Raymond Soulard, Jr. Labyrinthine
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From Soulard’s Notebooks Assistant Editor: Kassandra Soulard Feedback................................................................................................................................1 Classic CENACLE Poetry by Jack Heitner............................................................................................................3 The Multicolored People of God [Travel Journal] by Nathan D. Horowitz...............................................................................................7 Notes from New England [Commentary] by Raymond Soulard, Jr. ......................................................................................19 Poetry by Gregory Kelly........................................................................................................42 Sapphire Sins, Part 3 [Travel Journal] by Charlie Beyer........................................................................................................45 Poetry by Ace Boggess..........................................................................................................51 Same Moon Shining [Memoir Excerpts] by Tamara Miles........................................................................................................55 Many Musics [Poetry] by Raymond Soulard, Jr. ......................................................................................61 Notes on Cultural Evolution by Jimmy Heffernan..................................................................................................89 Poetry by Colin James...........................................................................................................93 Bags End Book #9: Edgar B. Bear Visits Bags End! [Fiction] by Algernon Beagle....................................................................................................97 Poetry by Joe Ciccone.........................................................................................................113 Howl [Classic Poetry] by Allen Ginsberg....................................................................................................114 Righteous Rants by David Hartley.....................................................................................................121 Poetry by Judih Haggai.......................................................................................................125 “Now I know why fairy tales are full of jewels”: 1955 LSD Trip Diary [Essay] by Anaïs Nin............................................................................................................129 Poetry by Tom Sheehan......................................................................................................133 Poetry by Martina Newberry..............................................................................................136 Labyrinthine [A New Fixtion] by Raymond Soulard, Jr. ...................................................................................139 Notes on Contributors...................................................................................................164 Front and back cover graphic artwork by Raymond Soulard, Jr. & Kassandra Soulard. Original Cenacle logo by Barbara Brannon. Interior graphic artwork by Raymond Soulard, Jr. & Kassandra Soulard, unless otherwise noted. Select photographs from this issue were taken at the “Takashi Murakami: Lineage of Eccentrics (A Collaboration with Nobuo Tsuji and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)” exhibition, which ran at the MFA from October 18, 2017 to April 1, 2018. Translation of Pablo Neruda’s poem “The Blow” (1969) courtesy of Nathan D. Horowitz. Accompanying disk to print version contains: • Cenacles #47-103 • Burning Man Books #1-72 • Scriptor Press Sampler #1-18 • RaiBooks #1-8 • RS Mixes from “Within’s Within: Scenes from the Psychedelic Revolution”; & • Jellicle Literary Guild Highlights Series Disk contents downloadable at: http://www.scriptorpress.com/cenacle/supplementary_disk.zip. The Cenacle is published quarterly (with occasional special issues) by Scriptor Press New England, 2442 NW Market Street, #363, Seattle, Washington 98107. It is kin organ to ElectroLounge website (http://www.scriptorpress.com), RaiBooks, Burning Man Books, Scriptor Press Sampler, The Jellicle Literary Guild, & “Within’s Within: Scenes from the Psychedelic Revolution w/Soulard,” broadcast online worldwide weekends on SpiritPlants Radio (http://www.spiritplantsradio.com). All rights of works published herein belong exclusively to the creator of the work. Email comments to: editor@ scriptorpress.com. Thank you to the hard workers at National Grid for keeping the lights on here at the Bungalow Cee, & for restoring them as quickly as you did during the recent Nor’easters that passed through New England. 