City of Legends / William F. DeVault

Okay, follow along as best you can and watch yourself on the chord changes…

Busy evening…

#1: This week’s show is UP. Check it out on Apple’s iTunes Music Store -or- visit The City of Legends Radio page.

#2: Visited B&N to see about the open microphone event. Tag unveiled his book and I got to meet Cheryl Denise, the completely charming poet/author of "I Saw God Dancing". I am going to book her into my podcast in the coming weeks…count on it. I read "Damascus III", "The Darker Angels" and "Cithara Song, strummed lightly as the sun leaps the horizon"…hey, Alisha, everyone loves that poem, you should be proud that you inspired it.

#3: Wrote some more works, but I won’t post any right now…busy getting wound up for the signing on Saturday, getting psychotic. No, really…don’t get in my face.

I got the boss to answer a few questions that I submitted, half jokingly…I didn’t expect answers, but after he did answer them he did give me permission to publish them, so…here goes.

E.J.: Okay, what’s the thing you’re proudest of?
WFDV: Wow. Tough one. Probably my children. There are days I wouldn’t bother taking my first breath if they weren’t in the world.

E.J.: Your greatest disappointment?
WFDV: More of a disillusionment - that the success of a relationship rarely has anything to do with the sacrifices you make for it. A hot and bitter drink that is to swallow.

E.J.: Living author you admire most?
WFDV: Aside from myself? Hmmm…you had to make it living? Cecil Adams, who does the "Straight Dope" columns. I learn from him and he amuses me. "Behold the snow. It fornicates" Still cracks me up every time I think of it.

E.J.: One thing you’ve read and said "I wish I’d written that?"
WFDV: "The Gitanjali" by Rabindranath Tagore. Yeats wrote a foreword. It won the Nobel for Literature. It is amazing.

E.J.: One thing you’ve written you wish you could unwrite?
WFDV: Ha! I knew this was a trap! Trying to get me in trouble again, hm? Well, Mr. Smarty Pants, let me tell you…I may not like the poem "Weaver"…I may find it lame, amateurish and insipid. But…it has got me laid. So, I can’t count it anymore. Hmmmmm….er…"The Strings of Pearl" as it turned out that muse was a ruse. I hate wasting intellectual and emotional energy on a con.

E.J.: If you could control who or what your next muse would be like, what would you build?
WFDV: Wow, dangerous question. I guess I would love to fall in love with a woman who comes from a different culture than I, perhaps China or Japan, maybe Eastern Europe. Even Russian. It would add to the breadth of the relationship, it would make it more of a learning experience. I’d also like to see someone tackle translating some of my works into other languages. I know it is only a matter of time, but I’d love to see it now, so I can see how it goes.

E.J.: The three people you miss most, every day?
WFDV: Too easy. My daughter, Peri. Then Brigit. Then Alisha. I never learned the knack for making close friends with men, so my daughter, then my lovers, have always been my closest friends.

E.J.: If I gave you one wish, what would you wish for?
WFDV: A means to an end. For one of my books to take off like a rocket and be sold for a movie adaptation. The money from that could fix a lot of mistakes I’ve made.

E.J.: Which book?
WFDV: Well, at this time it would have to be THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES, as it tells a story…but give me a few months. I was actually working on a children’s book a few months ago, but it got so depressing, owing to my estrangement from my daughter…I just couldn’t do it. I was becoming suicidal just editing it.

E.J.: Whjo would you want to play you in the movie?
WFDV: William L. Petersen, been a huge admirer of his work since Manhunter and To Live and Die in LA. He’s got the gravitas, although he is better looking than me. Don’t ask about the other roles.

E.J.: Regrets?
WFDV: Not making things right with certain people in my life. Getting blindsided by duplicitous people…not for the pride, but because it then kept and keeps me from doing more than I can.

E.J.: Epitaph?
WFDV: He cared. He dared. He did.

There ya go, people…his next two books of poetry, to my knowledge, also do not have a story line…so I have little idea what he is intimating about another "concept" book. We shall see.

My guess is he is storing up a lot of emotional energy for his next muse and plans to make her the "breakwater" muse…the one that pushes the past back to where it belongs. He’s ragged, but raging.

I slipped over into the page the poet calls "Radio City of Legends" and listened, as dispassionately as I could, to the contents.

Here’s my breakdown:

The Show:
So far, he has two sessions: Dec 3 with Dave Taub and Dec 10 with Larry Jaffe. The former is a bit longer, and has some nice touches, including the poet deconstructing his poem "from out of the city" from whence these programs (available not only at City of Legends Radio, but also at the iTunes musci store under Podcasts) got their name. It, unfortunately, lacks interactivity, and I would’ve liked a clearer recording of Dave Taub. The latter show, with Larry Jaffe, is a bit shorter, with some interaction between the poets, and features some great works by Jaffe, as well as a single, short reading from DeVault.

The Books:
He talks about the evolution of five of his eight books, notably absent are "PanthEon", "from out of the city" and "101 Great Love Poems". For the others he gives us insight and some nice readings of selected works from each. My favorite? "Love Gods of a Forgotten Religion" just to hear him read "Reborn" without tripping over his tongue. That poem is laced with so many verbal runs and alliterative monsters I am amazed it can be spoken aloud without one’s head exploding.

