in one take
back in '03 me and the poet a.p. sullivan drove to sf to hear thom gunn read at some dive bar called sweetie's
sweetie's was [is?] located just off north beach and we had some time to kill
we headed up the road a bit to city lights bookstore
when we left city lights night fell like a shroud / sf lit up like a brick of firecrackers
i turned to face the buildings of the financial district
this is why i love cities
my jaw dropped from all that beauty
if i were a filmmaker i would have shot a couple hundred feet just of that view
i can hardly stand it / i swayed under it all
i was new for a while
3 Comments:
At the risk of seeming like some blog stalker - or blawker - awesome poem, Richard.
I met Thom Gunn once, years and years ago, maybe in the 70s. I was young so had the nerve to ask him why his poems rhymed at a time when virtually no one else's did. His answer was totally liberating: "Because that's how they come to me."
thank you, ryan
beautiful response, john, from a poet who went his own way
that reading at sweetie's was a blast, dude looked like an old punk rocker or biker, and after the reading i asked him to sign my copy of the collected, he didn't have a pen so i handed him mine, a pelikan, one of the few writerly fetishes i own, gunn signs my book and proceeds to pocket my pen! i cleared my throat and said, i think that's mine, he laughed, looked at the pelikan and then handed it back
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