12/31/2006
OK, it's over. This has been some year, hasn't it. I guess my year turned out better than Saddam Hussein's year. Well now, here's the deal around here: Cinderella and I are staying home. I'm 1/3 of the way through House of Broken Angels. I am thankful for what is happening out there with readers. I have recently gotten fan mail, f'r instance, from law enforcement agents, human rights workers, and the Aryan Brotherhood in the CA prison system. Now that's a complex reading public. The Hummingbird Club in New Delhi is meeting once a month and wearing their Teresita t-shirts. I'm so tired after this year (plus) of crazy crazy go-go nitro-fueled driving. But I'm home and warm and happy. Hope you are, too. Much loss, but many blessings. I hope to do some new vision-work on this ol' blog on '07. Time to watch dvd's with the fam. I'll see you on the other side of the Eve. Yrs.,L
Christmas Eve
12/24/2006
Most of us have made it. Holy night if only for that. Shawn Phiilips sends us a picture of himself and his bride Juliet and their baby boy Liam. Shawn proposed to Jewel right in our driveway once when he was on tour. That's a great Christmas present. Cinderella is baking Christmas bread and the kids and the dogs are all on the couch watching A Christmas Story. It's cold and getting colder. We're all hoping the chance of a white Christmas comes through tonight. Chayo has actually pitched a small princess tent in Megan's bedroom, and they'll camp out, waiting for Santa. Eric and I have our colds, so we're cranky. Holy, holy night. Too many funerals and burials and tears this year in our families. And too much fame, believe it or not! Too much of everything. And here we are. Nobody shooting at us. Nobody bombing us. Nobody trying our doors in the night. Nobody sick here, or afraid, or hungry. My biggest problem these last few days is how to get through Part I of House of Broken Angels. (I got there today, by the way. 72 pages. I don't know what you're going to think about it, I really don't. But, like everything I write, I'm hoping it will change the world. It's rated R, no question. Pretty adult stuff. And in spite of the juicy sex and the bad words and the horrors of it, it is all about Grace.) Right here, in Naperville, we are at peace. Just think, after the last snow, the big FBI agent from down the street came over to snow-blow our sidewalks and driveways. How 1955 is that! So...thank you. Thank you, constant reader, for your support and friendship, though I probably don't know you. I hope to create three books in 2007: Broken Angels, Hummingbird II, and a new book (finally) of poems. Think I can do it? You have been kind to me this year, and for the few hundred of my new intimate friends I met on the long road--I hope this night is warm and kind for you. My oldest friends, the loves I lost and left, the homeboys I sat up all night laughing beside, the missionaries I lost track of, the ones I disappointed, the ones whose hearts I accidentally broke, and the ones who broke mine--good night. Merry Christmas. I think of you all, and I'm writing these awesome new books for you. I'll check in with you one last time for a New Year recap and report. Pax--L
12/22/2006
At last, the tour-mania of the last year or two has abated...because I made it stop. My last big trip for this mad season was back to Yuma. Closing the circle of death and rebirth begun by The Devil's Highway. I had a sense, when Geoff Shandler wrote me an email from Little, Brown in 2001, that life had suddenly changed. I just didn't know how much it was changing. What a one-two punch! I sit back and look upon Devil's H and Hummingbird's Daughter as a reassertion of my own soul, though I didn't know it had crawled off somewhere to fester and moan, to cry out like a jackal in the awful industrial night. Somewhere like...Chicago! I, who married the Rockies, but cheated on them with the Arizona desert and the unholy house of God, those Cajun swamps of Louisiana. Who knew? Chi-town, the Big Onion. For some kind of mystic tree-hugger (hug what you love, you constipated world-killers!), it's funny that I came to the land of bratwurst and rusty railroad bridges. Where are the shamans in Chi? They're wearing Sox and