City of Legends

Legendary comic actor and comedian Soupy Sales passed away yesterday.  He was hip, ironic, silly, bold, articulate, intelligent and made me laugh when I was a kid.  Hell, he could still make me laugh.

I was honored to be included in a book with him, the AEI’s "Art & Soul".  Of the 49 other persons besides myself, living and dead, who were honored in that volume saluting outstanding creative artists from the State of West Virginia, he was one of a handful I really got a kick out of being included alongside.

His antics were sometimes the stuff of urban legends (yes, he did do the "green pieces of paper" stunt on television).  He hung with some of the hippest, smartest and trendiest of his time, people like Frank Sinatra guesting on his show, knowing that it would mean at least a pie in the face.  He played with the kids like a kid, and you can see elements of his pioneering work in the works of Pee Wee Herman and others who followed.

His earnest and engaging wit and style has been missed from television as he had been pressed off the airwaves by time, tastes and the clowns who don’t realize they are clowns.  Guys with last names like Beck, Limbaugh and Stern.

Gnight Soupy, we love ya and give ya a big kiss.

According to various sources, including myself, my web hosting company (web.com), my publisher, my friend Dan McTaggart, the remaining judges for the TVC2008 who have not yet gotten their votes in to me (harrumph), Barnes & Noble, my parents, my sibs, the media, my sons, one of my ex wives and two or three inspirationally-gifted friends, the next three days of my life should unfold with some of the following milestones.

Tomorrow we will announce the winner of the TVC2008. Mass hysteria will abound as we announce the TVC2009.

peacat.com will vanish, by midnight tonight. If no one with greater claim to the name asks for it before the registration runs out next year, it will go back on the open market.

I will give three two-hour readings at Barnes & Noble in Morgantown, WV, Sunday (10-12, 1-3, 4-6) with the assistance of the amazing Dan McTaggart, who co-authored Psalms of the Monster River Cult with me. I don’t think they could handle the intensity of the Long Beach reads, so I am trying to strike a balance.

Michael Phelps will win two more Olympic Gold Medals.

I will add ten more pieces to williamfdevault.com. Someone will blast me for the lovely nudity that is interspersed with the other artwork on the site. I will feel bad that I am being criticized, but will soldier on.

I will hear from someone out of an unexpected quarter.

I will write something inexplicably charming.

I will announce sometime today…oops, already did, that some of the Fields of Arbol pieces appearing on Amomancer will find their way onto williamfdevault.com.

Some doucebag will leave a stupid (definition: willfully ignorant), presumptive and irrelevant comment on one of my blogs.

I will drive over 500 miles in the next three days. I will still be alive Monday morning.

I will have dinner with my family on Saturday, and visit with my Grandmother, who is 96…bearing down on 97 next month.

I will discover a fantastic new muse.

My good friend and sometime collaborator, "Mountain Poet" Daniel S. McTaggart, has accepted my invite to be part of the festivities for the kickoff of the Evangelist Tour, on August 17, 2008. I would encourage (en couer rage) any and all within driving distance of the Barnes & Noble in Morgantown, West Virginia, to attend. You are in for some surprises.

I am soliciting some local musical talent. Whether this means some local bands will perform and/or there will be an Amomancer performance, I leave it to the fates. But in a perfect world, if I had my druthers, you’ll get both. All the hours I have been spending in the studio of late are paying off…I no longer think I sound like a dying, diseased bullfrog with a hernia. And I am learning how to work a microphone! (It is tougher than you might think!)

I am also tracking down other local authors to take part in the readings. Books and CDs galore (all of them, including Dan’s) will be on sale (if you guys sell me out of them on day one of the tour…ah well…), with the Evangelist CD and As such being the official CD and book for the tour.

77 days. Sheesh. Gotta get back on the treadmill.

My good friend Nordette Adams has broken up my weekend by giving me a writing assignment, to write about my mother’s influnce on me, politically, particularly as it pertains to voting.

I have known my mother all my life as a woman of fierce principles, particularly her more Conservative bent, especially in relation to the abortion issue (I avoid the topic around her anymore, we have a very divergent view on this issue). But I recall her always trying to sort her busy schedule as a working mother to make sure she had opportunity to vote, to make sure her voice was heard and that she could feel good about the process including her.

