On Wednesday August 13th I got to El Cafecito at 3 Westmorland around 20:00 for Allen Sutterfield’s City of Words poetry get together. Allen was already at the bar talking to the owner. There were four other customers in the café when I arrived, which is an improvement. Paul Valliere showed up a little after Allen sat down, saying he’d had a hell of a time finding the place. When I asked why he hadn’t followed the specific instructions I’d emailed to him he said it was because he doesn’t find details very interesting. He noticed that Allen was drinking a clear liquid from a jam jar and he asked him what it was. The answer “water” inspired Paul to ask if he’d ever tried drinking food grade hydrogen peroxide. I said “What?” He explained that people drink food grade hydrogen peroxide as a purifier. I said, “That sounds insane! It reminds me of the guy I knew many years ago who worked at Noah’s Health Food store and who used to eat little balls of clay to absorb the toxins in his body. He also claimed that when John Wayne died they found twenty-five kilograms of impacted feces in his intestines. When I went for a colonoscopy several years ago though, I told that story to the specialist and he said such an accumulation would not be possible.” This led Paul to talk about John Wayne arguing with Rob Reiner on the Tonight Show which reminded me of seeing a drunken Burt Reynolds at an award show on television coming out as a presenter and commenting about how much applause he got from the people in the cheap seats but then he singled out Rob Reiner in the front row and criticized him for not applauding. Paul then moved our associative conversation to the subject of the making of the movie Deliverance and had covered a lot of details about the film, when around this time Cad walked in, complaining about the cold outside and the heat inside. There was talk of absent mindedness in relation to age but I said that I’ve maintained the same level of periodic absent mindedness throughout my life and once a year I might do something like almost put my shoes in the refrigerator. Allen said that he used to keep his copy of William Faulkner’s Mosquitoes in his fridge. Cad asked him if he’d read Harold Robbins’ A Stone for Danny Fisher. Allen responded, with a slight touch of contempt, that he wasn’t a fan of Harold Robbins’ writing. But when Cad told him that the Elvis Presley movie Kid Creole was based on A Stone for Danny Fisher, Allen was surprised and said “I liked that movie!” Cad gave us an outline of the plot, saying “Danny Fisher’s father was ineffectual because he wasn’t very effectual” and at that point I cracked up. Paul said that it was the 2003 film “Sylvia” that inspired him to read Sylvia Plath. Allen says that he sets up a table on some weekday evenings in front of his son’s store, West End Comics at 1590 Queen Street West, to sell selections from his 1,500 or more collection of books. Cad said “There’s one book I want and I’m wondering if you have it but I forget the title.” Allen answered, “I have that one but I haven’t read it yet.” Francisco arrived sometime near the end of the above conversation, which turned to Paul talking about a man he knew called Mike Argue. Cad mentioned that he knows two guys with the last name “Regular” and Francisco told us that his son’s name is Rudolpho Experience, which Paul suggested is a great name for a pick up artist, as he can ask girls if they’ve had the “Rudolpho Experience”. This was the first night of City of Words in the last six weeks when there were no women there. The conversations certainly took on a different flavour because of this. Kathleen Zinck had planned on coming but Paul gave her the wrong directions and her phone wasn’t working properly. Cad said “I can call somebody from my tablet but I can’t hear them talking.” Finally Allen got around to starting the literary portion of the evening and since Paul Valliere was new, he asked him to read first. Paul started with a poem called “Going with the Flow” which was inspired by a doctor friend of his who retired and moved to the country, having used the current of a river as a metaphor for life. This is one of the most common analogies in the history of poetry. His next piece was called “Everything Really Happens”, which finished by talking about “making love out of nothing at all”, which of course is a line from a hit song from the 90s by Air Supply. This is one of Paul’s writing traps, to get caught up in clichés. Paul handed out copies of the last composition that he read, which he said was partly inspired by Robin Williams’ death and had the title, “Going Home”. This was the one that we commented on the most. Francisco perhaps gave it the biggest condemnation when he said solemnly, “Honestly? It has a lot of potential!” Allen came close to that when he said, “I certainly agree with the sentiment of the poem!” I asked Paul if he ever writes more than a first draft of any poem and he confirmed that he tends to accept each poem as finished as soon as he’s written it. Acceptance is a key phrase for Paul’s attitude to everything. He is rarely critical of others or himself. I told him that what I’ve observed from hearing him read for all these years is that his poetry seems to be treading water as a result of this attitude. He responded, “Well at least that means it’s alive!” Allen declared that Paul’s method of just writing one poem after another without returning to edit them is a perfectly legitimate method of writing, and one’s ability will improve this way as long as one keeps writing. He cited Rumi as an example of a poet who worked in that manner. I don’t know how Allen could possibly know if that was how Rumi worked. Since Rumi was a spiritual leader in addition to being a poet the legends his disciples told would obviously be that every one of his poems was perfect in the first writing. To me this whole idea of becoming a good poet without carefully crafting ones poems is like setting a million monkeys to work on a million keyboards. It is possible that between them they would accidentally produce a hundred great poems. It’s like producing children without bothering to raise them. It’s like a blind man with a camera taking a million shots. Chances are some of them will turn out to be amazing photos. But who wants to be an accidental artist? Paul told us that his experience in grade school caused him to dislike a lot of poetry. Allen confirmed that schools offer the worst introduction to poetry. Allen quoted T.S. Eliot’s dedication of The Wasteland to his editor, Ezra Pound, who he proclaimed to be “Ilmiglio fabro”, meaning “The better craftsman”. Allen then read his own, “Hide and Seek”, which is a playful rhyming poem about death, in which he lists some of the many things that one can not do to escape death, one of which is “quoting Gurdjieff”. I told Allen that I was impressed that he knew who George Gurdjieff was and he responded the same to me. In fact everybody at the table except for Cad knew of the Armenian mystic, which is a real rarity. Paul gave us a short history of his ten years as a member of the Church of Scientology. He said after he left he had to deprogram himself of its dualistic philosophy. Allen agreed that dualism is limited and declared that what is needed at the very least is a triadic outlook. I sang “The Ticket Puncher at Lilas Station”, which is my translation of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Le poinconneur des Lilas” and which also uses a lot of death metaphors, including a reference to Strindberg’s “Great Highway”. Getting back to Paul’s poem, Allen suggested that in the last five lines Compassion, forgiveness And God’s right there, Right around the corner, Shining, arms wide, “Welcome my son.” he could easily remove the reference to God Compassion, forgiveness Right around the corner, Shining, arms wide, “Welcome my son.” without losing the message and thereby making the poem more accessible. Paul turned to me and asked me what I thought of that. I said, “I’m always willing to take God out of anything.” Allen laughed and asked, “Can I quote you on that? Christian’s always willing to take God out of anything!”
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 02:54:58 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015