Walking on the Moon

We are either born aloft on pinions of whimsy or being scooted along in the palm of an unseen hand.

A few days ago (22 July) we continued our explorations of what some call synchromysticism--and what are beginning to think of as poetic resonance--by Googling the words "Weinman / Carradine"--following some recent posts--with interesting results.

The first link which comes up leads us to a 1999 film directed by Richard Weinman and Keith Carradine called The Hunter's Moon. This would mean little if not for the fact that there were some important moon-related things going on at the moment

The first is of course that it came smack dab in the middle of the ballyhoo surrounding the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon shot. Men first walked on the moon on July 20th, 1969--one day before the Summer Solstice--and returned home four days later.

The second is that on the 22nd the moon eclipsed the sun and turned day into night across much of Asia, widely seen as a bad omen.

Also curious is that LoS superstar Tyler Weinman hunted his feline prey by night.

A Hunter's Moon, also known as a Blood Moon, is the first full moon after the harvest moon, the moon closest to the autumn equinox. The name comes from the fact that it's an ideal time for hunters to track and kill their prey at night. Interestingly, the name was used by both Europeans and Native Americans, and it was a feast day among some tribes of North America and Western Europe--before Columbus.

And what of Carradine? One of brother Keith's co-stars in that film was "Wild" Bill Mock. Mock...Bill? Kill Bill? Wild Bill? Hunter's Moon indeed.

What is the film all about anyway? According to Wikipedia "In this Depression-era drama, Carradine plays Turner, a WWI vet who is haunted not only by memories of the war but by the civil and economic unrest of the time."

War and economic unrest? Do tell!

Burt Reynolds plays a tyrant who dominates the residents of the mountain upon which he resides, and who sets out to kill young Turner to prevent him from romancing his daughter.

One can't but help think of Hassan-ibn-Sabbah, legendary Old Man of the Mountain and founder of the 11th century Ismaeli sect sometimes referred to as the Assassins. He was said to be in league with the Knights Templar, in turn believed by many to be the ancestors of the Freemasons.

(The) Hunter's Moon is among other things the name of two TV episodes and a video game featuring 32 star systems:

"Each level takes place in a void with two dimensional cities appearing as they are being built by "worker cells". The worker cells are indestructible but the bricks dropped by them can be temporarily destroyed using the ship's weapon. The goal of the game is to collect enough star cells contained inside the cities to get to the next level."

One of the TV episodes is also called Mystery in Space. Following episodes include Question Authority and Panic in the Sky.

The other TV show is a 3-parter involving a plot to extirminate humanity.

It is also the name of at least three novels. In one of these, a 2005 novel by O.R. Melling, two cousins search for a magic door to a land where humans are ruled by the little people.

Again, quoting Wikipedia: "Gwen must match her wits against those of a mischievous, immortal race, in an effort to save herself and her cousin from the land of Faerie and the Hunter's Moon."

So as we wave flags and pat ourselves on the back over the famous moonwalk by Neil Armstrong and crew, whose great phallic rocket finally conquered the Goddess, we can think of that other famous moonwalker, the plastic androgyne Michael Jackson, dead Sun King. And another famous Armstrong, the phallic Lance, chases the sun-yellow jersey in the Tour de France. He's already won it 7 times.
And fellow moonwalker Buzz Aldrin flew a Masonic flag on the Moon.

To quote: Tranquility Lodge 2000, Texas AF&AM:

"On July 20, 1969, two American Astronauts landed on the moon of the planet Earth, in an area known as Mare Tranquilitatis , or "Sea of Tranquility". One of those brave men was Brother Edwin Eugene (Buzz) Aldrin, Jr., a member of Clear Lake Lodge No. 1417, AF&AM, Seabrook, Texas. Brother Aldrin carried with him SPECIAL DEPUTATION of then Grand Master J. Guy Smith, constituting and appointing Brother Aldrin as Special Deputy of the Grand Master, granting unto him full power in the premises to represent the Grand Master as such and authorize him to claim Masonic Territorial Jurisdiction for The Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Texas, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, on The Moon, and directed that he make due return of his acts. Brother Aldrin certified that the SPECIAL DEPUTATION was carried by him to the Moon on July 20, 1969.

To commemorate this historic event, and to further solidify and establish Texas Freemasonry on the Moon, it is proposed that a charter be issued to a new Lodge, to be known as Tranquility Lodge No. 2000, and that authorization for such new Lodge and its purposes be granted by the addition of Article 201a, to read as follows:" [text follows]

Or maybe it goes deeper than that, as this book asserts:

"Few people are aware that NASA was formed as a national defense agency adjunct empowered to keep information classified and secret from the public at large. Even fewer people are aware of the hard evidence that secret brotherhoods quietly dominate NASA, with policies far more aligned with ancient religious and occult mystery schools than the façade of rational science the government agency has successfully promoted to the world for almost fifty years."

What does it all mean. We don't know. On 18 June NASA launched its' first moon mission in 10 years. According to NASA:

"The Mission Objectives of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) include confirming the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the Moon’s South Pole. The identification of water is very important to the future of human activities on the Moon."

Maybe they're getting anxious to finally have a Lodge meeting up there.