Cubs hats. But the magic is everywhere. You just have to learn the language of the angels watching over the place you've landed. (For fellow mystics, Rosicrucians, Freemasons, Revelators and conspiracy theorists, it seems odd to me that I wrote a devilishly angry book and an angelically jolly book and they had the same initials, only reversed! DH and HD. Call the atrologers and the numerologists! Call the pastor and the curandera! Call Art Bell! Something weird happened as I came back to writing life!) So, the tour ended in Yuma. I crawled home and became sick immediately. The tension holding my mind and body together over these last months of strange occurances, long travels, a million questions, vague threats, crazy people, famous people, planes, bad food, excellent food, politicians, dogs, cars, late nights, snow storms, heat waves, foreign travel, Playboy, 20,000 autographs--that tension broke and my bod threw about three tie-rods and a few bolts. I got sick at every end of myself. I was scared to go back to Yuma, since you never know what the subjects of your fire-breathing book really think of being put in that spotlight. It takes hubris to write a book like DH--you decide to speak for whole agencies like the Border Patrol, whole regions and whole peoples. Hubris always leads to the gods delivering a big slap-down. (Pride goeth before a fall, y'all.) So I went to Yuma expecting the worst. And when they told me Sheriff Ralph Ogden was coming, that ten foot tall lawman with the scariest mustache in the wild west, I figued I was dead meat. But everyone in Yuma was unbvelievably kind. Lorie, my hostess with the mostest, had me organized and humming along. The librarians were awesome. Sheriff Ogden was as nice as could be, and he and Deputy Sheriff Leon Wilmot were there in the audience so I could taunt the crazies and "patriots" who never read my book but want me to die--I told 'em the Sheriff would shoot 'em if they got out of hand! The USBP showed up in force, and we had a love-fest there, too. Interestingly, human rights activists were there, too. As was the Mexican consul. And the lone Minuteman bought two copies and had me autograph them both. We had a swell time. Is there hope? Maybe there is. My bud Kenny Smith, supervisory agent extraordinaire, had me out to his house in the desert. He and Annie his wife and their mad little terrier had a fine supper and a fun time talking and laughing. It wasn't the first time, nor will it be the last, when I thought there were mighty angels at work to bring us all together for such an unlikely reason. I'm home now, like I said. Mopping up all kinds of projects. Final grades--yeesh. Christmas preparations. Contracts--I'm signing up with a big speaker's bureau, folks. Cinderella can't keep wrestling with the myriad offers and come-ons and requests and demands. If I price myself too high for a while, the pressure will abate. Also working on a long interview with the poet, Martin Espada. And I'm writing The House of Broken Angels while cooking Hummingbird II. Everything's great. And if we're in great good luck, we'll even get a white Christmas. I'll write you a year-end review before I make some changes to this continuing blog. Chayo asked for some "Egg McNoggin" the other day. Wish I could have some with you. But receive me best thoughts and hopes for Chistmas this year. Remember what my Oglala brothers taught me: Hope is Prayer. Hey, my pizza's ready. Love 2 U 4 Ever, L
Influencias
12/02/2006
People often ask me what writers have inspired me, or been models for my work, or simply bring me pleasure. I find it hard to answer, since I'm such a reading slut. I love writing and writers! And I love genres--so it's hard to rattle off my influences. But I thought it might be instructive and interesting for anyone who is writing a paper, who is looking for good reading, or who is getting a creer running, to try to make you some lists. But, you know, there's snow on the ground, and we're putting up our Christmas village (on cotton batting snowfields), and I'm trying to get this interview with Martin Espada worked out. But I will give you a list of POETS who have influenced me, taught me, changed me, or just pleased me. Read for pleasure, friends. It's like a sweet massage with aromatic oils. Later, I'll give you fiction and non-fiction writers. I can't get them all, but here goes:
