Hugh Fox

=

FROM THE EMAIL 23^rd June 2010

Karl,
Sounds great to me....

Let me send some poems along (some taken from THE COLLECTED POETRY OF HUGH FOX published by World Audience in 2008, others from the individual books themselves).
http://www.worldaudience.org/pubs_bks/HughPoetry.html

THE COLLECTED POETRY is 540 pages long...and that's only part of the story.....At the very end I'll send some I wrote last month in Brazil, in Portuguese, translated into English when I got back here.....
plus a few other recent ones.
Best,
Hugh

From 40 POEMS (Colecciõn Nuestro Tiempo, 1966):


Isdom
is
Accepting the inevitability of Moles and Paunches
Pressing the buttons that say
sun,
Avoiding the buttons that say
Bang.
Isdom is
Hating
The right kind of Spiders,
Knowing which alleys are for urinating
And which for love,
And where they
Sell the best
Chow Mein.

from EYE INTO NOW, Ediciones de la Frontera, L.A., 1967.


VEDANTA AND THE ERDGEIST

God                        un-God (matter)
Contentment           Dissatisfaction
Spirituality              Materiality

            Unholy,
             Finite,
             Not liking, wanting, accepting
             Now,
             The Me, the Mine, the Me-Word.
             Change,
             Thrash about,
             This is the path of perfection,
Into the room
the corer,
the closet,
the basement,
the cold, the cramped, hurt,
then
            Explode ito duck ponds at dusk,
            A row of eucalyptus
            Sea, the channel birds,
            The come and go of tides.

SOUL CATCHER SONGS
(Ediciones de la Frontera, 1967) --

Fog opaques the screams
and invisible snakes and ravens
become visible.
I paint snakes on my eye wall
and worship them.
Radioactivity deradioactivates
and the time-fugue precipitates out the
colloids of pollution.


Buriel frames circles the earth,
North Star descends
and South Star assumes
dominion.
Apocalypses have shuttered the moon
but plastic time-eyes
begin to circle in our veins,
our us-stuff energizes, and
we become the trajectory
of our beginnings.

Multiple acceleration breakthroughs
burn dichotomies of timewheels
and our outmost soundings
crack the crusts of eye-swirl expansions.
The nebulae of IS touch time-triggers
and our conjurings fulfill our
total activations, and still expand,
I am Coyote, Bear,
and all the metamorphoses of
TO BE.

THE HEADLESS CENTAURS: THEIR VOYAGE AND CONQUEST (Wormwood Review, 1968).


Quetzalcoatl-Tiki-Viracocha
sallies forth on the sunplain,
brandishing his war-axe
and God the Father,
lightning streaming from his palms,
raises his hands
and Qetzalcoatl-Tici-Viracocha
is stunned, stumbles to the
cloud edges and falls,
down,
in midfall extends his ars
which flower plumes
and arising he claps his wings
as the Spiritu Sanctus, black-bat winged,
its beak stained with blood,
swoomps down to meet him,
and when they touch the skies explode,
the clouds burn like dry grass and
Christ the Musketmaker takes aim,
but as Tepeyolohtli roars, the musket shatters
and Christ, raising up his punctured hands,
downs the world in his blood.
Santiago, patron of Cannons
                                          orare pro obis
Arbitrator of Arquebuses,
                                           orare pro nobis,
Master of the Crossbow,
                                          orare pro nobis,
Forger of swords,
pickaxes and iron bars,
                                          orare pro nobis,
Why pursue this war?
I am sorry to
have destroyed your cities
                                          orare
and burned
                                          pro
your people
                                          nobis.


But I cannot, will not, leave; and even if I leave, or even if you
kill me, I will be replaced and the conquest will be accomplished,
because the destiny of the world is that
         geometry shall      destroy magic.

APOTHEOSIS OF OLDE TOWNE, Fat Frog Press, 1968.

