Dear Michael Boughn,
Begin forwarded message:
From: Michael Boughn
Subject: Kent
Date: March 13, 2023 at 2:09:36 PM EDT
To: longhousepoetry@gmail.com
Hi Bob and Susan--
We are putting together a collection of tributes to Kent called I Once Met Kent Johnson. I attached some below so you can get a sense of what people have written. We'd very much like it if you could contribute something, especially since you published Kent's book. I'm hoping to get something together in next couple of weeks. Let me know if you'd like to add to it.
Best,
Mike
--
Michael Boughn
I’m not sure what has happened — you invited me into the fold to send a piece about Kent Johnson for your proposed anthology I ONCE MET KENT JOHNSON. The title, of course, drawn from the two titles Susan and I edited, designed and published from Longhouse of Kent’s delicately mountaineering written portraits I ONCE MET. It sounded like a terrific idea and you sent me the almost finished manuscript of all those already involved. I wrote a little piece for the anthology, sent it along, and the rest is history, which I believe I will share in all our correspondence shown below — and why not — also with the general public. Kent would understand. I’ll also show my tribute to Kent at the closing, since all went quiet (never a good sign in publishing) after you accepted my tribute, revealed you wept reading it, and then months later published the anthology for Kent without my tribute. Why not tell me why there has been no explanation to my tribute being erased, nor any word here to the book's release. I had to ask an old friend of Kent's and mine who let me know about the book's publication. My copy arrived a week after his, which I thank you, but not for this treatment.
[BA]
From: Michael Boughn
Subject: Kent
Date: March 13, 2023 at 2:09:36 PM EDT
To: longhousepoetry@gmail.com
Hi Bob and Susan--
We are putting together a collection of tributes to Kent called I Once Met Kent Johnson. I attached some below so you can get a sense of what people have written. We'd very much like it if you could contribute something, especially since you published Kent's book. I'm hoping to get something together in next couple of weeks. Let me know if you'd like to add to it.
Best,
Mike
--
Michael Boughn
____________________
Begin forwarded message:
From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Kent
Date: March 13, 2023 at 10:01:56 PM EDT
To: Michael Boughn
Mike,
What a cherry idea!
What’s you latest deadline?
We have too much snow and too much mud to deal with.
Plus Susan just got out of the ER.
Time, at the moment, is funny.
Let me know.
stay warm & well,
From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Kent
Date: March 13, 2023 at 10:01:56 PM EDT
To: Michael Boughn
Mike,
What a cherry idea!
What’s you latest deadline?
We have too much snow and too much mud to deal with.
Plus Susan just got out of the ER.
Time, at the moment, is funny.
Let me know.
stay warm & well,
Bob
____________________
Begin forwarded message:
From: Michael Boughn
Subject: Re: Kent
Date: March 14, 2023 at 7:15:45 AM EDT
To: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Hi Bob — sorry to hear of your various travails. There’s no tight deadline, but I’m hoping to be able to put something together in 2-3 weeks.
m
Michael Boughn
____________________
Begin forwarded message:
From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Kent
Date: March 18, 2023 at 10:19:53 PM EDT
To: Michael Boughn
Hi Mike,
Nor’easter here gave us over three feet of snow. No power, phone, water, road for days. I’m writing now but no way to send it because the Internet is out. It may be out for a week or weeks. The power is back after five days. We’ve been moving snow everyday. One day this note will go out and get to you. With luck, I’d like to have a piece for Kent in your hand by the end of the month.
See you when I do.
Bob
____________________
Begin forwarded message:
From: Michael Boughn
Subject: Re: Kent
Date: March 19, 2023 at 2:06:41 PM EDT
To: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Terrific, Bob.
m
Begin forwarded message:
From: Michael Boughn
Subject: Re: Kent Johnson
Date: March 27, 2023 at 3:18:23 PM EDT
To: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
That’s terrific, Bob. Had me in tears. I really miss him, too.
I’d explain why you got drawn in later than some others, but it’s complicated. Suffice to say, the whole process was ad hoc and anarchic. And it was all on me, and I am grossly ignorant and isolated when it comes to the poetry world. Not mention usually stoned.
