Memoir 3

I was living in Queens back in around 1997 when the first edition of Clayton Eshleman's "Watchfiends and Rack Screams" was published. I didn't used to do poetry-related activities, in large part because I didn't know anyone and I didn't like much of the poetry I was reading (including my own, when I began college I wrote poetry constantly, but somewhere toward the end I felt I wasn't able to write what I wanted). Once I went to a Segue Reading, which wasn't very impressive, but I saw Charles Bernstein there, which I thought was very special.

Anyway, I ended up going to Clayton's reading at some kind of poetry foundation. And it was amazing, he channeled Artaud and read the Momo piece, nonsense/concrete outbursts and all. That book is still one of my all-time favorites. Up there with Clayton's Trilce.

Here's one of the truest bits of the book (from To Have Done With The Judgment of God):

The fact is I was being pressed
right up to my body
and right up to the body

and it is then
that I shattered everything
because my body
is never to be touched