September 25: "No Things," Thingness, Fireworks

Poet William Carlos Williams once said, "No ideas but in things."

I think most poets subscribe to that maxim.  Ideas are empty cups, and it's up to the poet to fill those cups with pomegranate juice or blood or mud or a thousand breaths.  Whatever it takes to turn the empty cup into something that can be tasted or seen or smelled or heard or felt.

Billy Collins has some things to say about things . . . 

No Things

by: Billy Collins

This love for everyday things,
part natural from the wide eye of infancy,
part a literary calculation,

this attention to the morning flower
and later to a fly strolling
along the rim of a wineglass—

are we just avoiding out one true destiny,
when we do that, averting our glance
from Philip Larkin who waits for us in an undertaker’s coat?

The leafless branches against the sky
will not save anyone from the void ahead,
nor will the sugar bowl or the sugar spoon on the table.

So why bother with the checkered lighthouse?
Why waste time on the sparrow,
or the wildflowers along the roadside

when we should all be alone in our rooms
throwing ourselves against the wall of life
and the opposite wall of death,

the door locked behind us
as we hurl rocks at the question of meaning,
and the enigma of our origins?

What good is the firefly,
the droplet running along the green leaf,
or even the bar of soap sliding around the bathtub

when we are really meant to be
banging away on the mystery
as hard as we can and to hell with the neighbors?

banging away on nothingness itself,
some with the foreheads,
others with the maul of sense, the raised jawbone of poetry.

I don't spend my days preoccupied with nothingness.  No thingness.  I remain pretty enamored of the small things in my life.  Sometimes, when I close my eyes at night, I become very aware of each breath I take, the very action of inhaling and exhaling.  In summertime, I can spend a couple hours watching bees swimming in my lilac bushes, and, in wintertime, I love the slant of light in icicles.  

Thingness is what poetry is all about for me.  I'm not sure that makes me a disciple of Dr. Williams, but all the little fireworks of everyday life--ants crawling on the sidewalk, an ice cube melting in my glass of water--lend meaning and grace to my existence.

Even if you're not a practicing poet, you can still celebrate thingness.  I say practicing poet because I believe every person is born a poet.  When I've worked with elementary school students, they blow me away with their creativity and facility at language play.  And then something happens--life, puberty, bad teachers--and, by the time they hit high school and college, they're too cool or embarrassed to unleash their inner poets. 

Celebrating thingness is easy.  You just need to open your eyes, be aware of all the little miracles you encounter each and every day.  Once you get into the practice (it takes a little while--be patient), you will find it difficult to stop.  Each dandelion or mud puddle or spiderweb becomes a firework blossoming in front of you.

Saint Marty wishes you all happy thingness tonight.

June 9: "A Rake's Progress," Puzzle Pieces, "Morning Rain"

A fall meditation ala Billy Collins . . . 

A Rake's Progress

by: Billy Collins

An autumn afternoon,

the neighbor's boy at work,

a pile of red and yellow

leaves growing even higher.

This poem reminds me of William Carlos Williams' red wheelbarrow and white chickens.  So simple and beautiful.  Of course, one of Williams' most famous quotes is this:  "No ideas but in things."  He found the everyday almost sacred, immortalizing it in his work.  Collin does the same in today's poem, making something ordinary into something wondrous.

Took my puppy for a walk this evening.  On our route, we came across the box for a 1000-piece puzzle.  It was flattened, and the puzzle pieces littered the road for a good half mile.  The image, as far as I could tell from the wrecked box, was a pile of fruits on a table.

My puppy went a little crazy over the pieces, sniffing and licking at them like they were actual slices of apples and oranges and watermelon.  I actually had to pull her along to keep her from eating them.

There was something incredibly beautiful about walking through that puzzle mine field.  I found myself avoiding stepping on the pieces, as if I would get juice and pulp all over my sneakers if I did.

These are the things that Saint Marty had ideas about today.

Morning Rain

by: Martin Achatz

I hear it between

awake and asleep--

tap tap . . . taptaptap--

like woodpeckers

feasting on the sweet

gums of dawn.

