The Legend of Boog

People have always asked me why I call my press Boog Literature. 21 years ago, me, my girlfriend and the guy she wound up cheating on me with were in my studio apartment in a converted brewery in Albany, New York, at 2 in the morning on a Saturday night when one of us said, "Hey, what's the name of that toilet that shoots water up your ass?" (Alright, so a bidet isn't really a toilet, but we didn't know that then.)

This was before the internet was part of everyday use, so we thought who can we call at two in the morning. So I picked up the phone and dialed the tips line at one of the local television stations and got a recording of anchorman Dick Wood asking me to leave a message. Next was a local radio station. "PYX 106, what's your request?" "Well, there's really no music I want to hear, but what's the name of that toilet that shoots water up your ass?" The overnight D.J. didn't know.

So I asked aloud, "Who else can we call this late at night?" And, in unison, we all screamed "Denny's!"

"Denny's, assistant manager Bob speaking." "Hi assistant manager Bob, I was just wondering if you know the name of that toilet that shoots water up your ass?" "What?" and after regaining his composure he replied, "A bidet." And we all yelled "Yes!" and then, "We're going to Denny's!" So we all piled in Judy's '71 Cutlass, met assistant manager Bob and thanked him.

That Monday, a care package filled with food arrived from my parents, provisions for the poor M.A. student. In it was the biggest box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes I'd ever seen, and on the outside it promised to contain a 3-D legend of baseball card. The legend I got was Boog Powell, a portly man with great homerun power who played first base for the great Baltimore Orioles teams of the sixties and seventies. The card, though, just listed his name as Boog, in quotation marks. With the same three gathered in my apartment, a new quest had begun, "What was Boog Powell's real name?"

I dialed the Corn Flakes hotline number. "Kellogg's Corn Flakes, may I help you?" "Ma'am, my Corn Flakes are fine, but I just received a 3-D baseball card inside my cereal box and was wondering, what's Boog Powell's real name?" "Hold on a minute, I'll check." So I hear her rifling through papers for a minute or two and then she returns to the phone. "I'm sorry, all of my literature says Boog on it."

That night, I told this story to my then-best friend Rod who I had been planning on starting a press with and when I was finished with the telling, he said, "That's it, we're BOOG Literature."

A coupla days later I found out Boog Powell's real name was John Wesley Powell, and was named after the gunfighter John Wesley Hardin, who was named after the central figure in the Methodist movement John Wesley, and that Powell's dad had called him the little booger as a boy.

It's now been 40 years since the death of Roberto Clemente. Here's my poem from 20 years ago.

More remembrances: 

https://twitter.com/#RememberingClemente

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Arriba Roberto
(On the 20th anniversary of the death of Roberto Clemente)

Esta noche yo escribo sin luces
this night I write without lights
esta noche yo escribo sin luces para usted
for you Roberto

has it been 20 years since you died that New Year's Eve on your way to Managua,
after throwing boxes aboard the plane
to feed and clothe the earthquake victims there?

did you know you would die that New Year's eve on the relief mission?

two premonitions

the wire service photo that went out
after your three thousandth and last regular season hit
your face was sad and gray in the black and white photograph
your friend Pancho Coimbre saw it and said,
"Este hombre esta muerto."
Your friend Pancho Coimbre saw it and said,
"This man is dead."
Three months later you were.

That November you told Vera, your wife,
as you awakened,
"I just had the strangest dream.
I was sitting up in the clouds, watching my own funeral."

You stand far away from the plate
men in scoring position
your bat high above your shoulders
ready to whip it across and through the ball
as the fans shout
Arriba Roberto!

you stand under a fly ball in right field
two steps back
ready to catch it on the run and fire home

and on one father's day
you scribble words on an envelope's back to your sons

Quien Soy?
Whom am I?
I am a small point in the eye of the
full moon.
I only need one ray of the sun to
warm my face.
I only need one breeze from the
Alisios to refresh my soul.
What else can I ask if I know that my
sons really love me?

And at your memorial in San Juan
in the same church where you and Vera were married
as your teammates and countrymen gathered,
Vera walked the beach of Punta Maldonado futilely hoping
as catcher Manny Sanguillen dove searching into the sea
as your spirit, a nun would say to Vera many years later,
was carried by the ocean to more places.