The King of America

On March 23, 2004, the Reverend Moon--George Bush's Paraguayan neighbor (see Bush & the Doomsday Compound)--was crowned by Congressional Representatives during a coronation in Washington, D.C., at the Dirksen Senate Office Building.



The Washington Post reported that some of the attending Congressional members later expressed outrage at the event, claiming they were tricked, but given Moon's history, how surprised should they have been? This was, after all, the man who founded a cult (his follower are, of course, the Moonies); was the subject of a Congressional investigation; served eighteen months in prison for conspiracy and for filing false federal income tax returns; and has ties to South American drug trafficking.

Moon's political influence is deep. In 1982 he founded the Washington Times, a right-wing newspaper. He has supported the presidential bids of Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43. He has enjoyed an especially cozy relationship with the Bush family: George Bush 41 has received over two million dollars from Moon and has spoken on his behalf on multiple occasions in numerous countries, and Neil Bush has spoken to the Paraguayan president Nicanor Duarteon on Moon's behalf.

All this talk of the Moon, politics and South America brings to mind the Iron Sky, an upcoming film wherein the Nazis, having established a moon base in 1945, return as conquerors in 2018.

To the curious, we recommend John Gorenfeld's fine reporting, including this film (a two-parter):

Moon!

Recently Gid and I have been making comments on an old post (A tessellation of the plane. And beer.)  Confirmation bias kicked into high gear, so much so that I wanted to re-post those comments here.  Today's news was the clincher.  Reading the original post will make these comments a bit more clear.

So dig this. Blue Moon gets lots of play on this half-serious synchromystic post--and the comments.

August 31 was a rare blue moon, which is nature's way of smiling on....Neil Armstrong's funeral, same day.

September 1. Obama, who got the cop a Blue Moon, releases his beer recipe.

Coincidence? Cosmic joke? Or weird ploy by Obama to slip "beer" into the national discourse, associating it with rare natural phenomena and the celebration of a national hero? Homer Simpson diplomacy?

And oddly, one hero named Armstrong dies just after another is taken down for doping, his heroism undercut, his 7 titles at risk....

This second hero named Lance. French verb lancer means...."to launch"....

****

OK, stop f*cking with us: Sept 3: Sun Myung Moon dies in Korea (Sept. 2 on the US east coast)

Bush & the Doomsday Compound

Are the Bush's preparing a doomsday compound at the ends of the earth?

Ken Layne scoffs at the idea:

The story goes like this: George W. Bush and/or George H.W. Bush bought hundreds of thousands of acres in Paraguay, adjoining a similar spread owned by the Unification Church's Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Both massive parcels are hidden within a remote South American wilderness atop the world's biggest freshwater aquifer adjoining a secret U.S. military airbase. Oh, and there's a special non-extradition law to protect the Bush/Moon families as they enjoy their old age and run drug/weapons smuggling rings, safe from American justice. And they'll own all the drinking water in the world, or something.

But Mr. Layne never disputes the facts.

So what exactly does it mean when the leader of the free world ppurchases 100,000 acres in a remote corner of Paraguay sitting on top of the largest freshwater aquifer in the world, conveniently adjacent to the self proclaimed Second Coming of Christ and a secret military base with full immunity from the local law?

You draw your conclusions, and we'll draw ours.

The curious may read more on the Wonkette.



___________________
Update: May, 8, 2008: See "The King of America" for more on Moon.

Dead Rabbit Blues

The Trigger

As I left work a few days ago and walked towards my car I caught the familiar whiff of decay, quite strong but not overpowering.  I looked about and quickly found the culprit; a dead rabbit stretched out by the low wall formed by the down-ramp into the underground parking garage.

For some unfathomable reason the words "dead rabbit" popped into my head and a number of associations with that phrase appeared in my mind; because I can't seem to get anything else off the ground lately, I've decided to trace the arc of my thoughts in this here post.

Watership Down

Long-time LoS fanatics know that the idea of "development" as applied to exurban expansion is a bit of a hobby horse of mine.  We have over several posts taken a diverse look at the definition of space and the definition and control thereof.  In the most obvious form, this is basically the old land grab.  New roads are a crucial part of this.  Presented as a way to alleviate traffic problems, they usually just a pretext to open up more land for "development".  Buy up empty land in order to re-sell it for new buildings.  Raise the tax base.  Keep the economic machinery oiled.

In the last ten years, the urbanization around Toulouse has undergone a rapid expansion and this process is being repeated ad infinitum.  The countryside isn't being transformed from a "natural" to a suburban state.  The existing environment is (becoming was) an already completely artificial, if more bucolic, agricultural landscape.

Toulouse has averaged 10,000 new residents per year recently.

So what does this have to do with rabbits?  In a median along one of these newer highways, poetically known as the Milky Way, I often see a small group of rabbits and I am always cheered by the persistence of nature, even in the tiniest of vegetal interstices.  Such a small place.  I often wondered how so many can cram into such a small place.  Much like the human population of the city.

So I wonder if the dead rabbit was once part of that band of merry survivors.  And I wonder what laid him low?

Mr. Mojo Risin'

According to Wikipedia's entry on the Rabbit's foot, it was R.E. Shay who said, "Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit."  Indeed.  Still this was the next flash in my mind.  I even for a nanosecond considered going back to the dead rabbit and cutting off its feet.  But like I said, this thought made me chuckle at my own in(s)anity before it was even finished. 