Thanks for this. If Susan is sending something, I will wait.
m
Michael Boughn
Begin forwarded message:
From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Kent Johnson
Date: March 27, 2023 at 4:41:30 PM EDT
To: Michael Boughn
You’re a good sport, Mike, appreciate it.
Susan is quite happy with what I wrote.
She likes Kent in there, voice man and all.
When is it all appearing?
Begin forwarded message:
From: Michael Boughn
Subject: Re: Kent Johnson
Date: March 27, 2023 at 6:09:16 PM EDT
To: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
It shouldn't be too long, at least in PublishingTime. Billie Chernicoff and I started collecting these when Kent told us he was terminal. There's a small group of us, most of whom were on the Dispatches editors list. It was half social and half Dispatches sounding board. We kept up a conversation after Dispatches closed up shop. When he broke the news to us, we all wrote something to give him cheer and let him know how much he was loved and respected. He sometimes had a hard time recognizing that, and according to Deb, his wife, while he was sick he was frequently despondent about the universal enmity he felt. So we decided to ask a few others to join in. No one was in charge. Everyone reached out, but mostly it was me. I knew the names of a lot of the people he had close relations with because I witnessed it during Dispatches. So I reached out to them. The manuscripts collected in Billie's computer because there was just too much else going on to make a book, too. I was out of the country for a while, then had a cardiac issue. Anyway, you know how it goes with time at our age. Poof. When we got back to it last week, I decided to reach out to people I had missed the first time around. And you and Susan came up. And now you have the whole sordid story I said I wasn't going to bother you with.
I think it will be available in a couple of months -- say June. Or July. I definitely want to make a book and I have some very reasonable ideas how to do that. As well as get it online.
All the best,
Begin forwarded message:
From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: IOMKJohnson
Date: August 7, 2023 at 10:37:53 PM EDT
To: Michael Boughn
RE: I Once Met Kent Johnson
Hello Mike,
Deb has sent the lovely memorial booklet of and for Kent which includes a brief passage or two from IOMKJ.
Has the book now been published?
Please let me know.
Begin forwarded message:
From: Michael Boughn
Subject: Re: IOMKJohnson
Date: August 7, 2023 at 11:16:19 PM EDT
To: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Hey Bob --
It's on hold. I am waiting for one last important contribution that's been held up because of health issues. I've been led to believe that I should get it soon.
Deb took that from the old pdf.
Glad to hear all's well. Here, too. I have been up on Georgian Bay a lot at our cabin. With my dog. It's good.
Michael Boughn
____________________
Begin forwarded message:
From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Subject: Kent Johnson
Date: March 27, 2023 at 7:18:14 AM EDT
To: Michael Boughn
Hi Mike,
After the Nor’easter here (42 inches of snow in 24 hours) we had no power for a week and no phone or internet for almost two weeks, plus there is no wi fi reception in this valley, period, except by the phone line — finally some restoration at the end of March — getting this piece for Kent off to you. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Will this gathering be both on-line and book form?
all’s well, Bob
Bob Arnold
P.O. Box 2454
West Brattleboro
Vermont
05303
After the Nor’easter here (42 inches of snow in 24 hours) we had no power for a week and no phone or internet for almost two weeks, plus there is no wi fi reception in this valley, period, except by the phone line — finally some restoration at the end of March — getting this piece for Kent off to you. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Will this gathering be both on-line and book form?
all’s well, Bob
Bob Arnold
P.O. Box 2454
West Brattleboro
Vermont
05303
____________________
Begin forwarded message:
From: Michael Boughn
Subject: Re: Kent Johnson
Date: March 27, 2023 at 3:18:23 PM EDT
To: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
That’s terrific, Bob. Had me in tears. I really miss him, too.
I’d explain why you got drawn in later than some others, but it’s complicated. Suffice to say, the whole process was ad hoc and anarchic. And it was all on me, and I am grossly ignorant and isolated when it comes to the poetry world. Not mention usually stoned.
Thanks for this. If Susan is sending something, I will wait.
m
Michael Boughn
____________________
Begin forwarded message:
From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Kent Johnson
Date: March 27, 2023 at 4:41:30 PM EDT
To: Michael Boughn
You’re a good sport, Mike, appreciate it.
