outlaw poetry and free jazz network

Jump to Comments

If you are a Todd Moore fan you will enjoy Gary Goude, and vice versa. Goude’s poems are cut-throat, matter of fact images about those who live trapped in the everyday horror of the human condition. Goude is an outlaw poet, and by that I mean he’s been places a lot of readers may rather not go. He also uses an economy of words, in the style of Moore. You may imagine through his poems that he has probably woken up next to the train tracks more than once in his life. Like Moore, he has lived hard and close to the bone.

These two poets fit perfectly together in this outstanding chap, which includes a color cover image taken from the film Reservoir Dogs. Goude takes us through the depths with tight lines: “I believe in the destruction/of everything man has touched and created,” (‘I Just Sit & Wait’); and from ‘The Bitter Life:’ “your teeth will begin to fall out/one by one/ your dreams will haunt you/with visions of ex wives/faces of your children/memories of dead love. Welcome to Hell.”

This is definitely not poetry one might read while sipping herbal tea in the garden. This is blood and guts writing while living in a world full of humans and rats, with not much distinction between the two. The 2nd half of the book will not be disappointing to long time readers of Moore. If you light a match the poem will have ended, but the scent will linger in the air and you may feel like you narrowly escaped having your flesh singed. Moore’s section is entitled: “Lost in America,” and he is speaking for the forgotten: ‘benny always:’ “ask benny what the war was like/benny smiled/sd what war/then tapped his temple/steel plates/no pictures in my head.”

Each poem he writes is a unique story, a flash, a quick movie, a jarring of the senses, unforgettable. Moore has by now mastered the long poem (“Dillinger,”), and no one else can deliver a short poem like he does. I prefer to read his shorter poems, but no matter the length, the delivery is always clean, sharp, delivered with dangerous style. I also like the inclusion of old black and white movie posters in this chap. by Victor Schwartzman

Gary Goude is a machine shop worker in Los Angeles. He’s also a Vietnam vet. And he happens to write the most gut-wrenchingly real poetry you’ll have read since the death of the originator of blood and guts poetry Charles Bukowski, who interestingly enough, found an audience among the uppity poetry folks when he was first published in the NYQ back in the early ’70s. Well, folks, Gary Goude is the new Bukowski. His stuff is about the real everyday hell we all go through. He is an every man. Married. Divorced. On the outs with one son and now the other. He can’t maintain a a relationship with a woman. He has few friends. His trust in his fellow man all gone. And he self medicates with alcohol. He’s nearing 60 and his words should be read by everyone who can’t stand regular, dull, lifeless, having nothing to do with anything poetry, you know, the flowery bullcrap that makes no sense and means even less than the next word out of President Bush’s mouth.

Also, his interview in this issue is his attempt to plead the case for a better poetry product, one that is of and for the people and not the green hedge blocked view of the campus poets, the dull bark of a human shells sitting at a machine knocking out their latest volume of poetry gunk, that won’t be read, that won’t sell a single volume but will be hailed by the New York Times book critics as the best poetry anyone, even the cellar dwellers like us, can and should read. BUNK. Gary Goude is the man people should be reading. You’ll identify with his short, understandable rips on ex-wifes, the job, the life of hell we all exist in and survive through…and for what, we don’t know. And neither does Goude. But we know a fellow survivor when we read him and Goude is a survivor and an artist who can chew it up and spit it out better than anyone you’ve read since Bukowski left this green Earth for poetry readings alongside Jesus H. Christ. byRobert W. Howington

Todd Moore books are available via the Metropolis Shop Page here…

some related articles are listed below:

1. todd moore | blood calls to blood Blood calls to blood. Blood always calls to blood. That happens whenever I read THE NAME IS DILLINGER. I promise myself to relax, to take it easy, breathe normally, just say the lines in a natural way but the last thing I can be is laid back when I read NAME. It’s like answering to a throwdown, a personal challenge, a psychic slap in the face, a long blood curdling yell from the void. I read the first line out loud and suddenly I am sucked into the current of the poem, in and down and around the roaring...
2. todd moore | the blood of the poet Every time I do a reading I am haunted by the blood of the poet. Haunted and driven right to the void by the blood of John Berryman. The blood of Hart Crane. The blood of d. a. levy. The blood of Vladimir Mayakovsky. The blood of David Lerner. The blood of Christopher Marlowe. The blood of Francois Villon. The blood of Alexander Pushkin. The blood of Yannis Ritsos. The blood of Eugen Jebeleanu. The blood of Orhan Pamuk. His novel SNOW is really a poem in disguise. Mouth and brain blood. The poem emptied out for the rope...
3. todd moore | night blood, red hands The only thing I remember about the dream was suddenly waking up and checking my hands to see if I had blood on them. Then checking to see if any blood had leaked out of the dream and soaked my bedsheets. And, finally checking the revolver I keep under the bed to see if any blood had come out and gotten on it. But everything was clean. All of the blood had stayed in the nightmare. Red hands at Guantanamo. When I was a kid I cut my hand on a coffee can lid and the blood went out...
4. todd moore | love & death & teeth in the blood Dear Todd, thank you very much for sending me your latest work. I hope, a lot of people will send you a lot of orders. Monsieur K. THE DARK HEART OF AMERICA by Tony Moffeit LOVE & DEATH & TEETH IN THE BLOOD. Todd Moore. Pitchfork Poetry Press, 2007. PO Box 146399, Chicago, IL 60614. $9.00. For the past several months I have been immersed in a manuscript of Todd Moore’s revolutionary novel, “Dreaming of Billy the Kid,” a lyrical, sprawling mural that captures the heart of Outlaw America. His own “Guernica” in a way. Haunted and hypnotized by...
5. todd moore | outlaw bonfires and dillinger’s blood Is it humanly possible to know what was going through Walt Whitman’s mind when he was writing SONG OF MYSELF? And, yes, we have the lines from the poem. We know he was thinking of them but what else was he thinking about? What was he dreaming, what was he talking about to friends? Is it humanly possible to know what was going through Allen Ginsberg’s mind while he was writing HOWL? The lines of HOWL are there for everyone to read. We know he was thinking them and putting them down, but what else was on his mind?...