City of Legends

Barbara Holmes, known to the crew who used to populate the legendary Writers Club hangout on America Online (named by Wired Magazine as one of the best places for cybersex) was ringmaster, interviewer and host for various online chats and rooms within that hallowed space that sheltered and embraced such authors as Margaret Moseley, Harlan Coben, Tom Clancy and John Gilstrap.  She was the editor of my Top Ten Lists that were archived there (over 500 of them) and interviewed me more than once for online chats, along with many, many other authors (some of whom I just mentioned).  This is not her first interview for publication with me, and I hope it won’t be her last.

The interview was conducted over the past two weeks, online.

Call Him, William
By Barbara Holmes (TwisterB/Twist) with William F. DeVault (WFDV)

We met in an old AOL Writers Club chat room back in the late 1990’s.  Amidst the groups collective sat me, a fledgling interviewer and humor writer, he a poet and writer of fiery wit and personality.  I dare say neither were surprised at our first offline meeting.  We were what we were, exactly as presented online, honest and forthright.   Screen names and nicknames, yes, but no phony personas, no make believe life stories.  In one word:  Real.

Eight years ago I asked “But why poetry…?”  He answered “Poetry is not a decision, it is a disease.”   As the poet has grown, so has his abundance of work.  Still one of the most prolific poets on the internet, if not “the most”, William F. DeVault continues to captivate us with an absorbing anthology of words.  The result is a personal Everest, a legacy.  One which, I no doubt, in our first interview he only fantasized.  So, how long will he be able to maintain this frenzied pursuit; one can only chance a guess.   For our sakes, if the fates rain kindly on this ever-growing garden, we will indeed be blessed. 

Long live the disease of poetry.

Barbara:  You’ve recently made an enormous change to your website, integrating your original website with your blog. Why?

William:  It was actually on the advice of my ex (Aubergine), who was very high on the power of WordPress.  She had converted her blog to it, and suggested converting my blog to it and raising its profile, its visibility, somewhere along the way it became the front-end to my site.
One of the reasons for the emergence of www.williamfdevault.com.  It is going to take over the heavy lifting of displayed poetry, the City of Legends blog will remain a blog.

B:   Has it changed the way you relate with your fanbase?

W:  It has not seemed to have a major change, except it is easier for fans to leave comments. Which they rarely do…as they are disused to the idea.  Most often my comments are hellos from old friends or hatchet jobs from someone with an axe to grind and bad information.

B:   You’re a poet, what axes would there be to grind?

W:  Good question.  Actually, over the years I have made more than one less-than-admirer for my stance on the status of poetry as an art form, my opinions expressed (sociologically, theologically or politically) and the gravity of my romantic works.  I will give you an illustration:  In high school I was once administered a beating by a young man whose girlfriend had a crush on me because of my works (I didn’t even know her).  I have gotten in the face of more than one other writer or editor in my life, and I have a sharp tongue.  I have had ex-girlfriends call me and tell me that their new boyfriends/husbands know nothing of me and please to keep it that way, or confess they lied to me about their relationship status, when we were involved, to me and that their boyfriend/husband has just found out and is not happy with me.  I can’t go into more details without breaking confidences, but I am far less evil than gullible.  Which I guess, in its own way, is a harder confession to make about oneself.

B:   Between the years of 1995 and 1997 your writing exploded with the Goldenheart Cycles, the Panther Cycles, the Great Cycle to the Goddess of Fire and Poetry and hundreds of other works. How do you think this compares to the more recent upsurge in your works?

W:  I have actually been thinking about this.  I view it as one of three distinct "explosions" of work (the Panther-Goldenheart era).  The first was the early-mid seventies, with a lot of those works filtered now by time so that only the cream survives. The Second Era (the Panther-Goldenheart era) has just started getting the filtration, but in large part because of my insistence of the retention of the integrity of the cycles, there has been little elimination of lesser works.  The most recent era was kicked off by the podcasting and recording I began around 2006, but also as part of a delayed healing process from my second divorce. It reached a fever pitch during the Aubergine courtship, then the death spiral of that relationship played out in poetics, which had integrity, but is interesting now to go back and read.

B:  It’s been 13 years since the writing of the first Panther Cycle.  Where do these poems fit into your legacy?

W:  The Panther Cycles are a monolith.  They are a block of work that does not cap, but cornerstones a whole section of my works.  There are some extraordinary works in amongst those 600 and some odd works, including my first work with villanelles.

B:  How can they be compared to your present works? Or can they?

W:  I think the Panther Cycles are a little less sophisticated, structurally, than the more recent works, but there are certainly some moments in there that are as good as anything I have or ever will do.  The recent works are more evolved, more thoughtful, more earnest, but neither era can claim primacy in my catalog.