Al Capone sitting in the first row crying
over Sierra's THE KINGDOM OF GOD
with autographed ($10,000 an autograph)
portraits of Washington, Lincoln and
William Hale Thompson in his wallet,
hears a twig crack in the sixth row and
drops to the floor as Old (Odd) Al Parson
starts throwing dynamite around like roses.

The Haymaket explodes,
and the four hanged innocents (November 12, 1887)
arise and sing the Cantata to the Gods of Oats, Rye,
Barley and Corn, written by Clarence Darrow in 1899, the
year he faked them out in court on the Thomas Crosby
trial, then the Union Stockyards explode ad out of the
blazing eyes of the stampeding cattle the Chicago auditorium
flowers into being and Mary Garde moves into the final pelvic
affirmations of the Dance of Seven Veils....

                                OLDETOWNE IS VAPORIZED
the geometrical inflexibility of the too wide,
too carefully attended-to profit-margin
boundary gone,
    rigidity softens, bends,
         and all planned straightness swells
             splits   flowers      spreads...
ORGANIC
INORGANIC FUSION WILL
GEOMETRIC FORM
ENERGY-CAPSULE
LIBERATING WILL     SEED-GERM
       AND THE APOTHEOSIS BEGINS.


We begin with UNITY      GREEN SPACE GREEN EYE GREEN MIND,
PLAZA, PIAZZA, PLACE, PAVILION....
THE STOCK EXCHANGE BUILDING,,
expanded
exaggerated
brought to its limit
then passed
new limits created
then passed, past them again
limits after limits, afterlimits ...

I'm warning you,
push ERA/Ego Reorientation Activation
and the whole unit
hushes to a surf of green wilk chiffon
King (shaggy) Kong....

I need you blind and burnt
         orbis mundi
and the f(l)ight
across the blue world had
(prairies to hills, humps to mountains, drop down to
sand, to waves, to water, waiting)
begun.

ALMAZORA 42, Laughing Bear Press, 1982.


St. Martin

I buy a green Loden (Austrian) coat
in Madrid for 2,000 Pesetas
(half price), bring my 10 year old
raincoat with zip-in (and out)
fake fur lining back to Valencia with me
to give to this legless beggar on
the pedestrian bridge close to
my place, who I give a little money to
every day,
only wen I bring the coat over for him,
he's not there,
and it's not just one day
he's not there,
it's weeks, and there's no one else
around to ask what's
happened to him.

SONG OF CHRISTOPHER ,Clock Radio, 1987.


Writing these poems
becomes self-flagellation,
at the same time peoples
the vacuum with sparks of
his presence, please, God,
give him back to me for
just a handful of years
and I will give you a witness,
like Peter, Paul, Augustine,
Aquinas, Luther, Loyola, Wesley,
give him to me and I will give him
back to you shining with yourself,
not for me but for HIM,
to unfold the folded in the light of
Your being, so he can become what for all
eternity (in the madness of your pans)
he always was...and let me in my own
last years, move at last from JOB to
REVELATION.

TIME AND OTHER POEMS, Presa:S:Press, 2005.

BACK

Going back, back, back to the clouds and the
cypresses and smoke, trees, mouldering twigs
and edge-of-dusk bats, skunk-smells, wild turkeys,
everything wild, primal, before guns, torahs,
mosques, in the beginning was the sky and you
and I
evolving into the pre-buddhistic-
buddhistic
everything
NOW.

GESANGVOLL/SONGFUL , Pudding House Chapbook Series, 2010.

WISHING

Wishing none of us had ever left
the little Chi-town village called Chatham,
weddings, newborns, going to the same
sacred school asour newborns, every
Sunday Howyadoin? Mass and all the
high/low holidays, a little coffee-time,
arks, job-talk, politics-talk, stint and
prostate/uterine cancer-talks, clothes,
films, funeral asses, cemetery flowers,
the next generation(s) moving into the
same (spruced-up) Chatham village.