July 28: "Blue Iris," Meaning and Purpose, My Daughter

Mary Oliver wonders who she is . . . 

Blue Iris

by:  Mary Oliver

Now that I'm free to be myself, who am I?

Can't fly, can't run, and see how slowly I walk.

Well, I think, I can read books.

               "What's that you're doing?"

the green-headed fly shouts as it buzzes past.

I close the book.

Well, I can write down words, like these, softly.

"What's that you're doing?" whispers the wind, pausing

in a heap just outside the window.

Give me a little time, I say back to its staring, silver face.

It doesn't happen all of a sudden, you know.

"Doesn't it?" says the wind, and breaks open, releasing

distillation of blue iris.

And my heart panics not to be, as I long to be,

the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.

This is who Mary Oliver is:  a glass waiting for water, a canvas waiting for paint, a piece of paper waiting for poetry.  I've spent a good portion of my life wondering who I am and who I long to be.  A lot of people spend their whole lives doing the same thing--always searching for meaning and purpose. 

I think I was meant to be a poet.  Everything that's happened in my life has led me to this moment right now, sitting on my couch, reading Mary Oliver, and contemplating what it means to be a poet.  Because there really isn't an official job description, in case you haven't noticed.

Sure, most of you are thinking that a poet is a person who spends a lot of time pondering things that nobody really cares about, like green-headed flies and wind and blue irises.  I'd lay down money that most of you are also thinking, "Who needs poets?"

Yes, the world needs more doctors and teachers and medical researchers and physicists and mechanics.  I know this.  When a person I love gets sick, I don't read them a William Carlos Williams poem.  When my car breaks down, I don't try to fix it by reading "I Heard a Fly Buzz."  When I'm hungry, I don't search through the fridge for Pablo Neruda's "Ode to a Lemon."  

However, when I'm grieving, I may pay a visit to Gerard Manley Hopkins.  When I'm suffering from insomnia (which is most nights), Maggie Nelson is right there with me in all her blueness.  When I need to celebrate, I can always count on Billy Collins to raise a glass of wine with me.  And when I need to be grateful, I have Mary Oliver.  

Who needs poets?  We all need poets.

This evening, we took our daughter out to eat.  She took the MCAT today, which was the culmination of four years of college education and two months of preparation, studying eight hours a day.  Here's where being a poet comes in handy.  It helps me to find words to express what I'm feeling tonight.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating:  my kids are the greatest poems I will ever write.  They fill me with wonder and awe.  My daughter amazes me.  My son makes me laugh every day.  Mary Oliver gets it right:  the job of a poet is to be an empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.  When it's time for me to give my Nobel Prize acceptance speech, I may just hold up a picture of my kids.

Saint Marty's glass is more than full tonight,  It's overflowing.

July 13-14: The Young and Strong, Holden Caulfield, Dreams

Merton returns to England as a teenage American gangster . . .

The truth is that we did have quite a big bar bill, the Bryn Mawr girls and myself, but we were never drunk, because we drank slowly and spent the whole time stuffing ourselves with sardines on toast and all the other dainties which are the stock in trade of English liners.

In any case, I set foot once more on the soil of England dressed up in a gangster suit which Pop had bought me at Wallach's, complete with padded shoulders.  And I had a new, pale grey hat over my eye and walked into England pleased with the consciousness that I had easily acquired a very lurid reputation for myself with scarcely any trouble at all.

The separation of the two generations on board the ship had pleased me.  It had flattered me right down to the soles of my feet.  It was just what I wanted.  It completed my self-confidence, guaranteed my self-assertion.  Anyone older than myself symbolized authority.  And the vulgarity of the detectives and the stupidity of the other middle-aged people who had believed all their stories about us fed me with a pleasantly justifiable sense of contempt for their whole generation.  Therefore I concluded that I was now free of all authority, and that nobody could give me any advice that I had to listen to.  Because advice was only the cloak of hypocrisy or weakness or vulgarity or fear.  Authority was constituted by the old and weak, and had its roots in their envy for the joys and pleasures of the young and strong.