A-- Anna Akhmatova, Yosano Akiko, Sherman Alexie, Alurista, A.R. Ammons, Jon Anderson, Antler. Homero Aridjis, John Ashbery. B-- Jimmy Santiago Baca, Basho, Wendell Berry, Robert Bly, Borges, Darrell Bourque, John Brandi, Richard Brautigan, Pete Brown, Charles Bukowski, Buson, Bobby Byrd, Byron. C-- Jim Carroll, Hayden Carruth, Raymond Carver, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Oswaldo Chanove, Ali Chumacero, Leonard Cohen, Stephen Crane, Robert Creeley, e.e. cummings. D-- James Dickey, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Dugan, Bob Dylan, E-- TS Eliot, Clayton Eshelman, Martin Espada. F-- BH Fairchild, Ferlinghetti, Carolyn Forche. G-- Tess Gallagher, Alan Ginsberg, Louise Gluck, Judy Grahn, Jay Griswold. H-- Marilyn Hacker, Donald Hall, Robert Hass, Han-shan, Jim Harrison, Linda Hasselstrom, Juan Felipe Herrera, Linda Hogan, Gary Holthaus. I-- Ikkyu, Issa. J-- Robinson Jeffers, Judson Jerome, Juan Ramon Jimenez. K-- Jack Kerouac, Gallway Kinnel, Etheridge Knight, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ted Kooser. L-- David Lee, David Lehman, Philip Levine, Lorca. M-- Antonio Machado, Edgar Lee Masters, William Matthews, W.S. Merwin, Gabriela Mistral, Jim Morrison. N-- Pablo Neruda, Naomi Shihab Nye. O-- Luis Alberto Ochoa, Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, Onitsura, Simon Ortiz. P-- Jose Emilio Pacheco, Kenneth Patchen, Octavio Paz, James Atlee Phillips, Sylvia Plath. Q-- Uh... R-- Chip Rawlins, Adrienne Rich, Rilke, Arthur Rimbaud, Alberto Rios, Roethke, Bill Pitt Root, S-- Saigyo, Sheryl Saint Germaine, Sappho, James Schuyler, Gary Snyder, Soseki, Gary Soto, Kim Stafford, William Stafford, Wallace Stevens. T-- Lord Tennyson, Gabriel Trujillo. U-- V-- Mark Van Doren, Paul Verlaine, Tino Villanueva, W-- Diane Wakoski, Frank X. Walker, Wang-wei, Walt Whitman, Keith Wilson, Wordsworth, C.D. Wright, Charles Wright, Franz Wright, James Wright, Robert Wrigley, X-- Well... Y-- Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Z-- Daisy Zamora.
22,000 Birds
A-- Anna Akhmatova, Yosano Akiko, Sherman Alexie, Alurista, A.R. Ammons, Jon Anderson, Antler. Homero Aridjis, John Ashbery. B-- Jimmy Santiago Baca, Basho, Wendell Berry, Robert Bly, Borges, Darrell Bourque, John Brandi, Richard Brautigan, Pete Brown, Charles Bukowski, Buson, Bobby Byrd, Byron. C-- Jim Carroll, Hayden Carruth, Raymond Carver, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Oswaldo Chanove, Ali Chumacero, Leonard Cohen, Stephen Crane, Robert Creeley, e.e. cummings. D-- James Dickey, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Dugan, Bob Dylan, E-- TS Eliot, Clayton Eshelman, Martin Espada. F-- BH Fairchild, Ferlinghetti, Carolyn Forche. G-- Tess Gallagher, Alan Ginsberg, Louise Gluck, Judy Grahn, Jay Griswold. H-- Marilyn Hacker, Donald Hall, Robert Hass, Han-shan, Jim Harrison, Linda Hasselstrom, Juan Felipe Herrera, Linda Hogan, Gary Holthaus. I-- Ikkyu, Issa. J-- Robinson Jeffers, Judson Jerome, Juan Ramon Jimenez. K-- Jack Kerouac, Gallway Kinnel, Etheridge Knight, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ted Kooser. L-- David Lee, David Lehman, Philip Levine, Lorca. M-- Antonio Machado, Edgar Lee Masters, William Matthews, W.S. Merwin, Gabriela Mistral, Jim Morrison. N-- Pablo Neruda, Naomi Shihab Nye. O-- Luis Alberto Ochoa, Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, Onitsura, Simon Ortiz. P-- Jose Emilio Pacheco, Kenneth Patchen, Octavio Paz, James Atlee Phillips, Sylvia Plath. Q-- Uh... R-- Chip Rawlins, Adrienne Rich, Rilke, Arthur Rimbaud, Alberto Rios, Roethke, Bill Pitt Root, S-- Saigyo, Sheryl Saint Germaine, Sappho, James Schuyler, Gary Snyder, Soseki, Gary Soto, Kim Stafford, William Stafford, Wallace Stevens. T-- Lord Tennyson, Gabriel Trujillo. U-- V-- Mark Van Doren, Paul Verlaine, Tino Villanueva, W-- Diane Wakoski, Frank X. Walker, Wang-wei, Walt Whitman, Keith Wilson, Wordsworth, C.D. Wright, Charles Wright, Franz Wright, James Wright, Robert Wrigley, X-- Well... Y-- Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Z-- Daisy Zamora.
