True, as the poet told me, this sweet little boke (produced by Lew Gallery in San Francisco), is essentially the b-side of FROM CHANSONNIERS (which Blue Press had the honor to publish last December) & so carries over, & on, the unreasonable beauty, the hunt & the haunt that sculpted the lyric discourse of the previous set.
Some things are less hurried than worried
about ten o’clock, dazed—
Because we’ve been there & may never have left. So Dunagan adds
mist just coming in.
The observation is surface structure that betrays what lies beneath
Sudden Fear, was it?
Maybe a murderer,
maybe not.
That was a Joan Crawford movie wasn’t it, Sudden Fear? & I think the same that Kerouac riffs upon in VISIONS OF CODY, the section titled Joan Rawshanks in the Fog. I’m not sure if Dunagan is conjuring out of that same SF fogmist night, but I prefer to think yes.
A novelist sees further
than pure white—
off the coastal road
burying a red coffIn.
Goddamn, that’s a tough send off, but Dunagan makes it work, as his ear is impeccable. That poem’s titled Larger Than Life In Pumps And A Fur & none of it needs the gloss of my own fevered reading. Please be distracted. This is a gem of a boke, you should be able to score a copy through Auguste Press. It is well worth your time & attention.
