Great Things I Received Lately, Part 4

This came in the mail today from poet Ray DiPalma.

Thanks, Ray!

As I mentioned, I enjoy when poets use anachronism (especially when they throw the Classical world or the Middle Ages into the pomo mix...poets like Hocquard and Laura Moriarty do this so well).

And so does Ray DiPalma!

He was kind enough to send his Gravitational Anomalies and the two poems you are seeing here are from his Hotel des Ruines, which first appeared (if memory serves correctly) as a livre d'artiste with art by a French artist whose name escapes me (but I'm thinking Alexandre is part of the name?)

I remember seeing some of the poems from that collection in American Poetry Review. I remember reading the poems one afternoon in downtown Harrisburg, in a restaurant in the Strawberry Square complex, in (Susquehanna Museum founder) Patricia Murray's copy of APR, actually. We were having lunch and talking about a new show that was going up.

And I remember I was so into the poems (especially Ray's) that I walked away with her magazine.

And I never did return it to her.

And she later died.

This is not a story with a happy ending.

I miss her.

She was tireless and brave and about the size of a sparrow but could lift paintings that weighed three times what she did.

We had (oddly enough) spookily similar tastes in art.

The difference was this: she had millions of dollars to buy the stuff.

But this worked out, because I still got to enjoy it.

In her museum.

Well, everyone's museum.

She was a generous woman.

She had a great soul.

She died way too young.

HOW EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED: If you click on the image to read the poems, you will note that Ray is quoting the "thkk, thgk" of the loom thing. So there's Duncan whom I was just talking about, and I suppose you could step back further to Pound, right. Synchronicity of the day? I hadn't yet opened Ray's pamphlet before yapping about Duncan.