12/01/2006
Greetings from the great Chicago snowstorm of '06. Snow and thunder--always a wild combination. Snow day: kids everywhere. And dog's covered in white. Hard to believe I was in Guadalajara a couple of days ago, being awakened every morning by 22,000 birds. I even had three giant green parrots in the garden of the hotel. I was there to help launch the Spanish edition of Hummingbird for the massive FIL (International Festival of the Book). People were very supportive--even excited. Though, you know, it's weird to see three copies of my book, and entire walls of The Historian. That darned Dracula. However, I had some unexpected thrills. I ran into a camarada I had met at the Texas Book Fair, who was working at the Planeta expo site. I had gone there to buy the new Paco Taibo II bio of Pancho Villa. My friend said, Paco's right here!" So I got to meet one of my favorite authors, who knew about my work. And Planeta gave me a free copy for him to sign. Altogether a great day.
What I'm Doing Now: Sorry, Hummingbird fans, but I am simpoly not ready to create Hummingbird II. Yet. Not completely, anyway. I have been working on islated scenes. But I am working hard on House of Broken Angels. I don't know how it will go over with my new readers, being harsh and sad and even violent. But I think it's strangely beautiful. We'll see how it comes out. I'm on it and will give you reports on both books as promised about 97 postings ago. What I'm Reading: Well, I'm working on S King Esquire's Lisey's Story. But I'm finding it hard going. Not because I don't like it, but because I am dreading all the details in it about being an author, and what happens when you die, and how your wife survives your absence. I bet most writers flee from this book. It hits close to home in several major ways. Yikes. Thanks a lot, Steve. What I'm Listening To: A much easier category to handle. I am frantic to get my mitts on the new Shriekback album, Cormorant. Evil genius music--I can't wait. Where I'm Going Next: I'll be in Yuma mid-December. I'm a little worried about how it will go--after all, I am revisiting the epicenter of The Devil's Highway, and I haven't been there since before the book came out. I know the sheriffs are going to show up, and I'm hoping some of the Border Patrol guys come. And I hope they're not angry. Man, I am so tired of getting yelled at by angry immigration enthusiasts on either side. I am preparing my Urrea Doctrine now, so I can answer, once and for all, the eternal question: What would you do about the situation, Mr. Smarty-Pants Hippie Commie Beaner Cop-Loving Race-Traitor Holy-Roller Bourgeois Godless Enemy of the State Writer-Person??? See You Out There, Beloved--L
What I'm Doing Now: Sorry, Hummingbird fans, but I am simpoly not ready to create Hummingbird II. Yet. Not completely, anyway. I have been working on islated scenes. But I am working hard on House of Broken Angels. I don't know how it will go over with my new readers, being harsh and sad and even violent. But I think it's strangely beautiful. We'll see how it comes out. I'm on it and will give you reports on both books as promised about 97 postings ago. What I'm Reading: Well, I'm working on S King Esquire's Lisey's Story. But I'm finding it hard going. Not because I don't like it, but because I am dreading all the details in it about being an author, and what happens when you die, and how your wife survives your absence. I bet most writers flee from this book. It hits close to home in several major ways. Yikes. Thanks a lot, Steve. What I'm Listening To: A much easier category to handle. I am frantic to get my mitts on the new Shriekback album, Cormorant. Evil genius music--I can't wait. Where I'm Going Next: I'll be in Yuma mid-December. I'm a little worried about how it will go--after all, I am revisiting the epicenter of The Devil's Highway, and I haven't been there since before the book came out. I know the sheriffs are going to show up, and I'm hoping some of the Border Patrol guys come. And I hope they're not angry. Man, I am so tired of getting yelled at by angry immigration enthusiasts on either side. I am preparing my Urrea Doctrine now, so I can answer, once and for all, the eternal question: What would you do about the situation, Mr. Smarty-Pants Hippie Commie Beaner Cop-Loving Race-Traitor Holy-Roller Bourgeois Godless Enemy of the State Writer-Person??? See You Out There, Beloved--L
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