Anyway, according to that same Wikipedia article, there are two many conditions that must be met before a rabbit's foot charm will work:

• First, not any foot from a rabbit will do: it is the left hind foot of a rabbit that is useful as a charm.
• Second, not any left hind foot of a rabbit will do; the rabbit must have been shot or otherwise captured in a cemetery.
• Third, at least according to some sources, not any left hind foot of a rabbit shot in a cemetery will do: the phase of the moon is also important. Some authorities say that the rabbit must be taken in the full moon, while others hold instead that the rabbit must be taken in the new moon. Some sources say instead that the rabbit must be taken on a Friday, or a rainy Friday, or Friday the 13th. Some sources say that the rabbit should be shot with a silver bullet, while others say that the foot must be cut off while the rabbit is still alive.

Disembodied feet are a long-standing (hee-hee) LoS preoccupation, and you who have been following the Canadian foot mystery will recall there have been at least two hoax feet consisting of sneakers stuffed with animal paws.  On a more abstract note, you may also recall that we've examined the conflation of hands and eyes and nipples, or various combinations of how the part represents the whole.  The rabbit's foot legend is related to this second preoccupation:

These widely varying circumstances may share a common thread of suggestion that the true lucky rabbit's foot is actually cut from a shapeshifted witch. The suggestion that the rabbit's foot is a substitute for a body part from a witch's body is corroborated by other folklore from hoodoo....Given the traditional association between black cats and witchcraft, a black cat bone is also potentially a substitute for a human bone from a witch. Hoodoo lore also uses graveyard dust, soil from a cemetery, for various magical purposes. Dust from a good person's grave keeps away evil; dust from a sinner's grave is used for more nefarious magic. The use of graveyard dust may also be a symbolic appropriation of the parts of a corpse as a relic, and a form of sympathetic magic.

Not much different from the cult of the saints and the rage for relics among medieval Christians methinks.  Medieval did I say?  Contemporary examples of the phenomenon are not long in coming. to mind.

The rabbit's foot was also of some importance among the pre-Christian Irish.  Which somehow relates to my next thought.

Gangs of New York

The Dead Rabbits were a street gang from Five Points and their story was fictionalized in Scorcese's Gangs of New York.  Which is how I know of them and it should be obvious why the sight of a dead rabbit sparked this memory.  The biggest impression I have of that film was the theme of nativist reaction against Irish Catholic immigrants which is, and I imagine Scorcese's point, a great paradox of the US.  A country founded and made up of immigrants, one wave is quick to take up the nativist banner against the next.  This is not a relic of the past, but we see it today.  The widespread negative feeling against illegal immigrants from Latin America, the Birther controversy, etc.

This last bit is especially stupefying for me and leads me to suspect the whole idea of national identity is bullshit.  The fear that Obama wasn't born in America seems more of an expression of the fear that given his parentage and upbringing, he is some how less American than his fellow citizens.  I take this personally, having a mother naturalized when I was four and having lived over a quarter of my 40 years outside the US.  This actually caused me some problems last time I wanted to renew my passport.  Oddly, all the bother seemed forgotten when this was revealed to be a result of the fact my father had a military career.

Recall now that the rivals of the Dead Rabbits were the Bowery Boys, affiliated with the Know-Nothings.  Both were anti-Irish and anti-Catholic.  They favored extremely tough immigration policies and English-only policies in education and government.  In many respects they are ancestors of today's Tea Party and aspects of the religious right; there is a certain cross-over between the two.

It all boils down to the fact that these people don't feel there's enough space for everyone.  Like those rabbits in the median, confined to little islands of green among the burgeoning metropolis.  That Watership Down reference comes in handy again.  This is the tale of a group of rabbits forced to leave their warren in light of its impending destruction from "development."  They thus set out to find a new place to settle.  When they arrive at their destination, they come into conflict with another warren led by a tyrant.  Bloody conflict ensues.  Lots of dead rabbits.  Bowery Bows vs. Dead Rabbits, Minutemen vs. Illegals, and so on.

The Rabbit Done Died

Finally, I thought of the popular belief that a dead rabbit somehow indicated a woman was pregnant.  Not quite true.  In the rabbit test for pregnancy the rabbit almost always died.  In the test, rabbits were injected with a woman's pee and a few days later its ovaries were examined to determine if the woman was indeed pregnant or not.  A far cry from peeing on a swizzle stick.  Snopes has the dope on this one.

I can't figure out how this ties into our story.  Unless we bring this into play: Census 2010: 50 Million Latinos; Hispanics Account for More Than Half of Nation’s Growth in Past Decade.  Apparently, a lot of people like to use the expression "breed like rabbits" when discussing Latino immigrants.

Smoke gets in your eyes

So the next day the rabbit was still there in the morning, but by evening it was gone.  All that remained was a moist, black patch of flattened grass, crawling with small maggots.  I first took that black spot to be the remains of a fire, asking myself, "What?  Did they burn the rabbit?!"  Of course they hadn't.  But it did lead me to another thought.  When I was a Boy Scout and we sat around the campfire and when the smoke blew into our eyes, we used to say "I like rabbits" as a way of making it go away.  I don't know why we did this, but it was weird to be hanging out and all of a sudden some kid said it.  Why rabbits, where did this little bit of folk-magic come from?  I don't know.

