random bits of time
Posted by William F. DeVault | Filed under Memoir
I remember my 4th birthday party.
Neighbors who I barely knew showed up and my favourite gift was a friction-powered toy car that, when you revved it up and turned it loose, went slowly down the sidewalk, with the little man inside looking back and forth. I thought it was very interesting.
Because my brother, Robert, and I were so close in age (two years) someone even brought a present for him, so he wouldn’t feel left out. A ring toss game, as I recall, with the "Three Stooges" label across it, as if a generic toy had been made all the more precious because we might think Mo, Larry and Curly would approve of it (or play with it…I can imagine the havoc they could cause).
We lived in Washington State, off-base, my Dad was in the Air Force at the time. We had a chicken coop out back, thanks to a shipment of baby chicks my Grandmother had sent us. It meant we had fresh eggs and the occasional fresh chicken (ghastly memories of helping Dad with the executions).
I recall little moments of that tapestry and time: The girl from down the street who was learning to play the clarinet to be in the school band, the divorced woman who everyone said had committed suicide on the day we saw al the police cars and ambulances at her house, the time I went to get a drink from the backyard faucet and ended up with a large, perturbed beetle in my mouth.
Life.
hung by my own inscription
Posted by William F. DeVault | Filed under A Ronin in the Temple of Aphrodite, Candy Tothill, Journal, Memoir
The other day I and my lady love were talking about everything and nothing when the Candiferous one herself said "I want to ask you a question…" which is usually a bad sign except I have done nothing to be worried about from her, at least I do not think so (she has a temper, or so I am told, but she keeps it well in my presence, or maybe I just don’t annoy or bore her as some do?)
Digression which will get back to the point: Where do you think is the first documentable evidence of my affection for the unbelievably marvelous Ms. Candy Tothill…was it back in mid-September 2007 when I posted "The Island of the Sweet Siren" on Author’s Den?
Nope.
Maybe a few weeks before that when I released the poem "Above room temperature" in which I accused her of settling for men well below her worth? Nah.
Back to the conversation…
Candy said "A few years ago you dedicated something to me on Author’s Den and I always meant to ask you why…"
So we pulled it up and there on February 18, 2006, was my timestamped first posting of "The Ronin in the Temple of Aphrodite" with the dedication "Thanks to Candy Gourlay for the inspiration (don’t ask how)." Back then she was known to me by her previous married name.
I had to be upfront with her. I was cornered, so I relied on the truth.
I explained how, as a part of my whole personal renaissance I had decided to follow my own advice from my poem "In the memory of lovers" and live by the credo to "take no pretender, again, to my bed". But I also wanted to benchmark my heart. I wanted, if I was to be alone for the rest of my days, to at least stand for a purpose, a standard.
And who better than my friend Candy? Brilliant, insightful, deep, beautiful and talented. I figured if I couldn’t have someone who lived up to Candy’s benchmark of everything, I’d just skip the next few courses. Truth!
But now her memory brought us back to that inscription and I had to confess that I had, for some years, considered her about the most perfect woman I knew, just unattainable.
I guess, if you wait long enough, and hold to your standards, a few miracles are bound to come your way.
Mine did.
to clarify, the fire
Posted by William F. DeVault | Filed under As such, Candy Tothill, Memoir
(I wrote this hours ago and saved it, by accident, as a draft…won’t Candy be surprised! Now I feel I have to write yet another post…and add some new poetry over on Amomancer…)
Okay…let me clarify.
I have known the most elegant Ms. Tothill for several years, as a nodding and casual acquaintance.
I will be the first to admit that within moments of first encountering her and her work on Authors Den I was somewhat smitten, a state that did not ease with my continued reading of her works (I subscribed to her updates at AD and was always informed when she posted something new). She is brilliant and mercurial, intense and dark and sweet and exotic. A wonderful blend of spices too numerous and rare to appreciate with just words.
But, at the time she was married and even though my own pseudo-marriage was grinding to a bizarre death, I had made an oath to never again, for myself or another, violate the bonds of marriage (ahem…shhhh!).
I hung back, and she drifted away and soon after her divorce (okay, not overnight but I was busy licking my own wounds, thank you very much) she found another and I would not have imposed upon that for anything, I faded into the background, merely occasionally taking note of a new work or a surname change on her part.
