Wrapping up a look back at 2011 and Round Bend...
As Occupy Portland camped out in two city parks during the mother of all camping fiascoes, the Sky News helicopters occupied the space over downtown, sending me into a frenzy of loathing for the local teledistorters.
November was an often sleepless month thanks to the chopper overkill.
Fortunately, good things were happening for Round Bend.
First came the news that Berkeley poet/biographer Tom Clark had picked up on Bill Deemer's Variations and commented at his website, Beyond the Pale.
Shortly thereafter, Michael Lally also expressed his admiration for Bill's book.
These two notices represented victory over the forces of apathy that generally surround the poetic cause. To have bright fellow travelers notice and praise the work is about as good as it gets for the writer, and by association the publisher.
Praise be to the poets!
Now, if the poets could only eat such and pay the rent with it.
An interlude of fun stoked this site in mid-month when, in a nostalgic mood, I began a series of posts recalling the film-making colony at the Jan-Mar Courts in Northwest Portland in the 80s.
K.C. Bacon reminded me that he lived in the apartment next door to Joan Gratz in this humorous aside.
And Blashfield killed it with this, recalling the Jan-Mar set on Drugstore Cowboy.
That's some art history there, folks.
If April is the cruelest month, what be December? The saddest, with its often forced holiday good cheer, with its endless materialism and shop until you’re flat broke mentality?
But alas, this December has been less disheartening than most. Echoing his appraisal of the work Bill Deemer put forth in Variations, Tom Clark spread some of his love to brother Charles for the poems in In My Old Age.
It is left to be said to the book buyer at the Multnomah County Library where I sit and type at precisely this moment, who told me over the telephone--"We know Bill and Charles. We love them--" you are not alone in your love of the brothers, lady.
But please remove the April from your soul and shelve the entire RBP catalog.
The press is for real. We just had a helluva year.
TS
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