Anyway, that's all folks.  A few random thoughts sparked by the sight of dead bunny.  The day after Easter no less.  Just thought of that now.  The Easter Bunny seems to be of German origin, which is appropriate, because there's a great word in German appropriate to my meandering thoughts.  So, I'm thinking this rabbit died because instead of a field, he was navigating his way through a warren of parking lots and office space.  Looks like he ran out of Lebensraum.  That and luck.

The Random Sun

At the supermarket, stuck for ideas, I asked the woman at the register to give me a random word.  She said "Soleil."  Sun.  The Sun and political imagery came to mind:  Obama's rising sun logo.  The Japanese flag.  The Sun King.

Then I Googled "national flags with the sun".  I knew The Philippines and Argentina would pop up, but I wasn't familiar with Namibia's flag until today.  When I saw it  (adopted, 1990), I was surprised, because the sun in the upper left Canton is a 12-pointed version stylized almost exactly like that of the Taiwanese flag, which I'd seen when looking into the brief life of the Chinese fascist "Blueshirts."  Dig:

The colors are different.  The Taiwanese rays are longer and completely unattached, but the angles at the base of each isosceles ray of the Namibia flag touch slightly.

At first glance they are almost identical.  Both have 12 rays and are set against a blue field.  Curious that they are stylized in such a similar fashion.

I won't recap the 10+ years of sun imagery and metaphor we've discussed here on LoS, but it seems worth discussing the similarities between these two flags. 

According to the Namibia government website:

The sun symbolises life and energy. The golden colour of the sun represents the warmth and the colour of the plains of the Namib Desert.

The blue symbolises the sky, the Atlantic Ocean, Namibia’s marine resources and the importance of rain and water.

Red represents the Namibian people, their heroism and their determination to build a future of equal opportunity for all.

White refers to peace and unity.

The green symbolises the country’s vegetation and agricultural resources.

No reason why there are 12 rays.

On Taiwan's flag....The twelve rays of the white Sun symbolize the twelve months and the twelve traditional shichen (時辰; shíchén), a traditional unit of time which corresponds to two modern hours. Sun Yat-sen added the "Red Earth" to the flag to signify the blood of the revolutionaries who sacrificed themselves in order to overthrow the Qing Dynasty and create the ROC. Together, the three colours of the flag correspond to the Three Principles of the People: Blue represents nationalism and liberty; White represents democracy and equality; and Red represents the people's livelihood and fraternity.

The explanation for the colors, although not exactly the same, is very similar.  I hadn't really noted that Taiwan's flag is red, white, and blue.  Common flag colors:. USA, France, Russia, the Netherlands, Cuba, Chile, the UK....

Other national flags feature the sun: Argentina and Uruguay, the Philippines....here's a complete list.  

We've looked at some flags with single stars and some with constellations.  I don't think we've looked at any with the moon.  I suppose most of these would be the crescent moon of Islam, although South Carolina is an obvious exception 

....

Coming up next, or in short order, anyway.  Sun, stars, constellations, and soon, the moon....

The dog is a domesticated form of the Gray Wolf

Seems like I bungled my post on the Jaycee Dugard kidnapping.... unable to see the forest for the trees, so focused on synchromystic jibba-jabba that I neglected to note the obvious.

When I spent so much time on the name Dugard--"from the garden"--and thinking only of Jesus' night of anguish in the garden of Gethsemane, how could I have missed the Garden of Eden? Probably because I'm currently involved in a dispute with neighbors which has in fact left me sleepless and anguished. Although it is a matter of beams and nails, my crucifixion doesn't seem to be imminent.

If I could see beyond my own nose I might have noticed that Dugard's story can be seen in the terms of the Eden myth. Sexuality and the loss of innocence. It was the Gid who pointed this out to me so I leave it there, as a challenge to the Gid to lay it all out for us. Let the preacher's kid untangle it!

The second (at least!) point of neglect is the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood. I warbled on about St. Thérèse and Anne Frank and forgot to go into this gem of a tale. Worst of all, I'd thought of it and then decided, nah, fuggit. Then this morning I awoke to read a story about Canadian folk singer Taylor Mitchell, a young woman of 19 who was killed by coyotes while walking in the woods and then after thinking "holy shit that's horrible," I remembered the tale.

So, here goes. Apparently the tale was told in the 14th c. by peasants in both France and Italy and may have roots in Eastern or "Oriental" tales with similar themes. There are many versions; sometimes the girl is eaten and sometimes she escapes; sometimes involuntary cannibalism occurs. Sometimes the wolf is a werewolf or an ogre. Sexual overtones abound.

The first written version was published by Frenchman Charles Perrault in 1697. In his version the girl is eaten and there the story ends. A moral tacked onto the end explains that the story is a warning to "good girls" to resist the sexual advances of men.

Since Perrault, many variations have appeared but most know the version as told by the Brothers Grimm.

The Grimm version is almost certainly a re-telling of Perault's except in the end, where a hunter after the wolf's skin saves the girl and her grandmother. In this version the grandmother and the girl are swallowed whole by the wolf, but emerge unharmed after the hunstman cuts the beast open. This ending sees to have been taken from yet another tale. The Grimms also wrote a sequel in which grandmother and the girl trap and kill another wolf with a cunning ruse: they drown him after luring him with a pot of water which had been used to cook sausages.