2018 1 Feedback on Cenacle 102 | December 2017 From Judih Haggai: From Tamara Miles: On a hot, sun-filled bus ride into the city, I Two poems have kept me busy in the latest picked up Cenacle 102. Cenacle: “Island of Bone” and “Seafood” by Joe Ciccone. I’ve tried to visualize the Island of Bone. To begin one’s reading with Raymond I try to situate it in the world, try to get myself Soulard Jr.’s love letter to a dear departed poet to it and experience the gray/not gray-ness of its / guitarist is like to begin a t’ai chi session by atmosphere. I imagine it inhabited by ghosts who doing chi cong. Energy flows, unleashed. pick up the bones of their beloved and sniff them, roll their fingers over them in the way an elephant And so I proceeded to read Mark Shorette’s rolls its trunk over the bones of one of its own. poetry, and each mysterious image hit a The ghosts walk out on the water, ride in again on different cell in my heart. Each node of contact a wave, and this is memory as well as invitation to was unique. “Violent acts of salvation” and love anew. That’s the trick, I think . Joe gave me “the mandala of the half drawn world”—both a fragment of an island, a finger-bone I can caress. phrases communicated deeply to me. “Seafood” also intrigues me because of what I I went on to Joe Ciccone’s poetry and know and what I don’t know. I know it for a poem responded to “the naked fisherman / lost in about grief and anger and trying to make up for an ocean of land.” A reminder of how I’m loss as well as to avoid creating loss for others. I always lost, on land or sea, except for those understand the lobster in the water, going from few moments when I’m hugging a loved one. life to edible death. I understand the shriek and the quiet, and a father who disappears and Just as I was heading towards Tamara Miles, reappears later in the mirror. What I’m working I reached my bus station, having to make out is the god part, and the salvation for us all that a mad dash towards a poetry meeting 10 must be waiting in the next lobster pot. minutes away. * * * * * * I’m looking forward to more. Thanks, all. From Jimmy Heffernan: * * * * * * I was delighted by Tamara Miles’ charming and From Ace Boggess: evocative poem, “Man Pleads Guilty to Trying to Smuggle Tiger Cub.” This majestic piece paints a Joe Ciccone’s poems are rich with such soulful picture of a jungle cat so vividly I could almost simplicity that reading them is like floating in a see its stripes. It evokes the purity and dignity warm pool. “Morning,” especially, mesmerized in nature, and gives the distinct impression that me with its Neruda-like qualities. As reader, I feel humans, at least by now, cannot compete with the narrator’s passion, but also something distant, such a beast in the grandeur of its essence. not easily explainable—a glimpse at the horizon. Ciccone’s poems in this issue make me want to * * * * * * read more of his work. * * * * * * ScriptorPress.com The Cenacle | 103 | April 2018 2 From Nathan D. Horowitz: Charlie Beyer’s prose continues ripping apart mountains for sapphires and coming up with language. Earthy and philosophical, like Bukowski in a tent, the man is incapable of writing a boring sentence. Perhaps his cat Pomo helps him. Tamara Miles gives us more of her splendid ongoing warts-and-all memoir and family history project. Her approach reminds me of William Carlos Williams’ injunction “not to talk in vague categories but to write particularly, as a physician works, upon a patient, upon the thing before him in the particular to discover the universal.” * * * * * * From Colin James: To paraphrase a line from Paul Theroux: Charlie Beyer’s prose puckers like a male hooker . * * * * * * From Charlie Beyer: This issue’s From Soulard’s Notebooks hits an internal bone—hard—as so many have dropped dead in my brief life. I am happy to be unpopular, as them whom the Gods love die young. But it is lonely to have loved and lost and, as Raymond says, we wish these wonderful souls had the science and knowledge for longevity that is available today. Sadly, such wisdom has not gotten to Mississippi or Walmart. * * * * * * From Martina Newberry: I am struck by the amazing, beautiful work in this issue. The poets, the storytellers—all of it is a lightning bolt of fine work, of strength, of tenderness. * * * * * * The Cenacle | 103 | April 2018 3 Jack Heitner In Early May In early May The bud-green mountains Climb the blue, And I climb with them. I too Am wild and ready. I too: Hiker— Seeker. * * * ScriptorPress.com The Cenacle | 103 | April 2018 4 Climbing Up the red rock cliff we climb Sometimes guided by the peak Sometimes trying firmer holds We sometimes find the love we seek Art Art is Spirit in search of itself The seeker in silence Alone with the light Along