Fast forward to this past summer when I find out her latest marriage was dead and having earth dumped over it. I did my best to position myself near the graveyard, trying not to look too opportunistic, and she made note of me. She acknowledged me. Me. (Double-take worthy of a Warner Brothers’ cartoon)
What passed over the next couple of months was a bizarre ballet of free spirits trying to define their role in the world and each others’ spheres. At times she encouraged me to seek other company. At times I would creep back into the shadows to nurse a bruised ego (and when an ego my size gets bruised, according to legend, we’re talking bruises the size of the "Cloverfield" monster’s right testicle). But I was resolute that I should, at least, linger at the periphery, hoping against hope that she might have the grace to bestow her favour upon me. Hell, a smile would be nice.
When we write our biography, it will be a strange and amusing series of chapters as to how we danced around it all. I am amazed we figured it all out, worked it all out, in the face of our own doubts, our wounds, our own human natures and those who would have warned us off or blatantly sabotaged us and our own hypergolic natures. By the way: You wasted your energy.
::fwooooosh::
But the fire burns and I, everyday, find her more charming, brilliant, magical, beautiful, desirable and miraculous than the day before. I want nothing less than to spend the rest of my life trying to make her as happy as she can be without keeling over from a massive attack of joy.
This love is what I have been waiting for, for oh so long, this is what the night has been for, to appreciate the light she brings into every corner of my being. This is the mantle I tried to place on every woman who entered orbit around me but who could not find a commonality to sustain us or a heat great enough to burn us beautiful. This is why I am a poet, to say things that might please her, that might frame all she is to me so that others can see that the fairy tale is nt only possible, it is real.
I love her without requite, without limit and without end.
But don’t worry, I still exist and I shall write and I still hold strong views on many topics, I am just deliriously drunk on Candy’s love and my love for her. I’m going to take a few decades and give her the proper treatment so many failed to.
I invite you all to join me when next month, in honor of the lady’s birthday, I realize my latest book, "As such", which is a collection of poems I wrote during our courtship. There’s some good stuff in there.
And (tapping chest) there’s now some good stuff in there, too.
my first impression
Posted by Candy Tothill | Filed under Candy Tothill, Journal, Memoir, Poetry
William has been sifting through our correspondence in search of poems for inclusion in his upcoming book ‘As Such‘. By now you’ve probably established that (a) we like each other a lot (understatement of the century); and (b) there is nothing we don’t share with each other (n-o-t-h-i-n-g).
One of the many adorable Williamisms that I’ve had the pleasure of growing accustomed to, is the way he thinks out loud to me… something which strikes me as an extension of his natural ability to communicate, together with the supernatural connection between us (I keep thinking ‘how incredible God’s plan?’.)
Anyway, last week as he re-read our old letters, he re-sent me whole conversations we’d had, to which he annexed footnotes about his present thoughts on them. How adorable?! One of these ‘recycled’ conversations included a poem I’d written 6 years ago, upon first discovering him on Authors Den in 2002. Here it is, in the context of our conversation of 21 November 2007:
I was going through some old writing from 2002 when I found something I wrote shortly after I ‘met’ you on AD:
observing
from afar
admiring
at a safe
distance
i fall
at the feet
of the god
sexually
wise
subliminally
innocent
he fingers me
without touch
i am a flame
trembling
feeling alive
wired
and needing
desperately
to smoke
the moment.It’s dated 28 February 2002. Evidence that you’ve been with me all along.
I found my own words so revealing, so telling. . . because I’ve been known to speculate about love with the best of the skeptics among us. A brief glance through most of the things that I’ve ever written will bear this out. I had been one of the cynics, one of the cautious; my walls had been built a long time ago.
But when I fell in love with a man who I consider to be, quite simply, the other side of me, it was as if I remembered how to love again. Swept off my feet by the sheer power of emotion, when we initially got together, the whole thing took me quite by surprise.
I still cannot completely comprehend the depth of feeling and the synchronicty between us because much of it is wholly inexplicable. Inexplicable and miraculous and passionate and wicked!
Hell, half the time I’m amused at my own romanticism. The other half, I’m so madly in love with the poet that I can think of nothing else. Nothing.