Susan is quite happy with what I wrote.
She likes Kent in there, voice man and all.
When is it all appearing?
all’s well, Bob
____________________
Begin forwarded message:
From: Michael Boughn
Subject: Re: Kent Johnson
Date: March 27, 2023 at 6:09:16 PM EDT
To: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
It shouldn't be too long, at least in PublishingTime. Billie Chernicoff and I started collecting these when Kent told us he was terminal. There's a small group of us, most of whom were on the Dispatches editors list. It was half social and half Dispatches sounding board. We kept up a conversation after Dispatches closed up shop. When he broke the news to us, we all wrote something to give him cheer and let him know how much he was loved and respected. He sometimes had a hard time recognizing that, and according to Deb, his wife, while he was sick he was frequently despondent about the universal enmity he felt. So we decided to ask a few others to join in. No one was in charge. Everyone reached out, but mostly it was me. I knew the names of a lot of the people he had close relations with because I witnessed it during Dispatches. So I reached out to them. The manuscripts collected in Billie's computer because there was just too much else going on to make a book, too. I was out of the country for a while, then had a cardiac issue. Anyway, you know how it goes with time at our age. Poof. When we got back to it last week, I decided to reach out to people I had missed the first time around. And you and Susan came up. And now you have the whole sordid story I said I wasn't going to bother you with.
I think it will be available in a couple of months -- say June. Or July. I definitely want to make a book and I have some very reasonable ideas how to do that. As well as get it online.
All the best,
Mike
____________________
Begin forwarded message:
From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: IOMKJohnson
Date: August 7, 2023 at 10:37:53 PM EDT
To: Michael Boughn
RE: I Once Met Kent Johnson
Hello Mike,
Deb has sent the lovely memorial booklet of and for Kent which includes a brief passage or two from IOMKJ.
Has the book now been published?
Please let me know.
all’s well, Bob
________________
Begin forwarded message:
From: Michael Boughn
Subject: Re: IOMKJohnson
Date: August 7, 2023 at 11:16:19 PM EDT
To: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Hey Bob --
It's on hold. I am waiting for one last important contribution that's been held up because of health issues. I've been led to believe that I should get it soon.
Deb took that from the old pdf.
Glad to hear all's well. Here, too. I have been up on Georgian Bay a lot at our cabin. With my dog. It's good.
m
______________________
Begin forwarded message:
From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: IOMKJohnson
Date: August 7, 2023 at 11:18:12 PM EDT
To: Michael Boughn
Thank you, Mike — we’re all looking forward.
Begin forwarded message:
From: John Bradley
Subject: Re: Kent
Date: November 19, 2023 at 3:23:36 PM EST
To: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Dear Bob,
I just received a copy of the book this week.
I don't see your essay in the book, though, Bob.
From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: IOMKJohnson
Date: August 7, 2023 at 11:18:12 PM EDT
To: Michael Boughn
Thank you, Mike — we’re all looking forward.
stay well, Bob
______________________
Begin forwarded message:
From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Kent
Date: November 19, 2023 at 3:07:33 PM EST
To: John Bradley
Dear John,
Between letters, a question — have you ever received the anthology Mike B and others were planning for Kent Johnson?
I thought I had heard from Mike they planned to have the book out this year.
Please let me know whatever you know.
all’s well, Bob
Between letters, a question — have you ever received the anthology Mike B and others were planning for Kent Johnson?
I thought I had heard from Mike they planned to have the book out this year.
Please let me know whatever you know.
all’s well, Bob
______________________
Begin forwarded message:
From: John Bradley
Subject: Re: Kent
Date: November 19, 2023 at 3:23:36 PM EST
To: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Dear Bob,
I just received a copy of the book this week.
I don't see your essay in the book, though, Bob.
John
__________________________
Begin forwarded message:
From: Bob and Susan Arnold <longhousepoetry@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Kent
Date: November 20, 2023 at 9:52:21 AM EST
To: John Bradley
Dear John,
That is a bit of shameful news to receive on a Thanksgiving week, but thank you, John, I thought those involved in this project might be capable of such a cowardly move.
