Those of you who have been with me PB&W (pre-blog and website) might remember my intro to writer-friend Ray Foreman that appeared over a year ago. I’m recycling that piece in this blog, in addition to his recent weekly on-line piece, “Tuesday Afternoon with Ray” (which immediately follows) as well this `new’ intro blog which you are now reading.
Consider this yet another installment of THE WRITING LIFE theme of Blei’s Blog, with a special emphasis on the sub-theme of FRIENDS (which I hope to re-visit often). One of the things I have in mind is…you know how we all have friends we fervently wish to introduce to other friends for the sheer pleasure of knowing and wanting one friend to be aware of the other. We’re positive only good, perhaps even joy, will come of this. Writers, artists, musicians, in particular, often feel this way: “I wish you could meet…” “I wish you could hear the song so-and-so did”…”I wish you could read what what’s her/his-name wrote…” "You MUST see the new paintings by my friend_. That sort of thing.
So,i want you all to meet my friend Ray (whom I’ve never met)except through correspondence and his poetry...
One more thing. I would also like to mention politics. Politics, art, and friends are a potent mix. And at this juncture in American politics we have probably all lost friends or severely strained relationships. What I find ‘comforting’, however, is the fact that so many people associated with the arts and humanities easily speak the same language. Call us ‘humanists’-or call us ‘liberals.” However one defines ‘liberal’ I like what George McGovern says in his new book, THE ESSENTIAL IN AMERICA, Our Founders and the Liberal Tradition. Simon & Schuster, $20:
“Just about every educated person I encounter around the world is a liberal…Just about every nurse, airline flight attendant, teacher, professor, organized worker, scientist, foreign service officer, writer, poet, musician, clergyman, environmentalist, child care worker and waiter-nearly all these are liberals.”
Here’s Ray…
TUESDAY AFTERNOON WITH RAY August 3, 2004 OLD SONGS PLAYING IN MY HEAD
they're old songs playing in my head these days. I keep them playing there because I don’t like the music playing in the country today.
the tunes coming out of washington are written by businessmen who don’t care if the music hurts our ears. is it going to be 1937 all over, is the country doing itself real harm, destroying the things that made it the best place in the world to live? that’s what I'm hearing and seeing
This past week I was consumed with the Democratic convention waiting for at least one Democrat to stand up against the war and say we needed to get the hell out of that sinking hole before we drowned - Kucinich wasn’t given the opportunity to speak, Dean was muffled, Edwards said silent words and Kerry, well, what did I expect, Kerry is a politician and played it safe. During the week I'd picked up some videos at the library here which has the largest collection of old discarded videos I'd ever seen. Saturday and Sunday I watched two which Jo thought would give her some relief from my political bitching. Wrong. Jo’s late husband was a 20 year marine who was in every war from II through Vietnam. You guessed it, I made a bad choice. Apocalypse Now and A Bright Shining Lie. "We never watched any films about Nam. When Bob came home, he never talked about Nam except to say that it was the most beautiful country he’d ever seen. He’d seen a lot in 20 years." After watching the films, my rhetoric elevated to near stroke level while she sought refuge in an old book by Jim Lehrer. This morning the terrorist alerts that target financial centers in NY, DC, and New Jersey was shown to be based on information from before 2001 the government dug up in papers found in Afghanistan. They have been on the news since the Dem con finished. Political? So what do we do, we reveal our security measures and places just in case the terrorists didn’t know. It doesn’t take an Einstein to realize what's happening today. As much as I think that Kerry is just one more politician wanting to be president, there is no greater political imperative this year than to retire the Bush regime that is the most dangerous and extremist in U.S. history. I want Kerry to replace Bush only because a Kerry administration would be less dangerous in areas of militarism, civil liberties, civil rights, judicial appointments, reproductive rights and environmental protection. Those films I watched had a strong lesson that we seem to be forgetting, that it took ten years, 58000 dead and 350,000 wounded American soldiers before we got out of Vietnam. Face it, our politicians have never cared about anything but themselves and their corporate sponsors. We rarely get a chance to do much, this November, maybe. Believe it, the people now in Washington are dangerous. All you have to do is look at how they got there - and what they’ve done since they’ve been there. If we haven't learned from the actions of a head case like Lyndon Johnson, then we better be prepared to pay a high price for not paying attention and giving our leaders too much power. Ray
***
Ray Foreman is a poet and publisher from Berthoud, Colorado and/or maybe, St. Luis Opisbo, California. I’m never sure which or where the hell he lives. I never met the guy, though I’ve known him for years. He’s more than alive enough for me in his poem and letters.