The Muses:
So far he has only profiled three: Psyche, The Goldenheart and Alisha. Despite the gravitas of the myth that is the Goldenheart, I preferred his session about Alisha. It is obvious he still has a bad case of her.

I’ll check back in later and talk about his singles, including "Glass Roses" and "Diogenes" and also the contributions made so far by Dan McTaggart and Nordette Adams.

Seven months ago (or so) I did a blog at AuthorsDen about a question someone had asked me about what my ten favourite things are. The list I gave was as follows (in random order):

1. KIssing
2. The sound of thunder
   
3. A woman, biting her lower lip.
   
4. The smell of bacon frying
   
5. Snow
   
6. Spooning
   
7. Nailing a moment in a poem
   
8. Pachabel’s Canon in D Minor
   
9. Making love
   
10. God

I was considering making a revision to the list, but upon second reading realized I couldn’t. Yes, there are hundreds of things that from moment to moment make their leap to the level of these ten, but to demote any of these? Get real!

1. Kissing is wonderful and wondrous, a way of being sexual without having to be sexual. The art of kissing, I think, has been lost. Well, in my recent experience. My second wife did not like to kiss (read into that what you must or will) and thus I have felt its absence in my life for about a decade. Best kisser I ever kissed? Wow, let’s stir that hornet’s nest…hmmm…Alisha. By a slim margin, and I won’t say over whom.
2. The sound of thunder is a relaxing sound to me. It puts me in my place in the universe and reminds me of being at home, in the confort of my room, listening to a late night thunderstorm.
3. A woman, biting her lower lip. I don’t know why, for sure, but this one facial expression hits me in several places at once and makes me totally melt. Ask any woman who has ever used it on me, intentionally or not.
4. The smell of bacon frying. Breakfast, first moments of wakefulness, home, camping, the promise of something yummy. All in a flash to the ancient brain. And yes, I like my bacon crisp.
5. Snow. God, but I love snow. I love to go outside after a snowstorm and lay in it in shorts and t-shirt. I love watching it fall. I love the way it sticks to my eyelashes and brushes my face, I like the way it covers a multitude of surface flaws.
6. Spooning. Yes. There you go. I am a cuddler. Before and after. When Brigit left, back in Venice Beach, I took to cradling a blanket in my arms and sleeping with my futon folded into the sofa configuration for the illusion of having someone next to me. If you don’t sleep more soundly in an embrace, you’re sleeping with the wrong person.
7. Nailing a moment in a poem. A real sense of accomplishment, when you have just written something you read it and it blows you away. After all these years, you’d think I’d be immune to that…not a chance.
8. Pachabel’s Canon in D Minor. Takes me back to college, and just the overall ethereal beauty of this piece is so perfect a tranquilizer, musically.
9. Making love. Don’t make me expain this. I draw strength from intimacy, one of the reasons I find myself in a fractured and depleted state at this time, lacking one of my core revitalization methods. I won’t bore you with the details.
10. God. I believe in God as much as I believe in anything else my senses tell me exists. God made me, but S/He made me who I am. When I write, I feel His/Her pleasure. And more than the love of a good woman, the approval of a friend or family member or the dollar signs on a royalty check, that’s all I really need to get through the day.
11. Oh, and E.J.? I noticed the change to the blog layout. I approve.

Okay, a brief note on the 261 format…people who’ve read my book "from an unexpetced quarter" ask me about it, and I just smile and make low growling noises…not too social, I know, but I get away with it because I am a poet.

Slight digression: Why does everyone always expect greater eccentricity from a creative soul?

Any the way…here’s the magic formula for a 261 form (I sometimes call them the "Alishan" form, as they were developed as tribute to Alisha, my muse.

Three stanzas. Don’t count meter…count syllables.

Each stanza has fives lines with this many syllables per line: 15/18/21/18/15. (this makes 261 syllables, total, hence the name)

Each stanza’s first line begins with a three-syllable phrase word that sets the tone for the stanza. I present an example below.

261: Dance away. The Imp Smiles. Weaving words.

Dance away. Spin the web and set traps for the soul, romantic
and riddled with passion, ripe to fall ito hands eagerly awaiting fate,
forced like sweet cider, pressed so hard from a fruit forbidden by a zealous, jealous God.
Delighting in the dark, surrender once hidden now held to consecrate,
consummate, liberate a sense of self esteem didatic.

The imp smiles. Knowing well the web spread will hold in cold carnage
the soul that would predate upon soft, innocent, essential will-o-wisp
that faux flirts with essence both heady and naive, ready to receive a nectar odd
and strange to senses spared the bitter ravishment of desire, charcoaled crisp
in ancient furnaces awakened by lover’s new couer rage.

Weaving words. Can my web make you fall into arms that have dared
to embrace the windswept worlds of pale goddesses far less the worthy to
take comfort in the dance of the Amomancer? I would uncover, arouse and prod
your noble heart to wake and to take of me my focused heat and to undo
the lessons of lessers, healing in our sealing fears, unscared.

William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

Note also the title is a recitation of the three stanza theme phrases/words.

Why don’t I use it more? 1: Alisha is not in my life at this time. 2: The lines get so long they are cumbersome for publication. The one published set of them in the aforementioned book got butchered by editing and line wraps. I don’t forgive easily.

That’s it for today, campers. Later!