Genius Loci: 4325 Baltimore Avenue

 

Here is the fabled house where all the action in Genius Loci, now up on P.F.S. Post, transpires: 4325 Baltimore Avenue. As always with both Philly and the Philly 'burbs, the architectural level is interesting: not a normal looking house (or twin, as it were), something worth looking at. This shot was taken of 4325 from across the street, on the edge of Clark Park. Mary's room was at the top of the stairwell, on the second floor. Diana's (Kevin's, actually) was also on the second floor, right next door. Mary's window overlooked the grassy backyard area, which grounded the house in something, a mode of earthiness or reality, past what urban domiciles usually have to offer. 

Synchronized Chaos: The Vessel

Now that The Painter, from Something Solid, sits in Synchronized Chaos, I thought it might be useful to, in curatorial fashion, display the goods. So, here is the Mary Evelyn Harju piece mentioned in the poem: Self-Portrait: The Vessel. I saw the piece with Melissa at a PAFA show Mary had invited us to in mid-2001. We saw Mary on the wall, a ring of pieces with The Vessel at the center, but failed to see Miss H herself, who it turns out was sequestered somewhere else at the time. Did I fall madly in love with Miss H for having painted The Vessel? Semi. Spanish coloration, bits of earth-tones, and the haunting fragility of the female figure, who slightly less than dominates the center of the composition. Note: it's an image seen in a mirror. The irony for me, nearly a quarter of a century later, is that Miss H proved to be a pretty fulsome entity. Not much hollowed out and/or empty about her. But this is one mood for her, one emotion. As Miss F and I descended the Versailles-like stairs, my own emotions were stirred, singularly. Something was building; something would have to give.   

Leonard Cohen and State College

Culture wars are culture wars, folks. Why cultural terrain must become, and remain, embattled: the human race, as usual, can't make up its mind, and is of two (specifically two) minds. I've written about my time in State College extensively, including a literary apprenticeship I did there. I lean, in these passages, on the French Symbolists, the Beats, and the Existentialists. Yet, as of late 1994, my adventures in the West Pattee stacks took me to a specific place, a massive one for me at the time, that I I have neglected to mention. As of the 1980s and forward, Leonard Cohen's primary reputation, has been as a composer of popular music. Pop tunes. Fair enough. It's just that, as of '94, I fell under the sway of Cohen's books from the 50s and 60s, including Beautiful Losers. The spell cast on me by the early Cohen books was fairly profound, and others around me were also compelled. Yet, I've now spent thirty years in a position cramped by Cohen's status as a pop star, so that I can't bring up his name next to Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and the rest. Leonard Cohen is a name robbed of an essential dignity. The media, also as usual, are culprits, and are only too happy to bury a part of Mr. Cohen's arsenal which could lend dignity to his enterprise. But, in a way there is no looking back from, I've placed a crucial early Cohen piece on P.F.S. Post in an attempt to dignify work done which deserves a dignified assignation.

When Mary Evelyn Harju and I visited Montreal in the early-to-mid Aughts, I couldn't not think of who Leonard Cohen had been there in the 50s and 60s. The summer afternoon we spent on the McGill campus was a kind of vigil, not exactly a seance but close, towards a recognition that here was a place where some serious work had been done. The Montreal that cries out in Beautiful Losers is about depth, memory, regret, and a visionary appreciation of language expressing, teasing out, all these things. It is eerie, to me, in 2024, how well the early Cohen material works on P.F.S. Post. It fits like a glove. And, while I do not dare to condescend to the entirety of the Leonard Cohen enterprise, I can't help think that I am returning an assignation to someone real: who Cohen was, as a young writer in Montreal in the 50s and 60s.It will be interesting to see, over a long period of time, if squabbles ensue, as to who the real Leonard was and who he was not. All I can say, from where I stand now, is that this Leonard, the literary Leonard who animated State College for me and others in the 90s, is more deserving of long-term accolades and recognitions than who he might've become later, as a pop star. I have written a good amount of pop music myself: I am not without sympathy for the motivations which compel that side of things. But books are larger entities in the world than pop tunes. I am prepared to build for Leonard, on that front, if I may.