B:  Do you ever have the urge to add to any of these previous Cycles? Situations or settings that trigger a memory…

W:  Not really the Panther Cycles, although I did write a few poems over the years as a follow up when situations demanded it, like when the Panther broke a promise to me.  I am far from perfect and have made more than my share of blunders, but I have never held much with people who live for each re-invention with a disdain for what made them who they are and brought them to their change.  I believe in the human capacity for growth and change, but not at the cost of the truth.  There have been a few works, but not enough to tamper with the framework that is the ‘Cycles.

B:  The bond you had with your daughter, Peri, developed numerous fractures which began during the Panther era. Why was this particular cycle of work so crucial in the relationship’s demise?

W:  I think the evidence of my involvement serves as sort of a slap in the face to her mother, upon whom the dissolution of my marriage to her the affair rested, and that leaves a festering wound, for both of us.  The funny thing is, she now manages a bookstore in Los Angeles.  I have not sought, nor will I seek, to have my books sold through her chain, for the very reason I don’t want that aggravation in her face every day.

B:  Yes, the Panther Cycles would be bit of an irritation but why not your other works?  Don’t you think she would be proud to show off her father’s work?

W:  Ours has always been a complex relationship and reality.  I believe she sees me in a less sterling light than perhaps she did when she was younger.  Even I am not aware of all the perspectives and perceptions that have gone into our dissembling relationship.  I am hopeful we shall patch it up, but I know that there are some wounds that, no matter how skillful the surgeon, there will still be a scar and a memory.  You also must recall she had to endure my second wife, who was very jealous of her and did her own share of hand-grenade lobbing into the chaos.

B:  Did it affect your sons as well or just Peri?

W:  Yes, to a much lesser extent.  Elric and Dante did not have the pre-existing depth of relationship with me when the divorce and exile to LA came.  There was no real sense of losing their best friend, not on the scale of Peri and I, who were best friends for many years.  In some ways I think what really hammered the issues between Peri and I were not the Panther events, but the events in my second marriage.  My second wife was very jealous of how close I was with Peri and on more than one occasion I was forced to publicly give Peri the back seat.  That hurt, I know, and I wish there was a way to make it up to her.

B:  We’ve spoken for years of your need to return to Los Angeles.  Do you see yourself there in the near future?

W:  I had hoped to return to stay later this year, but it is now looking more like sometime next year.

B:  What necessitates this desire for LA?

W:  It feels like home to me.  It is where I want to live out my life, where I want to die.

B:  Why do you feel such a strong urge to go back?

W:  It’s funny, I almost feel like a salmon, justifying his need to swim upstream at spawning time.  It is a primal thing, I am only aware of it as a drive within me.  I am at peace there, and peace eludes me.

B:  I know you’ve not been feeling 100% in the past few months.  Has anything else reared its ugly head to stall your departure?

W:  Well, aside from nearly dying of food poisoning and having my heart brutally plucked from my chest, no, all is as it should be.  Ha!
The food poisoning I acquired while visiting my daughter in Los Angeles left me hampered to a degree I would not have predicted, the side effects were staggering (and, no longer being a teenager, my powers of recovery are not as potent as they once were). 
And, as you as well as anyone knows, I am driven by the champion vector of my personality.  Losing Aubergine as a focal point for my energies stripped me of my vector, I became depressed and bored and boring, a laser beam became a series of small, smouldering brush fires that had no purpose or path.  It has taken all I have, all the coping mechanisms and techniques for my own emotional and intellectual self-manipulation I have developed and learned over the last several decades just to rise to my feet.  My energy levels were and are depleted.  I am in recovery, emotionally, spiritually and intellectually.
And, as with all such actions, reality plays its role.  The logistics of the move, my sons, my aging parents, my grandmother (who just turned 97 and is fading) all play into the timing.  As much as I like to tell myself I am immune to the fates, the truth is I am always at their whim.

B:  You and I have had stimulating discussions on the subject of Muses, and your oft times dependence on them to write.  Who was your most recent Muse?

W:  In the absence of a dominating muse, such as the Panther or Aubergine, I am reacting to moments and minutes, so there are many muses in the sky at this time.  I foreswore the use of the totems, last winter, and am now evaluating going back to them.  I don’t honestly know what is next or who is next or where my soul is at this time.

B:  What work did they inspire you to write?

W:  Readers should look at the last two or three months of Amomancer (http://amomancer.blogspot.com) for some of the new inspirations and works.

B:  Who would be perceived as your greatest Muse?

W:  Wow.  The natural, safe answer would be the Panther, but you have to realize that she makes up only a tiny percentage of my works, and not the best works.  If I died tomorrow, Aubergine would end up with the crown, owing to the recency of her regency.  "More than Gods can comprehend", "Aubergine", “ the entirety of the book "As such…" and the works that frame the end of that age of grace, all are so powerful.  Who knows what happens tomorrow?