Life is good. William is awesome.
fidelis(terminus VI)
Posted by William F. DeVault | Filed under As such, Candy Tothill, Memoir, Poetry
fidelis(terminus VI)
I would rather kiss you than make love with any other woman,
for that would violate my sacred vow and how could I live
knowing that what I was given as a grace and gift was set aside,
if even for a moment, for reasons and treasons I could not defend?
you are friend, to be sure, but pure and higher passions spend
their heat in units of a thermal, dermal demand I will command
only to your chariot of joy, harnessing the beasts of Apollo
and the winds I have brought from the high desert, blue as midnight
green as your eyes and black as lies revealed when unsealed
from the damning pride that tried their best to keep me from heaven.
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.
Five Memorable Public Appearances
Posted by William F. DeVault | Filed under Appearances, Memoir, Psyche, The Panther, the Leopard
Well, on April 22nd, I have to put up or shut up. Not the first time, not the last, I am sure.
It’s just a reading, actually a book signing, not my most important, but it is likely to get attention on several fronts.
Commercially, Barnes and Noble will be taking my temperature to see how well the small stack of books they provide sells. Best result, they sell out during my first hour. Worst result, nothing moves, nothing sells, and I bite a passer-by.
Okay, the latter is unlikely. But I think back to some of my more notable fulcrumed appearances. Here’s my five most memorable, in no particular order.
The Southern Poets Reading Tour (I), The Fairhope Arts Center, Fairhope, Alabama, Summer of 1997. Loki was right, I’d been flat all weekend, and I was supposed to be the big dog. So, I drop my reading list, put on my shades and did a set only of poems I could recite from the heart. As they were almost all about my relationship with Psyche, I cried through the read, then left the building. Ann followed and had to bring me back into the room, where poet after poet who followed me was changing reading lists and doing their most intimate works. It became a massive, public, catharsis session. I wrote my poem "Breathe" in one of the Leopard Cycles, about the incident.
The AOL Writers Club Party, The Algonquin Hotel, New York City, September of 1995. Having helped plan and execute this intimate gathering of poets and authors, when I was called upon to read to a room of peers, I chose works from the first six "Panther Cycles" (that’s all there were back then). It’s the only public reading I ever did with the Panther herself in the room, and the stress of being conscious of her presence in a room where, theoretically, no one knew about "us" yet, was intense.
A Catholic Girls’ High School in California, April, 2003. Just months before abandoning my beloved Golden State, I was invited to speak at this school. I called the place Kevin Smith’s Greatest Nightmare (or his wet dream). Several hundred well-groomed, upper middle class Catholic high school girls, all in their uniforms, most with attitude. I was actually intimidated. Yeah, I know, that’s funny. I recall particularly, not so much darkly, the one girl in the front row whose blouse was probably unbuttoned one more button than permitted, who seemed to be trying to channel Sharon Stone in ‘Basic Instinct’ with a smirk as she slouched in her seat, her knees apart, through most of the read. If I was but twenty years younger and willing to do jail time, I might have thought more about her. As it was, I had a good audience, and I got to see how well my material played to a young, estrogen-laced audience, which has always supposed to be a key demographic for the "Romantic Poet of the Internet".
The coffeehouse at Drummond Chapel United Methodist Church, Morgantown, West Virginia, sometime in 1974. I don’t recall the exact date, but it was my first "real" reading. After enduring a couple of rounds of polite applause from an audience that obviously was not listening to what I was reading, I gave them a tongue lashing for their hypocrisy. Thus was a reputation born.
The sports bar reading, Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, late 1978. My friend Dave Demeter, whose band was playing that night, set me up to be the act between musical sets. It takes a certain amount of confidence to be reading my poetry between musical sets in a place where most of the people are half into their third beer, watching a hockey game. It toughened me. I got applause, sold a few books, and fulfilled my quest to stop reading in poetry venues. Plus, it was the first place I ever performed "TRIUMPH". I don’t recall the exact name of the bar, alas.
So, aside from a few "private" readings, these are the ones that really stand out to me. If I had to pick a sixth, it would be the reading at The Blue Moose in Morgantown, during my 2002 tour. I sold a ton of books that night and met some guy named Dan McTaggart, plus it was the first time in decades that I had done a public reading in West Virginia.
Interview with the Amomancer, Part II
Posted by admin | Filed under Memoir, Muses, The Compleat Panther Cycles, interview
This is the second of five parts of an interview
I’ve conducted online with William F. DeVault
over the last several days.
……………………………………………………………….
EJ:
Let’s talk about some of your more famous and infamous works?