Something I wrote in 1991 that i thought I'd share given the headlines. Hope you enjoy:

I saw the first remnants of the Gulf War's true destruction
     in a Long Island beauty parlor
as a little boy, five years old,
sitting on the couch next to me,
having just gotten off the school bus,
opened his camouflaged plastic bag,
placing a canteen and helmet on the glass table,
among the Glamours and basketful of Christian literature.

He took his plastic camouflage vest out of the bag,
the vest's small white tag saying "Made in China,"
and he placed the vest on,
and hung his black binoculars ’round his neck,
as the woman next to me tells of war toys coming back in vogue recently,
as the child places the gray plastic hand grenade pin between his teeth,
tossing the grenade at the manicurist's table
(she doesn't blow up, though).

"I don't know where he learned how to do this," his mother says.
"We don't let him watch t.v. or bring any Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles stuff in the house.
He does watch the news, though," she reveals.

"My little Stormin' Norman,"
a smirk on her face, a glint in her eye,
"I bought it for him, you know."

Every Boog City Poet Ever

BC1, Jan. 28-Feb. 10, 2002
no po-ed, i selected

David Baratier
Anselm Berrigan
Sean Cole
John Coletti
Ethan Fugate
Lisa Jarnot
Eliot Katz
Aaron Kiely
Eileen Myles
Wanda Phipps,
Kristin Prevallet
Jenny Smith--cover
Lorenzo Thomas
Ian Wilder

BC2, Feb. 11-24, 2002
no po-ed, i selected

*Kurt Cobain poems
Arielle Greenberg--cover
Eileen Myles--centerfold broadside
Hoa Nguyen

*SF Bay Area poets
Mary Burger
Trane DeVore
Lauren Gudath
Beth Murray
Chris Stroffolino
Delia Tramontina
Elizabeth Treadwell

*Columbus, Ohio poets,
selected by David Baratier
Steve Abbott
Stephen Mainard
Julie Otten

*non-themed work
Jim Behrle
Ed Berrigan
Susan Landers
James Wilk

BC3, Feb. 25-March 10, 2002
no po-ed, i selected

Eliot Katz--cover
Edward Sanders--centerfold broadside

*Coletti and Friends--readers for his Boog chapbook pub party. Readers selected by John, work selected by me
Ed Berrigan, I Feel Tractor song lyrics
John Coletti
Betsy Fagin
Greg Fuchs
Mariana Ruiz-Firmat

*non-themed work
Charles Bernstein
Caitlin Mcdonnell
Kent Taylor

BC4, March 11-25, 2002
no po-ed, i selected

Emma Straub

BC5, April 8, 2002
Joana Fuhrman, poetry editor

Veronica Corpuz
Alan Gilbert
Daniel Kane
Noelle Kocot
Lisa Lubasch

BC6, April 22, 2002
*Douglas Rothschild, baseball po-ed

Marcella Durand
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (unsolicited)
Kevin Gallagher
David Hadbawnik
Owen Hill
Bill Luoma
Sharon Mesmer
Carol Mirakove
Elinor Nauen--centerfold broadside
Ann Elliott Sherman
Ed Smith

*Joana Fuhrman, poetry editor
Philip Good
Chris Martin
Stephen Paul Miller

BC7, May 6, 2002

Anne Waldman (i got to go with the Rachel Levitsky interview of Anne we ran)--centerfold broadside

*Joana Fuhrman, poetry editor
Ed Berrigan
Bob Hershon
Rebecca Reynolds

BC8, Aug. 2003
Jim Behrle, poetry editor

Nick Piombino--cover

*Arielle Greenberg, 1977-78 editor
Liz Brown
Sean Cole
Sarah Manguso
Chelsey Minnis
Edwin Torres

BC9, Sept. 2003
Jim Behrle, poetry editor

*SF Bay Area poets
(i got work from these poets who would read in Boog Oakland event)
Taylor Brady
Donna de la Perriere
Joseph Lease
Chris Stroffolino
Delia Tramontina

