Gaton Update

If you are a follower of Gaton you may already know that he did not attend his own re-release at the end of July. Two things happened to cause this.

1st: He (Gaton) took one look at the issue that was to be put-out and decided that the boys at Teppichfresser had no idea what they were doing. Aside from the Endnotes being referred to as "footnotes" they were also talking about releasing the original page from the first section of the poem entitled "Secret" which is actually a self censored page of automatic writing where in the lines that least resembled Grenada were omitted. Though this didn't happen it was enough to push him to follow through with his plan which is the second reason.

2nd: He has decided to return to Israel. After the passing of his beloved wife Gaton has for some time talked about needed a new connection. He has found it in returning to the faith of ancestors. Though only a small portion of his bloodline may actually be of Jewish descent it does come down through his mother's side so despite being raised Catholic he has decided to go to his roots.

I actually drove him to the airport in Milwaukee on what would have been the day of his only reading in Milwaukee. He claimed some desire to see what he referred to as "the situation on the ground" and what indeed could be done to bring peace in the Middle East.

Of Grenada Re-Release

Gaton's 1984 chapbook Of Grenada has been re-printed by Keith Gaustad and Jon Lohr of Teppichfresser Press. Both Gaton and I have worked closely with them to make sure that everything was reprinted exactly as the original. The only real drama was when the two wrote a page of endnotes for some of the dated references. Although Gaton was reluctant to do so, he eventually conceded, making them promise to "keep them tiny and sparce."

The launch party will be Monday, July 27th at the backyard of 2979 N. Bremen, or as Gaton and the old timers remember it, the Suds beer garden.

Gaton has agreed to read from, talk and answer questions about Of Grenada. This will be his first Milwaukee reading in almost a decade. Unfortunately as I will be out of the state, your humble host will be unable to attend.

The launch party will also be a going away party for Jon Lohr, who will soon be moving away for school.

Q&A with Chris Gaton

What do you like or dislike about poetry today?

(CG) I can tell you what I dislike first. Only because I have to confront it anytime I open up an anthology or go to an open mic, and God help me I don't know why I go to these, I don't even read at them! (laughs)
I keep reading and hearing all these youngsters going on and on about their sex lives. Not their romantic lives mind you, but it's all graphic or maybe I should say pornographic but then that feels like it congratulates them somehow. See, I get all bothered by this because I was married for years and years to a beautiful woman. I write things all the time about her still to this day but I never felt the need to discuss her intimately with anyone else. If I wrote about her it was about her temperament when I made an ass of myself. She was so patient.
But it comes down to this: aside from what I may think of my poems poetry is not me. Poetry is not you or the sex you think you have. It can be about the big sunshiny idiot you try to be when the absolute truth gets you nowhere near the sex you think you have to have or the scar you hide. But poetry is never you.

Is this like dictation?

(CG) It can be. If you are really lucky and get those signals that guys like Spicer were talking about. Or that notion of Duende that Lorca had. Some of us aren't blessed that way. It doesn't mean we stop writing. I think of myself as one who traces pictures in a magazine and then colors it differently if that helps any.

A little.

(CG) Literature isn't supposed to be absolute truths of formula that you can prove out on a blackboard. It's only truth is the complicated nature in all things. A celebration of mystery. It's not science and even scientist will tell you that the more things they learn the more questions they have. It's because we're not supposed to know everything. That's the biggest lie going right now, this idea that we can know everything. I saw a picture of Steven Hawking in a strip club. That right there proves he doesn't know everything and if he does he doesn't care and in that case what good is the knowledge?

I'm a bit confused.

(CG) It happens and when it does I change the subject. For instance I forgot to mention what I like about poetry today.

Oh yes that's right.

(CG) The fact that there is an absolute tidal wave of writing out there now allows the uninterested writer to continue on in obscurity. There isn't any bother with us. The TV guys went on strike but that was over getting paid. Writers and poets ought to be paid but anyone can read my poems and I gotta say there's a fifty-fifty chance they'll read them better than me. I always liked those kids that go to open mics and read out of other peoples books. I did that myself but that was before open mics, back then you just stood up on buses and went for it until someone stopped you. Nowadays there are places for poetry, but hey that gets me back to the things I don't like. The poet is not to be celebrated. Just the writing. This idea of ushering people around to read their poems is absurd.

You don't like places for poetry?

(CG) No, they seem to segregate poets out of society. If there's any reason to admire a poet, and I mean the actual personage it's the truly crazy ones. You can spot the difference between these ones and the fakers. And let me tell you there are an awful lot of fakers coming out of those graduate programs.

What are they faking?

