David Bromige, R.I.P.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

A fine poet and an old friend, passed away yesterday in Sebastopol at 75.



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http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article...=David-Bromige


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Call name. Stop. On the Avon, a swan; in Cleveland, a river of fire.

Cowabunga. Call me Stop. Fog-on-the-Avon causes genuflection.

Cried for you Stop. Learned to think like X but still felt like ABC, forbears and forbards, funny hats.

Weep Stop. The mote might be removed in the form of a letter or more heavy breathing. The ash from a J perhaps.

In the corner, a secret. The weather is changing. There is nothing to laugh at. Roll the Sucrets to the front part of the mouth.

Address stuff to author's office. Move to Suffolk or Sussex? The circle is buckled. Ride Brighton Line or Soul Train? Stick toilet on wall, next to telephone. Part agent and part pencil, partly at once, writing backwards to erase last trace of locquaciousness.

Listen Stop. Where the river rises it gets visibly physical. Hear it's difficult to stop the bubbling. Here's a present, eye to eye. La! Allover tan? Passe! Venereal past, fast approaching.

Crying to myself because I almost died in Switzerland, figured in a romance with a lyricist, fussed over the blue clothing we affected, dressed up like chickens and went to the movies. Ate at the Israeli-Japanese restaurant So-Su-Mi. Saw Devil at that resort. He read palm for a trifle over dessert. I must never name the real trouble.

Must never say the word Desert.

Must only mention others' feelings.

Must always belittle same.

Let these rules repeat.

Must sleep in the entry-way to the fort, compare the Avon to a silver snake, must avenge in this sleep. Repetition of known facts pays.

Born in a particular hotel. Had to be quiet between 1300 and 1500 hours. Mulled things over nonetheless, and when required to speak, spoke well and to the point. Later, graduated to Pompous Old Fart, claimed this was a New Direction, was buried with his money, by then considerable. Sexy story.

[Pete C]

Sorry to hear this. I didn't know him, but he was a friend and collaborator of Opal L. Nations, whom we discussed before.

[rollhead]

Steve,

Sorry that you lost an old friend. Always a blow.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

There is nothing ambiguous about our double entendres... The poet, having no identity is continually informing and filling some other body, and who isn’t a poet, if by that this case means scorned, spurned, feverish, headed for death, name writ on water, way with words, incapable of not noticing all this and more upon occasion?

-- from Typicality Enthralls with its Particular Failures

°°°°°



Laying the Word



It wasn’t the Return of the Great Mother

it wasn’t the Return of the Repressed,

nor being born again, nor was it yet

the Pure Experience of Otherness,

you laid the word on me & I responded,

I laid my hands on you & I had no defense.



Now what to call it, in our need,

this relationship we’ve launched,

this mutual agreement to be broken

open, this mystery that lifts us,

love, – if none of these suffice

they’ll do, they’ll say what I wants of you.


°°°°°°


It all, he informs us, rests firmly on the edge of oblivion. Living on, we will not see his face again. I don’t want to see what I shall never again see. I want to rest. That’s why it all has to look permanent. He hasn’t found rest, rest is a sentient occasion. He is permanent. I can alter his significance with every sentence.

-- from Tight Corners and What's Around Them

[David Gitin]

Sorry to learn this... I knew him for more than 40 years.... brought him to Monterey to give a reading... last ran into him at a memorial reading for Creeley in Petaluma...