Joe Lawson, The Gumball King, Dead at 58

NOB HILL--Joe Lawson died last Thursday night. Saturday we had a wake. There are no words that can express the loss.

But I tried. I posted a piece about him on The Duke City Fix this morning.

Robert E. Lee & Ken Saville... Which Is Which?

NOB HILL--How the Artist Ken Saville managed to get his picture on the cover of U.S. News & World Report I will never know. All I can say is he never wears bowties anymore...the magazine must have paid him a pretty penny to get him to rummage through his closet and come up with that outfit.

What's more, he does claim to be a distant relative of Robert E. Lee. "Everybody from the South says they are related to him."

Gene Frumkin, ABQ Poet...Gone

NOB HILL--Gene Frumkin, Poet and UNM creative writing teacher, died Feb. 18th. The notice of his death appeared only yesterday, March 2nd. He was 79.

I didn't ever have Gene as a teacher, but for the last few years I would run into him about suppertime in Mannie's restaurant. We did know each other from mutual acquaintances, specifically poets Diana Huntress and Dianne Duff.

The title of his 1998 book has to be one of the best titled books ever...and certainly worth thinking about in terms of his passing: The Old Man Who Swam Away and Left Only His Wet Feet. We still have those wet feet of his, several volumes of them.

I last heard Gene read at the Robert Creeley Memorial in September of 'o5. I couldn't get a good picture of him in the dim light. I hope the following poem from Santa Fe Broadside will serve even better.

Let the Lines Stand

It will be hard to erase each other
now that she is a beauty in my lines
I had no longer thought to find there.

Even should she move to another vision
of herself and me, I have her written
in immovable ink through my mind’s

open spaces, where she can be at ease
in her dreams, and mine. This affinity
subverts in thought other obligations

thicker than easy passage from now to then.
Our words are the clasp that holds us
together, but after they are all spoken

what can engender in us a certain place
wherein we can see each other a step up
from limbo? Patience. Let the lines stand

as long as they can. When they fall,
even then, I will hold her, speechless,
the lines still there, still held to their page.


Copyright © 2006 Gene Frumkin

Flying Star Moments: Poet David M. Johnson

NOB HILL FLYING STAR--I ran into Dave Johnson yesterday afternoon. His new book of poems Rebirth of Wonder has just come out from UNM Press. I have known Dave for about 25 years...ever since I took a poetry writing class from him. He has been an important figure in the New Mexico poetry scene for longer than that.

This book concentrates on the spiritual and physical journey of a preacher's kid from Minnesota who ended up a poet-philosopher in Albuquerque.

Here is a poem from the book.

Patriarch in the Midwest

Where grandfather dipped his pen I burn incense. His inkwell
a bronze pagoda laced with oriental trees and fern.

Winged serpents crawl along the tray, a butterfly etched in the roof
waits to rise with the smoke of sandalwood.

Grandfather was a dragon from the north whose nature rejected
the mystical East, the solitary path to Nirvana.

Jehovah wasn't a breath from within, but a force like a winter storm.
Sin could destroy the household or locusts reap the harvest.

Did Scandinavians travel too far inland losing sight of the sea?
All that snow filling the hollows in a man's mind.

Grandfather talked to God in English and Norwegian, like engaging
the captain of a ship. His sermons charted the open spaces,

As if words could finally cut clear between good and evil.
From his pulpit in Minnesota Grandfather could see the ocean.