My father has always been very liberal, working-class Democrat, much the dove on international affairs, my mom the opposite. I always felt they sort of cancelled each other out, so it was my job as a liberal Democrat to make sure the balance was tilted. I note that West Virginia went for Bush only after I had moved.

I think the impact our parents have on us is more than the lectures and the obvious hand-holding, but the examples they set. I never recall my parents trying to dodge civic responsibility, whether it was to vote or serve on jury duty. These things are inconveniences in a free society, they are the paltry pence we pay for such an environment.

There, Nordette, now I can post the link to http://acorn. org/moms and report I am done!

Whilst my actual manhood is under remote control from thousands of miles away, I have gathered my wits and wiles and held council of war with a few choice friends to announce (subject to delightful change at the whim of the right woman) the initial planning stages of a coast-to-coast poetry tour this summer, taking in festivals, conferences, book fairs, schools, churches and maybe even a diner or two (just to make Dan McTaggart happy).

I have tentative arrangements underway already in six, make that eight, er…eleven…cities (nothing named until they are locked in, but let’s just say there are a few cuckolded husbands and ex girlfriends who are going to have clear shots at me from the back of a room within driving distance). Most likely to begin in August…I was planning to go on vacation to LA this August but my traveling partner may have opted out and thus the tour will be therapeutic. Of course, if she wants to come and be my wingman for the tour, I won’t argue…I had this one wingman named Ann on the Southern Poet’s Reading Tour…

Florida has never heard me read in person. They will. Texas knows me all too well, and they are getting an extra helping. Chicago? I wouldn’t miss it (or a certain suburb) for the world. I’m a dead man if I skip Morgantown, Salinas, Birmingham or Mobile, and New Orleans looks good.

My ex has been eying me all week saying she knows my reaction to stress and it tends to be an explosive change of direction that confounds my peers, dazzles my friends and pisses off my critics (I have no enemies, no one is worthy of that title). I figure I have one good run left in me and rather than rot somewhere, waiting for the worms, I am going to burn like a magnesium flare. Not much good as a mouldering hulk, you know.

I haven’t mounted a tour like this since 2002 (I have mounted anything since 2004, but let’s just keep that between us, shall we?) and the Love Gods of a Forgotten Religion book tour, which was a blast.

So if you know a good local venue, high school (the tour will overlap the start of the school year), festival, sorority house or bookstore, drop me a line, I’ll get you with my coordinator and we’ll make some magic. I may even get a band on the road, you never know. And I am willing to partner with one or more local poets to share the stage…never have been a microphone hog.

I am still looking for a theme, and such might yet occur, but I will let you know in a few days.

Oh, for those of you looking to order As such from amazon.com or your local bookstore, I got off the phone with my distributor a few hours ago…they were apologetic, but it is taking longer than usual for the book to get listed out in Books In Print, which is what all the book vendors use to order from. Keep patient, I will let you know when it is live. Right now the largest stash of the book in the world is probably sitting in South African customs.

Those of you who have read the pages about me in the Appalachian Educational Initiative’s "Art and Soul" volume know that I included a tribute (an essay, not a poem) to the only Creative Writing teacher I ever had, Mary Tomasky. She was the CW and Art teacher at Morgantown Junior High School when I attended there, and our relationship was stormy, mostly because she didn;t let me get lazy,

She never really understood the level of impact she had on me as a writer until years later, when I was selected into that volume and wrote of her influence. I am at my best when challenged. I am smart enough and talented enough that I can "get by", and being human, sometimes that’s exactly what I try to do. She recognized this and kicked my butt around the table when I gave her less than everything in my poetry or fiction.

She has had more than her fair share of personal tragedy in her life, and I won’t go into that here, but when I think of my most crashingly bad day and how hard it was to rise again, I recognize in her someone who exemplifies the human spirit.

This is for her.

to my teacher

lessons learned, burned into my soul
kind intentions, a steady hand to guide
and the ability to take great pride in what comes from the effort

I am, in part, made of your will
in forcing me, in time, to face
that which in me gives grace to the random gifts I sport

you did your Maker justice
who did give you the will to reach,
to teach me and countless others, lessons of life’s report

William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

I was interviewed by email this week by Vic Burkhammer, for his arts blog. Here’s the link:

the gazz interview with William F. DeVault.

I am going to be doing an over-the-phone interview with him this weekend. I’ll let you know when it surfaces.

