Last photographed somewhere on the coast of the Aegean sea, the mangy beast continues to see far more of the world than I ever will.
Here he visits the famous City Lights Bookstore and Ghirardelli Chocolates. I am sure the hilly nature of that city works for him. Not to mention the chocolates.
Have you got my GOAT yet? If so feel free to send a photo of my pal so I know what he’s up to. Or to reprimand me for worst marketing tag ever for a book of poetry. Either will do.
Courtesy of Leonard Durso, who writes, “I took Goat into town for a little ship gazing on the Aegean.” Thanks Len!
He gets around, that Goat. Most recently sighted with baguette and coffee in the vicinity of St Helena by poet Robert Okaji, and taking respite and comfort at the Bonita…
photo courtesy of Robert Okaji
photo courtesy Robert Okaji
I am still awaiting the promised photographic evidence of our yarn-horned friend on a bluff overlooking the Aegean Sea…and other places far and wide.
A few images from West of Here, where some of the poetry offered up on this site has found its way recently into the hands of kind caretakers. Admittedly it is kind of thrilling to know this work travels far better than its author…
GOAT at Coco et Olive, Main and 21st St, Vancouver BC (photo courtesy MB)
GOAT at Rocky Mountain Flatbread, W 1st Ave, Vancouver BC (photo courtesy of MB)
Goat has never been on a Vancouver cafe run before (at least as far as I know). So thanks, MB, for expanding my horizons! And many thanks to all of you who’ve taken one poem or another for a ride in your mind or your car, wherever you are.
For those who’ve followed the adventures of my old friend Goat over the last few weeks as I’ve posted them, many thanks.
For anyone interested in the entire collection, I’ll put together a PDF of this work and have it on this site for download before the New Year. There is still a print version of the book available through Amazon with black and white versions of Tom Williams’s great linocut art, but no copies of the original letterpress are available (at least not that I know of!)
Finally, for the last word on this sequence, I’ll hand it off to National Book Award winning poet A.R. Ammons, who wrote this about the Goat poems:
“A sequence in which the imagination is marvelously free to leap, convert, disjoint, dispose re-dispose as the moment prompts, but a sequence in which restraint, compression, intention, craft are all alive and conscious in a fine discipline. The rambunctious is made sadly tame, sulled, schooled in ‘Goat’s Style is Cramped’ so naturally and with such apparent ease and one is so caught up in the poem itself that one has to break away to become aware of how flawlessly the poem’s made. I like these poems very much and consider them a rare achievement. Though energetic and almost dismissively swift, they startle one with sharp loneliness, compassion, loss. I’m afraid I cannot find anything wrong with them.”
On to new stuff! Happy holidays to all.
If you ever call, there is always
this: the grumble or tremble in
your voice is mine. I have gone
out to something, am not available
now. As a rule, I am never home.
I do the goose dance, i do the
state of the art. This is my
answer then, my message. Listen:
the hill is full of rocks
the wood is green with beasts
Goat watches the sky bruise
with approaching day. He is old,
he can hardly walk. One day
Troll lifts him, carries him
to the city and drops him in
the middle of Broadway. Traffic
stops for miles. Goat is constantly
mumbling something. Someone in a car
gets out and shoots him. Goat is dead.
Goat is never dead.
from GOAT lies down on Broadway. For more info see here.
On the train, Goat sits
on Chicken Little. At first
he is unaware, but then Troll
ties up its beak with masking
tape. The sky stops falling.
Goat decides never to speak
again.
Goat scares the conductor
with his bloody teeth.
It’s only chicken blood, says Troll.
from GOAT lies down on Broadway. For more info see here. Lino-block art by Tom Williams.Troll tells Goat that the sky
is scheduled to fall today:
he read it in the Post.
It starts: Goat kicks back clouds
while Troll keeps the blue above
by force of sheer ugliness.
All over, people carry umbrellas.
They think it is only raining.
When they can do no more, they find
a subway entrance, catch a train.
from GOAT lies down on Broadway. For more info see here.
Goat sees Troll at MOMA.
They eat the contents
of the room they are in,
then head for the library.
Later, they break up a
softball game: Troll eats
third base, Goat kicks
the umpire out of the game,
offers to sub, having read
the rules. “It’s only reasonable,”
he reminds Troll.
Translations from the English 