Questions from a Chinese Scholar (Part 1.)Jack FoleyZhang Ziqing is a scholar whom I met a number of years ago in California. He teaches at the Institute of Foreign Literature, Nanjing University. He is writing a history of twentieth-century American poetry. This is a questionnaire he sent me along with my responses to it. Passages in italics are by Zhang Ziqing. Please give your reply under each of my questions. 1. Steven Hirsch writes of your performances, “These collaborative, multimedia poetry performances are both seminal and shamanic, evolving from the linguistic musical tradition of the original S.F.'Beat' poet/performers and extending that eye, ear and voice of penetrating clarity into a modern mythology....” [Heaven Bone (#11, 1994)] Could you explain the word "shamanic”a little bit? Does it mean “religiously fanatical”? Steven Hirsch's word “shamanic” doesn’t mean religiously fanatical. A shaman is “a medicine man; a person who works with the supernatural as both priest and doctor.” But, secularized, the word has come into use to describe certain kinds of poetry. The idea of the poet-priest (rather than the more traditional kind of “priest”) is an attractive one to many poets. To talk about the poet as a shaman is to connect the idea of the poet to the idea of the spiritual--and to ritual in general. It does not imply any specific religion or religious fanaticism. 2. I appreciate it when Pamela Grieman points out that “Foley’s poetry teems with multifarious voices, none of which take precedence. The poet doesn't privilege one particular voice or so much as hint at one specific meaning. There are multiple possibilities of meaning..." But I'm not convinced when she says, "The jumble of voices that inhabit "Chorus: Gershwin" speaks of night, sleep, frost, death, fire, sexual desire, and the creation of poetry, among other things...The possibilities and resonances are endless....” Could she support her argument about your "multifarious voices" with a list of things such as night, sleep, etc? (Pamela Grieman, “Touching Fire,” Poetry Flash, Oct. 1992) Could you send me some lines or some stanzas to illustrate your multifarious voices in this poem? I recently tried to explain to someone who was translating some of my work into Arabic what the nature of these choral pieces is. We usually think of a poem as the product of an “individual,” a single person--i.e., this is what “I” think. In my choral poems, however, the “I” keeps shifting. I told the translator to think of these poems as the product, not of a single person, but of a crowd of people in a room. The poem is “written” or “spoken” by the crowd rather than by any specific individual. The various “voices” in the poem keep shifting--though the poem is something like a single entity. It does not have “a” speaker but various different speakers--somewhat in the manner of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. The speakers of the poem constantly change. There are many passages which are quotations--written or spoken by other people; there are female speakers (“WHEN YOU TOUCH ME I'M ON FIRE”) as well as male speakers. One passage is taken entirely from A Short Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon Poetry in a Normalized Early West-Saxon Orthography. The person who remarks, “I don’t like people; I don't love my / neighbor…” is the actor Marlon Brando, though I don’t identify him specifically. The passage beginning, “Be good, O my Sorrow, calm down,” is my translation of a sonnet by the 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire. (Gershwin’s piece, An American in Paris is a kind of “translation” of certain kinds of French music.) There are also imitations of Gershwin’s rhythms in some places. I think Gershwin’s work--especially his symphonic work--is, like mine, an instance of the collision of many voices. It’s my feeling that we inhabit a multiplicity from which we are always fleeing towards simplistic formulations. “Gershwin” is not exactly a “portrait” of George Gershwin; it is an attempt to show, as the poem suggests, “not what the man ‘looked like’ / but what it felt like / when he was there.” As I write in the poem, I am “encountering another’s subjectivity”--Gershwin’s--“as [my] own.” This quotation from my poem, “Sweeney Adrift” (published in Adrift) suggests my position about the various “voices” and their relationship to one another. The passage in my poem is a version of a remark made by James Harkness in the introduction to his translation of Michel Foucault’s This is Not a Pipe:
Things are “CAST ADRIFT,” Is Gershwin the pop musician George Gershwin (1898-1937)? Yes, the composer, George Gershwin, for whom I feel a deep affinity. He appears in the poem at certain points, and the drawing which appears in the concluding pages of the poem is a drawing I did of him. The poem opens with passages from a book about George Gershwin: the section beginning, “It happened during the summer of 1919” and ending, “so unusual in the intervallic leaps of its melody” is taken from George Gershwin: His Journey to Greatness by David Ewen, though I presented Ewen’s prose in a deliberately fragmented way. When, at the end of the poem, I write,