Many interpretations have been made of the fairy tale, only a few of which I'll mention here. Obviously, wolf attacks were a serious problem in the Middle Ages, so it may have simply began as a cautionary tale to young kids, much like stories of La Llorona are thought to have begun as a way to scare kids away from dangerous waterways.

Alan Dundes has analyzed the tale and interpreted it as the story of a girl who leaves home and in various actions crosses a threshold; she emerges from the belly of the beast as a woman. In another Freudian analysis, Bruno Bettelheim sees it as a rebirth; the child is reborn coming from the wolf, her emotions liberated.

Yet another interpretation sees the story as a warning against falling into the trap of prostitution; supporters of this theory note that the red cloak was a common symbol of hookers in 17th c. France. Less pernicious perhaps is the idea that the story represents sexual awakening. "In this interpretation, the red cloak symbolizes the blood of the menstrual cycle, braving the "dark forest" of womanhood. Or the cloak could symbolize the hymen....In this case, the wolf threatens the girl's virginity. The anthropomorphic wolf symbolizes a man, who could be a lover, seducer or sexual predator...."

We would argue that the pedophile and the kid-snatcher has replaced the Big Bad Wolf as the ultimate danger of our time, lurking in the forest after the sun goes down, ready to pounce; the former is the metaphor for the latter. Indeed the wolf has always had a connotation of sexual aggressiveness. The leering wolf-whistle as the statuesque blond walks past the construction site, Duran Duran's Hungry Like the Wolf (I'm on the hunt I'm after you....) All of these sexual wolf metaphors may derive from this very tale or others like it; the wolf and sexual danger have become intrinsically linked. Wikipedia offers a brief summary of modern adaptations, such as popular songs, cartoons and fiction in which the sexuality of the tale is explored.

Blatant eroticism has been a trope of the vampire tale since Bram Stoker. Less so perhaps for the werewolf but nonetheless, there is clearly a brute sexuality to the lycanthrope. A normal man goes about his everyday business until the full moon appears. In the maiden-mother-crone cycle of pagan moon-lore, the full moon represents the point when the woman is most fertile, full, bountiful. "Mother" may be the appellation but the implication is fertility and thus sexuality. An in the presence of the full woman our mild-mannered lycanthrope turns into an uncontrollable beast with an immense hunger for flesh. While not universally true, the werewolf in European cultures is usually a man.

According to NASA, however, neither June 10, 1991 (Dugard kidnapping) nor November 22, 1976 (Callaway kidnapping) were full moons; though certainly a beast, we can rule out lycanthropy in Garrido's case!

Wikipedia again makes the point that certain modern interpretations of the tale resemble "animal bridegroom" stories such as The Frog Prince and Beauty and the Beast. This latter is perhaps even more telling than the tale of Riding Hood. In the popular Disney film, the Beast first holds young Belle's father as a prisoner but agrees to free him if Belle agrees to take his place. Although coarse and full of anger, the Beast treats Belle kindly, slowly revealing a more sensitive side. Given her freedom, Belle returns of her own volition to save the Beast from his tormentors. She has fallen in love with the Beast, and her tears transforms him back into a handsome young Prince. Cue the dancing candelabra; they live happily ever after.

One might reasonably construe this as a glorification of the Stockholm syndrome. Given the prevalence of the fairy tale in our culture, it shouldn't be so surprising that Dugard never seemed to try and escape her captor. We speak of her as being imprisoned, but it seems she had some degree of freedom, working in Garrido's printshop, interacting with the public. Her children have been described as fairly well-adjusted and clever. Not exactly feral kids locked in a cage for years. Disney's celebrated version of the film was released on November 13, 1991. A week and a day before the Dugard kidnapping!

In both Little Red Riding Hood and the Beauty and the Beast, there is an explicit danger in the forest. Folklorists tell us that this is a trope dating back to the Middle Ages where the forest--place of darkness and danger--is juxtaposed against the village as a place of safety. Put in other words, between the wild and the domesticated, the savage and the tame. In French we can speak of the dusk, or at times the dawn, as "entre chien et loup," literally "between dog and wolf." The night and all its attendant dangers versus the safety of the light of day. These liminal periods put in stark contrast the nature of the wild and the domesticated; they are transitions between states of being. The Wolf in Riding Hood you will recall, dresses itself in Grandma's nightdress and bonnet in order to fool Little Red. And what is the Beast but a lycanthrope stuck in his animal state?

Hunter Thompson brought the following quote by Samuel Johnson to many peoples' attention: "He who makes a beast of himself avoids the pain of being a man." I always thought Thompson was explaining, even advocating, his particular kind of behavior. Now I'm not sure that it isn't merely scorn, or an impersonal observation. Men are dogs, they say. And they are right.

Alfred Starr Hamilton, 2: Bibliography in Progress

ASH 1914-2005

An introduction to this bibliography can be found here:

  

Alfred Starr Hamilton, 1: Biographical notes and reflections

  

I first put this online in November, 2001, updating it from time to time until 2004 or 2005.  This latest edition [2013] has a few additions and I hope readers will contribute as well.  