Thanks, Vic. And Candy likes the picture, although I think I look like a demented chipmunk in it.

The results are in at the WV Finals of Poetry Out Loud…and I know them (having been one of the three judges, I got to shape them!)…

First off, let me say that all the contestants were worthy. It takes guts to get up and recite long, complex word puzzles while your friends, family and competitors stare at you with blank, unblinking eyes, silently praying for you to humiliate yourself.

The winner was:

Carolyn Rose Garcia of Notre Dame High School in Harrison County, who edged the competition in the finals owing to her incredible performance of "Shirt" by Robert Pinsky.

The runner-up was Jasmine Lewis of Spring Valley High School in Wayne County who gave a powerful recitation of "Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou.

I have to give two special unofficial awards out of my own.

The first is to Elizabeth Falstreau of George Washington High School in Kanawha County who wow-ed the judges with her poise and presence, particularly in her finals delivery of "Walking Down Park" by Nikki Giovanni.

The second is to Emma Dalen, whose charming delivery of Shel Silverstein’s "Sick" got her into the finals.

Congratulations to one and all, although I should point out that most of you failed to approach me to sign your gift copies of my book at the reception!

It is the first Saturday in February, and the long road of the year still stretches out before me. Miles to go before I sleep, miles to go before I sleep.

The year has already taken me by surprise. A year ago I was living two hundred miles from where I am writing this and unattached (a pledge by me to remain faithful to my vows from my second marriage, out of respect for her and to prove to myself that, despite the legends, I can keep it zipped, just became a habit and I found myself promising to make sure I would "take no pretender, again, to my bed").

Now I am where I am, wishing I was 8,132 miles ESE of where I am, blissfully involved with a woman for whom, for years, I felt unworthy to get the attention of. We are making plans. That is a very gentle way to put it. There’s an old saying that love is just your neuroses finding somone else’s neuroses attractive. We both have our frayed edges, dings and cracks, but it seems to have made us both stronger, and more suited for a life with each other than we would have been five, ten years ago.

I have a lot of work ahead of me, having allowed some things to slip over the last few years, but I am making the adjustments…not to be a different person, there’s a world of difference between shining one’s shoes and throwing them out to buy another pair, but to put the edge back on the knife, the shine back on the mirror and recalibrate some things I let slip in the face of my own doubts and penance.

Next month I am the a judge or judge and MC (they are still debating on whether or not to turn me loose on a crowd of high school students, no wonder West Virginia has a bad rap in educational statistics, nationally, they are so afraid of their own shadow they stunt the students by pretending the world is Disneyland) for the West Virginia state finals of the Poetry Out Loud contest. I have a few miracles left…not many (I laughed aloud at the anonymous commentor who accused me of having a Messiah complex or Narcissism, obviously they have been spending too much time with their head up their ass to move beyond such simplistic and misapplied generalities…Salieri lives!) but enough.

Not miracles of divine intervention. But if you take a reasonably well filled brain pan (is it narcisstic to know one’s own IQ score?) and give it a vector and a shove, you can take down mountains and reroute rivers. Then all the people who never got off their fat asses will accuse you of thinking you are better than them, and it gets ugly because, while they are farming the new fields and irrigating with the rerouted river, they are busy trying to hang you as a witch.

I actually find it terribly amusing. C.S. Lewis was very right when he pointed out that Democracies have an issue with excellence (take a look at our President, the triumph of mediocrity. We elected a man I wouldn’t hire to fix my car because of questions of competence and integrity and gave him the power of life and death to send my nephew and thousands of other people’s fathers and mothers and sons and daughters and nephews and nieces into harm’s way).

We need to stop this whole entitlement mindset that hampers and pampers us such that we become a nation of couch potatoes grunting at faux celebrities on television. You know why I might would not vote for Barack Obama for President? Because Oprah Winfrey has so little social conscience that, to make a quick buck, she’d shill her jury consultant, a Dr. Phil McGraw, to the American viewing public as a competent and representative mental health professional, causing untold harm to people and relationships (but she gets her licensing fees from syndication). So I wonder if she’ll put her prestige behind a train wreck of a snake oil salesman like Dr. Phil, do I want to trust her with telling me whom I should have deciding who lives and dies and what Federal programs get funded?

Maybe we should just skip the step and run Dr. Phil. The terrifying thing is, he’d get a lot of votes. Just not from Britney Spears.