THE HAIR

The hair that never greys and breasts,
eyes, lavia, legs that never autumn, that
snow that spring melts every day, the word-hands
every day (byting) new found lands of daily
revelation that Homer, Tchekov, Verlaine it from
a forever deathlessness.


===============

The recent Brazil poems

DEPOIS

           Depois de anos asexuais a primeira vez que a vejo
           nua, oi corpo inteiro cheio de veias enormes, ela
           parece cento vinte em vez de 64, mas não importa,
           eu duzentos, já 92.4% morto, mas ambos ainda
           temos Nutella, Nescafé, mamão, um banheiro, coca,
           as caras dos netos/netas, as noticias sobre o ódio
           voando atraves do mundo, em todos lugares menos
           (vento, uns momentos de cuva, nossa Senhora de
                       Fátima acordando na televisão)
                      aqui.


AFTER

           After years of asexuality the first time I see her
           nude, her entire body full of enormous veins,
           she seems more like a hundred and twenty instead
           of 64, but what’s the difference, I’m two hundred
           already, 82.4% dead, but we both still have Nutella,
           Nescafé, papaya, a bathroom, coca, the faces of
           the grandsons and granddaughters, the news about
           the hate flying across the world everywhere except
           (wind, a few moments of rain, Our Lady of Fatima
               waking up on the television)
                   here.


  =                             

                   IGUATEMI

           Um senhor que não conhecemos aparece, nós
           tomando cafe e casadinho (chocolate e leite
           doce solido) em frente de Ponto Frio (lojia de
           televisão) e Cavalira (ropa masculina fina, fina,
           fina) ele para, “Tudo bem?,” “ Tudo bem,”
           “Voce é...?,” “Jesus Criso,” olhando a suas
           mãos, nada de cicatrizes, “Nada de cicarizes
           nas mãos?,” “Tudo curado fazem milhares de
           anos...e o tempo nas não conta!,” “E para nós?,”
           a voz muda para mim todo o shopping “Meu
           pai, eu e o meu irmão fizemos tudo, mais voces
           melhoram tudo tanto , nunca vi tanto luxo, eu o
           Jardim de Eden ao lado de seu mundo computorizado,
           nem su, meu pai ou irmão fizemos nada tão
           milagroso, e a comida daqui e, possivilene, é
           tempo de casar-me com uma mulher dessas com
           pernas de espadas, tetas devacas, olhos de buracos
           pretos entre as estrelas...començar não de novo mas
           tudo construido sobre a realidade daqui...,” de
           repente nos manda um beijo e desaparece, um
           momento na tela da televisão (Sansung) na janela
                         de Ponto Frio
                            e


                        A    Deus
                                     
           

                   IGUATEMI

           A man who we don’t know appears, we’re
           having coffee and casadinhos (chocolate with
           solid sweet milk), in front of Ponto Frio (a
           TV store) and Cavalira (fine, fine, fine men's
           clothes), he stops “Everything OK? “Everything
           OK,” “You are?” “Jesus Christ,” looking at his
           hands, no scars, “No scars on the hands?,” “everything
           healed thousands of years ago...and time doesn’t
           count for me!,” “And for us?,” “The mute voice
           fills the whole mall, “My father, me and my brother
           created everything, but you people improved everything
           so much, I never saw such luxury, me and the Garden
           of Eden next to your computerized world, neither I
           or my father or my phantom brother ever made anything
           so miraculous, and the food here, I’m going to
           reincarnate myself in order to eat the sweets here, and
           its positively time to marry a woman with those sword
           legs, cow breasts, eyes of black holes among the stars...
           begin again but everything based on the reality here..,”
           and suddenly he throws us a kiss and disappears, a
           moment on the TV screen (Sansung) in the window
                         of Ponto Frio

                         and

                       God        bye


=

                                   
                   AMAR

           Amar as caras na televisão, os computadores,
           drogas, onibuses, as igrejas, aviões, carros,
           as jóias, os orgasmos, cafe, cerveja, os tambores
           e guitarras, cantando-gritando, os radios a noite
           toda, o dia todo, o céu combustivel-electrico,
           os morros, o mar, todos as florestas já invisíveis,
                   inaudíveis.