Finally, when I arrived at Oakham several days after the beginning of the term I was convinced that I was the only one in the whole place who knew anything about life, from the Headmaster on down.

I remember that time in my life, when I thought I had everything figured out.  It was wonderfully comforting, knowing that I had all the answers.  And when some authority figure tried to provide guidance or advice, I nodded dutifully, went away, and did exactly the opposite.  My mother told me to study computer science in college.  There was a future in that, she said.  I went to the university and became . . . a poet instead.

Adults always choose the safe path.  Security.  Money.  Employment.  That's not what young adults want.  When I was an undergrad, I was one step away from establishing my own Dead Poets Society.  I was artistic, love-starved, and, a lot of the time, clinically depressed.  In short, I was Holden Caulfield.

Now, as one of those old authority figures that Holden disparages through most of The Catcher in the Rye, I find myself craving safety, security, money, and good employment.  I often wonder if I chose the right path.  Perhaps I should have stuck with computer programming.  I might now have a good-sized 401(k), a nicer house and car, and a vacation home.  If only I had listened to my mother.

Yet, I know that, even with all those luxuries, I probably wouldn't have been very happy.  I mean, John Grisham was a successful lawyer, but he spent his spare time writing novels.  William Carlos Williams was a doctor, scribbling poems on his prescription pads.  Wallace Stevens sold insurance his whole life.  All of these writers had adult jobs to support their writing habits.

That's the real challenge about being a responsible adult--somehow managing to hold on to some part of what excited you as a young person.  The part that spurned all the advice of adults who wanted you to be responsible and boring.  The part that wanted to be Ingmar Bergman or Amelia Earhart or J. D. Salinger or Thomas Merton. 

If you're able to do that, no matter what career you eventually end up pursuing, you'll find happiness, despite all the adult pressures of the real world.

Me?  I work in a medical office and teach at a university.  But I'm also a Nobel Prize-winning poet.  Oscar-winning movie director.  Underground cartoonist.  Mad blogger.  My reality and my dreams.  The day I give up on my dreams is the day I stop believing in miracles. 

This message has been brought to you by Saint Marty, official sponsor of dreams and miracles.

March 30: Turning Into a Penguin, Healthcare Jobs, Brief History of My Time

Space time continues to bend for Arthur and Ford . . .

"Haaaauuurrgghhh . . ." said Arthur, as he felt his body softening and bending to unusual directions.  "Southend seems to be melting away . . . the stars are swirling . . . a dustbowl . . . my legs are drifting off into the sunset . . . my left arm's come off too."  A frightening thought struck him.  "Hell," he said, "how am I going to operate my digital watch now?"  He wound his eyes desperately around in Ford's direction. 

"Ford," he said, "you're turning into a penguin.  Stop that."

Again came the voice.

"Two to the power of seventy-five thousand to one against and falling."

Ford waddled around his pond in a furious circle.

"Hey, who are you?" he quacked.  "Where are you?  What's going on and is there any way of stopping it?"

"Please, relax," said the voice pleasantly, like a stewardess in an airliner with only one wing and two engines, one of which is on fire, "you are perfectly safe."

"But that's not the point!" raged Ford.  "The point is that I am now a perfectly safe penguin, and my colleague here is rapidly running out of limbs!"

"It's all right.  I've got them back now," said Arthur.

"Two to the power of fifty thousand to one against and falling," said the voice.

"Admittedly," said Arthur, "they're longer than I usually like them, but . . ."

"Isn't there anything," squawked Ford in avian fury, "you feel you ought to be telling us?"

The voice cleared its throat.  A giant petit four lolloped off into the distance.

"Welcome," the voice said, "to the Starship Heart of Gold."

Well, there you go.  Ford is a penguin, and Arthur is rapidly turning into a human version of Stretch Armstrong.  By the way, I love petit fours.  They are one of my favorite holiday treats, along with really soft sugar cookies and peanut butter buckeyes.  But I digress.

