tom wolfe reading as rev. reacharound



catalin and tom



saturday before last several of my old poet friends got together for the first time in close to 17 years. thanks to the tireless efforts of catalin who managed to track at least half the group down. what is amazing is not the passage of time but the fact that the time whizzed by so quickly. nearly all of us now are parents and what dropped my jaw is that one old friend, tom wolfe, is the father now of a 19 year-old. tom was 19 when i met him!

we called ourselves the beatrice collective because we were young and ambitious and because i think there is beauty in dante's love's name. we met at the jc american river college where poets such as geoffrey nutter and ric cole were in the periphery of our group. i don't know what happened to cole, i remember him vividly as a talented writer and i've googled his name but come up with nothing. i'd love if he self-googled his name and came upon this blog. nutter i don't remember tho our paths must've crossed paths at least a couple of times.

this is the roster of the collective. i name them because i think names are important, that friendships our important, and the fact that cat was unable to find a few.

mike newland

soliel paz tranquilli

catalin

richard lopez

bill leyva

tom [t.e.] wolfe

shauna hubert

tom balfour

chene watson

miles miniaci [nee minnies]

i think that's it. tho my memory ain't what it used to be. so if i left someone out i'm sure i'll get the what-for.

anyway, we had a lovely, long evening. i didn't get home till 3:30 a.m. what is astonishing is how the passage of the years vanished. all of us are now in our late 30s, early 40s, and we picked up right where we left off.

i suppose i posted that piece of poem by duncan mcnaughton yesterday because when i was re-reading his book bounce [first intensity press; 2007] yesterday it resonated with me how important our relationships are. mcnaughton places great importance on friendships and often his poems and his books are dedicated to a score of friends who without them the poems wouldn't have been written.

i'll post a few more pics in a different post. blogger isn't cooperating with my lay-out right now. i wish i had photos of us back then, but when you are young and poor and living before the digital age, the idea of taking photographs didn't occur, i think. tho i think there is a videotape or two of us doing readings. god knows what happened the tapes. i don't.