                   TO LOVE

           To love the faces on the TV, computers, drugs,
           buses, the churches, planes, cars, jewelry, orgasms,
           coffee, beer, drums and guitars, singing-screaming,
           radios all night long, the whole day, the electric-
           furnace sky, the hills, the sea, all the forests already
                      invisible, inaudible....


=

                                   

                        PROCURAR
                   Gritar-cantar
           Policia lutando contra as drogas
                   O êxtase sexual
                   As drogas mesmas
                   Pistolas & Motocicletas


                   TO GET
                              Scream-sing
           Cops fighting against drugs
                   Sexual ecstasy
                   The drugs themselves
                   Guns and motorcycles


   =

                   EVITAR

                   O silêncio
                   Passarinhos
                   A solidão --a natureza natural
                   Furtos de veículos
                   Unindo-se com o divino amanhecer

               
                   TO AVOID

                   Silence
                   Birds
                   Solitude -- natural nature
                   Car thefts
                   Merging into the divine dawn


=



               OS DOIS DEUSES LUTANDO

           O quase silencio total de Cheia de Graça, o Espirito
           Santo, uma neblina que quase anula tudo
           e si mesmo, o filho agora voando atraves
           universos inteiros meditando “Devo começar
           tudo de novo” versus “Os leões divinos carnivalescos
           samba-rugindo,devorando ttodas as plantas/sementes
           divinas andinas que abrem as portas do universo
           rugindo, contraçao versus expansão, quem
           ganha aqui, os centros nucleares de terminar tudo
                                   amanhã...”



               THE TWO GODS FIGHTING

           The almost total silence of Full of Grace, the Holy
           Spirit, a mist that almost wipes out everything and
           himself, the son now flying across entire universes
           thinking “Must I begin everything again” versus
           “The divine carnival lions samba-bellowing,
           devouring all the divine Andean plants and seeds
           that open the doors of the bellowing universe itself,
           contraction versus expansion, who wins here, the
           nuclear centers terminating everything tomorrow.”


=


                   FINALMENTE

           Finalmente ao lado do mar eterno, os morros atras
           de nós cheios de verdejancia florestal, o ar cheio de
           urubus rodeando a gente tomando, comendo,
           falando, eu falo com um, “Eu sou um agente astral
           de uma planeta ao lado de Venus, A Deusa de Amor...
           e as vozes celestais me falaram dizendo ‘E tempo de casar-se
           e começar uma família..,’” ele toca a barriga de sua esposa
           “Ela já esta gravida, uma filha...de onde vem voce?,”
           “Da Universidade de Michigan State,” “Interesante, passei
           um ano lá no departmento de Portugues...sou poeta....,”
           lhe cumprimento, depois le dou o meu e-mail, ele me da o               

           seu...vamos ver onde vai isso, com certeza não existe mais
           nenhum senhor poeta aqui que conhece
           East Lansing, Michigan,

                                             de tudos os lugares do mundo.

               

                       FINALLY

           Finally next to he eternal sea, the hills behind us
           full of crazy green forest, the air full of vultures
           flying around the people drinking, eating, talking,
           I talk to one of them, “I’m an astral agent from a planet
           next to Venus, the Goddess of Love...and sometimes
           celestial voices talk to me saying ‘It’s time to get married
           and begin a family...,” he touches his wife’s stomach
           “She’s already pregnant with a daughter...where are
           you from?,” “Michigan State University,” “Interesting,
           I spent one year there in the Portuguese department...I’m
           a poet..,” we shake hands , I give him my e-mail, he gives
           me his...let’s see where this goes, for sure there’s no other
           poet around here who knows East Lansing, Michigan
                           of all the places in the world.


