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 our little podcast. As always, thanks to all of you have subscribed. Notice that we do not charge for subscribing, but with the subscription, notice of new installments goes to your email. Don’t be afraid to click that button. You never know when something is going to pop out of the 4 Door Lounge?
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? This 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 folk. Look for his books online.
Share this post