Top Ten Alternate Tour Titles
Posted by William F. DeVault | Filed under Evangelist Tour, Humour
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.
Identity Issues
Posted by William F. DeVault | Filed under Dante, Elric, Journal, Muses, Peri, Poetry, Thoughts about Life, West Virginia
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.
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.
Monday Mornings and Sunday Nights
Posted by William F. DeVault | Filed under Journal, The Compleat Panther Cycles
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.
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