I don’t write in a journal everyday, but I have accumulated many entries over the past 50+ years beginning in 1966. Some items evolved into longer works. Among the leftovers little pieces survived. I thought a collection of these with a piece culled from the same date in a past year would make an interesting yearbook. The consistencies and inconsistencies of mind, skipping back and forth across time, provide varied perspectives. It is difficult to remember the context of the past we’ve lived; we also make suppositions about times that predate ourselves.

The few alterations from original drafts were to improve clarity. The worst of my work is not included. There remains enough mediocrity and immaturity to make me feel humble and you feel smart. There are also moments of accidental insight and incidental humor.

Author Stephen Crane referred to his little pieces as pills…apparently they were small and somewhat hard to swallow, but good for you.


Comments Welcome!

Sunday, November 3, 2019

We want hard-edged prose


November 3, 1975  (I was 30)

We want hard-edged prose
even in our poems

The splashy colors of weekly tabloids
SLA  WATERGATE  ASSASSINATION
Hemingway illustrated by Peter Max      
How realistically Nixon cringes
in all those books  Dan Rather
could do commercials for razor blades

The Revolution is brought to you by
Flames Burning through three networks
Serious Gunshots blaze in crazy L.A.
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