Re: Ray Bremser

Will Dockery wrote:
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Zod wrote:

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On Wednesday, March 4, 2015 at 8:13:47 PM UTC-5, George Dance wrote:

On Wednesday, March 4, 2015 at 11:22:35 AM UTC-5, Will Dockery wrote:

On Sunday, March 1, 2015 at 9:17:24 AM UTC-5, George Dance wrote:

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Today on The Penny Blog:
If Winter Remain, by Clark Ashton Smith
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Hateful, and most abhorred,
about us the season
of sleet, of snow and of frost
reaches, and seems unending
as plains whereon
lashed prisoners go
[...]
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http://gdancesbetty.blogspot.ca/2015/02/if-winter-remain-clark-ashton-smith.html

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Aha, I remember Clark Ashton Smith from my later childhood

days, when I was steeped in Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E.
Howard, Baudelaire and Rimbaud, the Cthulu Mythos, and all the lurching
shambling horrors that went with it. Great stuff, and very influential
on the Shadowville scene.

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Here's a groovy quote from C.A.S.
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"The nostalgia of things unknown, of lands forgotten or

unfound, is upon me at times. Often I long for the gleam of yellow suns
upon terraces of translucent azure marble, mocking the windless waters
of lakes unfathomably calm; for lost, legendary palaces of serpentine,
silver and ebony, whose columns are green stalactites; for the pillars
of fallen temples, standing in the vast purpureal sunset of a land of
lost and marvellous romance. I sigh for the dark-green depths of cedar
forests, through whose fantastically woven boughs, one sees at intervals
an unknown tropic ocean, like gleams of blue diamond; for isles of palm
and coral, that fret an amber morning, somewhere beyond Cathay or
Taprobane; for the strange and hidden cities of the desert, with burning
brazen domes and slender pinnacles of gold and copper, that pierce a
heaven of heated lazuli."

-Clark Ashton Smith, "Nostalgia of the Unknown"

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I'm glad you know of that tradition (which I didn't until I

started working on PPP). I wonder if Michael does, since it's the one he
actually works within. It's a shame, really; if it weren't for the
Mickey Mouse Act of 1998, all their works would be public domain by now,
and everyone would probably be well aware of them; but nowadays one
won't find any of their poetry without digging for it.

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When I was publishing "Penny Dreadful," I corresponded with a

lot fellow

writers with similar tastes (most of them living in England);

and was a member > of The Doppelganger Society which published a
broadsheet that focused on horror > and fantasy writings from that
period.

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Sorry if I was unclear. I'm sure you know a lot more about the

Cthulu writers' horror fiction than I do. And I'm sure that nearly every
reader has at least heard of it. I was referring to their poetry: I'd
had no idea that Smith, Lovecraft, Howard, and Frank Belknap Long all
wrote Romantic/Gothic poetry, too; that's the part I fear may be being
forgotten. I've never read a word in any poetry texts or anthologies
that I've read (mind you, that's true of a number of top-notch poets,
like Vachel Lindsay and Alfred Noyes, as well). As far as academia is
concerned, their poetry never existed. And, due to the absurd U.S.
copyright term, the Internet can't be counted on to fill the vacuum,
either.

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I'm familiar with some of Lovecraft's poetry, but nothing by Smith

or the others. It would be great if you could put some more of them on
TPB..

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I'll start searching those authors today; thanks for the leads.
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I can use some poetry by Lovecraft, since he died in 1937, which

makes all the work he published in his lifetime in the public domain in
Canada.. Unfortunately, though, like Howard his poetry doesn't seem to
have been collected in book form until the mid-1950s, which makes it all
under copyright in the U.S. for at least another 30 years.

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On the bright side, his fans haven't let that stop them from putting

it on the Net, and the copyright holders seem to be lax about having it
taken down. There are a lot of sites that have printed Lovecraft's
poetry, of which this one looks like the most comprehensive

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http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/#poetry

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Yes, the fans of H.P. Lovecraft are, oddly, similar to those of the

Grateful Dead, and the copyright holders seem to have similar stances as
far as letting the material be presented on the fan sites, et cetera...
the slightly harder to find works, and in the case of the Dead, almost
every performance has been recorded in some form or another.

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I changed the subject header, BTW, in the hope of making the Lovecraft
links easier to find in a search later.

Another poet I've been reading, actually pointed out to be by Lisa

Scarboro from her "Poratble Beat" volume is the very obscure Beatnik
poet Ray Bremser, who pretty much began and ended his poetry career with
one 1965 small press chapbook:

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anyway, funk is when
thelonious monk peeps
above the bamboo shades
to see the piana setting there,
bald and bold ... monk looks at it,
while the bass run and the drummer
bugs him with the cymbal ... 6 days sleepless ...
monk looks ... perfectly zonked and
loafing on the stool ... he looks
and looks
and the bass and drummer meet
like flys making it on the mid-air,
attracting, (at least,) the ears
of monk, who lifts his hands
and lets them fall on the keys in
commentary; with whut's funk.
-Ray Bremser
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Read more at:
http://www.blacklistedjournalist.com/column74g.html
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[POEMS OF MADNESS was originally published in 1965 by PAPER BOOK

GALLERY and reprinted by WATER ROW PRESS, PO Box 438, Sudbury, MA 01776.
These excerpts from POEMS OF MADNESS appears here with the permission of
Jeffrey Weinberg, publisher of WATER ROW PRESS and literary executor of
the poet's estate.]

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Bremser
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"Ray Bremser (February 22, 1934 - November 3, 1998) was an American

poet. Bremser was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. He began writing
poetry there and sent copies to Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and LeRoi
Jones (Imamu Amear Baraka), who published his poems in 'Yugen' and threw
a big party for him when he got out of jail in 1958..."
Thanks for the leads. I've added Bremser into PPP, using the wiki
article, and adding a few links (including the one to the above book)
and a video.. I compiled a new bibliography: turns out he published at
least 6 books, right up to his death in the late 90s. As a bonus, I even
found (and referenced) a mention of him in a Dylan poem:
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http://pennyspoetry.wikia.com/wiki/Ray_Bremser

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Quite interesting back story....!!

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Good morning, Zod, great to see you again.

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And Tally Ho to you as well, old pal....!