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!

Like many of my generation (I will be 240 on March 33rd) a particular anthology sparked my interest: "Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle" (weird title!), ed. by Stephen Dunning. There I think I read ee cummings' "In Just- Spring" (from his Chansons Innocentes). "and the little lame BalloonMan whistles far and wee"

fresh air! tres charmante.

& I had to memorize & recite "Charge of the Light Brigade" for Mr. Close in 6th grade.

& my grandfather chanting his jokey Irish folk song. & my mother's improvisations: the adventures of Frisbee, the little Tomb Thumb chap who sailed his paper boat down the stream in the dirt road outside our house (Arthur St). Springtime in Mendelssohn (a section of Hopkins, MN settled by farmers & young musicians from Minneapolis).

& reading the complete Nabokov while still in the womb (a few months before March 33rd, 1753, that is.)