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A memorial to poet and New York Quarterly editor, William Packard.

 

A TRIBUTE TO BILL PACKARD by Todd Moore

 

I would like to take a moment to honor the passing of William Packard. Anyone who has worked at the writing trade for any length of time will recognize Packard as the exemplary editor of The New York Quarterly, a first class magazine which has been friendly to all writers across the board. For many years Packard had been one of Charles Bukowski's major supporters. During Bukowski's lifetime, the doors of NYQ were always open to him and many of his best poems, drawings, and interviews were featured in the Quarterly.

 

Packard was not only an editor who could hold his own with the Maxwell Perkinses Of the world, but was also a fine poet and essayist. His interviews of such noteworthy poets as Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, Gary Snyder, and many others have been collected in his book THE POET'S CRAFT. As that eminent poet and critic Robert Peters states in the introduction to that book, "William Packard has done much to redeem that much abused genre, the literary interview."

 

I personally found the Bukowski interview the most interesting, mainly because Bukowski was always so painfully honest. And, I think that's what Buk admired most in Bill Packard. The short time that I knew Bill through a letter exchange, I found him to be a straight shooter and a man devoted to the art of writing, particularly, the writing of poetry. I owe Packard more than I could repay him by writing this short remembrance, for giving me space in NYQ to report about the state of poetry at a time when the best I could expect from most small magazine editors was enough space for a few pared down twenty line poems.

 

If Packard is going to be remembered for anything, it will be for the way that he encouraged the discussion of writing during a remarkable period in American poetry Which, of course, is the second half of the twentieth century, and in particular, the last twenty or so years. His passion for the writing of poetry stands out on almost every page of NYQ that came out under his watch. And, his passion for the poets themselves has also been noted.

 

What is a man, what is the sum total of who he is or was except for what he has left behind? And, I am not talking about material goods, but the things he has made with his hands and heart and soul? Bill Packard and The New York Quarterly have become practically the same thing. Magazines, the good ones, are not printed with ink, but almost always with blood. The energies, the ideas, the passions of Bill Packard will always live on in the issues of The New York Quarterly, the people he influenced, and the books he wrote. And, I am happy to have known him.

 

                               The Three Amigos

 

Pictured left - right: Todd Moore; Tony Moffeit; Lawrence Welsh.

The Price of Fame by Todd Moore

 

The price of fame is high in America. Movie, rock, and sports stars all know what I’m talking about. But, for them it’s at least a kind of trade off because for all their loss of privacy, they at least have some kind of financial pay back. In the arts, and specifically poetry it doesn’t work exactly the same way. I’m not sure what kind of money a main stream poet is capable of earning but I do know that in the small press there is practically no money to speak of unless you are a Charles Bukowski and he really was the exception to the rule. And, even Bukowski was not what I would call enormously wealthy. In later life, I am certain he made five and six figure incomes from his writing and lived comfortably, but he never made the kind of money a Tom Hanks or a Madonna or Michael Jordan make.

 

But I’m not really talking about money here. Right now I’m more interested in a poet’s reputation. I think my best definition of fame for a small press poet is he is famous in the small press if he is fairly widely known. You don’t have to be world renown like Bukowski to be famous in the small press. But you do have to be generally well known among small press poets and editors to at least have a modest reputation, a small bite of the fame pie. Of course, this kind of fame brings with it no money whatsoever in jobs, readings, or book sales. It just simply means you are pretty well known for a body of work.

 

This kind of fame makes you a little more vulnerable than a movie star, a rock star, a sports figure. At least these kinds of people can use the unimaginable sums of money they make to provide a little distance between themselves and their fans. A small press poet, if he has any fans at all, is usually not bothered or harassed by them. I mostly see this kind of attention as at least flattering.

 

But, it is not always flattering or friendly. And, the reason for this, is the very nature and essence of poetry.  Poetry has always been a peculiar source of dark energy. Lorca called it Duende and Rilke referred to it as the Angel. Mostly, they were trying to get at where poems come from. But, they really didn’t stop to consider what comes out of that ether along with those poems.

