outlaw poetry and free jazz network

TONY MOFFEIT | AMERICAN BLUES OUTLAW POETRY ANARCHIC DREAM
by Todd Moore

Tony Moffeit and I founded the Outlaw Poetry Movement in America in 2004, partly as a reaction to the kind of tame poetry generated by writing programs, academia, and the prize system which is good old boy, incestuous, and corrupt. However, Tony and I have been good friends since 1983 when I published one of his early chapbooks entitled OUTLAW BLUES. But Outlaw in his work predates the early eighties because of his abiding interest in rockabilly, Delta Blues, Sun Records Country, and Hank Williams. Tony brought pop music culture to the poetry table when most everyone else was too cultured, too sophisticated to care.

When I say Outlaw Poet, I don’t mean to suggest that Tony Moffeit robs banks or is involved in a criminal organization. What I do mean to say is that Moffeit’s poetry bucks the trend of safe writing in America. It doesn’t come out of the John Ashbery East. It isn’t affiliated with the New York School, Black Mountain, or Language Poetry. And, in the West, it has nothing in common with the Boulder Beats or Post Wannabe Bukowski. Moffeit, at times, has been called Beat but he really has nothing in common with the Beats. He shows no interest in Eastern Religion, doesn’t write like or in the tradition of Allen Ginsberg, and is not even connected to the Baby Beats.

Moffeit’s predecessors are really Jack Micheline, Ray Bremser , and d. a. levy. These poets were all marginal Beat poets who had more interest in street poetry, drugs, crime, and going it alone than in the more public scene of Kerouac and Ginsberg. These three poets are really closer to what the Outlaw Poets are all about.

As an Outlaw Poet, Tony Moffeit is more interested in Billy the Kid rather than the Dalai Lama. What he is searching for in many of his books and chapbooks is the dark American underbelly, the shadowy place where all creative energy originates. His sense of Lorca’s Duende is visible in his poetry and blues performances. When he performs Luminous Animal, the room begins to shake.

For Moffeit, the metaphor of Billy the Kid is really central to his most important work. The Kid, who was a real life Western gunman, is important to both Moffeit’s continuing long poem about the Kid and to Moffeit’s poetic stance which stresses a kind of existential attitude about being a poet in America post nine eleven. Because if you are a poet, if you are one of the last of the authentic American voices, if you are a storyteller in the wreckage of the human, then you are making an existential choice about the breath and the way.

This passage from Outlaw Blues probably best exemplifies what Tony Moffeit is all about.

…tonight i sing a blues song for the outlaws the renegades the desperados who drift under endless skies america your clouds are my songs your rain is my voice your hail is my blues.

Tony Moffeit has always lived at the edge of his nervous system. He howls his poems in performance and he writes poetry doing 80 on Route 25. His is a high speed america and his dreams are energized with Duende and blood.

some related articles are listed below:

1. tony moffeit | outlaw: the roots i. the blood of the poet outlaw begins with blood. the blood of the poet. the visceral. the guts. the blood and the guts. that secret part of the brain. where the blood meets the guts in the electricity of the brain waves. and there is lightning in the veins. and the brain drives the limbs. the feet and the knees and the legs. and the arms and the shoulders and the stomach. a dance. the dreamwaves of the brain drive the dance. a billy the kid dance in which the gunfight is mad love. a theater of blood...
2. tony moffeit | I’ll never get out of this night alive I NEED TO WRITE IN THE DARK i need to howl my blues in the blackness i need to reach out and touch the ghosts who are the ghosts the ghosts are billy the kid and marie laveau the gunfighter and the voodoo queen i need to talk with the ghosts i need to dance with the ghosts billy the kid as blues poet marie laveau as the voodoo snake woman let me talk let me dance let me go deeper into the darkness i close my eyes in order to see i want to let the blackness be...
3. todd moore | what are the stakes in american poetry ? What are the stakes in american poetry? What is the writing of poetry really all about? Is it about getting the prizes, is it about lucking into all that grant money, is it about those cushy teaching positions? The real stakes have nothing to do with awards, fellowships, paid readings, or who kisses who’s ass. What are the real stakes of american poetry?...
4. the outlaw bible of american poetry Mumia Abu-Jamal, Kathy Acker, Ai, Miguel Algarin, Rafael F.J. Alvarado, David Amram, Rudolfo Anaya, Sini Anderson, Hannah Aquaah, Penny Arcade, Amiri Baraka, Julian Beck, John Bennett, Mark “9-Box” Benyo, Ted Berk, Wallace Berman, Steven J. Bernstein, Father Daniel Berrigan, Iris Berry, Umar Bin Hassan, Max Blagg, Jennifer Blowdryer, Cecil Boatswain, Laurel Ann Bogen, Joe Brainard, Richard Brautigan, Ray Bremser, Douglas Brinkley, Jim Brodey, Eric Brown, Lenny Bruce, Michael Bruner, William S. Burroughs, Regie Cabico, Cal, Steve Cannon, Jim Carroll, Michael Carter, Neal Cassady, Jim Chandler, Neeli Cherkovski, Justin Chin, Andy Clausen, Allen Cohen, Ira Cohen, Leonard Cohen, Wanda Coleman,...
5. tony moffeit | renegade as if you would search out a poem among hundreds of poems. the one you would kill for. the one you would die for. the one that would make you forget your darkest memory. or take that dark memory and use its dark energy. the one that would make you see in your blindness. make you reach out for the blackness as if it were a new light. to be buried alive in that blackness. to feel yourself in your breaking. and in the breaking the blackness becomes a new light. something giving birth whether it is a bullet...