Something Solid: Aughts Philly: The Painter on Synchronized Chaos

The Painter, double sonnet from the Aughts Philly section of Something Solid, on Synchronized Chaos.

Th Painter is also available as an individual mp3 file on PennSound.

from PICC (A Poet in Center City): #40

 for The Bats

If there was never any particular gleam in Bill Rosenblum’s eyes about us at the Highwire, it was for the simple reason that we’d inadvertently shanghaied the place away from him and his band. I’d given them a nice free ride in the early Aughts, but by the middle of the Aughts I knew I was onto something big and wanted to sell, and they didn’t. Bill was a trooper, however, and was happy to man the board for us for shows we did with musical acts, for free dope and whatever other treats were around. It’s just that Pete Lawson was a painter, and, as had been slow to emerge, Bill was a painter too. Semi-formalists, they both sought a happy medium between displays of technical prowess and a loose aesthetic which could find at least some place for abstraction. They both found Trish and Tob to be tight-asses, and, as was also slow to emerge, had a death-match attitude to the two ladies, going back a number of years. Turns out, Bill and Pete had a shady connection to a shared studio on the PAFA campus, where they really weren’t supposed to paint, but did. Trish and Tob spent many nights in those days buzzing from studio to studio, checking out the competition, making connections, or just getting merrily wasted the right way. One night, Tob stumbled on Bill hard at work, and decided to drop in on him. He knew damn well who she was. She looked at the mostly finished canvas and said, “You can’t leave half the canvas empty. Why don’t you…” “No, that’s alright. Thank you.” Bill was peeved. Tob made a characteristic moue and said, “Alright, well, what are you doing here? Do you go to PAFA?” The answer, typical of Bill, involved more complications than he felt like discussing: “Yeah, sorta. I mean, I do, but…” “I know which class you need to take.” At which point a number of other painters, all girls, shuffled in. “Listen guys, it’s nice to meet you but I am working here. So.” Tob sauntered out with the rest, but Bill was inflamed with animosity when he saw how technically grandiose she was. Yet even that wasn’t really the problem. Tob and Trish were in a sorority of sorts, which operated from PAFA. In time, all of them knew Pete, too, who also wound up doing the head-on with all of them. The sorority was always making lists of guys they liked at PAFA, and it hung heavy in the air for Bill and Pete that they’d never be on those lists. Bill and Pete were, arguably, shady about painting, shady about PAFA, and Bill went out of his way in other parts of his life to obfuscate what he was doing. They always felt that Trish and Tob’s sorority blocked them from showing in Philly. I didn’t think Trish and Tob were that cloak and dagger— Bill and Pete did. As of us our Highwire residency, John and I began to learn of these things. No surprise that when, at one of the larger shows, we rolled out one of Trish’s larger male nudes, Bill’s eyes rolled skyward. “Don’t put that anywhere near the board, please.” Not hard to humor, but I managed to convey to Bill that he should feel free to express whatever he wanted (Trish not having arrived yet, and Bill’s tutorial in my direction having begun). “I have nothing to say. Except to say that it’s conservative the wrong way. I’ve said that about everything she’s done from the beginning.” Ok. Beneath whatever else Bill was hiding, I knew that Bill was jealous— Trish and Tob were more technically advanced than him— but I also knew that he hated empty formalism backing up what for him were tired traditions. PAFA! It got even funnier when The Bats played at the Highwire, with Bill behind the board. Ha! Liz and Tob go around doing their everyone-under-our-thumb routine, but the buck (proudly) stops with Bill. Who was happy to tell Tob, “Um, we’re gonna have to do a whole soundcheck, OK? I’m having problems with the PA. And it has to be soon, please.” They did, it was fine, because Liz went with Bill. But Bill got weird and placed Tob higher in the mix than she usually was. He was right— she was the musical lynchpin holding The Bats together. And the spirit of the Free School dictated that, at the end of the day, we were all in the maelstrom together, and when it could be all for one, one for all, it should be, and pettiness was unacceptable. Bill’s rebuke to Tob that night was implicit.