little joe gould has lost his teeth and doesn't know where to find them (and found a secondhand set with a click) little gould used to amputate his appetite with bad brittle candy but just (nude eel) now little joe lives on air Harvard Brevis Est for Handkerchief read Papernapkin no laundry bills like People preferring Negroes Indians Youse n.b. ye twang of little joe (yankee) gould irketh sundry who are trying to find their minds (but never had any to lose) and a myth is as good as a smile but little joe gould's quote oral history unquote might (publishers note) be entitled a wraith's progress or mainly awash while chiefly submerged or an amoral morality sort-of-aliveing by innumerable kind-of-deaths (Amrique Je T'Aime and it may be fun to be fooled but it's more fun to be more to be fun to be little joe gould)

-- e.e. cummings

HAPPY Turnkey Day!

the delusions of grandeur. Gould had a joke about that, which I've put in the header, above.

the massive unavailable History.

I've written more Poetry than anyone in blogland. so there.

Sarah down with stomach bug. We watched video, Joe Gould's Secret. I had to go & read the book (by Joseph Mitchell), which we happened to have in the house, since it was a favorite of Sarah's father (born in Manhattan) (Up in the Old Hotel).

Gould is definitely a relative, though I can't seem to trace him on Google genealogy. He told Mitchell his family settled near Boston in 1635 (likewise); "the Goulds were the Goulds when the Cabots & the Lodges were clamdiggers."

Interesting Mitchell/Joyce connections (Mitchell's fascination with bars, and with Finnegans Wake, which according to the intro, he read "at least six times").

I recognize a number of personality traits. Both in Joe Gould, & in the Gould world (New England crusty) he left behind.

His phantom Oral History. Much of local Stubborn Grew grew out of, & refers to, an oral history project I did in the old Af-Am section of Providence, along Benefit St. (the first thing oral history prof. Allen Smith asked me was, "are you related to Joe Gould?")

Bluejay leads Henry there, as part of their catabasis.

& the bookends in FW, basically.

Pound mentioned Gould as an unknown "native hickory". He was a friend of EE Cummings & Aaron Siskind. Apparently Siskind's Village studio was one of the repositories for Gould's strange notebooks.

It's got me wondering whether Siskind allowed a photo of his to grace my first book (Stone) because of my name.

p.s. Is McSorley's Ale House still in business?