Glad the book is out for Kent. Glad those contributing are there for Kent. More than glad Kent and I were together and Susan and I were able to publish I ONCE MET not only once in a hand-sewn gold cover booklet but the expanded and perfect-bound edition that Kent knows we plan to keep in print.
However, to never have Susan and I included in the first place (and I have to ask) and then to be invited, my submission taken (all shown in the spool of this brief correspondence) and then be dropped without any explanation — heavens to betsy!
I believe I’ll show all this correspondence to allow what happened to speak for itself, and then post my piece to Kent, which turns out to have a little wave of foreshadow.
all’s well, Bob
______________
KNOCK KNOCK, A Visit With Kent Johnson
I not only ONCE MET Kent Johnson, I saw Kent the other day — waiting for me up in my woodlot in Vermont, sitting with his legs comfortably crossed on the large ash tree Yuri the Russian and I dropped a few weeks ago. A very big tree, maybe 100 feet tall. The tree has been dying now for some years but still taking its time. Like a cat who finds the softest spot in a room to curl up or a dog who slumps into the warmest spot in the dooryard on a winter day, Kent knew where to find me. He, of course, asked about the tree. Pointed to all I had bucked up and hand-split. It’s nearly two cords of prime firewood. Kent wanted to know all the juicy details — like, who was Yuri?
Yuri was from Moldova. He’s half my age. I was looking for a young tree-surgeon and one afternoon at the grocer’s Susan got out of the truck and cried, “Oh wow! the top of that pine tree just fell over.” That was Yuri up there. I didn’t know him yet but I was going to. He was working as a favor for friends from the same neighborhood church. Susan went off to shop and from the parking lot I watched awhile Yuri work. Then I walked over for a closer look. I got Yuri’s phone number from one of the ground workers since Yuri was too high up in the tree. Yuri was at our place a week later with his little family snug in a company work truck. Not his truck. We took down the ash tree when it was ten degrees, late February. The money Yuri earned would pad his pockets for a three week trip back to Moldova to visit his young wife’s family since they hadn’t yet seen the baby. Kent loved all the story. Told me again of his own travels to that part of the world, the poets he met. He then put one of his hands deep into the hollow of the big log he sat on. I still had the last twelve feet of the ash tree to buck up. It was three feet thick. The hollow rot would at least give me a leg-up when starting to split the large chunks. Kent asked how long it would take. He kept smiling and shaking his head as I described everything. Taking his hand out of the hollow he then asked was it true it was only after twenty or so others were invited to this anthology of I ONCE MET, I was then invited?
I beamed and nodded. “Nothing new in club-house poetry America, Kent.” I added that the editor was kind enough to share with me many of of the contributing pieces. “I know, Bob, but you published the book I Once Met. Hell, you encouraged me to write this bigger book of memories from the smaller handmade golden booklet you and Susan published. Don’t you remember how I told you I planned to go to this bar I like and sit there and write? Well, I did! And then you added in all those great photos”. . . “By the way, how is Susan?” I told Kent Susan was back at the house keeping the wood fires up but as the sun gets warmer she’ll follow my snowshoe tracks and see us. Kent asked if I was going to write a piece for the anthology. I said I hoped to. We had a real true blue Nor’easter blow through the week the invitation arrived laying in over three feet of snow in twenty-four hours. We lost power, phone, water and even the dirt road along the river for days. But I read through portions of the anthology that was sent to me and saw mutual friends John Bradley & George Kalamaras in there, plus a sharp, warm remembrance by George Quasha. I never met Quasha but I bet maybe Kent had (he nodded his head). I bet you also felt the same thrill I did when young and finding a copy of his Active Anthology? Kent didn’t say anything, just kept smiling at me. Neither a nod or a head shake; he was a man in love. I waited while Kent came back from wherever he was, thinking or dreaming of poets and books.
He then blinked and looked me dead in the eye and said, “I died too young, Bob. I miss my family. I miss my dog Ben Jonson. I miss you all. Look at me — my hair’s grown back!” We laughed and let that all sink in. The sun had finally reached our spot in the woods. Snow was melting around the big log. “Yeah, you died too young Kent,” I said. “Everyone misses you. But you still lived almost twenty years longer than Basho.” Hello rolled into goodbye.
Bob Arnold
_______________
27 March 2023
Green River
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