Space and time are a bitch sometimes.  Last night, I literally was thinking about a production of the musical Hairspray that I saw once in Appleton, Wisconsin.  I thought it was just a few years ago.  Imagine my surprise when I realized that it was over ten years ago.  Actually, it's approaching 15 years.  Couldn't believe it.

And, given the circumstances at work this past week, I've been also thinking about my time in the medical field.  I never thought that I would make a career in the healthcare field.  Initially, I took the job at the surgery center to fill-in for a person who was on maternity leave.  Then that person came back, and it was over.  I was in graduate school, trying to scrape together some extra cash.  Then I was offered a full-time job at the surgery center.  Then I basically became the business office manager of the surgery center.  At the same time, I was finishing school, and my wife was pregnant with our first child.

All that started over 20 years ago.  I've worked in three different medical offices--outpatient surgery, cardiology, and medical records.  In the summers during my graduate school days, I cleaned patient rooms and doctor's offices and operating rooms.  I guess you could say that healthcare has been the career that I never really wanted.  I just sort of stumbled into it and stayed there.  For a long time.  Longer than I realized.  Amazing.

Time has a way of running away from you, like a giant petit four.  One day you're a fill-in employee for a pregnant woman, and, twenty years later, you're a displaced healthcare worker in search of a computer station.  I don't like to say that the best is behind me.  I'm not that fatalistic.  Life has a way of taking unexpected turns.

Twenty years ago, I would never have thought I would call myself a poet.  Now, if someone were to ask me what I do, my answer would be, "I'm a poet."  That's how I identify.  Sure, I have jobs in the medical field and higher education to supplement what I do.  But poetry is my thing.  And I'm good at it, I think.  It's the thing that makes me feel good about myself.  An unexpected turn.

Gone are the days when poets could make a living being poets.  I think that died around Shakespeare's time.  Robert Frost taught and raised chickens.  William Carlos Williams was a doctor, scribbling poems about red wheelbarrows on prescription pads in between patient appointments.  Wallace Stevens sold insurance.  The poets I personally know are artists with galleries, environmental activists, teachers, musicians, and music teachers.  These are my people.

That is the brief history of my time for this morning. Thank you, Stephen Hawking.  It's been a 20-plus year journey.  The universe is open and expanding, always.  So am I.

If you're looking for Saint Marty, just look for the second star on the right, and head straight on till morning.

December 2: William Carlos Williams, "Blizzard," Special Hot Chocolate

Blizzard 

by:  William Carlos Williams

Snow:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down--
the blizzard
drifts its weight
deeper and deeper for three days
or sixty years, eh?  Then
the sun! a clutter of
yellow and blue flakes--
Hairy looking trees stand out
in long alleys
over a wild solitude.
The man turns and there--
his solitary track stretched out
upon the world.

_________________________

A good poem for tonight, as the snow and wind continue.

Saint Marty is in the mood for some special hot chocolate tonight.

October 20: Joseph Millar, "Night," Writing practice

Night

by:  Joseph Millar

Nobody wants to fall sleep
watching the stars burn like trash fires
listening to the big waves smoke
down the rocks,
nobody wants to sleep.

My Pelikan 800 fountain pen,
green with a faint gold stripe,
lost with my hundred-proof memory,
my sea flat as glass,
its kelp leaves and poppies.

Now I watch the women
dressed in black--black shoes,
black pants, long hair falling
over their hands and wrists.
They star awake far into the night
writing their scattered poems,
sisters of the half-empty wine jar,
of childhood lost
in the coastal fog and the lapsed
Catholic funeral flowers.

Nobody thinks of going to sleep
now that the streetcars are silent,
now that the dew seeps
into the grass.
I came west in my twenties
looking for work,
driving straight into the setting sun
and now I'll take anything:
a pencil stub and a cheap
cardboard notebook
somebody gave me for nothing.

_________________________

I love the images in this poem of all these people, refusing sleep, writing in the night.  It's something I'm familiar with.  As I've said before, my writing time is squeezed between moments of registering patients and teaching classes.  A stolen ten minutes in the morning office, before everyone else shows up and fills the place with noise and distraction.  An hour between classes, when I close my office door and pretend that I'm Keats coughing my lungs out.