(CG) Everything! From how they achieve the poem to the manner they affect, they even fake having personalities. Usually they just sit and talk about what they don't like about popular culture but then of course all they write about is popular culture so what's the point? But you know it isn't their fault really. They're all the same middle class kids who had TV as the babysitter, and in some cases, dad. I met this young poet recently in a jagged little crowd. He said he learned how to shave from watching a movie. No dad.
But they go to school like this and maybe they read a few poems in high school and tried writing some and now they're in College not sure what to do and they go to these classes where all they hear is how much they have to reject the thing that raised them.
So then they write these horrid faker poems. The only thing worse than the one who try to sound proper are the ones trying to sound cutting edge. Get the hell outta here you're not from the new york school and what does that school have to do with you anyway Midwest! That's what I wanna scream at them.

Sounds like you got it in for Regionalism?

(CG) On the contrary. It's one of the things I really like about today's poetry. The only problem is the entire nation needs to actively reject everything that happens in New York. Now before you make anymore faces just listen. Reject in terms of not allowing it to dictate what they do. It's why they teach Beat classes everywhere, to get people interested in all forms of life and all the places life can happen. New York is too big. Too many writers there, but thankfully it's dying out a bit. I'm holding my breath for Ashbery to go. (Laughs and waves it off)

That's sounds....bad.

(CG) In that case I take back everything I said.

Shouldn't you wait until the end to say that?

(CG) Right! But, No I love his writing. But the head needs to die off so the body can be free again. It's the last step in decentralization of poetic thought. Or a big step everytime some famous poet drops off, the we get to see if any of it mattered without that person sitting at a desk writing reviews of other people's books or favorable blurbs. I'm old too and when I die nobody will give a shit. But maybe somebody will pick up the books someday and read what I got and think about it and hopefully by then all the prejudices we have coming down from academia and New York will be gone and it can be read on its own merit. Everything on its own merit.

Are you a fan of "authorless" poetry then?

(CG) I'm a fan of it but the only problem is in some ways it is a shield. Hiding the identity of the author serves the poem only if it is completely universal. If the elements of the author are still there then what is the point? If your doing authorless poetry then you need to get a job with Hallmark.

So why the attack on New York?

(CG) Haven't they suffered enough? But listen, it isn't an attack on a place for the sake of attacking but for the sake of liberating....You know what though, aside from dear John they've not got much there anymore. Nobody that packs a walllop, it's an intitution now which is weird to say about a city. The weird irony is here in Milwaukee we've got Woodland Pattern, one beacon in a city is all you need, more is desirable but enough stuff comes through and now every town with a University has any number of writers coming through...it's all happening just like I thought it would back in the 70's when the program started up around here at UWM.
I went to classes and thought I'd be hot shit but I sat down and had a long talk with the department head and I realized, it might be good for a while but soon every place will be like this place and all we'll have left to distinguish us is the people that didn't go through the system. And suddenly it felt okay to let that slip away. Getting a job to pay the bills was important and I was able to switch majors.

Yes, this is a famous element in your biography.

(CG) I have a biography?

Well I'm starting one.

(CG) Oh, good God.

Do you think it's a bad idea?

(CG) Well yes only in that it won't be very interesting. I had a steady job and one wife most of my life. I live in blue collar city, as my hip hop neighbors might say "I ain't the one"

What can I do to make it interesting?

(CG) Embellishment comes to mind. We can make B. black or better yet say I bought her during a trip to Haiti brought her home and married her in exchange for her freedom.

That might be a little extreme.

(CG) Actually, we used to make jokes about that all the time, how boring we were I mean.

If you are comfortable I'd like to talk a bit about B. if that's alright?

(CG) Well I think I'm over the anger stage. So whatever's after that is what you'll get. I don't know if I'm at acceptance yet though. But in broader terms writing about death is never easy. Only because we are always so unsure of the next topic. Kids always dabble with it when they're down in the dumps with high school depression. When you're older though is when it starts to look like such a tantalizing option. In fact death sort of becomes a companion. A long term illness will do that to a person. And if you can accept your own role is when you are able to move on past death. Until of course you actually die.

What do you have to accept as your role? The role of a poet?

(CG) No no. Poet is just a title or description. That's why I don't like poets being celebrated for being poets. The role is life. You are life, I am life, that's the role. It's a bunch of horseshit pretending the definition of a person is what they do. Human life is always more than that, it just became easier for a lot of people at some point to identify this way. Of course they reach the mid-life crisis and crap their pants because they suddenly realize that this isn't how to define anything. It's just what you do to get by more than anything.
Okay sometimes it really works out to a tea. A baker is a baker or a priest is a priest or in my case a rabbi, but not very many people can actually bring this to the perfect alignment and use the job title as the ultimate identifier. If I ever call myself a poet and mean it then I'm fooling myself. What I do in life is not "being a poet" but writing poems. If other people call me poet then I'm flattered and I take it as a compliment. But if I call myself that it's presumptuous. It's one of those things.