These days he lives on my computer screen, where he bounces all kind off poetry to me almost daily (his and other poets) and in old fashioned snail mail, where his little mag, Clark Street Review, comes to me every-so-often like a breath of fresh air, just when I need it. He’s an old fashioned kind of guy whom I was introduced to through the mails by a mutual poet, publisher, writing friend, Don Olsen, of Minnesota, who figured (for sure) one thing we both had in common: a love for Chicago. That’s our glue-plus a love of writing and little mag/small press publishing.
At the time I first made his acquaintance, Ray was publishing a little mag called???…oh, one kind of Café or another. I can’t find his file at the moment, so some of this is guess-work, bad memory, and a little bullshit. This coop I work in is so cluttered it refuses to relinquish my notes, my files…things both multiply and suddenly disappear. Welcome to Coop Chaos where I lose a little something every day and must make up for it through sheer literary shenanigans.
One thing for certain: The names of Ray’s little magazines always had something to do with old cafes in Chicago. Both real and imaginary. Though `home’ may be CA or CO, Ray really lives in a café somewhere in Chicago where time stopped around the `30’s, early `40’s, and there’s Ray, still sitting there at one of the tables, a coffee cup in one hand, maybe a cigarette in another, conversing with the regulars, characters steeped in philosophy, politics, affairs of the heart, all the age-old stories of the human condition.
It’s a good place to be-the café of Ray’s head. And he takes you there often in his poetry. The café is his nirvana. His memory of old Chicago is positively Proustian. And though the names of his little mags always seemed to keep changing, he was consistent about a number of things-his love for narrative poetry, and his love for Clark Street. Women (many…often in uncompromising positions) play/played a big role in his poems too.
Ray is probably somewhere between 50 and 70. And his good woman, Jo, also a poet…well, the way he sometimes describes her…some sweet, young chick. And for the sake of poetry in old man’s soul…let’s say she’s going on 30. And waiting on tables at a Clark Street café.
The narrative poem is his other haunt. He can’t STAND so much crap that passes for poetry today. No fancy schmansy for Ray. No pantoums or quatrains or sonnets. No bloodless New York school of poetry, pleaaase! No sappy imagery, god forbid. And you can take your precious haiku for a hike. Just give give me the poem--in real words, and tell me a goddam story why doncha? Is that all there is?
While writing the above, I figured I’d better check in with Ray for a few details. So, here’s my note to him-and his reply.
Following the letters, a couple of Ray’s poems. By then, you’ll know ray Foreman about as well as I.
----- Original Message ----- From: Norb Blei To: Ray Foreman Sent: Friday, April 11, 2003 10:20 AM Subject: info Ray, Give me a short bio...I'm living and working in a huge dumpster here (with windows) and I can’t find the fucking files when I'm looking for them... How many different little mags/reviews/publications have you done in the past (with names)??? Where are you now Clark Street and your online efforts? Also, where the hell is home these days? CO? CA? norb Norb, i love it, a dumpster with windows, that should be a story in itself, a narrative poem at least. you old son of a bitch, when I turn around in my chair towards the book case, what do i see? CHI Town. And then I'm okay for a while, my feet grow long shafts and I feel grounded again.... because you know you old bastard, we're not handling this bullshit going on, not well. Some fucking days just to calm down I don't turn on the TV or the radio. And Jo's careful I don't see pictures of the cowboy because she don't like my ranting and raving, it upsets her. Her late husband was a 20 year Marine, 3 wars. After his tour in Vietnam, he wouldn't talk about anything dealing with the government. Shit, forget it. Not much is going to affect us, we're too fucking old. For sure I don't talk to my neighbors or even people I knew a long time. They're infected with the bug known as "dumb." Okay, so what you wanted to know is the Mags I produced, Coffeehouse Poet's Quarterly for 7 years Clark Street Review since 1998, finishing the 5th year. I love doing CSR, 6 + issues a year of narrative poetry...first class stuff for readers who are all experienced writers. I wouldn't print dreck even if it had a $100 bill enclosed. Money is no longer a problem, it's all chump change anyhow. I don't solicit subscriptions, what, for a buck a copy? Have fun because that's what i like doing. No website, just the Open All Night Diner, which lets CSR writers stay awake when they want too. I like putting out the Tuesday Afternoon with Ray thing. I have so many pieces stacked away, I figured getting them out and breathing is right...at least before I die. I tried to get writers to do the same with the same format - there isn't always the artists fires burning. Anyhow, I'm in Colorado until the summer when I plop back in California for a couple of months. I usually go back there for the winter. Peace - fuck it, there ain't gonna be no peace, not in our lifetime. I'll settle for a little kindness, especially to the guys with signs that say, 'will work for food." At least they're honest liars. Ray
BEFORE McDONALD’S AND BURGER KING
Before there was McDonald’s and Burger King, places where people who need to get out of the cold can sit and work a cup of coffee in the slow part of an evening, there were chains of cafeterias in the city like Thompson’s and Pixley’s and the Marquis.
