'Beyond Baroque' and Frank Samperi

Claudia Samperi-Warren with Conrad DiDiodato

   "Altho it is difficult to grasp by many or few or none, I am not really a foreigner -- nor do I relish any indirect assaults upon where exactly my nativity is" (Samperi to Corman)

 Though a stranger to the place I felt far from it. But I could hardly believe I was there: to those of us schooled in Canada's version of the terrific California poetry scene Venice Beach seemed hallowed ground (as indeed it still is). American poetry and the always revolutionary conditions of its growth and development always came accompanied--to this very impressionable 70s student of literature--with distinctive names, faces and personalities And I saw a few of them proudly displayed along the upper walls in the 'Beyond Baroque' bookstore: diPrima, Acker, Duncan, Olson and Venice Beach's local poetry legend, John Thomas Idlet. The 'Gas House' and Ellison Hotel were, in the words of local poet and musician Betto, where the poets came for the 'vibes'.

I am not really a foreigner here, either. There is a wonderful 'vibe' indeed (almost aural to this impressionable Canadian) that the people always carry and that I felt, too: it's in their words, tone and the artist's always soft eyes. 'Beyond Baroque' was more than a place (entirely community-supported) of art exhibits, workshops and readings: it was, as Frank Samperi, would say a place where "[t]he angel prepares and disposes" and I felt Frank's angel there, too. 'Vibes', the angel or the softness in a poet's verses--they all collectively were Venice Beach and 'Beyond Baroque', the place's gift to this proud foreigner.

But, above all, it was Frank and Frank's daughter Claudia, host of the poetry reading, and the wonderful group of poets who'd assembled to read from Samperi's 'Trilogy' that I came here for. And I saw Frank and his poetry in the person of Claudia who'd made possible this wonderful homage to a life and work: in the gentle elegant daughter who'd brought us all together to celebrate the Skysill publication of the combined Trilogy works: The Prefiguration, Quadrifariam and Lumen Gloriae.

It was my unique privilege to read from the Morning and Evening in The Prefiguration and afterwards offer my own reflections on the very interesting art and poetry collaboration between Samperi and Petersen that resulted in the Morning & Evening folio published in Caterpillar 3/4 (1967), of which Claudia had displayed at 'Beyond Baroque' the original stoneprinted version (along with an original "A"-12 typescript Zukofsky had given Samperi).

Claudia will shortly post pictures and video segments of the 'Frank Samperi Celebration' event at her blog. Below is the text of my comments on the Samperi-Petersen collaboration minus references (taken from my unfinished literary biography of Frank Samperi).

The entire Frank Samperi reading may be seen here at PennSound.

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    The Trilogy began as a poet-printmaker collaboration through which Petersen’s lithography served as foil to Samperi’s own terse formulations of a spirituality gathered in the quotidian. Theirs was artistic effort underscored by the need to remain committed to the work despite worldly pressures to put a commercial value on art, poetry and music in general. It was probably an inability, as Petersen puts it in an undated letter to Samperi, “to exchange enthusiasms” that formed the basis of their 60s partnership, conjoined as this also was to the feeling that their commitment to artistic purity had alienated them from the mainstream. Both Samperi and Petersen (if Petersen’s letters are any indication) were prone to bouts of self-pity and a reluctance to engage more actively with the busy world outside of their own spiritual and artistic practices (as evidenced in Petersen’s Noh and  translation activities and Samperi’s own assimilation of Dante and spiritual poetics). Though Petersen’s own self-loathing was likely more feigned than real, the lament for quiet introspective space in which to create was certainly genuine. The Caterpillar Morning & Evening is an example of the way poetry and the printmaker’s artistry, as well as a friendship based on the need to keep a clear sense of the connections between them always in view, could combine to form a rather remarkable work. It’s perhaps a case of a correspondence and creativity symbiosis that wouldn't be seen ever again in Samperi’s literary career: Samperi’s Origin publications, though a success even in his own eyes, certainly lacked the rich artistic presence of a Will Petersen. Relations between them would, however, later deteriorate to such a point that Samperi (in an undated letter, probably 1980) would expressly forbid Petersen from publishing in his Plucked Chicken magazine a transcript of a recorded conversation that took place between himself and John Levy in 1980.

    Both the Petersen 4 October ’66 and 17 October ’66 letters to Samperi and the Caterpillar Morning & Evening (M&E) folio publication showcase admirably the ideals of artistic purity and the aesthetics of illustration come to fruition. Talents and appreciation of the materials of art and artistic production don’t so much complement as stand respectfully distant from each other, inviting interpretation and respectful bickering over the final form. Petersen says in the 17 October letter, in particular, that though their efforts stand “side by side” they ought rather to purposely look “unrelated or contrary” so that the readers can make the connections for themselves. Eshleman presents M&E as forming part of a larger unpublished work (that is, of course, The Prefiguration) as well as an individual folio available for purchase.The M&E, as embodying a sense of both the work “in process” and finished product (both the end and means of creativity), is very much a synthesis of the qualities of two distinct artistic sensibilities. Petersen had hoped that the portfolio would find its way into print. From Samperi come the spiritual journey motif and the revelatory nature of ‘seeing’ combined with spare minimalist phrasing, the skillful alternation between prose and poetry and sensitivity to the intermediaries of space and illustration; from Petersen, the lithographer’s careful handling of illustration and the nuancing of text that formatting always entails, the creation of a Noh dance of stone work and printing that results in the most unexpectedly original confluence of words and images. There’s always in Petersen the urge to preserve the stark simplicity of Samperi’s poetry by working “in a loose, quick way – putting down ink with fingertips and heel of hand.” I’ve already mentioned the multitasking of an indefatigable Petersen who, among other things, makes editorial recommendations, and continually details the printmaking process to a nervous and expectant friend, even looking to matters of packaging and distribution and a good deal of the public relations work.

 

    The reader of M&E is certainly struck with this purposeful artlessness of effect in the finished product, the play of “fingerprints” on stone and the creatively dissonant patterns of repetition and variation of page design. Petersen thinks, for instance, that the choice of black and white for spiritual verses— particularly in the case of the “last leaf fallen” line in Samperi’s poem—and the oft-times erratic movements from black to white and vice-versa, and even the use of “an early stone to depict the angel” for the “last leaf fallen” page, all seem to nicely accommodate the ambiguity of the nature of fall itself. “Man—do you think perhaps”, Petersen says, “ ‘last leaf fallen’ should revert to ‘man’ rather than ‘angel’ --? If the final is angel leaving the city, passing through, …”Like the unfinished conditional itself, the smudgy, rough-hewn M&E angel figure seems the presentation of a riddle rather than a clearly delineated angel or man. And the purposeful ambiguity is proof of Petersen’s skill as printmaker and illustrator. Art sustains a central thematic tension between the purity it strives for and the limitations of representation to which the very media of language and printmaking seems to restrict it always. Petersen’s lithography provides a sort of sketch for the incongruous visions of the poet-pilgrim living and writing in a crudely competitive America: with its scattered fragments (almost paleolithic) of holes and spaces, palm and finger prints and the most mismatched assemblage of cloudy half-formed shapes (almost surrealistic), the whole looks more collage than a work of representation. But amidst the confusion there does arise, almost out of the dark peripheral borders and disfigurations themselves, Samperi’s angel, sometimes with wings and no head, sometimes a menacing headless Lucifer falling to earth (as in the case of the “last leaf fallen” page) and turning into something decidedly more fiendish than angelic. The wings and other discarded parts alone litter Samperi’s page to make the whole look certainly like a modernist, even surrealistic artifact.