A recent note from someone let me know that there had been, once again, an identity issue surrounding me.

Let me clarify who I am (best Christopher Lambert impression, from "Highlander"):

I am William Francis DeVault. I am a poet. I have many sobriquets, but since I gave up on pseudonyms in the 1970’s, just one name. My monogram is "WFDV" and my family motto translates to "Humble only before God".

I am regarded by many as the "Romantic Poet of the Internet", a title originally given to me by Yahoo, in the mid-1990’s. Some consider me one of the fathers of the "Digital Renaissance". I have even been regarded as a possible reincarnation of a Holy Man, a notion I disregard and reject. I am me.

I have written thousands of poems, published several books, been in many publications, toured and presented my works from coast to coast in the United States, and known the love of some truly remarkable friends and lovers along this strange road.

I currently hang my ponytail in Morgantown, West Virginia, where I work as a trainer and coach for TeleTech and also moonlight as a teacher with Monongalia County’s Technical Education Center.

I used to write a comedy column for AOL’s Writers Club and used to write film reviews for AOL’s Roadside, USA hub. My favourite movie, all time, remains Bob Fosse’s "All That Jazz".

I am also called "The Amomancer", as one who "casts spells with words of love". It comes from the word "Amote", which I coined as both a contraction of the Latin for "I love you" and as meaning "To speak of love".

I have three wonderful children, all by my first wife: Perelandra (Peri), Elric and Dante. I have married and divorced, twice.

I host the podcast show "From Out of the City".

I graduated from Morgantown High School, in Morgantown, West Virginia, in 1973…a school that has never invited me to speak before even a single English class. I briefly enrolled at West Virginia University. I suppose attending classes would have helped, but I was off, in my own sphere, writing all the time.

I’ve survived gangrene and pneumonia, both in my younger days. At one of my last physicals, the doctor told me it would take kryptonite to kill me, but that I’d look better if I lost some weight. I have dropped almost 50 pounds since then.

Thanks in part to my relationships with psychologists and psychology students, I have taken just about every psychological test there is, and I know the results. Neurotic, bright and mercurial. I achieve emotional satisfaction from gratification of my very strong sex drive. In the absence of sex, I eat. I am conquering this as we speak, and to that I attribute this incredible run of productivity over the last three years. I have learned to sublimate to editing and writing and recording and painting and engineering and composing.

I am shy with women, my poetry being where the romantic can express himself.

But I am not psychotic and not pathological. Most lies I have told in this life (a bad habit for any cause) were told at the behest of others to cover their sins, not my own. I know my demons, I converse with them, and I keep them under an iron fist, but I keep them. I have sworn to fulfill the "Nosferatu’s Dream"…that if I ever see myself turn evil, I will destroy myself. I don’t hide from those who seek me, I don’t charge for good acts, I believe that any person who gets rich off of spiritually by making others pay to find their paths is a charlatan and a fraud. All truths are to be freely given, as is all love. Love = truth.

My favourite person is my father.

Perhaps the most famour quotations from me are: "A quote is just a tattoo on the tongue" and "The existence of a single atheist does not disprove the existence of God".

I am overly generous, sometimes taken advantage of for that. I have been an ennabler. I do recall the middle name of every woman I have ever been with. I am a natural flirt, something my daughter pointed out to me years ago, and I like bright, articulate, beautiful women. Despite my failings in my first marriage and some rather aggressive temptations, I did not cheat in my second marriage. I still haven’t taken a lover since then.

I was once given a tryout at Marvel Comics at the behest of Stan Lee. I didn’t make it.

I hosted the Mississippi Gathering of Poets in Bay St. Louis, three years ago. I headlined with the Southern Poets Reading Tour, twice, in 1997. I am featured in the Appalachian Education Initiative’s "Art & Soul" volume, celebrating arts education by honoring 50 "outstanding creative artists" from West Virginia. I was a featured in the Edinburgh International Internet Festival of the Arts. I have read in schools, churches, bars, coffee houses clubs and colleges across the United States.

I hosted the Writers Club Party at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City in September of 1995.

I have lived in South Carolina, Alaska, Washington, Colorado, Michigan, West Virginia, North Dakota, California, Maryland, Mississippi and Virginia. I have been homeless.