This is my writing practice.  Probably the writing practice of millions of poets.  William Carlos Williams scribbling verse on his prescription pads in between house calls.  Wallace Stevens printing lines on the back of a customer's insurance policy.  That's the working life of most poets.  Poetry doesn't pay the bills.  Its rewards are not tangible in any way.

Yet, poems save my life.  They help me make sense of a world that makes no sense to me at times.  They fill me with compassion and understanding.  They puncture balloons and anger and resentment I sometimes carry around.  They make me appreciate being a part of the universe.

I know all of this sounds very highfalutin.  But it's true for me.  Tuesday, I worked all day on a poem.  Line by line.  I couldn't stop.  The idea came to me as I was taking a shower in the morning.  On my drive in to the medical office, I wrote the first stanza in my head.  In between patients, I swam in words, plucking them from the kelp and seaweed.  By the time I'd scanned the last medical chart, entered the last charge, I had a new poem.

Poems are around me all the time.  I just have to look around and write them down.

January 25: Goodwin Sands, Predictability, William Carlos Williams

Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among flowers can say- here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave. As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here.

In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included; why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands! how it is that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth; why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are not without their meanings.

But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.

It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me. Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine chance for promotion, it seems- aye, a stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of whaling- a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot.

Goodwin Sands.  Had to look that one up.  It's a sandbank off the coast of Kent, England.  There have been more than 2,000 shipwrecks on Goodwin Sands because it is so close to shipping lanes.  Tides and currents are constantly shifting the shoals, making the area incredibly unpredictable to navigate.  Hence the loss of so many vessels.

For the most part, I live a pretty predictable life.  I have to.  Every morning during the week, I get up at the same time--4:45 a.m.  I'm at work by 6 a.m., and my day is filled with the same tasks.  Patients and medical charts.  Students and classwork.  In the evenings. I am the dance dad chauffeur.  For example, tonight, I'm driving my daughter to her dance studio at 7 p.m.  Her classes get over at 8:45 p.m.  Then, it's home and preparing for the next day.

Some people might find this kind of schedule tedious.  No room for spontaneity.  I sort of like that element of non-surprise.  It allows me to navigate my weeks without ending up a shipwrecked, underwater, on the Goodwin Sands, if you get my analogy.  While I can't completely avoid the unexpected (brake jobs, collapsing ceilings, and the like), I have learned that routine also gives me freedom.

Because of my crazy life, I sometimes struggle to carve out time to write or read or create.  William Carlos Williams is famous for writing tiny poems.  The reason he was so economical in language and image is that he was a busy physician.  Some of his poems were written on the backs of prescription pads between visiting patients.  Williams found the time in his busy life to be a poet.  So do I.

And it's the predictability that helps me to do this.  I know that I will have at least three or four hours every Thursday afternoon/evening where I can fully concentrate on whatever creative project I currently have on my plate.  I also have couple hours on Tuesday and Wednesday night, as well.

Yesterday, I didn't write any blog posts.  I had another writing project that needed my attention.  I knew that I had the time to do that.  In fact, I had blocked it out on my schedule to complete the project.  I got it done and submitted last night at about 11:30.

I think most writers, if they are honest, thrive on predictability.  One of my writer friends religiously sits at his desk from about 7 a.m. to 10 or 11 a.m. every day.  Sometimes, he says, he accomplishes a great deal.  Other times, he gets three or four sentences written.  That is his creative life.  No unpredictable sandbars for him.

So, don't scoff at routine.  Don't laugh at daily lists.  Spontaneity, while exciting every once in a while, can get in the way of serious creative endeavor.

Saint Marty is thankful for the one hour and forty-five minutes he will have to work on his new poem tonight.

January 26: Working Hard, , Daydream, "Ives" Dip

I have been working pretty hard all day long.  Eight hours in the medical office.  Then, I took my son to religion class.  I spent a couple hours at church, listening to a video about confession and penance.  At least, that's what I think it was about.  I was sort of reading and preparing for teaching while the video was playing.  (I know, I know.  I'm going to hell.)  After I got home and got my son in bed, I took out my laptop and did additional schoolwork for a couple of hours.  It is now 10:10 p.m., and my eyes are burning.