B:  Who is “Aubergine” that she deserves this lofty state of regency?

W:  Remind me to set boundaries next time.  (Scowl)  She was a friend, a writer, whom I had a crush on for some time, mostly because of the power of her writing, there was an earnest, raw energy to it, and I admired her greatly.  I can’t go much more into that without dragging her fully into the fray.  The relationship evolved unexpectedly, intensified at a speed and on a curve that would astound a hurricane forecaster, then fell apart under its own intensity mere days after my last book came out (some cynic pointed out that women tend to wait to leave me until after their book comes out, but the Panther was 9 years gone from my bed when "The Compleat Panther Cycles" came out!)  [Note: The interviewer is not the aforementioned “cynic.”]
In four years, she was the first person to say and do the right things to get around the walls I had put up.  I had not really given myself in some time (by the way, celibacy is a bitch) and I threw myself into the relationship with the blind emotional vigor of a teenager.

B:  What caused this fall from grace?

W:  I have my own theories, and have had many (some who have no knowledge of what transpired or was said within the relationship) present theirs.  In the end, even if there were sworn testimony of a thousand angels, I would probably still not know all, and I was privy to most things. 
I think it was the old Rita Hayworth trap.  She once said that men "go to bed with Gilda" (perhaps her most famous role) but wake up with her.  Over the years a lot of women have fallen in love with the poetry, ironically enough it is often works written to another, but then can’t find room for the third dimension when I am off the page and in their lives.  No shame to them.  I am not an easy person to love, in the real world.  I am mercurial, literal, intense, sexual and can be slow on the uptake (dropping clues on me is usually wasted, use anvils and shout a lot, that works better).  I shoulder my failures.

B:  In recent years you’ve become more politically active, with such works as "Darfur (Jesus Wept)" and "An American Father".  Is this an evolution in your conscience or just a side ultimately being revealed?

W:  I have always been politically active, but have kept that largely out of my poetry. I am a liberal pacifist feminist Democrat.  Tom Clancy calls me an anarchist.

B:  You’ve graduated from exclusively written prose to recording your work. Why now, why do you feel your work needs a voice?

W:  It adds a dimension, and it records how I perceive a work should be read.  I fell into it, after reading an article on podcasting.  Now we have five CDs and a 24/7 internet radio station at Live365.com

B:  You have also stated these recording take an enormous toll on you so why not another voice, why yours?

W:  It would be disingenuous to give the job to someone else.  These are my words, my thoughts, my soul.  No one else can speak for me, I wouldn’t want them to.

B:  Undoubtedly, you’ve heard other people read your work.  Weren’t you satisfied with their readings or do you just feel you give a better presentation?

W:  Better?  Not so much, but more accurate to my intention.  As an example, there’s a band in North Carolina named "johnnydirtyshoes" that did a reading of my poem "Darfur" at a fundraiser for "Doctors Without Borders".  You can see it on YouTube.  The reading is technically fine, but the nuance isn’t my nuance.  Writers write for several reasons, but part of my motive is to be understood. 

B:  You’ve spoken a few times of the CDs’ “band”.  It has a synthesized ring to it so who or what is this band?

W:  Mostly it’s just me, with Garage Band on my Mac.  I have had a few quest musicians and vocalists contribute, notably Alan MacDonald, Kevin Bond and The Selke.  I manufactured a second face for the band’s lead guitarist, Izzy Durden, when Izzy is me on the synthesizer, indulging my love of the film "Fight Club" and the notion that no one would imagine me as a wild-man guitarist. "Is he (Tyler) Durden?"

B:  The "Evangelist" is your fifth CD in three years.  How does this differ from the others and what is the symbolism behind the name and cover?

W:  It has some cuts from the previous CDs.  Aubergine had suggested a "Greatest Hits" compilation, so I met her halfway.  The cover is a woodcut of Paul on the road to Damascus, struck blind by his confrontation with Jesus.  I added the blood effects to intensify the look and contrast.  The symbolism is that the "Damascus Road" moments we have, when we think we have been transformed by our finding love, are real, but only within a frame of reference.  It took me months to recover from the break-up with Aubergine, and the CD kept changing form…finally I realized I needed to make a testament to love itself.

B:  Which of your books are you the most proud of, so far?

W:  Pride is a tough emotion for me, they are all flawed.  I have to admit a certain awe for "The Compleat Panther Cycles" though.

B:  Which of your CDs?

W:  "Evangelist".  It is honest, earnest and true, and it brings together a spectrum of my works and styles.

B:  Which do you feel exemplifies your work?

W:  Books?  "Ronin in the Temple of Aphrodite".  CDs?  "Evangelist".

B:  Which process satisfies the real Amomancer? The writing?  The readings?  The recordings?

