GLOBE OF DHARMA enterprises
THOMAS FRANCIS NOONAN
2124 Kittredge St. #110
Berkeley, CA 94704
voicemail:(510)-549-8828#540
email: tfnoonan@hotmail.com; fax: (707)-516-3898
www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/8501(email and website are registered to above name and address and are used for legal purposes only)
June 2, 1999
Mr. John Martin, Editor
"Black Sparrow Press"
24 Tenth Street
Santa Rosa, CA 95401
Dear Mr. Martin:
The May/June issue of "Poets & Writers" had a most interesting piece about your small press. I truly had no idea of the rich and varied history with which you’ve been involved…(though I can honestly state that, while I personally was never a big fan of Charles Bukowski’s writings, I did take notice of your press in the works of Diane Wakowski and Denise Levertov, some twenty years ago, when I was first beginning to write "seriously" after working—albeit "professionally"—as a film critic, feature and investigative journalist…At the time, holding the book with gratitude in my hands and saying to myself, Now here’s a poet who can really write…).
At that time I’d shown up at the office of the late novelist John Gardner, at SUNY Binghamton, upstate New York, with a "Manhattan hotshot writer" chip on my shoulder (that he without blinking an eye promptly knocked off), and though I had no money—plus a few other "difficulties" in that I owed library fines and student loans to UC Berkeley, who’d "seized" my transcripts in retaliation—he agreed to work with me…(to my surprise, as he’d furiously attacked the three short stories I’d assumed were finished with one of his trademark pencils, grimacing between puffs upon his pipe, why, I’d assumed that it don’t look good for the kid…Instead he handed them back to me and said, Not bad, have these revised for me by next week before out first [Graduate Fiction Workshop] class)
Now I can’t swear to my recollection, but I do remember one day attempting to "bait" him by saying that I was fond of the work of Jack Kerouac; he responded with the disparaging, Yeah, I used to like him when I was young, too and described him as a one-trick pony like that Bukowski character…
I’d never heard of Mr. Bukowski, but on my next expedition back into Manhattan (I was doing work there still as a freelancer and visiting my college sweetheart now attending Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism) I made a point of finding in Greenwich Village…To be honest, his work did not do that much for me but I figured that anyone publishing such "controversy" was worth checking out further, so I picked up other of your titles and "happenstanced" upon Ms. Levertov and Ms. Wakowski—two poets whom I then studied deeply with the respect of finally somebody "contemporary" who has something to say (and in a most beautiful way)…
A long story as an intro to yet another manuscript for your consideration, I know…
Though many of the works in this chapbook, "The Silence of Pauses," had creative genesis from that period, I’m the type of poet who usually takes a very long time to finish a piece and revised all the material heavily over the past half-dozen years or so. A few, like the separate piece, "A Hawk from a Handsaw," are "brand new" and at the same time feel "done."
I have another "funny story" about my professional reference, Mrs. Maxine Hong Kingston—who, along with my attorneys, Patrick and Terence Hallinan ("Hallinan and Boro," 703 Market Street, 8th Floor, San Francisco, 94123, 415-536-4111), is better at answering questions about me than I am…About a decade ago, before I was run outta da East Bay in a "case of the mish-taken ignorance of anudder," (moving to Petaluma for a year and finishing a pretty decent "purchase" of a feature-length screenplay based upon my "real-life experiences" as a night-time cabdriver in the East Bay), I was employed as a half-time tutor of student-athletes at Cal (writing, upper-division English and Economics). Mrs. Kingston had recently arrived from Hawaii and her book, The Woman Warrior, was just beginning to take off. Yet many of the students assigned it for "English 1A or 1B" were having "difficulties" with understanding—a matter that I, as a practicing Buddhist for many years already, found a bit troubling. The most common complaint that I heard was "Why can’t she just tell the story more straightforwardly, why all the confusing jumps in Time?"
As the demeanor of the person asking was often "Southern Cal beach culture" (women on the Swim and Diving Teams), and as I usually managed a week’s vacation down south, late summer, on the soothing hot sands, I tried what I thought was a very "reasonable" analogy. "What Prof. Kingston is doing," I said, "is building the tale the way the ocean creates a wave; the impulse begins deep down, in the sluggish currents, and works its way up, becoming lighter as it arcs and crests before curling back, leaving just wisps of foam to connect to the next wave. Each successive wave thus builds on the previous one, bringing along those associations as it traces a path. Thus the ‘circular’ way of her telling a story, kind of ending with the beginning."
My students found that analogy most helpful, but, sad to say, encountered "trouble" with their "1A [or 1B, whatever it was]" lecturer, a very "militant feminist" who, these poor females complained, "hates us as blonde bimbo jocks" (with their team practice schedules and work for some, they were really too busy to have to worry about this core course requirement and just wanted to "get it over with"). As Mrs. Kingston was beginning to be hoisted as an "icon of feminism," why, I may indeed have been a little petulant in my advice to these women, considering myself—as I still do, never having received anything "contradictory" from women in the know—an enlightened (or "liberated") gentleman (I told these women that the "beauty of Mrs. Kingston’s work" is that it has appeal to "all kinds of women," including the "quiet, shy types not prone to complaining or explaining"—a theme my students loved as each explored in the required term papers, having been reassured that "I would talk to this instructor if necessary," setting off The Confrontation (so to speak)…
As I was a "straight white male jock" and, according to this instructor, "completely mistaken and hopelessly ignorant," this woman arranged a meeting with Mrs. Kingston (sans myself, the "troublemaker," of course). Yet, to the woman’s chagrin, Mrs. Kingston (who at that point I’d never met, having read her work for the first time in order to prepare for my tutoring) declined to bray like a donkey on command (or something like "straight from the horse’s mouth"). Instead, upon being given a more accurate description of what I’d actually said to these poor females, she clapped her hands together and said, Yes, how wonderful! That man really and truly understands my work at a time when so few others do. I must meet him…
Perhaps I have explained my "creative style?"
In other words, like the lead in wise old King Solomon’s parable, I am so often able to look back, after all the veins that shot off in this or that direction before curving back to the one point where the leaf comes to perfect symmetry, and say to myself, How astoundingly beautiful…I must be the luckiest person in the universe…