(Jim got work from these SF Bay Area poets)
Del Ray Cross--cover
James Meetze
Catherine Meng
Eileen Tabios
Stephanie Young

BC10, Oct. 2003

Anselm Berrigan (i got to go with the Greg Fuchs interview of Anselm we ran)

Jim Behrle, poetry editor

kari edwards
Bruna Mori
Hannah Nijinsky
Chris Pusateri--cover
Anthony Robinson
Aaron Tieger

BC11, Nov. 2003
Stephanie Young, poetry editor

Brenda Bordofsky--cover
Brenda Coultas
Brenda Hillman
Brenda Iijima

BC12, Dec. 2003
Stephanie Young, poetry editor

Shanna Compton
John Erhardt--cover
Dan Fisher
Gigi Oliver
Robert Paredez

BC13, Feb. 2004
Stephanie Young, poetry editor

David Harrison Horton--cover
Yuri Hospodar
Cassie Lewis

BC14, March 2004
Stephanie Young, poetry editor

Tina Celona Brown
Eli Drabman
David Hadbawnik
Simon Perchik
Eleni Sikelianos--cover

BC15, April 2004
Stephanie Young, poetry editor

Michael Farrell
Rosemary Griggs
Michael Vernon

*baseball poetry i selected
David-Baptiste Chirot
Joel Lewis
Ryan Murphy
Shin Yu Pai
Anne Waldman

BC16, May 2004
Carol Mirakove, poetry editor

Yedda Morisson
Rodrigo Toscano
Mark Wallace--cover

BC17, June 2004
Carol Mirakove, poetry editor

Douglas Rothschild--cover
Alan Semerdjian
Elizabeth Treadwell

BC18, Aug. 2004
Carol Mirakove, poetry editor

Allison Cobb--cover
Aaron Kunin
Kevin Varrone

BC19, Sept. 2004
Carol Mirakove, poetry editor

Ethan Fugate--cover
Heather Fuller
Kim Rosenfield

BC20, Nov. 2004
Carol Mirakove, poetry editor

John Coletti
Rob Fitterman
hassen--cover
Karen Weiser

BC21, Dec. 2004
Dana Ward, poetry editor

Tanya Brolaski
Jordan Davis
Stacy Szymaszek--cover

BC22, Feb. 2005
Dana Ward, poetry editor

Amick Boone
Catherine Meng
Noah Eli Gordon &
Sara Veglahn
Chuck Stebelton--cover

BC23, March 2005
Dana Ward, poetry editor

Susan Landers
James Meetze
Alli Warren
Tyrone Williams--cover

BC24, April 2005
Dana Ward, poetry editor

Jim Behrle
Anselm Berrigan
Sean Cole
John Coletti--cover

BC25, May 2005
Dana Ward, poetry editor

Noah Falk--cover
Rodney Koeneke
Cynthia Sailers

BC26, June 2005
Dana Ward, poetry editor

Joshua Corey
Drew Gardner--cover
Steven Vincent
Stephanie Young

BC27, August 2005
Dana Ward, poetry editor

Bruce Covey
Ange Mlinko--cover
Mark Tardi
Matvei Yankelevich

BC28 September/October 2005
Dana Ward, poetry editor

Julia Cohen
Michael Cross--cover
Dylan Michel
K. Silem Mohammad

BC29 November 2005
Dana Ward, poetry editor

Evan Commander
David Pavelich
Erik Sweet--cover
Rodrigo Toscano

BC30 December 2005
Dana Ward, poetry editor

Jack Kimball--cover
Tanya Larkin
Jon Leon
Christina Strong

*Deanna Zandt, politics editor, picked these for the politics page
Shappy
Sparrow

BC31 March 2006
Dana Ward, poetry editor

Brandon Brown
Michael Carr--cover
Nada Gordon
Logan Ryan Smith

http://theaugustproject2004.blogspot.com/

Hasta Luego

as you few loyal readers left have probably noticed, i don't really blog anymore, just two entries since march 27. and i just finished my april project blog, the third month in a row of night-time writings, and have decided to stop those projects for now. basically, i just ain't feeling it, so though i'm not shutting this blog down picture a "gone fishin'" sign on the door, as the posts here will be even fewer and far between, until i feel it again. xo dak