enthusiast of the book, the word, deep reader. His attentiveness to Stein (as Lew's) was peerless. It had to do w/ how language is said, spoken, it's what their other mentor Williams reiterated. The music of saying.
Ah PW: at a battered upright pecking out Bach or Scarlatti. Was always impressed w/ anyone sight-reading & playing. But many ear-witnesses who heard him thought he was defiantly mediocre, yet a happy comper working within another language ordering another way of being in the whirl.
123 Beaver Street: early '60s. En route to a reading, Lew Welch with a bottle of serious whiskey & Philip (though then Phil) drinking from the bottle & then I, junior poet wannabe, guzzling from the bottle & both of them, shocked, telling me to take it easy, this stuff is powerful.
PW in Stinson in a flat whose entrance had rows of wind bells. Talking again about Gertrude Stein & his friend poet Rick Duerden. Bells & chimes in counterpoint.
In Bolinas when PW had his teeth removed & suddenly, downtown, in front of the Library flashing immensely bright & wide smile.
Our interview at the Hartford Street zendo during the Gay Pride weekend. James Brook & Marina Lazarra — editor & tape recordist — w/ me at the dining room table. Every so often someone from the center would bring PW some kind of sweet goodie. His generosity amazing as well as his awareness & acceptance of his deteriorating condition.
Michael Rothenberg's communique from Zen Hospice where, I gather, PW was 86'd because he wasn't dying in accordance with their script.
Watching you [Dale Smith] work through MA thesis on PW & sighing a huge exhale of gratitude for your direct & to the point exegesis of a unique body of work.
his gifts to us returning from Kyoto:
a scroll of Buddah w/ lots of gold iconic rays
spronging out of his head
a prayerbook fold-out
that over the decades
silverfish love to suck on
his gifts to us returning from Kyoto:
a scroll of Buddah w/ lots of gold iconic rays
spronging out of his head
a prayerbook fold-out
that over the decades
silverfish love to suck on
