When the ULA invited me to join in the
protest of the symposium at Columbia University to honor the 50th anniversary of
the publication of Howl, I began writing poems to read at the event. I collected
them into a pamphlet to give away at the demonstration, Yawp.
Yawp
was followed by the pamphlets No Oprah and Free Speech. No Oprah
had a No Oprah logo on the cover.
I combined the three pamphlets into a chapbook called Free Speech.
Free Speech included an additional pamphlet, Afterword, which expanded
the chapbook into a short book.
I call the book A GOOD SCOUR.
Every
50 years or so, literature needs a good scour.
A GOOD SCOUR is mostly poems,
but also contains letters, mini-essays, self-interviews, and prose vignettes.
The book runs 18,000 words, but, as it is mostly poems, the MS is 93 pages, single-spaced,
in 5½ x 8½" format.
Longer than Howl.
A GOOD SCOUR is more
of a banshee keening, or ululation. A prolonged howl. A riff on howling, like Bobby
Bradford playing 45-minute solos, one fertile phrase leading to the next one.