There was a dead piano near [Gershwin]. He walked over to it, began to play. I am referring to the chord structure of one of George Gershwin’s most famous songs, “Summertime.” As I suggested in my answer to the previous question, the “I” of the poem is meant to be constantly in question. The opening line is, “It happened during the summer of 1919. I was then twelve.” The person speaking was born in 1907. Obviously, that couldn’t be me. Yet, as the poem is performed, “I” (Jack Foley) am speaking the line. And, like David Ewen, I am fascinated by American vaudeville, a medium in which my father performed as a tap dancer. Listening to a friend’s CD clarifies both my work and his. His CD is a constant assertion of the ego, the I. To be sure, it is a deliberately “weird” I, an outsider I, but an I all the same. My work begins with the strong conviction that such an I--whether “straight” or “weird”--is a falsehood, a misapprehension of experience. I think we exist as multiplicities, as a “field” of various interrelating, sometimes conflicting forces, and not as individual egos (I’s). For me, the idea of the individual I is fundamentally a political idea: one man, one vote; the rights of the individual. In that context, the I is real enough; but in the context of self-examination it is not. At the same time, however, my work has a strong push towards performance, which is often used (as I think your friend uses it) as an affirmation of the I. “Look at me now and here I am,” writes Gertrude Stein. The problem my work deals with is how to assert “performance” without also asserting the I. The use of multiple voices--and the idea of “music” as an expression of multiplicity--is one response to this problem. One of the questions that can be raised about the so-called “jazz poet” is whether the poet identifies himself with the soloist (or the solo instruments) or with the band as a whole, which is a group of interrelating “voices.” 3. I appreciate Michael McClure’s remark about you : “Foley is our firebrand experimentalist and he holds his torch high so the reader can have more light.” I’d like to quote from it. Please tell me its source (what journal or newspaper or backcover of your book). Michael wrote the remark as a blurb for my book, Adrift (Pantograph, 1993). 4. I like your funny poem “ELI, ELI.” What is “ELI, ELI”? Could you explain it? Here is the poem: ELI, ELIThe full phrase, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,” is from the Bible. I believe the language is Aramaic rather than Hebrew; it means “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (“Eli, Eli” = “My God, my God.”) Jesus says it when he is near death on the cross. (It’s the opening line of the 22nd Psalm.) Father O’Fondle identifies himself with Jesus (“You'll make love to me--and Jesus”) and that is part of the point. But, more importantly, God certainly seems to have “forsaken” this man. Do you play on the word “fondle” in your fiction of the name Father O'Fondle? Yes, I do. Calling him “O’Fondle” also suggests that he is Irish. (There are many Irish names which begin “O’--.” My own name was originally O’Foley.) It is extraordinary--and sad--how many of the priests who have been accused of these actions have been Irish.
In the line “There's a sweet and sacred band!” what do you mean by “band”? No, I don’t mean ejaculating--not at this point in the poem. The context of the word is I'll bring “God” to them and theirs“Band” here means simply “group of people.” I am referring to the various people (“They”) who Father O’Fondle believes will react positively to him. You may know that “wet dreams” are dreams involving involuntary ejaculation; I heard a good deal about them in my childhood from religious instructors and of course experienced them. Father O’Fondle believes that these people will see him as a helping figure when they have wet dreams. There is also the suggestion that his “helping hand” will cause them to ejaculate--that he will masturbate them. Father O’Fondle thinks of this group of people--this “band”--as his “disciples.” In the English language, the verb “to come”--in addition to its ordinary meaning--is a somewhat vulgar way of saying “to ejaculate.” (I believe it's a shortening of the phrase, “to come to a climax.”) When the word “come” in this sense appears in pornography, it is often spelled “cum,” rather than “come.” The Roman Catholic Latin Mass has a phrase which is repeated: “Dominus Vobiscum,” which means “The Lord be with you.” When Father O’Fondle asks, “Who put the ‘cum’ in ‘Vobiscum’?” he is playing upon this vulgar meaning and spelling of “come.” Later in the poem, when Father O’Fondle refers to his “Second Coming,” I am again playing on the sense of “coming” as ejaculation--as well of course on the religious meaning. Do you refer to some scandals about the Catholic fathers who abused children in the poem? Yes, I do. Remember the identification I mentioned above of the poet with the “priest.” And I had a Catholic childhood, though this sort of abuse by priests never happened to me. Are you an anti-theist since you've used some unpietistic words in the poem? Why did you write