Lucy In the Sky With Darrell: Actualism Part 4
| Lucy In the Sky With Darrell |
Part 4
In Iowa City Introduction
When Iowa City Actualism was blooming in the 1970s, we wrote a lot of collaboration poems, and I made it a practice to save the ones I was involved in. I put the collab folders in a storage box, and then I forgot about them for three decades. Just two days ago, I found the folders, which contained over 220 pages of work. Some of them were unsigned, but at least 194 pages bore the names or initials of two or more people--48 people in all. Here is a child’s garden of Actualism.
Notes on reading:
Each poem is preceded by a tilde. This enables the reader to jump from poem to poem by doing a search for tildes. It also helps to know for certain that a specific line is the title.
Each writer’s identifying letters (usually initials) are preceded by an accent mark. This enables the reader to skip to the collaborations in which a specific writer participates by searching for the accent mark followed by the two identification letters--thus, searching for 'DG would take you to poems in which Darrell Gray participated.
In some of the collaborations each section is attributed to the person who wrote it. In most of the collaborations, however, authorship is attributed at the end to all the authors together.
The first poem, “Party Poem,” has the most known collaborators--11. It is dedicated to the Writers Workshop.
The last poem, “Marathon Collaboration Poem,” is the longest--31 pages. It was written by many during the 2nd Poetry Marathon, but signed by none.
Index of Abbreviations
Each person has a two-letter abbreviation representing their full name.
AB Al Buck AC Ann Conner AH Anselm Hollo AK Allan Kornblum AT Audrey Teeter AW Alan Willis BA Bruce _____ BR Barb Raaz BS Barbara Sablov CK Cinda Kornblum CM Chuck Miller CW Chris Woeffels DA David Gitin DF Dale McFarland DG Darrell Gray DJ Donald Justice DM Dave Morice DO Dave Odegard GF Geoffrey Ford GM George Mattingly GS G.P. Skratz HI Hillary _____ JA Janet _____ JB John Birkbeck JD Jim Dorka JI Jim Bateman JL Judy Lawson JM Jim Mulac JS John Sjoberg KA Kay Amert KF Kathy Fetter LC Leander Cyrus LD Linda Dorff LG _____ _____ LW Lynn Willard MA Margaret Manos MC Mark Cohen MK Michelle Kulefsky MM Michele Morice MP Many People (unsigned) MS Morty Sklar NR Neil Ruddy PC Pat Casteel PI Paul Ingram PL Phil Lemke RD Ray DiPalma SA Sally Redfern SL Steve Levine ST Steve Toth SW Scott Wright
~ PARTY POEM
(for The Writers’ Workshop)
[Ten people wrote this poem: 'DM 'MS 'CM 'SW 'JM 'JS 'AK 'ST 'LG 'DG. Each section has the individual author’s abbreviation listed at the end.]
1
music inspires the floor shakes
'DM
2
four or five words
'MS
3
familiar plants, animals
'CM
4
potted plastic
'SW
5
plantit
'DM
6
hiya, Cinth! wisteria?
'JM
7
one more time the kids in the neighborhood hey hey that’s a great choice one of my favorites ships on the oceane
'MS
8
color it orange & leave all that snow
'JS
9
there is a chain hook between the cushions of this largte couch. i call it The Great Chain of Being. we unhook the chain before opening frozen orange juice. good morning little schoolgirl. i’m a couch
'AK
10
boo!
'ST
11
THE TRAVELS OF OZONE
Oh! Zone!
'SW
12
melting fish bones
TOGETHER
'CM
13
i’m an easy bruiser
'LG
14
I wanna hold your foot, I wanna be your leg, I wanna look at the table.
'JM
15
a sunlit day it’s almost may and yet there’s snow outside uh-oh
'DM
16
i woke up this morning and it was this afternoon oh i woke up this mornin |