another Actualist

I met a guy named Dave Morice last Wednesday at the open mic at Uptown Bill's.  I'd seen him up there before.  He is in his sixties, I'd guess, and comes with his wife.  They are pretty out there, which I appreciate.  He read a piece on a million year old language called it; four languages, actually, all called it; based on truth, falsehood, beauty and love, respectively.  It was great.  The audience got into it.

I read four completely random pieces from my Internal Narrator's Prosetry stuff (It's Happened Again, I am Dead Serious, When the kids go to bed peacefully, and Leaves me to wonder … in case you want to see for yourself) and somehow was able to find a way to tie them all together during my required intro.  You can't just read a poem, it seems, you have to tell why you wrote it first.  I'm fine with that, I guess. 

Dave came up to me after the show was over and told me he really liked my stuff.  I sensed he was going to continue, so I shut him down, asked about his piece.  Was it a real interview of a fake person or was the whole thing made up?  In the early-to-mid-seventies, he and an old girlfriend had created an imaginary poet.  He would write the words and she would go out and perform them, presumably in disguise.  The poet, Joyce Holland, lasted several years without being discovered.  (My detective work later showed she made quite a splash on the poetry scene of the time and was published in 29 literary magazines.)  I'd actually read about Dave in Joe Michaud's Iowa City – City of the Book.  He was one of the founders of The Actualists, along with Chuck Miller.  They were roommates.  I told Dave about the message I'd received from Chuck.  He agreed it was very complimentary.

He had said that the fake poet, Joyce Holland, had written a lot of concrete poetry and I asked him what that was.  (I'm never afraid to show my ignorance with literary things; I figure they don't know much about the design and testing of airbags; people study different things.)  Turns out that concrete poems are pieces that depend as much on their form / shape as they do on the words.  I've actually played with that kind of thing before, not knowing (or caring, at the time) what it was called.  This morning I wrote a concrete poem with Dave in mind.  It's called:

A Better Shape

(for Dave Morice)

I've

shed

eighteen

maybe

twenty

pounds

in

the six

or eight

months in

which I've

been out of

employment.

I no longer sit

within earshot of

those god-damned

vending machines,

depressed and list-

ening to candy

dropping all

day long.

I still

don't

exer-

cise

the

way

I'd

like

to, though.