I got a lot done today.  I have a whole lot more to do tomorrow, but I'm in pretty good shape at the moment.  I have to admit that I did daydream a little bit tonight about having a full-time teaching job.  One where I could go to the university, sit in my office for a few hours, and get all my crap done during the day so that I could actually relax a little bit.  At the moment, relaxation for me is when I fall asleep around midnight.

It's a daydream in which I indulge frequently.  To have a somewhat normal life with normal hours.  I have never had that.  Ever.  Since I entered the work force, I have always held down, at the minimum, two jobs.  At times, that number has climbed to four.  Currently, I have a full-time job (the medical office) and a part-time job (the university).  And I'm exhausted.

I'm not complaining.  I have learned a long time ago that complaining doesn't do any good.  It just makes me more miserable, and it doesn't really make for compelling reading on this blog.  I'm not the first poet to hold down a day job.  Wallace Stevens sold insurance.  William Carlos Williams was a doctor.  (That's why most of Williams' poems are so short.  He wrote them on the back of prescription pads.)

My question tonight for my Ives Dip is pretty straightfoward:

Am I ever going to get a full-time teaching job at the university?

And the answer from Oscar Hiljuelos is:

Slowly [Ives] began to earn more money, to dress better, and finally to settle into a series of relaxing affectations that defined the creative people in his field.

More money.  Better clothes.  Relaxing affectations.  Looks like Saint Marty's going to finally get his dream job.  Or he's going to write pornography for a living.

Sometimes, I don't even find myself interesting

June 14: What I Have Learned About "Howl"

I'm currently at work on a poem for my new collection.  The poem I'm writing is based on Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl."  Thus, I have been reading up on Ginsberg's poem, and I have found out that "Howl" has a history paralleling, in some ways, the evolution of culture in 1960s American (the drug culture, the sexual culture, the political culture).  I thought I'd share some of the information I've acquired since I started this little endeavor, since I'm probably not going to use it anywhere else.  (Most of the background I'm about to relate comes from Wikipedia and a few other online sources.)

Allen Ginsberg wrote "Howl" in 1955 and published it in 1956 in a book titled Howl and Other Poems.  Upon publication, "Howl" made a huge splash in the literary world and established Ginsberg as one of the most important writers of the Beat Generation.  It also spawned obscenity trials and arrests.

Ginsberg wrote the poem (or a good portion of it) in a coffee house in Berkeley, California, called the Caffee Mediterraneum.  He was heavily influenced by Kenneth Rexroth (who told him to "free his voice and write from the heart") and the writers William Carlos Williams and Jack Kerouac.  Eventually, Ginsberg settled on his signature form and style that comprises "Howl."  His style, as described in Wikipedia, is "a long line based on breath organized by a fixed base."  "Howl" is dedicated to Carl Solomon, whom Ginsberg met when the two were confined in a mental institution together.  Ginsberg also admitted that the poem deals with his feelings for his mother, who was schizophrenic and, eventually, lobotomized.

Ginsberg first performed the poem at the Six Gallery in San Francisco on October 7, 1955.  His reading left the audience standing in wonder, stunned and cheering.  Soon after this reading, Lawrence Ferlinghetti published Howl and Other Poems through his City Lights Press.

On June 3, 1957, a bookstore manager in San Francisco was arrested for selling the book to an undercover police officer.  Ferlinghetti was subsequently arrested for publishing the book.  His arrest spawned a famous obscenity trial, covered by Time and Life.  Ferlinghetti won the case, with a judge declaring that "Howl" had "redeeming social importance."

"Howl" went on to become the most famous poem of the Kerouac generation, and Ginsberg became the poetic voice of the 1960s.  He died on April 5, 1997, of liver cancer.

That's what Saint Marty's been doing with his spare time:  falling in love with the "Howl" of a magnificent poet.

Ginsberg (left) and his partner of 40 years, Peter Orlovsky