12 Dec 2016:  Updated with new Epoch references, Wake Up Heavy reference and images.

3 Nov 2022:  I recently came across the University of Chicago library's description of their ASH archives and was able to add about a dozen new citations for magazines, in effect doubling the bibliography's size.  I'm sure it's still incomplete.  Since I first put this up 20 years ago, the number of online articles about and referencing Hamilton has skyrocketed.

I.  Books & Chapbooks

Sphinx. Kumquat Press, Montclair, NJ 1968

Published by Geof Hewitt. 

Kumquat Press apparently still exists and you can reach them at: Kumquat Press, P.O. Box 51, Calais, VT 05648. Hewitt is himself a poet who leads workshops across the state of Vermont. Hewitt's been a juried member of the Vermont Arts Council since 1971.

The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton.  Introduction by Geof Hewitt. Drawings by Philip Van Aver. The Jargon Society, Penland, NC 1970

"Al Hamilton is the kind of poet everybody says they'd like to be.  He doesn't apply for grants and has probably never heard of the national Council on the Arts.  He doesn't teach in a college or write reviews or wash dishes in a diner and other odd jobs.  He writes poetry.  All he does is write poetry."

The Jargon Society

PO Box 15458

Winston-Salem, NC 27113

The Big Parade. The Best Cellar Press, Lincoln, Neb., 1982

 

"This book is published as a special issue of the poetry magazine PEBBLE. This is issue number 22."

Best Cellar Press

Greg Kuzma, Editor

Department of English

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Lincoln, NE 68588

(The next two books appeared after my ASH website ceased to exist)

Send This to the Immune Officer.  Commentary etc. by Lisa Borinsky.  Weird New Jersey, Inc., Bloomfield, NJ, 2010

Letters from ASH to the Montclair Police Dept. with commentary.  A fascinating and compelling read.

A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind:  The Poems of Alfred Star Hamilton.  Edited by Ben Estes and Alan Felsenthal.  Introduction by Geof Hewitt.  The Song Cave, 2013

A comprehensive collection of early poems published in various journals, to previously unpublished, hand-written poems written during his final years at an assisted-living facility.  It's well-designed, and the occasional use of black pages, the title, and the introduction by Hewitt all recall the Jargon book.  It's even got a photo by Simpson Kalisher on the cover, almost certainly taken during the same session as the photo used for the Jargon collection.  Unlike the Jargon book, "Dreambox" includes an autobiographical blurb by Hamilton, originally written for Quickly Aging Here (1969).

John Latta mentions the following two works as well, but I'm not sure if they're books, chapbooks, or broadsides....Any info out there?  I got the the following info from WorldCat.

An orange drink at Nedick's.  Crawlspace, Belvidere Ill., 1985

War and Peace: poems.  Blue Moon, Tuscon AZ [?], 1960 [?]

The references on WorldCat give no indication of the length of these books and the date of War and Peace is incorrect; Blue Moon was founded in 1975.  Both publishers do exist, however.

 

II.  Magazines / Journals

Epoch.  Fall 1962 Vol. XII, No. 3  Cornell University:  "Crabapples"

Epoch.  Fall 1963 Vol. XIII, No. 1  Cornell University:  6 poems 

 

Epoch.  Winter 1963 Vol. XII [XIII?], No. 3  Cornell University

Epoch.  Spring 1964 Vol. XIII, No. 3  Cornell University:  3 poems

Epoch. Winter 1965 Vol. XIV, No. 4  Cornell University:  5 poems

Epoch.  Winter 1967 Vol. XVII, No. 2  Cornell University   

Metanoia. Vol. 1, No. 1 December 1967

Metanoia. Vol 1 (?), No. 4 1968 (?)

 

Monk's Pond. No. 1 Spring 1968.  Trappist, KY:  "Poems from Salvation Army"

Judging from Hamilton's correspondence with Merton, 6 poems were included.

Poems of the People.  No. 3 1970: 3 poems [Thanks to Eric Torgersen for sending these scans from PotP].

"This was a mimeographed publication sent free to underground papers....who were free to publish any of the poems etc. in the issue. Published by me [Eric Torgersen] with Michael Lally and Paula Novotnak. 

It was a publication in its own right, with some individual subscribers, but the service to the papers was the point. I can't name individual publications....but besides the three who produced it we had stuff from Robert Bly, from small-c communist poet Walter Lowenfels, Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs, Vincent Ferrini (who plays a role Olson's Maximus Poems), plus many of the most political poets out there in little-mag world."

The Archive. Vol. 83, No.3 Spring 1971: 8 poems

The Archive. Vol. 83, No.2 Winter 1971: 19 poems

Note: the volume info for The Archive comes from the Guide to the Alfred Starr Hamilton Papers 1963-2015 at the University of Chicago Library; I'm not sure why No. 2 is Winter and No. 3 is Spring; I suspect an error with the numbering or the dates, and will try to clarify this with UC.

New Letters: A Continuation of the University Review. Vol. 39, No. 1 Fall 1972:  short biography and 4 poems

The Wormwood Review. Vol. 16, No. 1 (Issue No. 61) 1975: “Double Daring" (10 pages of poems dated 9/12/75)

Workshop 25. Fall, 1975. Bob Arnold, Ed.

I don't know what poems are included.

