sw00586rtj-9books

Regarding This Journal
  =                 Entry 18                    [ last modified: 2008-08-02 ]

For as long as I am able to maintain it, this Sprintedon Hollow
webbed log will persist in AOL space.  I cannot be sure what
directions it will walk.  I do know it will no longer walk some 
of those it has walked.  Fewer directions should equal easier
touring.  More photos are likely.

             §

Of the 9 books of my poems presently here:
-
Begun in 2006, This Day's Poem is the shortest.  It did not            
exist as an entity before this "sw".  Two of its poems are in
this journal's initial entry.  40 poems are in this e-chap.            
1

Begun in 1976, 1976 Today is                 
2
the longest, presently consisting of 353 sonnets.  The original, 
which was first published in 1980 in the cassette medium, had
366 sonnets.  Over the years, I chose to be a somewhat isolate
poet, creating my own press: Thinking Lizard.  In tandem with
it (for about five years) I used a pen name: Alden St. Cloud.
The press and the pen name, I believe, were conceived in 1979.
49 selections from this book are in this August 2007 archive.

Rooted Sky, which contains one letter, is my first public book
of poems.  It was published in November of 1972.  In 1981
I republished it as a Thinking Lizard cassette book authored 
by Alden St. Cloud.  In this journal it is Rooted Sky 2007.           
3

Postures, first published in 1980 as a Thinking Lizard cassette
book authored by Alden St. Cloud, is in this journal entitled:
Postures 2007.                                                         
4

After entering the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1965,              
I attempted to write an epic entitled Onefor.  Only Book I 
of it was completed.  My mentor, the late George Starbuck,
dissuaded me from continuing that project, and talked me into
writing something more personal.  Along with a Prologue stanza
and an Epilogue stanza by Alden St. Cloud and "Incantation",
my first tonal/phonetic poem, that variously-revised project is
here as Justan Tamarind.                                        
5

What resulted from my mentor's            
push was quite unlike the failed epic other than that it also is 
at base a narrative.  I imagined "myself" taking a long walk
through part of my hometown, beginning it with an injunction
to "myself" to heed "the now, what is".  Its opening words are:
               Ring the bridge rail!
Though it may not be obvious, what I was telling "myself" was
to rap that rail with my knuckles, making it ring, since that
particular rail was hollow.  Did doing so hurt one's knuckles?
Yes.  I entitled it Fond du Lac.                                 
6
In its present form a quote from T. S. Eliot's East Coker and a 
Prologue precede it.  Lines from it were published in Wisconsin
Review and in my hometown's newspaper.  It too became a TL
ASC cassette in 1980.

In 1974 and 1975 I put together a book
of 33 prayer poems--which earlier today I found out is/ 7 fewer
than are in tdp.  However, Prayers in December is longer by 2      
7
entries.  Both are e-chaps, but I call pind a chapel book.  

This past June I was on some unknown mental acid.  My crazy intent 
was to write 3 stylistically-divergent-for-me poems each day.  I
didn't quite, but managed to net an 85-poem book: June 2007.       
8

The last is a work of sets of poems, a set being a group of 6 or
more poems with something in common which allows them to 
be seen as a set.  While I may add other sets to it, I consider it
a completed work.  The 5 sets now in it are not like each other,
and when each was created I had no idea I would place it with
other sets in a book, especially one entitled Sets.                  9



Brian A. J. Salchert