 

When I write poetry, especially those long sections out of Dillinger, I like to think of that kind of writing as calling down the energy. I’ve never been overly superstitious or religious. But peculiar things happen to you when you write a long poem. You may be subject to very striking and almost prophetic dreams. You may experience some moments of clairvoyance. And, you may summon up some real live demons you never counted on.

 

And, it’s the real live demons I want to focus on. These demons are actually real people who want to take you on, take you over, and by attempting to make a fool of you in public, become bigger and brighter and more creative and ultimately their larger version of who they think they are through you. I recall seeing a Stephen King movie years ago that addressed this very issue. I forget the title but the stars were Kathy Bates and James

Caan. He was the writer and she was holding him prisoner so that he could write the book that she envisioned. Or something to that effect. The point is that for every strong poet out there, many, many wannabes dream of taking his or her place. The strange thing is that I’m talking about poetry. An art that brings no money. Especially in the small press. But an art that is still associated with enormous psychic and other worldly power. Duende, Angel, Mojo. Call it whatever you want to.

 

The kinds of wannabes who feel themselves hypnotically attracted to poets are what I consider to be something like icon stalkers, cultural ghosts who’ve failed at being university professors, writers, actors, painters. Something happened to them. Most of the time they just didn’t possess the necessary creative genius to be a writer or an actor. So, the next best thing was to challenge the very system that they feel broke them in the first place.

 

At this point, as I stare at these words on the page, I almost find this subject to be ludicrous beyond belief What am I saying here? That there are people out there somewhere who would be silly enough to stalk a small press poet? And, I guess that that is precisely what I am saying. In a way, when you think about it, this is probably one of the reasons Bukowski bought that house out in San Pedro. Naturally, he wanted a nicer place to live in. And, naturally, he wanted his own space, his own privacy. But i would be willing to bet there were people just aching to find out where he lived, failed writers, failed actors who wanted to rub up against Bukowski’s mojo.

 

Of course, stalking can occur in any number of ways. First, you can be physically stalked. You can be followed to and from your home. You can be followed while you shop. You can be followed to the movies and while you are out dining. And, you can have someone hanging around your house. This is the up close and personal stuff and just a heartbeat away from some kind of violence.

 

Second, you can be stalked through the mail. Love letters, hate letters, letters admiring or criticizing your work. This can also happen through your e-mail. Out of the blue you may get a peculiar letter about a chapbook you’ve written or an essay you may had just recently had published. These forms of stalking are really not meant to engage you in an intelligent conversation but to draw you out, to find your weak places, to invite you to a public exchange where this kind of predator is not really after your ideas but rather the very essence of who and what you are. This kind of predator is interested in one thing only and that is to destroy you publicly and become whoever they think you are.

 

Needless to say, this kind of pseudo intellectual predator is really only a bottom feeder and more than likely a failure in the arts and in his or her personal life. And, this is only a guess, but this kind of person is filled with so much blind desperation that he or she is willing to risk an already apparent failure against any poet’s reputation. What I’m really talking about is a suicidal lunge toward any poet with a successful reputation no matter what.

 

In a situation like this, and they are relatively rare even today, the best thing to do is remain silent unless the stalker attempts to invade personal space. Most of these psychic terrorists on the internet are quite frankly physical cowards. They wouldn’t have the courage or the guts to face a poet in the flesh so they use the net where they can hide in their cowardly anonymity.

 

Silence almost always defeats and defuses any situation that involves a wannabe who wants to climb into the spotlight by defaming a writer or a poet. Silence has a kind of powerful metastasis all its own and before long the predator will cruise around for another target.

 

If silence doesn’t work and one of these wannabes does show upon your doorstep in real life, then go to plan B. Go heavily armed. I do. But, then isn’t that what you’d expect from an outlaw?

Both of these essays were published in the Lummox Journal in the year 2003.

Exploring the Creative Process since 1996