the poem? I am anti-theist in some ways, yes. I am attempting to think, to conceive of things, outside of the concept of “God.” Often people who think that they “don’t believe in God” believe in concepts which require the idea of God to ground them. Thus, whether they know it or not, they “believe in God.” I tried to deal with this concept to some extent in “Yes, Virginia, There is a Postmodernism,” which was published in my “Foley’s Books” column (see Archives, under my name). Father O’Fondle is clearly a very bad person--even a monster in some ways. And people-- understandably horrified--have been vilifying such priests. Yet--can we understand these priests in any way? Can we empathize with them to any extent? In the context of Catholicism, desire (including erotic desire) is to be directed towards Jesus--who is usually represented as a nearly naked man and who is referred to as the “son.” Mightn’t the figure of Jesus easily slip over into the image of the young boys whom the priest encounters--aren’t they also “sons”? Mightn’t the desire for Jesus become the desire for these young boys? I write, Father O’Fondle, troubled manFather O'Fondle is “troubled”; he needs “love” and is “under ban”--prevented from getting it. And he feels desire for the “Son”--which, as I say, might become desire for the “sons” of his parishioners. I wrote the poem for various reasons, but part of it surely was both to present Father O'Fondle as the monster he is while at the same time suggesting that there are nevertheless ways in which we may empathize with him. The last line, “Would I have done as you have done?” is a real question. In that context, operating under that set of conditions, would I--or anyone--have done as he did? There are, obviously, elements of parody in this poem; but to parody something is necessarily to empathize with it to one degree or another. 5. Dana Gioia comments, “… He takes the polyphonic forms of Pound and Eliot and pushes them into possibilities open only to performance-based art…” Dana Gioia has a high opinion of you in her introduction to your book. Is she a poet or critic or professor? Please give me the source of her comment (what journal or newspaper). Dana Gioia is a man, not a woman. (The name “Dana” can be used as either a man’s name or a woman’s. But you’re not the only person to be confused: Dana was once nominated to be “Woman of the Year”!) Dana wrote the comment as a blurb for my book, Adrift. Dana Gioia is a prominent poet and critic; he is not affiliated with any university, though he sometimes reads poetry and gives lectures at universities. He has recently been appointed chair of the NEA (the National Endowment for the Arts). He has a web site which includes a biography:
Do “the polyphonic forms of Pound and Eliot” refer to the different voices appearing in their poems, e.g., The Wasteland? Yes, and in Pound’s Cantos as well. The term “polyphony” is from Greek polyphonia, variety of tones, from polyphonos having many tones or voices, from poly- many + phone voice. The term I usually use in referring to my work, “multivoiced,” is the Latin equivalent to the Greek “polyphonic."” 6. In a review of O Powerful Western Star and Foley’s Books, San Francisco Chronicle Book Editor David Kipen points out, “Yet Foley is far too passionate about the power of poetry to write it off: ‘At the heart of Western poetry,’ he writes, ‘is a split, a confusion, a multimedia situation which is never resolved but which remains in a continual, and at times enormously creative, state of tension.’ These words, offered to describe the 'state of crisis' in writing, nicely describe Foley's book." Please give me the source of your remark quoted by David Kipen (what essay and journal). David Kipen did review my work in the San Francisco Chronicle (Thursday, April 13, 2000), but what you're quoting is not from Kipen’s article. The quotation comes from “A Poet's Passion Illuminates the Craft” by Jonathan Kirsch, an article which appeared in the Los Angeles Times (Wednesday, May 17, 2000). The quotation from my work is from “Light, Breath, and the Empty Page,” the Author’s Preface to O Powerful Western Star (p. 5). 7. I appreciate your reply to Dennis Morton in his interview with you: DM: What's the biggest mistake a poet can make?Please give me the source of the interview (what journal or newspaper). The article appeared in the Santa Cruz Sentinal, a local newspaper. The date I have is March 20th, 2002. I reprinted it in my “Foley’s Books” column, however, and you can reference that. You'll find it in the Archive section under “Two Questionnaires.” 