WHOLLY COMMUNION ~

JACK MICHELINE ~

hiding places | november 19, 1976 san francisco

There are hiding places in my room
where beautiful poems are hidden
Poems hidden away in boxes
on sheets of brown paper
Poems of spirit and magic
workers hands hidden in boxes
beautiful thighs
there are blue skies hidden in my room
dolphins and seagulls
the heaving of breasts and oceans
there are skies in my room
there are flies in my room
there are streets in my room
there are a thousand nights hidden in boxes
there are drunks in my poems
there are a million stars on the roof of my room
all hidden away in boxes
there are steps down side streets
there is a crazed eye of a poet in my room
there are old Arabs exploring the desert near Escalon
there are sparrows and bluebirds and wildcats in my room
there are elephants and tigers
there are skinny Italian girls in my room
there are letters from Peru and England
and Germany and Russia in my room
There are the steps of Odessa in my room
the Volga river in my room
there are dreams in the night of my room
there are flowers
there is the dance of affirmation in my room
the steps of young poets carrying knapsacks full of poems
there are the Pictures of an Exhibition in my room
Moussorgsky and Shostakovich
and Charlie Mingus in my room
Composers and painters all singing in my room
all hidden away in boxes
one night when the moon is full
they will come out and do a dance

______________

Jack Micheline

FMSBW /San Francisco, CA. 94110

CHERRY VALLEY EDITIONS (ARCHIVE) ~

Something wonderful I recently pulled out of the archive —

the catalog of books once upon a time published by

Cherry Valley Editions.

Charles and Pamela Plymell, and back when they

published my first book of poems Rope of Bells (1974),

Joshua Norton was also part of the merry printing pranksters.

Some may recall Charley Plymell was one of the first to

publish then unknown R. Crumb. 

As I recall my book was published in 250 copies and 

went out of print almost immediately, 

I'm not sure why, no one knew me at all,

except Pam, who I was in regular correspondence with,

and in each letter I tucked in another poem.

Pam had a plan.

The CVE little books were printed by xerox on kraft paper —

ingenuous as far as I'm concerned — stapled and

light and easy to move along and to this

day I covet the copies I own.

Charles & Pamela Plymell

1966

Cherry Valley Editions

LITTLE BOY ~

(UK edition)

(Kindle)

(Doubleday 2019)

Stream of consciousness away with the master poet!

DON'T HIDE THE MADNESS ~

R E A D      M E

Three Rooms Press

2018

BEAT MEMORIES (ALLEN GINSBERG) ~

M O R E !

The exhibition was organized by Sarah Greenough, senior curator of photography at the National Gallery of Art, where it had its debut in 2010.

HOLY SOUL JELLY ROLL ~

CROWDED BY BEAUTY ~

P H I L I P     W H A L E N

You will want the Philip Whalen biography. 

It is a gnarly book in that it goes round and round in interesting ways, 

often through friendships, quite unusual in this day and age of publishing. 

First Ginsberg, then Kerouac, and then taking off like a rocket
with Snyder

and leveling off mysteriously & sweetly with Kyger, 
while sharing birthdays with McClure (and Rimbaud!)

and all the friends, each and every one

claim they never saw Philip with 

a love interest. 

The gods could have told them that.

 Look at the full Collected Poems if you want to see his love interest. 

Long before a Buddhist,
Whalen, like Kerouac, were human beings. 

They didn’t actually waste their time on the Buddhist stuff, 

they just never needed it in the first place.
So the book reads less as a biography and more like an autobiography— 

Philip’s — the one he didn’t write. 

He wrote love poems. 

He wrote On Bear’s Head. 

The book that must be in every poetry library if one wishes to claim it is a poetry library. 

[ BA ]

Counterpoint, 2015