Plastic Owl on Life Support. Plastic Owl Schiavo. I Think It Smiles At Me.

An idea to run by you, Lauren, and you, Cathereen: I recently checked out some books by Ronald Johnson from the Merced Public Library, and when I mentioned to Jared how much I've been enjoying them we began to talk about getting some kind of group-read thing going on here. Would either of you be interested in digging into either The Book of the Green Man or Valley of the Many-Colored Grasses? Seems like it ought to be possible to find copies of these at nearby libraries, even if they aren't currently in print (or maybe they are, I don't know -- until two weeks ago the main Ron Johnson in my life was my walrussy landlord on Ronalds Street). And although I've only looked through the books briefly, I came away convinced that they're worth a stronger attention. So, any takers?

(If not, be warned that I'm perfectly happy to fill the blog here with Ronald Johnson-related raps. Witness the following, and tremble:

Reading Ronald Johnson 'cuz I don't give a fuck.
Course I know the Green Man! Dude's chilling in my truck
and screaming at the hotties eating blizzards on the curb.
Only way I'd like this better'd be if Whitman wrote the blurb.

Capische?)

(Boo-hoo.)

(Re-nob.)

Merced, of course, is totally kicking. I'm sure you all expected nothing less. Yesterday I hit the one secondhand bookstore in all of downtown and was shocked to find that from the looks of things Mercedians don't really give a shit about experimental verse from the 60s and 70s. I know, it's staggering. Picked up a Roots and Branches from 1969 and this old City Lights edition of Malcolm Lowry's selected poems -- you know, just because. #1 of the Evergreen Review, with Beckett reprints and Sartre talking about Hungary and Henri Michaux taking clinical notes on his mescaline trips -- again, why this isn't red-hot in Merced is totally beyond me. I almost picked up The Cities by Paul Blackburn and think I'll grab it next time. Also a nice find was Creeley's wonderfully piecemeal Pieces. I'll sign off here with a random poem that I flipped it open to this morning.

Citizen

Write a giggly ode about
motherfuckers -- Oedipus --
or Lysergic Acid -- a word
for an experience, verb

or noun. Count down, count
Orlovsky, count up --
in the air, you filthy
window washer. Why

not clean up the world.
You need it, I
need it -- more than
either one of us can get.