I have a tattoo. It is of a lion, on my right shoulder, mtching the lioness on my second ex-wife’s shoulder, as she requested. Duh.

I used to teach "Youth Alternatives to Violence" for Monterey County Probation in California and was the county coordinator for Monterey County for the California Friday Night LIve Partnership’s FNL program for young people. I was the Alcohol and Drug Resource Specialist for Harden Middle School in Salinas, California.

I have never eaten a live hamster. I love chicken livers. I do not like broccoli.

That is a picture, from 1974, of me on the cover of my book "The Morgantown Suite Poems". Those are pictures of my second wife on the cover of "from an unexpected corner" and "Love Gods of a Forgotten Religion".

A mystic once predicted that I would die a violent death. If so, I hope it is for a purpose and not just as a random target of random violence. I do not attend funerals, as I find them barbaric. Celebrate life, not death. Jesus said "Let the dead bury the dead".

I designed the cover of Daniel S. McTaggart’s book "Midnight Muse in a Convenience Store". I sometimes, in my spare time, edit books and design covers for other authors.

I don’t drink or do drugs, never have, never will. I believe sleeping with a person under the influence is rape.

I have made, in the past, a healthy salary as a manager of software development teams, a proposal writer and manager, and as a consultancy director.

I am an ordained minister. I have been admitted into both the Southern Baptist church and the Episcopal Church, but I count myself a Quaker (Society of Friends).

I prefer Macs to Windows platforms. My drink of choice is Diet Dr. Pepper, which is unfortunate as I do believe Splenda to be a much safer choice for artificial sweetener. I tend to wear black because it simplifies my life, I have bad taste in colour coordination. I love jasmine tea, as to me it tastes like a woman.

And, until proven otherwise, I am immortal.

At least spiritually and literally. Check in with me in 500 years to see how the physical side goes.

Living for now in a town with a university (WVU) known more for the destructive and anti-social behaviour of the children who attend there than any real accomplishments makes one take pause regarding the entire college system in the US.

At one time, University was a place for the elite and accomplished. Now it is an almost essential survival tool, as more and more employers consider a 4-year degree the equivalent of a high school diploma thirty years ago, and parents are forced to second-mortgage their house so junior, who really has no interest in 11th century European political movements, must now spend 4 years in a strange city competing for the right to come home and work as a trailer salesman.

C.S. Lewis was right about the democritization of society, including our educational institutions: They are no longer places of excellence, but strident mediocrity (look at our current political leaders if you want more proof of the Salieri Effect, the destruction of excellence and genius in the name of paranoid underachievement).

The first weekend with the students in town this year produced the usual rash of emergency calls (and probably, quite a few incidents that were quickly swept under the rug by the school, they seem particularly good at covering up rapes in colleges nowadays) but this latest fad of starting fires, which included last year’s post-game burning of people’s cars for no other reason than they just happened to be parked on a street where the morons with the Bic lighter happened to be, seems to be a throwback to almost primitive knuckle-dragging. Regardless of whether or not this violence and property destruction is fueled by the easy access to alcohol on campus (the majority of students are underage for drinking, but the local papers seem intent on focusing bar and beer ads on students as, after all, we are talking responsibility not to the community, but to advertising revenues as the defining force in modern Journalism) or just the fact that the notion of "best and brightest" does not seem to apply to admission standards at most universities anymore, which are run as for-profit corporations, where often the administration’s #1 job is fundraising, not standards-raising, it is a sad commentary on the quality of people in general, not just the specific students who cannot seem to make the distinction between "party" and "vandalism".

Don’t even get me started on the subculture that celebrates drunken date rape as a rite of male passage. You don’t want to hear that. I hope the Daily Athenaeum (The DA is the student newspaper at West Virginia University) takes a stand in this area and at least shows an allegience to higher principles than revnues from bars and endless "editorials" about the upcoming football season. (Idea for new Coors ad: "I like…burning peoples’ cars…thowin’ up in bars…and twins!")

This endeth the sermon. (Yes, it is noted with no irony that I am an ordained minister.)

On a brighter note, sat with Tag at Books A Million yesterday and we discussed his upcoming book, his trip to New York, and the preliminary work I am doing towards my next book.

Also noted: No sound out of Maggie in several days, wonder how she’s doing…I miss her.

Haven’t checked email yet this morning, hope it is good stuff and not just the recent rash of spam.