8. In your poem “AN EPITHALAMIUM FOR MY SON SEAN AND HIS BRIDE, KERRY HOKE,” there is a line, “What does it mean to be one--that longing?” What does the line mean? Could I interpret it as “what does it mean to be the one who has sexual desire or a longing for sex?” Right? Not quite. I was fascinated by the fact that the words “one,” “only,” “alone,” “lone,” and “lonely” were all etymologically connected: they all mean to be “one.” (The etymology of the word “alone” is “all one.”) The “longing” I am speaking of in that passage is partly sexual, but only partly: it is the longing for another, the longing for a connection to other people; to a woman, yes, but also to a community. I see this sense of being “one”--and of desiring another--as the basis for love relationships of all kinds. Note the context of the line: What does it mean to be lonely?When was the poem written or published? This year? An “epithalamium” is a poem written upon the occasion of a marriage. I wrote the poem for my son Sean’s marriage to Kerry Hoke on July 16, 2002. Adelle and I performed the poem on that occasion. I’m the featured poet on the Michael McClure-Ray Manzarek web site: You can find the poem there. It’s the only place the poem has appeared. “Eli, Eli” appeared in the anthology, From Totems to Hip-Hop, edited by Ishmael Reed and published by Thunder’s Mouth Press (2003). Talking about sex with our children is a taboo subject in China. As a whole, your poem is philosophical. But do you feel any awkwardness when your son and daughter-in-law read lines about sex and sexuality in your poem for them? As their father, you'll have various kinds of advice for them. Why do you remind them of sex? A marriage is a socially-recognized situation in which reproduction can take place. (Reproduction can of course take place outside of marriage as well, but that is often socially vilified.) Sexuality is central to the idea of marriage. The very word “epithalamium” or “marriage poem,” as I explain at the beginning of my poem, is by etymology “on or upon the bedroom.” If I am going to write a “marriage poem,” I have to deal with sexuality. Yet the poem insists that sexuality is only one aspect of a deep loneliness which extends considerably beyond the specifics of sexuality and which turns into issues of selfhood: the search for the self“The task of pleasure” is a phrase referring to sexuality and to the creation of children (the creation of children is both a “pleasure” and a “task”). The poem asserts that the “search for the self / in the other” is one which constantly fails--but is nevertheless constantly undertaken. The point is that sexuality--important as it is--is part of a larger undertaking, a deeper search, a deeper longing which appears initiallyThe question the poem asks repeatedly is not “What is sexuality?” but “What does it mean to be lonely?” Sean and I are indeed able to talk to one another frankly about sexuality--he has asked my advice in various ways--but very little of that is in the poem. The way sexuality is dealt with in the poem is far from the kinds of specifics that one can find in almost any American movie. Why should I have felt awkward? 9. When and where did you graduate from? I did my undergraduate work at Cornell University and graduated from there with a BA in English in 1963. I minored in French literature. I did graduate work at UC Berkeley and received an MA in 1964. I stayed on at Berkeley pursuing a Ph.D. but in 1974 I finally dropped out before receiving it. 10. As for Cover to Cover on KPFA, could you tell me the meaning of “Cover”? Does it refer to the front cover of a book to its back cover? Yes, it does. There is an expression in English: “I read the book from cover to cover,” from the beginning to the end. 11. Could you give me the full name of KPFA? Who founded it in 1949? Is KPFA supported by Pacifica Foundation financially? You say you've worked for it for 11 years. When (what year) did you begin to work there? Do its staff members including you have any pay for part time work there? KPFA is a radio station: its call letters-or full name--is KPFA. I believe the “PFA” stands for “Pacifica.” It was founded by Lewis Hill. You can get information about it from its web site: I’ve worked there since 1988, so it’s now 15 years. I have always done programming associated with poetry. KPFA is part of the Pacifica Foundation, but it is not supported by the Pacifica Foundation. KPFA’s frequent fund drives are what keep it on the air: it is entirely listener supported. (We do not have any grants from corporations, etc., which National Public Radio does.) People who work at KPFA are divided into two classes: paid staff and unpaid staff (or “volunteers”). I have been part of the unpaid staff since I began to work there. 12. As a contributing editor of Poetry Flash, could you tell me who or what foundation supports it? I remember that I could take its copies for free in a shop in Berkeley. Do its contributors get some money for their essays or articles they write for it? Do you work for it without pay? Could you tell us something about the poetry newspaper? Poetry Flash is sometimes able to pay contributors: I have occasionally been paid for articles I published in it. I am happy to write for it for free. A Contributing Editor is merely someone who agrees to “contribute” articles on a regular basis; I have no real knowledge of Poetry Flash’s financial arrangements--though, like many arts organizations, it is currently undergoing financial difficulties. (It still continues, however, though it is no longer being published on a strictly regular basis.) You can get information about it at The web site is excellent, but people are always very happy when the print version appears.