=


                            Não


           Não quero nunca voltar ao meu planeta natal
           mas queroi submerge-me no mar de camarões e
           tubarões aqui, voltar a ser mar mesmo, liquido
           infinito que escuta e evita o munto terrenal inteir


           I don’t want to ever go back to the planet where I
           was born, but want to submerge myself in the sea
           of shrimps and sharks here, become the sea itself,
           eternal liquid that listens to and avoids the whole
                   earthly earth.


=


                   TUDO MUNDO

           Todo mundo com sua cocaina e crack, eu com Nutella,
           mais e mis a lingua volvendo a ser penis, a colher
           de paraiso achocolatado, a vagina fresca da Virgem
           Maria (Costa), minha esposa caindo juntos através do céu
           chocolate, boca a boca, o resto do mundo/os corpois
                   eterno vazio.



                   EVERYBODY

           Everyone with their cocaine and crack, me with Nutella,
           my tongue more and more becoming a penis, the spoon
           chocolatized paradise the fresh vagina of Virgina Maria
           (Costa), my wife, falling together through the chocolate
           heavens, mouth to mouth, the rest of the world/bodies
                   eternal emptiness.


=


                   CADA DIA

           Milhares de orgasmos cada dia, nas praias, nas
           igrejas, nas vaginas miando felinamente, “Agora
           o universo inteiro so tem mais uma hora, podemos
           mudar-nos para oi presente divinamente cada dez minutos,
           subir as montanhas de areia de minhas pernas
           siliconizadas, as tetas são picos onde oi sensualismo
           espera os fieis e depois os olhos, o cabelo, as caras
                   selváticas pristinas.



                   EVERY DAY

           Thousands of orgasms every day, on the beaches,
           in the churches, in the vaginas that are felinely
           meowing, “Now the entire universe only has one
           hour left, we can move divinely into the present
           every ten minutes, climb the sand mountains of
           my siliconized legs, the tits are peaks where
           sensuality awaits the faiful, and afterwards the
               eyes, the hair, the pristine jungle faces.


=

                   VISITANDO

           Eu fiz tudo isso? Arvores com folhas flamejantes
           sem chamas, Hibisco, agora lembro mais ossos em chamas,
           morros, quais são os seres que se atrevem a construir
           casinhas pequenasde madeira le, vemk a chuva e tudo pode
           cair, as árvores, milhares de tipos diferentes, e
           vem e vão as chuvas, outras lugares (não aqui) tudo
           deserto, e a gente preta, branca, crianças por todos
           lado, e esqueço o que é “fazer amor,” “fazer
           criancas,” “fazer dormir...matar...morrer...,” bem --
           o que se tornar a ser -- o que? Preciso de um dicionário
           universal, os animais falndo tambem, mas o que dizem?
           Bombas nucleares, porque criar radioatividade?
           Possivelmenteé tempo de començar de novo, dar aos
           angos corpos, criar um sol novo, nada de Eden, filhos
           crucificados, doi principio ate o fim só beatitude, e
           vamos esquecer o assunto de UM FIM

               

           I made all this? Trees with flaming leaves without
           flames, Hibiscus, now I remember more flaming bones,
           hills, who are the beings that dare construct little wood
           houses there, the rain comes and everything can fall
           down, trees, thousands of different types, rain comes
           and goes, other places (not here) totally desert, and blacks,
           whites and children all over the place, I forget what it
           means to “make love,” “make children,” “to sleep, kill,
           die..,” OK, and to become what? I need a universal
           dictionary, the animals talking too, but what do they say?
           Nuclear bombs, why create radioactivity? Maybe it’s
           time to start over, give the angels bodies, create a new
           sun, no more Edens or crucified sons, from the beginning
           to the end only beautitude, and let’s forget the business of
                       AN END.

=

                        TUDO

           Tudo “normal” aqui, laranjas, goiabas,
           os cheiros, chiqueiros, folhas, passarinhos,
           a chuva, os morros, desenho, desenho, desenho,
           cada folha diferente, com cada tronco, cada galho
           diferente, tanto desejo de ampliar, embelezar a
                     vida, porque incluir morte?