American Poetry Review. March/April, 1976:  "Color Lines," "Moon," "To Father Coughlin," "Pink Ponds;" p.13

"I am immune."

Poetry Now. Volume III. Numbers 3-6 (Issues 15-18), 1976:  "Our Flag," "The Pool," "Wilkes Barre, Pa.," "Broom Factory," "Visitations," "War;" p. 60-61

waves [sic], No. 1 1978: "Walden House," "Baloney," "Boy Meets Girl"

New Letters: A Magazine of Fine Writing. Winter 1981/82:  4 poems

The UC archives list “Apples” and “Crawlspace” as "Published Poetry" in 1985 but I'm not quite sure what that refers to, as no journal is mentioned.  Perhaps they were broadsides?  I think Crawlspace is a journal. They published "An orange drink at Nedick's" either as a broadside or in their magazine.

Cat's Eye, Winter 1980: "The War," "Ferlinghuysen Avenue," "Arena," "King Solomon" (I haven't verified this)

Cat's Eye, No. 3, Summer 1981: "With contributions from the reclusive outsider poet, Alfred Starr Hamilton...."

Exquisite Corpse. Vol. 5, Nos. 9-12 September-December 1987

Lips. No. 11 1985

Lips. No. 14 1988:  “A Drifting Cloud” and “The Month of Maine”

The Wormwood Review. Vol. 28, No. 1 (Issue 109) 1988:  “Yes” and “Poetry”

Journal of New Jersey Poets. Volume XVII. Number 2, 1995:  "Mirrorland," "Beautiful," "A Town without a Soul;" p. 1-3

Wake Up Heavy, No.3, 2000 

Chicago Review. No. 58 Summer 2013:. "Woodcut," "A Disciple of Red Christ," "Indomitably Bystanders," "City Wide," "Officers Shoes" 

(Hewitt apparently did a hand-printed broadside of a poem with this name in the late-60s.  WorldCat;  "Set and printed by hand, the Kumquat Press, Montclair, N.J., [196-?])  Hewitt writes:

I don't recall "Officer's Shoes," and cannot recall whether I issued a Hamilton broadside. I think there were 8, all on a nice white toothy paper with deckle edge, as I recall, each only as big as the poem plus margins, so there was Elliott Coleman"s "A Summer Sky" (18" x 14"+/-) and probably a Hamilton poem (10" x 6"). It's all getting a little foggy, but the broadsides are probably 1968 Iowa City, same letterpress shop as Sphinx.

Boston Review, 38, 2013: "Cinderella"

III.  Anthologies

Quickly Aging Here: Some of the Poets of the 1970's. Geof Hewitt, Ed. New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1969.

Alfred Starr Hamilton’s “Anything Remembered,’’ “April Lights,’’ “Guardian,’’ 
“Liquid’ll,’’ “Town,” “White Chimes,” from Epoch, © 1963, 1964, 1967 
by Cornell University; “Bronze,” “Didn’t You Ever Search for Another 
Star?” “Psyche,” from Sphinx, © 1968 by The Kumquat Press.

Bleb Twelve. Gardner, Geoffrey, Ed. New York, NY: Bleb, 1977.

Thus Spake the Corpse : An Exquisite Corpse Reader 1988-1998 : Volume 2. Andrei Codrescu & Laura Rosenthals, Eds: "God," "February," & "New York City Public Library Lions."

 

Bluestones and Salt Hay. An Anthology of Contemporary New Jersey Poets. Joel Lewis, ed. Rutgers University Press, 1990. Foreword by Anne Waldman. 

IV.  About Alfred Starr Hamilton

HAMILTON, Alfred Starr  1914-[2005]

PERSONAL:  Borne June 14, 1914, in Montclair, N.J.; son of Alfred Starr and Virginia (Gildersleeve) Hamilton. Education:  Attended high school in Montclair, N.J. Politics:  Socialist.  Religion:  "Immune."  Home and office:   41 South Willow St., Montclair, N.J. 07042.

CAREER:  Poet.  Military service:  U.S. Army, 1942-43.

WRITINGS:  Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton, Jargon Press, 1970.  Contributor to Epoch, New Directions, Foxfire, New Letters, Archive, and Greenfield Review.

SIDELIGHTS:  Hamilton has hitchhiked through forty-three states.

source:  Contemporary Authors:  A bio-bibliographical guide to current writers in fiction, general nonfiction, poetry, journalism, drama, motion pictures, television, and other fields. Volumes 53-56. 1975: p.264

 

New: American and Canadian Poetry. Number 9, 1969; p. 40-41

A review of Sphinx by Eric Torgerson.

"Notes towards extinction: American poetry wipe-out." New: American and Canadian Poetry. Number 15, 1971; p. 39-44

 

This essay is a "state of poetry today" kind of thing.  Hewitt doesn't say anything about Hamilton that couldn't be applied to any number of other poets, but he does praise his unique voice, apparent lack of concern for literary "fashion" and ability to maintain a strong "presence" in the poetry without being its sole object.

[I've always felt my description here sounds a bit flip, so I should reiterate my respect for Hewitt as a long-time champion of ASH and a stand-up guy.  I've had exchanges with a few Hamiltonians and to a number they're good people].