A cafeteria was a place with food you could afford and didn’t need to leave a tip. In the big ones, if a person was broke, they could make a meal from what people left on their tray. There was a counterman who dished out the food, a lady who bussed the tables, and a cashier. At night the counterman did everything himself.
A guy didn’t have to feel guilty about buying a five cent cup of coffee and sitting at a table with a newspaper for hours. On those Chicago cold nights when the radiators in his room went off at nine, he could drop into an all night cafeteria where there were always people like him sitting around soaking up heat. He could order a cup of coffee for starters, half hour later go back for a ten cent cheese sandwich, then back again and again.
There were cafeterias on most of the busy streets in Chicago, it was the way it was in big cities. Cafeterias were the Algonquin Hotel Round Tables of writers, painters, philosophers, socialists and out of work intellectuals. Republicans never came to cafeterias at night for sociability, not when they had jobs and steady paychecks. People would sit together, each ordering small food items into the hours before dawn and trading solutions to society's problems, but seldom did they discuss the pains in their private lives, those remained private.
GROWING OLD IN AN OLD HOTEL WITH OLD POEMS
The owner of the hotel hadn’t changed the wallpaper in thirty years, as long as Millie had lived there and that was how long she stacked poems in shoe boxes in her closet. She wrote poems borrowed from the lives of hotel guests, poems about what happened on the TV set in the lobby, poems about the life she dreamed she wanted to live, poems and poems.
The owner and her have a thing that comes alive now and then. Mostly then; she makes dinner and they have drinks two or three times during the week. She still pays the same rent she did in ‘58 when she got her divorce and moved in.
The neighborhood has gone down, half the rooms are in disrepair, the hotel is transient, one-nighters and couples by the hour. Whenever he asks why she doesn’t move to a safer part of town, she says, “People get used to places, I like to talk to you and write poems, I like us having dinner and afterwards. Move? No point in changing anything.” He likes hearing her say that and says, “Yeah, I love you too.” -----
OPEN ALL NIGHT DINER Presents Ray Foreman The past 12 days have unnerved me, I admit it, I'm a mess, depressed, I feel like I'm in one of those movies where a big rock in space is heading for the planet and holding my hand out isn't going to stop it, it's too big and it's coming too fast. I watch people around me, people on live TV shows, neighbors, a few friends, like nothing has changed, nothing going on, everyone goes to Wal-Mart and buys stuff and when I meet someone, anyone, no one even whispers anything about what's going on. Scared, I'm too old to be afraid, death is more a waiting friend, but I hurt when I see a beautiful painting being marred, it's that kind of hurt that makes we walk around the house without saying anything to Jo because she doesn’t hear my drummer. She hasn’t tasted my beautiful pictures, the ones I saw in the ‘30s and ‘40s and ‘50s and ‘60s when even wars couldn’t mar them, when hearts still beat the beat to the rhythm of Tom Joad and Shirley next door came over to borrow a cup of flour and we talked for an hour about what we wanted our kids to become because it was possible and a job at GE promised a pension after twenty years and we had a twenty year mortgage we knew we could pay off. The painting was believable. What is it that is making the paint run from my beautiful painting unto the ground and mixing with the dirt? I can't make out what remains after the paint has washed away, is there still a picture left?
I'm a mediocre poet and writer, but I need to write to keep balance and sanity. Like some of you, nothing lately grabs me, not like it used to so I sit around and eat chips and listen to the news. That’s bullshit, I should know better so I hunt up things that do grab me, human things and pull them into poems and stories. I not only need to write, I want to write. I pull out poems that have made homes in the back of file cabinets. They're not dead, just waiting there for an injection of maturity. Hey, I'm only trying to get by, I don’t want to change who I am no matter how hard some sons of bitches are pushing against me. Fuck’em, my way or no way! clarkreview@earthlink.net
