Poe and poetry, one has a birthday Monday

I never noticed how much taller Ernie Pyle is than Edgar Allan Poe.

Pyle and Poe

But seriously, Monday is the 200th anniversary of Poe's birth, so, we should all celebrate with something macabre, no? Perhaps brick up a relative, or dust off the pendulum.



Me, I'll be checking for black cats and listening to black birds raving about his poetry.








A Poe Webliography

The Poe Museum in Virginia

Wikipedia on Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore



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A Writer's Life For Me

A long, long time ago, I decided I wanted to be a writer. I was still in high school at the time. Writing looked like an easy life.

You type things. Someone pays you to publish what you wrote.

How tough can that be?

Now, that I've been writing full-time for more than two decades, I wonder where the time all went.

Where is that novel I started in 1971? And the sequel?

I recently came across some poems I wrote back in the day. My high school had a literary magazine. I was on the staff that chose what went in. All my stuff was rejected. Reading it now, I'm not surprised.

But that rejection didn't stop me. I kicked a few trash cans and went back to my typewriter. With each draft my writing painstakingly grew better. I think it has. If it hadn't, you wouldn't have read this far, would you?

And I've never run out of topics to write about. My favorite, however, is growing up in Belleville in the 1960s.

Who knew, then, that it was so great? TV was black and white, gasoline was less than two-bits a gallon.

We drank tap water and ate red M&Ms, and took deep, deep breaths running behind the 'mosquito man' spraying DDT to kill the tiny pests.

Who knew, when I was a kid, that I could put down a few words and bring back to life the Brookdale soda delivery men? Or recall with amazing precision the pigeon coops where my father raised his homers.

It took a life time, but I think a writer's life is more than I ever thought it would be.

A Writer's Life For Me

Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

NARRATIVE OF LIFE

I used to see my life unfolding before me like it was being typed out on my Smith-Corona.

Now you might think of it as closed-caption – although it included the narrative, too. (As if the story was being written and I was doing what the written words said, or vice versa.)

I used to think of it as my life being dubbed.

I often wondered how and when the movie would end.

Perhaps I was spending too much time at a typewriter?

This reminds me of the film clips I've seen on TV for the new Will Ferrell movie, Stranger Than Fiction. But I've only seen the commercial, not the movie.

Lately, as I read notes on Allen Ginsberg's famous poem Howl, and the notes published of earlier versions of the poems, I'm reminded that my later works leave NO PAPER TRAIL.

Anything that was printed of the earlier versions, if not already on the back of once-used paper became the used side of once-used paper.

When I last tried to find remembered manuscripts from earlier pieces, I found only OTHER stuff that I wasn't looking for and that distracted me from the failing search at hand.

I just re-read my review of Al Sullivan’s book Everyday People – and a thought came to me.

Sometimes I read something from long, long ago that I wrote in some distant past and when I read it now I say why don’t I write like THAT now.

That was really good.

It’s just a thought.

Everyday People: Profiles from the Garden State

If you ever met Al Sullivan, the last thing you'd do is picture him as a dashing young soldier long ago at the height of the Vietnam war - much less baby sitting a bunch of freaky rockers outside his helicopter at a place called Woodstock. Yet, that's one of the duties he 'volunteered' for.

In his essay "By The Time I Got To Woodstock" Sullivan briefly notes his 1st visit to the upstate refuge - and his overwhelming fear of helicopters. It is one of the rare times in Everyday People that he uses "I". It's to be forgiven him because he immediately uses his modern day visit to Woodstock as a newspeg to compare that town with Secaucus - his current tour of duty.

Sullivan worked for me for a few months in 96-97, and though the months were few, the impact has been long-lasting. He covered the mundane meetings, sure, but there was always something else lurking behind the tousled hair and the distant stare. He had the ragtag Tandy laptop blinking on one desk, the company terminal blinking there, a notepad in front of him - all while he was on the phone talking to another source. Sullivan was always on the go, always three steps ahead of the sunshine, so to speak. It is a pleasure to read him again.

It was there, in those other stories that Al set himself apart. If he worked for me now, he'd be a 'special writer' - that's someone who does his beat, and also turns in outstanding stories from left field, Clark's Pond, the emergency room and just about anywhere else fate takes him.

"Down and Out in Hoboken" relays the chance meeting with a panhandler at St. Mary's Hospital. The panhandler - whose name Sullivan never learns - says "People give me money to make me go away..." And in just a couple hundred words, you learn an awful lot about the panhandler - and the skill of Sullivan's perception of people. That's what makes Everyday People in its gritty realism a pure reading pleasure.

Perhaps the editors of Everyday People could have selected a few longer profiles, but as Sullivan notes in his Preface, "the word count has always been my curse," and I'll vouch for his observation here, "as it is for all prolific journalists," and again I agree. While we await the next volume, dig in here, and meet some interesting everyday people.

Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

PF FLIERS, PORTABLE TYPEWRITERS ...

One of the first things to catch my eye when I opened the Vermont Country Store catalog was the Simple-to-Use Smith Corona Electronic Typewriter, Efficiency Without High-Tech Headaches.

Now there’s a headline to get you out of the 21st Century and back into the good old days.

No wonder. The Electronic Typewriter is being sold by a Rutland, Vt.-based company that sells things we remember from the good old post-WWII growing up days.

Think Lifeboy or Sweet Heart soap, or PF Fliers- the high tops! Ipana toothpaste (as if your spell check would have a clue if Ipana was spelled right!) Adams brand Black Jack and sour apple gums.

My first typewriter was a portable Smith-Corona. My second typewriter was an electric Smith-Corona. There wasn’t really a lot of difference between the two, besides the obvious electric plug. The keys and characters were all about the same.

The manual typewriter used man finger power to move the bars and levers to make an impression through a ribbon of ink. The electric used electricity to power the levers. Instead of a return bar the electric had a button you pushed.

The manual typewriter had a hard case, made of steel or kryptonite. You could stand on the case – with or without the typewriter in it – and reach things on the top shelf. The electric typewriter had a vinyl cover with a zipper.

Next to my Datsun B210, my Smith-Corona electric typewriter was the most powerful tool I owned in the 1970s. In fact, I still have it.

But I digress from the Vermont Country Store catalog.

Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.
Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.