Three poems are given in full:  "Liquid'll," "April Lights," and "Hark"

The New York Times.  April 13 and May 25, 1975

On April 13 Jonathan Williams has "The Guest Word" in the New York Times Book Review.  He berates James Dickey for high reading fees and praises Hamilton.  The article repeats the Hamilton story told by Hewitt and makes a plea on his behalf for money, adding that for 1975 he only needs about $2,000.  A Spartan existence is outlined.  The details differ, but it is essentially the same story given by Geof Hewitt in his intro to The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton.

"I'm not immune.  I'm just out in the open.  There aren't as many bees as there used to be."

On May 25 Williams writes in to report that Hamilton donations have come to the tune of $5,600 dollars.

Blackbird Dust. Jonathan Williams. Turtle Point Press, 2000.

 

Includes his NYT article from May 25, 1975.

The New York Times.  "His Poetry Was Odd, but His Letters to the Police Were Odder." Peter Aplebome. 23 Aug 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/nyregion/23towns.html?_r=0. Accessed 06/11/13.

“Dear Police; Is anything of this kind surreptitious?” reads one letter dated Jan. 10, 1983. “I don’t know. Make sure everything is alright. Send this to the immune officer. I am immune. Alfred Starr Hamilton.”

Not so much a review as a description of Borinsky's magazine and the paradoxes in ASH's life.

CounterText, Vol. 7, Iss. 1 2021: Moreover: Reading Alfred Starr Hamilton. John Wilkinson.

Honest question. Is this a satire of academia?  I'm not saying it to take a dig at anyone, but this reads like a satire of academic jargon.

This article addresses the challenge to professionalised practices of reading represented by the oeuvre of Alfred Starr Hamilton (1914–2005), with broader implications for the contested category of Outsider Writing. Drawing on the author's experience, three types of early life encounter with poetry are specified, guided to its objects by cultural and parental authority and later reaction against them: a fetish of the book and representations of the poet, oral pleasure, and the magic of the word as an illimitably productive and plastic material. These are linked to encounter with Hamilton's poetry, at once unrelentingly repetitive, and sponsored and structured by a small seedbank of magic words, occasioning the sudden florescence of beauty. To read Hamilton requires a feline practice of submitting to reverie while registering disturbance and aesthetic shock precisely.

V.  Music  (Eventually, if such a thing were to happen, I'd add theater or cinematic works about or  

                     inspired by Hamilton)

A.  The Bye Bye Blackbirds have a song called "Alfred Starr Hamilton" on their 2016 album Take Out the Poison.  I wrote them and asked why, or if an ASH line is used as a lyric.  Singer/songwriter Bradly Skaught replied:

[The song] doesn't incorporate any of his lines (or even approximate his style) but it was inspired by him. It's not so much about his work, but him as a person and an artist, living and working so marginally and isolated, yet still creating this rich artistic life. I found myself thinking about artists at the margins, some of whom we never even hear of and vanish without a trace, but who lived an artistic life and navigated the world with a spirit of creative investigation and expression regardless of their relationship to anything like the art world, publishing, etc. I guess I was trying to capture something of the feeling of that spirit, and maybe relating to it as well -- to that core drive to be creative and create art in whatever little sphere of life we find ourselves in.

Here's that song:

B.  Composer Nathan Hall has set 5 ASH poems to music and put them on SoundCloud: here. 2019.

VI.  Archives

The University of Chicago has some archival material related to Hamilton (3 boxes / 1.5 meters of shelf space) which are open to researchers.

https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc/findingaids/view.php?eadid=ICU.SPCL.HAMILTONAS

The collection contains biographical information, personal belongings, correspondence, drafted prose inspired by Hamilton written by family members, book reviews, newspaper clippings with interviews and biographies, poetry journals and magazines, books, and Hamilton’s unpublished poetry manuscripts.

There is a more detailed inventory at the UC Library website.  It appears as though there are some appearances in print of which I was earlier unaware, and I've updated the bibliography accordingly.  If anyone has an opportunity to see those archives and would like to share with us, we'd be grateful.

My own collection of ASH book (not including photocopies from his appearances in poetry journals).  I started with the Jargon book in 2001 and got a copy of Sphinx in 2020.

***********************************************************************************

If you know of any other appearances I've missed, please 

let me know and I'll add it to the bibliography.

Years ago I bought The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton for 30 dollars and The Big Parade for 10 or 15.  Booksellers have cottoned to his enduring popularity and the increasing scarcity of these small print runs; both now sell for about 90 dollars.  I don't see Sphinx for sale anywhere; when it was available it was - even then - beyond my means.  You might try asking Geof Hewitt directly if he still has copies.  

If you are interested in the work, and not a collector, I'd recommend the Dreambox collection.  It's affordable, comprehensive, and a nice little book, easy to read (an important consideration for fogies like me) and not too big or heavy to bring to a picnic and read to your companions à la Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe....

Here are some links, if you're looking (I get no remuneration for this):

• Sphinx

• The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton

• The Big Parade

• Weird NJ Presents: Send This to the Immune Officer--Found Letters of Alfred Starr Hamilton (out of stock, try the publisher)

• A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind: The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton (look around and you can find it cheaper than this link)

Many thanks to those who've helped me and agreed to be quoted.  I hope to annotate this bibliography further with anecdotes about the circumstances of these publications.  One day....