Tempus Fugit/2012 Gone

With an Internet connection that is recently giving me hella, I'll try to get this done.  If the links in this post don't work, try those on the sidebar.

What happened to 2012?  We must have had fun here at RBP because time flies like this only when you're having the best of times.

Pressed to describe the sensation, I'd compare RBP to a perpetual cocktail party in the offices of the loneliest publishing enterprise known to mankind.  It's rewarding, but I'm prone to the hangover-induced publishing blues.

This year I blinked and the world sped past me in its race to oblivion and madness, but fortunately for the solid fans of RBP--gritty, determined, faithful--some good press stuff did indeed happen, along with the usual bad stuff, which I won't bother you with.

The Good:  We published six new titles in this our third year of existence.

The year started off with the press getting some much needed fiscal support from a true believer.  The significance of this earthquake-like event should not be ignored, for had it not happened the press might have ended as an inanimate, mangled machine bleeding ink into the gutter.

Nah, that doesn't happen in the digital age, but you know what I mean. 

Six, I say.

First up was Charles Deemer's Eight Oregon Plays.  Deemer describes how he became a resident playwright in a couple of Portland-based theatre companies in the eighties in this RBP video interview. The Portland State University screenwriting instructor, the son of a Navy careerist, grew up in Norfolk and Southern California.  After a stint in the Army, he graduated from UCLA.  He moved to Oregon to attend graduate school at the University of Oregon in the early seventies, earning an MA in playwriting before leaving to teach briefly on the east coast.

Once ensconced in Oregon permanently, Deemer absorbed the locale's manner and spirit, and, in one of the most obvious instances of a writer writing what he knows in both an historical and contemporary fashion, the plays came forth throughout the years and a legacy was created.

Oregon is better off for this book having been published, though the very state has changed, not always for the best, since the plays were first noticed.

Deemer has commented in the past that he is forgotten.  He isn't, but writers have been known to lie and exaggerate.  As long as RBP is around he has this forum if he chooses to use it.

The second book up this year is a thing I still marvel at, because what K.C. Bacon has done in Aphorisms is make a very difficult form appear easy.  

All aphorisms are not created equal, and Bacon's rise above the noise.  This is a major accomplishment given that every word counts in this tough form and one false step can amount to ruination. 

These lines have wit, intelligence, truth, soul.  One might not agree with all of the author's sentiments, but his are not lacking for conviction, which trumps supposed righteousness in every regard.

The third book is another by Deemer, who turned to the novel form a decade ago and has since published numerous titles.  He published Sodom, Gomorrah & Jones with RBP this year.  As in his volume of poetry, In My Old Age, published in 2011, the subject is aging as it relates to personal and historical change. Carlton (CJ) Jones has issues he battles through until one big surprise makes him take flight.  A retired history professor, Jones views the world through an old typewriter until the computer age catches up with even this reluctant protagonist.  Finally, the truth sets him free.

Buddy Dooley, the graphic artist, broke out his pen to publish a book of writings at mid-year.  He titled it People, Polemics & Pooh-Pah: Notes from Under the Bar.  No less an authority than RP Thomas (AKA Sam White, author of "The Huncke Poems" in the 2010 RBP anthology Cold Eye) called the book "splendid," though I think it better than that.  I thought it magnificent.

Though I did not agree with Dooley's title, I agree with Thomas/White.  Dooley is a special writer whose humor is hit and miss, but always funny, intentionally or not.  Will Dooley pen another one day?  We can only pray!

Number five:  Deemer's operatic adaptation of his play Varmints, a "libretto in search of music."  Read it now and laugh like I did at its craziness.  

Finally, the sixth book of the year was another by Bacon. Moon Over New Rotterdam is his first prose work published by RBP, after Aphorisms and two books of poetry.

Bacon's hero, Augustine Jones, a Californian by temperament if not heritage, is at sea after a divorce and financial troubles push him back into the arms of his hometown of New Rotterdam, a port city near Seattle where his familial connections rescue his poor butt and set him in a new, healthier direction.

Bacon, a painter and businessman associated with the stevedoring industry, knows the waterfront and its characters and gives the reader a good dose of what life is like in that world.  In an uncomplicated yet fascinating story, Bacon's writing excels in its narrative and poetic qualities.

A smattering of other video projects developed this year, including this interview with Charles Lucas, can also be linked at the sidebar.

Happy New Year, folks!

TS