                   EVERYTHING

           Everything “normal” here, oranges, guava, the
           smells, pigstys, leaves, birds, rain, the hills, design,
           design, design, every leaf different, with every trunk,
           every twig different, so much desire to amplify
           and beautify life, why include death?


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Recent Others

FAMILY

What I need most,
in the midst of Torah
scrolls, blessed wine, onegs,
mystic candles, remembering
the dead, strolling into ancient
sanity,
the sense, anywhere, anytime
meeting one of us and the
immediate sense not just
of family, but the world as
erratic, at the same time,
ordered brotherhood,
sisterhood, fatherhood,
motherhood
fun-ness.




SOMETIMES

Sometimes, wandering around in Chicago,
Brooklyn, Detroit, Gary, L.A., Lansing, I wonder if
the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves
ever happened, my cousins in Chicago telling
me “Don’t go to the south side where you used
to live, man....you’ll be a deadman fast, man...,”
OK, and then I come into class and if I close my
eyes I can’t tell the difference between blacks
and whites, the accent-jargon gone, future and
past surrounding me like time-travel on a daily
basis depending on big WHERES and HOWS.




Day- instead of Noct-urne

Slavic blonde, watch out for those
shoulders getting burnt, cutting the
dead peonies from their stalks,
two backyard grammar schooler
girls fooling around with a basketball
and a fancy backyard hoop attached
to the garage, a skinny law-school type
sitting on his front steps, a laptop on
his lap, talking on a cell phone,
my old Lebanese pal out watering the
roses, front yard half a block away from
my hospital, up to mid-seventies after
an upper sixties rain-week, not a cloud
in the sky, and you’re gonna tell me
that all the bird-claws, fingernails, brains,
tongues, seeds and eggs, bowels and
bones are all just “by chance,” a sense
of eternality in the air, as if everything
around me would be around here just
as is,
forever.



TIME TRAVEL

Time travel drifting over remote farm country,
not one house, barn, silo less than a hundred
and twenty years old, thinking about Civil,
Revolutionary, World War, Atomic War whats
as the winter wheat turns harvestable and the
corn is up to my ankles, deer here and there,
grouse, a couple of redbirds, turkeys, even one
peacock, wanting to throw down an anchor from
my balloon and stay, stay, stay…

= = =

HUGH FOX

                   ALIEN

            Czech potato pancake grandma in
           a jak se mas world, school-surrounded
           Irisher nuns with solid stone brogues,
           violin beginning age 6, P. Marinus Paulson,
           also a composer (educated in England)
           who would teach me “Let’s look at chords,
           the key of C, the key of....let’s play around
           with b-flat, left-hand chords, right-hand
           melody, let the keyboard talk to you...,”
           Latin Mass, Italian pastor at San Francisco
           de Paulo church, concerts every week,
           immersions in Bach, Beethoven, Vaughan
           Williams, and then German, French, Italian,
           marrying a Peruvian, months in the Peruvian,
           Bolivian, Chilean Andes, a year in Valencia,
           Spain, another studying Latin American literature
           at the University of Buenos Aires, learning
           Quechua, the language of the Incas, then
           Maya, the Art Institute in Chicago, galleries
           in Paris, Florence, Rome, learning some
           Romanian, writing a book on French film
           after ten years of immersion every night,
           even relating to grandfather homesteaders
           out in Montana, ten years in L.A., two years
           in Caracas....married thirty years to a Brazilian,
           two trips a year to the island of Santa Catarina
           in southern Brazil. O que posso fazer?

= = =

Bibliography:
If I was to include Fox's biblio here it would literally be a seventy page word doc.
A good idea would be to Google his name.

But a better idea would be to get hold of his book:
THE COLLECTED POETRY OF HUGH FOX published by World Audience in 2008

http://www.worldaudience.org/pubs_bks/HughPoetry.html 

http://www.worldaudience.org/publications.html

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