So a baker is a baker but a poet writes poems?

(CG) Yeah. Doesn't that sound nicer?

I admit it does.

(CG) And it doesn't aim to offend the bakers of the world. Who they are is very important to me. I have a thing for fresh bread.

And a good deli?

(CG) You better believe it.

A Poet Begins

The following information was obtained through a series of interviews with Gaton. I'm posting only snippets of material based on what I've been able to verify.

After returning from a stint in Chile when he was in his mid twenties, Gaton learned about the new creative writing program at UW-Milwaukee and enrolled as one of its first students. He repeatedly says that he was the first, but this is something I have yet to fact-check. The track system has been in place for some time so I am unsure if the set up was different back in the early 70s. Despite this status, however, it is now legend that he dropped out of the undergrad program when he learned that his then longtime girlfriend was pregnant. This transition was eased by a long talk with the head of the creative writing program at that time.

He switched majors and focused on his earlier minor, business. The new plan worked as he was able to secure a job right out of school distributing cheese. Sargentos proved to be a stable company and he provided for his new family but he had not written anything for some time.

Unbeknownst to him, his new bride (with his old friend Bob Watt's encouragment) began sending out his poetry to various publishers. Not all the responses were favorable but she kept her campaign going in secret since the bulk of the poems were written before Gaton entered UWM he wasn't sure of their quality. In time the sample proved to be enough for the University of Toronto Press to request the entire manuscript.

This first book of poems are a strange subject with Gaton. Although the book went through three printings by the University of Toronto Press, it has been dismissed by Gaton countless times only to have him reverse his opinion minutes later.

"She went through so much trouble to get that book printed and all I ever did was complain." Says Gaton years later. He does point out that this printing was what assured he was going to be "unread" in his hometown since he was never very good at his own publicity. However it did assure him readers in the great white north and to this day not everyone in Canada realizes that one of its most popular poets is in fact American.

A re-release?

Interesting news concerning Gaton. It seems one of the editors of the most recent issue of Burdock magazine has been researching Gaton based on my few entries into this blog. I've been asked to show them my copy of the rare "People of Grenada" long poem.
Gaton himself has been reading Burdock for sometime along with the few other poetry journals published in Milwaukee.

According to the blogsite for Burdock (strangely named Teppichfresser Press) they've also put out a few chapbooks. Since the poem is no longer in print I've suggested it get another go around since it is over 25 years old and most probably few in the younger circles in Milwaukee have even heard of Gaton.

I believe the poem holds up well after all these years in part because it existed under the radar to begin with.

Of Grenada

Gaton recently gave me a chapbook of his from the early 80's, a 6 part anti war poem that uses metaphors as wide ranging as Films by Gehr and the Mountain Meadows Massacre to discuss the Regan administrations various "weekend" conflicts in South and Central America. It is either a harsh condemnation of the American Public's inability to pay attention or a plea for sanity in foreign policy.

The whole book begins with a quote from a book by Harold Lamb "Genghis Kahn: Emperor of All Men"

"He knew now that beyond the ranges of his westerly border existed fertile valleys where snow never fell. Here, also, rivers never froze. Here multitudenous peoples lived in cities more ancient than Karakorum or Yen-king"

It's tone is similar to Robinson Jeffers and has the awareness (maybe not quite the hipness) of Ginsberg. Gaton seems to have a direct line into the CIA's mindset in section I and his comparison of that organization to the Spanish Inquistors is as near a bullseye as one can get.
It's a little dated in terms of content but since it is highly political/topical it must be viewed in this scope and taken as a lesson of what happens when the powers that be to quote Gaton: "wear bloodstained gloves".

It was a limited edition chapbook that was self published and sent overseas to friends abroad. The copy I found was autographed by Gaton "To J- they're never worth it but we love them"

He refused to tell me who "J" was, or why the book was back in his posession, but insisted that I take it.

Exerpt From Gaton's Latest Book

While this might not be the best example of Chris Gaton's work, he asked me to share a work about his late wife before anything else:

Periodontal Maidenhead

Someday soon when I’m too old and deaf
to remember that I’ve fallen asleep
with the television too loud, a woman screaming
in a film will drive my neighbors
to report me to the police

and after they burst in, guns out and raised,
arresting me, they’ll bring in the scientists
with the white plastic suits
and black lights
and find our trails of blood:

yours on the sheets, mine in the sink.
Where’s the body? they’ll ask me
in the interrogation room. The blood
told them about a murder and I can’t
bring myself to talk about your wedding gift.

It is a short work, emotional without being burdensome. He finds a comical approach to dealing with his grief. It is sexual without being graphic. Well, perhaps a little graphic, but in a way that is tender and familiar, not vulgar.