Reading My Friends, #4

Reading My Friends #4

Welcome to Reading My Friends.

This is Lyman Grant, coming to you from the 4 Door Lounge, my backyard study in Harrisonburg, Virginia, deep in the heart of the beautiful Shenandoah Valley.

Thank you for joining me for the fourth installment of this little podcast.  Remember you can subscribe on Substack or find us here on my web page 4DoorLounge.com.

Here is a like to the Substack Podcast.

Lately, I have been reading Jealousy Cured by my friend Richard Lance Scow Williams. I have known Ric for something like thirty-plus years.  He contributed several articles for MAN! magazine, back when some us old farts were committed to becoming better men. Ric is famous for being a writer and editor for Austin’s alternative paper, The Austin Chronicle. His Litera Section in the Chronicle kept Austin’s underground and above-ground poets connected. Each week he signed off his on-going manifesto for more poetry with vaya con dios.  

He was always calling for more: more commitment, more beauty, more love.  Like in this poem

“mess kit.”  Great title, right? With this title a poem can go in all sorts of directions.

mess kit

the child no truer

than the old man

the old woman

the surliness

of a teen

we are myriad

hiding revealing

feigning retreating

the truth has no single home

any more than a song its single voice

entertain your demons your child your death

each a place at the banquet of life

smile at the mess you've made

happy to have loved it all

Now there is a poem, that, when you finish reading it, you say, “Thanks, I needed that.”

Jealousy Cured is Ric’s fourth book, three books of poems, and one novel of constructed of fairy tales like narratives. He has also collaborated in publications with a mutual friend, David Jewell, whom I plan to read, again, soon.

Ric’s second book of poems, Helga, tells of the wonderful love story with his second wife. It is a rich and velvety book of poems. Helga figures in these poems also.  This time as companion and witness as Ric undergoes treatment for cancer—which I will say here is cured.

Here is “cancer flavors into the bright café.”

beyond the mouth of

or the nose or

breath of

this day

with its

hard

infliction

senses burnt

a deforestation of

taste and smell

stumbling

past fetid

fields of

cafes

bodegas

she says "ho

delicious' & he winces

"it smells awful" he hesitates

says "sorry" 7 looks away wincing

again "it's ok" she says "it tells me something"

"that i am in another world?" he jokes

"that you are in the underworld"

& he thinks of Odysseus

visiting the dead

the stench of

Lazarus of

what it must be

to eat from the floor of hell

how a waitress says she heard that

Michael Hutchence of the Australian band INXS

lost his sense of smell and taste because of a head injury

& because he was such a hedonist it was that lose that led him

to commit suicide & he thinks it is not the loss

but the memory of what was every fresh

become stale rotten necrotic

& they cross the street

beyond the river

ghost of

pinon

waft

but

he

cannot

recognize it

she pulls him close

& says "the moon disappears

but you still hunger for its fullness"

& he gazes up wondering the flavors of stars

What a wondrous line Helga utters and Ric holds on to: “the moon disappears / but you still hunger for its fullness.” Yes, yes, yes.

I have Ric to thank for getting my second book of poems published with Deltina Hay’s Dalton Publishing.  He trimmed a large ungainly collection into a tidy story of love lost, found, lost, and found again.  I will always be indebted to him. Ric is a gentle warrior, unrelenting is his commitment to seeing the larger mythic truths we all live, but he presents them to us like a friend in a café sharing a pot of tea.

We will close with the title poem “jealousy cured,” a poem that speaks to my wobbly sense of self. Maybe to yours also.

jealousy cured

i get jealous when she reads The American Poetry Review

& says this is a good own--you should read it

& I say ok & then I don't because

what if it just proves to me that I should take up

car mechanics or the priesthood focus on the stock market

bitch about Obama or childproof pill bottles

god damn it i am an American ha ha ha

there it is: i get jealous thinking someone else has pissed on this already

no wonder we keep hearing god bless America

maybe one day it will take & when i drew the dame poem

i will say yes--it is really quite good

i wish i wrote as well as that

i think we'll renew the subscription

& i read this poem to her & she says

it's good--you're exposing yourself in this poem

& i smile as she reads another one in APR & says Christ this guy

gives me a headache

Well, I know that did not give you a headache. Ric Williams folks, or more formally Richard Lance Scow Williams. Look for his books online.