W:  None of it.  The writings are necessary as my adaptive mechanism for life.  The readings became a tool for interfacing with my public, meeting new people and selling books (plus, when I press for it, I can make more money on a single night’s reading than in a month of book sales, plus sell some books and CDs).  The recordings?   Damn, I don’t know why I am doing that except that I can.  People seem to like it and I have some fun doing it.
I am not satisfied with anything.  I sometimes wonder if it is possible for me to be satisfied.  Hell, I sometimes wonder if it is possible for me to be in love, that maybe this whole tapestry has been an illusion, played to random chance or otherworldly amusement.

B:  An interesting personage you noted on your “who influenced me” blog list was “Dangerous Liaisons”, Viscount Valmont.  This character was exceedingly egotistical, a tremendous womanizer not to mention emotionally abusive.  How and why do you feel this type of personality influences the growth of your own moral fiber?

W:  Valmont discovered his conscience through love and did the right thing in the end.  I have never been the kind of man he was in the beginning of the story, although I have seen that beneath the surface.  When he saw the monster he was, he gave himself up, and gave others the power to see the truth.  I’ve spent too much of my life working with people who have been abused, trying to help them get their lives together.  If I ever thought I was Valmont, the monster, I would have to take myself out.  I lack his ego, his skill with women and his hollowness, ethically.

B:  The list also contained many individuals who could be classified as “Heroes”.  Do you see yourself in this light?

W:  I have my moments.  I want to do the right thing, which is sometimes clouded by the arrogance of life and the nature of the world.  I think if I was truly free to speak all truths I know, the world would see me in a gentler light, for sure.  I have a certain stripe of the heroic bent, the sort of kid who burns himself pulling moths away from the fire.

B:  You had the chance to “speak the truths” in your book. Why haven’t you finished it?

W:  Many times I am constrained by the "Dragnet" clause.  "Names have been changed to protect the innocent".  There are things I cannot say because they would hurt others, but at the same time there is the compulsion to speak the truth, so I let myself come as close as possible, sometimes even destroying works before they are published, as I find they will reveal something that hurts another.  Sometimes I don’t realize I have crossed a line until after I have crossed it (I said I can be dense).  Those are moments of great moral conflict and true horror.
I presume by "your book" you are speaking of the body of my works?  Or of my discarded memoir?  The memoir was discarded as I realized it would destroy so many sandcastles out there, and I am trying not to reveal myself at the expense of others, especially those who may be criticized or attacked merely for human failings.
You know, of all the people who have wounded me in this life, Aubergine was the only one who apologized in or after the act of my evisceration.  Perhaps that is part of her special place in my memory and tapestry.  She demonstrated that she has a soul.
But to the question:  Truth is never complete, where humans are concerned.

B:   If you died today, what happens to the hundreds, even thousands, of works you claim to have never released previously?

W:  My children gain control of them.  My brother has the master password to unlock the virtual vault I keep them in.  What happens to them after that is of no concern to me.

B:  What would you like your legacy to be?

W:  He wrote well and championed the couer rage to love.

B:  On your headstone, help me etch the testament: "William F. DeVault ….

W:  "We don’t know where his body lies, but let this be where those who would curse or praise his memory come to express what they perceive as true.  May love free us all from madness."
 

My thanks to Barbara Holmes for this interview.

Back in the day, when I was a humour columnist for AOL’s Writers Club, they used to post my extemporaneous "Top Ten Lists" (Yes, I ripped the concept off of David Letterman, always steal from the best. Right, Mr. Gates?). They had over 500 of them posted when the WC shut down. Having recently gotten back together with a few of the old crew, I felt nostalgic…

So here are the Top Ten Alternate (and Discarded) Titles for my reading tour, Evangelist, later this summer.

10. Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me

9. As such, a schmuck

8. Love Poems to Whom It May Concern

7. Bored to the Bone

6. Geritol and Absinthe

5. 35 years of screwing up, revisited

4. Captain McSqueak and the all-mouse orchestra

3. Next!

2. Last of the Red Hot Losers

and the #1 alternate title for this Summer’s "Evangelist" Tour:

1. Cuckold Shooting Gallery

Thank you for that tepid applause. Had to break the mood, you know.

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.

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.

Alive. yep, still alive. good start.

Interland finally got email back up, but I note a 10-12 hour window of no new emails, which tells me it was really a network failure…hope nobody important tried to reach me by email yesterday evening, because if they did, we are both screwed.

Hung with the WC crowd on AOL last night again…a few of the ancient ones are there, people I have known for a decade. Good to have that anchor.

Did a little polish to the P’cycles last night…still debating a couple of editorial policies…there’s a couple of pieces that are definitely "filler" and I am tempted to drop them in an attempt to elevate the overall quality. It is actually a thornier, weightier issue than you might think.