13. It seems to me that you're challenging the label “White American” in your essay “Multiculturalism And The Media…” In the eyes of minorities--say, Chinese American writers, African American writers--White American writers have privileges in mainstream literature. I’ve met lots of Chinese-American poets and novelists who are regarded as marginal writers. Perhaps you don’t know how bitter some of them feel towards the White American mainstream literary field. You're a lucky one in mainstream literature. But it seems that you're not happy with the label “White American.” I am hardly a “mainstream” writer myself, so I am not “a lucky one in mainstream literature.” Maxine Hong Kingston and Li-Young Lee are two Chinese-American writers who are considerably more “mainstream” than I am! Frankly, I find mainstream writing to be fairly boring--and I wouldn't want to be a part of it. My entire writing career has been carried out not only “outside the mainstream” but in the context of constant connections with minority writers--whether through PEN Oakland or through other organizations. (The subtitle of the anthology, From Totems to Hip-Hop--in which “Eli, Eli” appears--is A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002.) PEN Oakland's Josephine Miles Awards was specifically set up to give recognition to minority writers--which it has been doing for many years now--and I've been an active member of that organization since its inception. I suggest in “Multiculturalism and the Media” that the term “white” is a fiction: it has nothing to do with anyone's ethnicity and is essentially an expression of power. This same point has been made by others--including many minority writers. “Multiculturalism and the Media” appears in the very interesting anthology, MultiAmerica: Essays on Cultural Wars and Cultural Peace, also edited by Ishmael Reed (Viking, Penguin, 1997), and you will find this point being made there in a variety of ways by a variety of people. In that book David Lloyd suggests that “integration with the dominant order has never been the only or the most liberating possibility.” I agree wholeheartedly. Ishmael Reed has for many years encouraged people to identify with their ethnic roots (mine are Irish and Italian) rather than to identify with the white superstructure and its power. Once you begin to to identify with your ethnicity, the whole concept of “white” disappears--except as what in fact it is: an expression of power, domination, and oppression. To value “empathy” or “compassion” is necessarily to be against the machinations of power: I identify far more strongly and have more in common with Al Young or Frank Chin than I do with General Motors. 14. I appreciate it when you say in your essay, “What About All This” in O Powerful Western Star, “Unlike Robert Grenier, I had found a direction the poetry reading could go: multiple voices.” Could you illustrate your “multiple voices” by giving us some 'examples in your poems? Here is the beginning of a poem which shows up in that essay (O Powerful Western Star, pp. 14-29):
What is it? Up to now our considerations have been referred to a particular body of reference which we have styled a “railway embankment.” We suppose a very long train traveling along the rails with the constant velocity v As far as I am able to judge, after long attending to the subject, the conditions of life appear to act in two ways: one
we see indefinite variability Speakers constantly change as you move down the page--the “person” saying “Voices. Voices” is not the same as the “person” saying “Up to now our considerations” who is himself not the same as the “person” saying “As far as I am able to judge”--and the issue of “Voices” is explicitly raised. (In another poem, “Chorus: SON(G),” I ask, “What of all these voices?”) 15. As for the title O Powerful Western Star, what do you mean by Western? Does it refer to the western part of America, say, the Bay area with San Francisco as its center? Could you explain the title a little bit? The title is taken from a line in Walt Whitman’s poem, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” Whitman wrote, “O powerful western fallen star!” In choosing my title, I meant to assert a connection with Whitman, but I also changed the line to “O powerful western star,” leaving out the word “fallen.” (When Dana Gioia wrote his essay on the San Francisco Bay Area’s cultural decline he called it, in reference to my title and its omission, “Fallen Western Star.”) I meant the emphasis not to be on the “fallen” aspects but on the “powerful.” The word “western” does refer to California and San Francisco--after all the book contains a time line about the area--but it also has a more general meaning: “Western” culture itself, the whole of that uneasy compendium which has been attacked (often quite justly) but which nevertheless maintains itself as a fascination for a writer like me, who was initially schooled in its classics. 