WFDV:
Okay, I’m game. Any particular pieces or do you just want me to free associate?
EJ:
Let’s start with The Panther Cycles. These have been a lot of baggage for you, both in the creation and their part in the changes that have gone on in your life over the last decade or so. Now the book, THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES. Aren’t you afraid of being caught in a rut?
WFDV:
I am sure Michelangelo was worried about the rut he was in doing religious frescoes, too. (snarfle)
Not in the least, actually. I decided it was time to put them all out there, so many fragments and individual cycles have been read and shared around the world, it sort of became that so many people came to my works like watching a single scene or montage of scenes from a movie. You need to see the whole work to truly get your arms (or legs) around it.
I realize that their inception was not an easy process for many. I’ve done my share of questionable things, but I think that tossing away these works would not be honoring people in any greater manner. When something good comes out of something bad, you need to hold onto that.
I’ve had this debate in another form, with my daughter, before. She asked me if I wished I’d never married her mother. I said that if I were to wish that away I’d be wishing away her and her brothers, which were the most wonderful of things. I wouldn’t do that. She had some problems getting her conceptualization around that.
We embrace our disgrace to learn from it. You admit your mistakes and move on, taking what you can from your failures to build on your successes. Anything else and you are trapping yourself in a cycle of failure, of ignorance, of arrogance. Life is an experiment. You are supposed to learn from experiments, even if that the experiment proves you wrong in something you once believed.
EJ:
How did the experience of living and writing The Panther Cycles prove you wrong?
WFDV:
In no way. I was a bit emotionally battered, and I may have bet on the wrong horse by throwing my emotional soul into that relationship, but what I did was follow my heart. I think there are too many people in this world who don’t do that, and I think that is a tragedy. I have had people who have publicly tarred and feathered me over the works and my divorce come to me in secret and tell me their stories of when they failed to follow their hearts and how much they admired me for having actually tried to do so. Hypocrisy is pandemic in our culture. Most people do, not what they think is right, but what they think will leave the most doors and pathways open to them. I proved in both The Panther Cycles’ milieu and my second marriage that I was willing to "march into Hell for a heavenly cause".
If anything, it restored my faith in me, in my core belief system that treasures sacrifice and charity above all other things.
Yes, I am an adulterer. Actually, I gave up adultery not so long after George W. Bush gave up cocaine and public drunkenness. The difference is I admit my sins and take something from them besides a sense of self-righteousness and an addiction to denial.
EJ:
Wow. I do note that recently you’ve taken more of a turn towards the political. Something in that?
WFDV:
Yes, but after a small comment so it doesn’t get swept to the wayside, let’s get back to the poetry. I would, at a moment’s notice, enter politics. I think we need people who actually have values, real values, values of helping the poor, of ending wars (not starting them) in the political arena. A real Christian Agenda, not this mock one we have been sold like beer and hamburgers. After the financial deprivations of my first divorce and my second marriage, after the public way I have chosen to live my mistakes, rather than in craven silence, it would be short lived. I would need a patron to swoop in and pay off some debts I have from when I was unemployed and working to save Ann’s life. I would need a second chance that is unlikely in that part of my life.
EJ:
Back to the poetry?
WFDV:
Yes, please…we can touch on personal issues later.
EJ:
What’s the best thing you ever wrote?
WFDV:
I still adore TRIUMPH. "Diogenes" has faded. I see it like Rodin’s "Burghers of Calais"…not artistically my best work, but the scale of it is impressive. Some nice romantic works in there. Hard to argue with the cult following "The Patchwork Skirt of My Love" has.
EJ:
Well, romantic works are your trademark.
WFDV:
Yes, and it’s funny to see how I am still cranking them out in romantic exile…I guess the desire and the memories sustain me. "I shall live on these crusts stained with jelly. Filling my belly with morsels and mould." Sound familiar?
EJ:
Yet another line from "Horizon", which has sometimes been called the prophecy poem because so many images of it have been fulfilled since you wrote it.
WFDV:
Precisely. I sometimes wonder if it was a prophecy, or some kind of verbal inkblot test, or I am actually trying to fulfill it with my actions. I wish I knew. One more question for the afterlife, I suppose.
EJ:
Let’s touch on your muses
WFDV:
Better ask their husbands first.
………………………………………………….
~so while hanging out in your corner...