I was speaking to Dino Andersen - whom I used to see on
Sundays at the café on Prospect Avenue where he would drink endless cups of
coffee until a white sheen gathered around the corners of his mouth - of the
Milwaukee poet John Koethe. I had recently read that with his lucrative
position as a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Koethe
would occasionally take a flight to Paris just to have dinner and then return
home. I told Dino, who had been writing art limericks for many years and had
amassed several thousand of them, that it seemed as if John Koethe had realized
his dreams and that it was for this reason that his poetry was ethereal, a
trail of words that led far into realms of consciousness that felt like visions
of mist. Dano responded that he did not believe that Koethe had realized his
dreams, but that he rather had “solved” them. Koethe had solved his dreams.
Koethe wrote:
“There seems to be, about certain lives,
A vague, violent frame, an imperceptible
Halo of uncertainty, diffidence and
taste
Worn like a private name that only God
knows,
Echoing what it hides, that floats above
a bottomless
Anxiety that underlies their aura of
remote calm.”
---
I observed Tucker Katonah!
for some time before I decided to introduce myself and talk to him. He cut a
strange figure: knickers, a burgundy knit cap encircled with flowers, a teal
cardigan sweater and toting a carpet bag suitcase, also teal with an
old-fashioned floral design. He would show up at the Moulton Union, though he
was not a student, ensconce himself at a table and write. He would later pen
the phrase, “He died writing.”
I came upon him writing
his thoughts into a Star Wars-themed notebook and told him my name, shaking his
hand. He acted as if he knew that we knew we would eventually meet, that there
was some wavering beam of light emanating from each of us which sought the
other. This I felt, also.
The writing he did was
his distillation of the reading he had done for years, including time “starving
in the mountains in Colorado,” with his girlfriend Wendy. He no longer read and
told me he was “digesting” all of those books: James Joyce and Richard Ellman’s
biography of him, Kerouac, though he declared resolutely to Bill the bass player
that he had tried and failed to read The
Subterraneans multiple times, as Bill asserted the book’s wonders. Tucker’s
distillations took the form of crystalline aphorisms which formed the basis for
his songs and also his poetry hand stamps with which we peppered Portland,
Maine.
"Living in these hard times
Learning to play the guitar
Living in these hard times
Wanna be a wannabe
Living in these hard times"
…
Liking the same woman was
inevitable. This happens regularly among close friends: we like the same music,
the same poems, the same women. Calendar Finch worked the breakfast shift at the downtown Portland Holiday Inn.
Tucker chose to like her from a distance. I went to her breakfast shift where
the playful waiter named Elvis tried unsuccessfully to hit on her. She was
happy to see me at my table. We went to her house later and kissed listening to
the Ciccone Youth album by Sonic Youth.
Tucker showed a vague
jealousy – it wasn’t expressed directly to me, but was rather communicated via
silences and wry comments: How was it over at Calendar’s last night? It was a woman that
brought Tucker from New York City to Brunswick, Maine (population 45,000). Four years after high school graduation, at age 22, the
memory of Pamela Perry’s dark hair, Mediterranean features, and cool playful
bearing surged into his mind, compelling him to purchase the Greyhound bus
ticket. He appeared at the door of her room in the Grateful Dead co-ed frat
house and announced himself and his intentions. Pamela said, I’m sorry, Tucker,
I don’t feel that way about you. And
Tucker, O.K. and he decided, I may as well stay on this town: a college, pretty women, 19th century buildings with New England gothic spires and a
fine bookstore...