16. I've tried hard to read all reference materials as much as I can. I'm happy to have found a definition of you, “Beatnikized W.D. Snodgrass,” from an article,“The Roger Ebert of Poetry Criticism: Jack Foley”written by Dan Schneider. Schneider writes,“Before I hit the 2 books lemme give some more info on JF--a name more well-known for a character played by George Clooney in Steven Soderbergh’s film Out Of Sight. No, this JF is no heartthrob--he’s a 60ish fellow who far more resembles a Beatnikized W.D. Snodgrass.” Do you like the author Dan Schneider’s humorous comment? Could you tell me where and when did his essay appear? This quotation is from an essay by a notorious Internet person. I have called him, “Dan Schneider, Terror of the Internet.” I responded to his essay in my column, “Foley’s Books” (6/16/03). Dan Schneider has never published a book and has, I believe, published only a few poems--mostly on his own web site: In addition to the essay on me, Schneider posted on his web site the whole of the correspondence I subsequently had with him. I suspect he did it because our exchange represented more attention given to him than had ever before been the case--except when the author was Schneider himself. Frankly, I don’t think that this megalomaniac is someone who should be taken very seriously. Given his comments, the only poetry of mine he ever saw was what was featured on the Michael McClure-Ray Manzarek web site. Ray Manzarek was the keyboardist for the famous rock group, “The Doors.” He and Michael McClure are old friends who often perform together--Michael reading his poetry, Manzarek playing piano. The poems on the McClure-Manzarek web site are not particularly typical of my work--nor were they meant to be. Michael told me that the people who access the web site are intelligent but not necessarily very attuned to poetry--so I was careful to suggest poems that might appeal to people of that type. No one would read these poems and think: Black Mountain. Some of them are formal poems and funny--light verse. That’s why Schneider mentioned W.D. Snodgrass. It would be amazing if someone who had read more of my work than what is on McClure’s web site would describe it as in any way resembling W.D. Snodgrass’s. The only book of mine Schneider had read was O Powerful Western Star. (That’s where he got the “Beatnik”--because the book contains references to Ferlinghetti, McClure, Ginsberg, etc.) There is also a poem of mine in O Powerful Western Star--and of course there is a poem on the CD. Neither of these poems by any stretch of the imagination resembles W.D. Snodgrass. Schneider’s comment simply ignores these poems--but that’s typical. Schneider is not a very careful reader of anyone’s work. His essay is full of quotations taken out of context, wildly inaccurate statements, etc. He is primarily known for attacking prominent people--that, and an extraordinary amount of self-promotion. You can find an article about this man at 17. A friend writes me that he has been enjoying your work and that he sees it, like his own, as a kind of synthesis of Language Poetry and Beat Poetry. Your friend is mistaken, I believe, in saying that I've been particularly influenced by Language poetry, though I certainly knew some Language writers at the time it was happening in this area--Ron Silliman, Barrett Watten, Steve Benson. I see my work as to some degree opposed to Language poetry--though perhaps “opposition” is a kind of influence. It’s more the case that Language Poetry grows out of Black Mountain Poetry (Olson, etc.) and Gertrude Stein--both of which were also influences on my work. The interest in performance--and especially in the kind of performance I do--was not at all characteristic of Language Poetry, and (except for Larry Eigner, who was not exactly a Language Poet) no Language Poet has ever shown the least interest in my work. Your friend may be attempting to make some sort of synthesis between Beat and Language Poetry, but I’m not. 18. It is my impression that--along with African-American poets, Native-American poets, Language poets and other types of poets--you’ve close connections with almost all Beat poets alive in the Bay Area or wherever else, as well as with Black Mountain poets Robert Duncan and Larry Eigner. Essentially, your artistic style is influenced by Beat poetry and Black Mountain poetry. And KPFA plays an important role in your literary career not only in the democratic and liberal ideas about freedom of speech the radio station stands for but also in the convenience for you to contact various poets. So you’re a dictionary or encyclopedia of the Bay area literature of the latter half of last century and new century and your two fat books O Powerful Western Star and Foley’s Books can prove it. Am I right? Anything you'd like to add? Well, I try to stay open to all possibilities of poetry, to both “closed” and “open” forms, to “light” as well as to “serious” verse--not to mention song. The composer Lou Harrison believed that a composer should be able to compose in any style--that was part of what it meant to be a composer--and I have something of that same feeling as well. What joy in all possibilities of language! The poet/critic Tom Parkinson once remarked to me that he felt that radio station KPFA had a profound influence on all the writers in the area--bringing them closer towards the specific possibilities of speech.
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Jack Foley