More on Frank Samperi poet-mystic
Kyle, it made me happy to see you talking about Frank Samperi on the blog (10/27). I've photocopied the long piece NIGHT & DAY for you from Cid Corman's anthology is out of print, and far as I can tell this piece has never been published outside the anthology, and the magazine from which the anthology is made. (It's a fantastic anthology by the way)
To be honest my first feelings about Samperi were mixed, mostly because I kept getting stuck (annoyed is a better word) with his religious ideals. Soon enough though it became clear (or so it seems) that he was a spiritualist who happened to be catholic. I've met other spiritualists who were also catholic. My old friend Rosina is a pagan who follows her Sicilian mother and grandmother's traditions of the Strega, but also has a serious PASSION for the Eucharist. It can all be just fine together, and I guess I needed to relax about this, and both Rosina and Samperi helped me realize this.
And I'm glad I didn't let the religious language interfere because Samperi is unlike any other poet I can think of from our time (almost from our time).
One HUGE Samperi fan was Gil Ott.
Gil Ott answered:
The poet's face on my kite is Frank Samperi, reclusive when he was alive, but now deceased at least a decade. I would ask him to elaborate on the word "procession," which he used to distinguish from "process." I image this man's mind as pure witness, tuned to the essential deity of events, and so endangered.
Samperi has always been so elusive, physically, and more than almost any other poet I have wanted to know WHAT he looked like. He has a way of making you fall in love with him, really fall in love with him, without ever knowing him. For me, the only other writer who has done this is Franz Kafka, but for very different reasons, and in very different ways. Gil Ott is the only person I've ever know who met Samperi, and so I liked to pump Gil for details.
In that interview I did with Gil for BANJO, Samperi comes up again. Here's an excerpt of that section:
CA: Earlier you mentioned Frank Samperi, and he's someone you have mentioned over the years as being an inspiration to you. Can you share some of your thoughts about how his poems fit into your life as a poet?
Gil: Poverty and art is something I've discussed with the Australian poet David Miller, who is also familiar with Samperi. At the time--which would be the early 80s--Frank Samperi seemed to me to be a great undiscovered poet in our midst. The notion of poverty and art was very strong, and he seemed very monkish to me. This is something I have adopted, as a condition, which is what's interesting in that quote you pulled out earlier from my book WITHIN RANGE.
CA: You met him once didn't you? At the Ear Inn, isn't that right?
Gil: Yes. He gave a once in a lifetime reading at the Ear Inn. It's funny, because sometimes you meet people at the Ear Inn and you expect something from them that they're not. I guess that's true of many things. I expected this guy to look like a monk. And he shows up with his wife, who is wearing a frilly outfit, with fur around the edges. Everything I saw in them bespoke a struggle to maintain a middle class existence. Anyway, he sat down and read, and he read very softly. I have long-sought a recording of that reading, but apparently, due to the Ear Inn's technological failures, no recording is available. But it was beautiful! You really had to listen hard, because his voice was so soft, and the microphones weren't working.
CA: Didn't you say that he died soon after that reading?
Gil: Yes he did. He seemed fairly fragile. I also want to say that part of the appeal of Samperi were the books of his work that were produced. Grossman and Mushinsha published his trilogy. Also some very nice chapbooks of his work that Cid Corman had put out at one point. The linkage with poverty was through the line. His line was very spare. Sometimes one word or two words to a line. And you get these long thin lines that are just barely there, but powerful.
No one put it quite like Gil did.
Thanks Kyle for bringing up Samperi, let's get more going on this amazing poet!
CAConrad
http://phillysound.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_archive.html
To be honest my first feelings about Samperi were mixed, mostly because I kept getting stuck (annoyed is a better word) with his religious ideals. Soon enough though it became clear (or so it seems) that he was a spiritualist who happened to be catholic. I've met other spiritualists who were also catholic. My old friend Rosina is a pagan who follows her Sicilian mother and grandmother's traditions of the Strega, but also has a serious PASSION for the Eucharist. It can all be just fine together, and I guess I needed to relax about this, and both Rosina and Samperi helped me realize this.
And I'm glad I didn't let the religious language interfere because Samperi is unlike any other poet I can think of from our time (almost from our time).
One HUGE Samperi fan was Gil Ott.
Gil Ott answered:
The poet's face on my kite is Frank Samperi, reclusive when he was alive, but now deceased at least a decade. I would ask him to elaborate on the word "procession," which he used to distinguish from "process." I image this man's mind as pure witness, tuned to the essential deity of events, and so endangered.
Samperi has always been so elusive, physically, and more than almost any other poet I have wanted to know WHAT he looked like. He has a way of making you fall in love with him, really fall in love with him, without ever knowing him. For me, the only other writer who has done this is Franz Kafka, but for very different reasons, and in very different ways. Gil Ott is the only person I've ever know who met Samperi, and so I liked to pump Gil for details.
In that interview I did with Gil for BANJO, Samperi comes up again. Here's an excerpt of that section:
CA: Earlier you mentioned Frank Samperi, and he's someone you have mentioned over the years as being an inspiration to you. Can you share some of your thoughts about how his poems fit into your life as a poet?
Gil: Poverty and art is something I've discussed with the Australian poet David Miller, who is also familiar with Samperi. At the time--which would be the early 80s--Frank Samperi seemed to me to be a great undiscovered poet in our midst. The notion of poverty and art was very strong, and he seemed very monkish to me. This is something I have adopted, as a condition, which is what's interesting in that quote you pulled out earlier from my book WITHIN RANGE.
CA: You met him once didn't you? At the Ear Inn, isn't that right?
Gil: Yes. He gave a once in a lifetime reading at the Ear Inn. It's funny, because sometimes you meet people at the Ear Inn and you expect something from them that they're not. I guess that's true of many things. I expected this guy to look like a monk. And he shows up with his wife, who is wearing a frilly outfit, with fur around the edges. Everything I saw in them bespoke a struggle to maintain a middle class existence. Anyway, he sat down and read, and he read very softly. I have long-sought a recording of that reading, but apparently, due to the Ear Inn's technological failures, no recording is available. But it was beautiful! You really had to listen hard, because his voice was so soft, and the microphones weren't working.
CA: Didn't you say that he died soon after that reading?
Gil: Yes he did. He seemed fairly fragile. I also want to say that part of the appeal of Samperi were the books of his work that were produced. Grossman and Mushinsha published his trilogy. Also some very nice chapbooks of his work that Cid Corman had put out at one point. The linkage with poverty was through the line. His line was very spare. Sometimes one word or two words to a line. And you get these long thin lines that are just barely there, but powerful.
No one put it quite like Gil did.
Thanks Kyle for bringing up Samperi, let's get more going on this amazing poet!
CAConrad
http://phillysound.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_archive.html
The Ear Inn is (as far as I know)
ReplyDeletestill there at least it was in 2000
I sat at the bar talking to the bar-tender (who I think also owned the place)
who just happened to have gone to high school with me..
I almost did my once-ever reading there as he slotted me in for some time in 2001 !
then, the rubble intruded upon
and now
Big Money is ruining The City....
Gil Ott does neat stuff too:
traffic, The Whole Note, The Yellow Floor, Public Domain ...
MAIZE is a beauty with Carol Emmons' "translations' (via photo-prints of one of her installations):
fall leaves representative
hands that pass from the mind
color, gesture, symbol, tongue, speech
leaf falls here
forms a language
of us
(G.O. 1979)
Ed,
ReplyDeletewww.earinn.com the olderst bar in NYC. Looks really cool! Carol Emmons, very interesting.
Thanks Ed.
Claudia