Jim Leftwich
Tugt Dugl
The American poet Jim Leftwich was born in Virginia in the decade following the end of World War Two. Eleven years after Nagasaki, eight years before The Gulf of Tonkin. Duck and cover drills were a real thing, though memories of them seem like a kind of minimalist surfiction. Leftwich as a poet, as a visual poet, as an asemic writer, as an experimental essayist, has been nothing if not prolific. Another world is possible, even if the poet has to write it into existence. Poets are the unacknowledged registrars of the world, adding incessantly to the stock of available reality, carrying little notebooks and a pen in the shirt pocket above their hearts. Leftwich matriculated in the mid-70s as an English Major hoping against hope that he might grow up to be a Professor Poet. But he hated Robert Browning, and Alexander Pope was even worse. He studied the history of jazz, until he came upon Archie Shepp's opinion of the word (articulated, perhaps, during Bill Dixon's October Revolution In Jazz festival (October 1 - 4, 1964)). He studied art history. He moved out west. He moved back east. He got married, 34 years ago. He edited the micropress magazines Juxta and Xtant. He wrote tens of thousands of pages of poetry. By the time you read this he should be somewhere between the Mojave Desert and the Oregon Coast. Traveling with Sue, in a van, with their cat. Gas prices in California are very high. Water levels in Lake Mead are very low. It has been written that Donald Trump was the first declinist President of the United States. Don't believe a word of it. Every American president since Eisenhower has been a declinist.
Tugt Dugl
The American poet Jim Leftwich was born in Virginia in the decade following the end of World War Two. Eleven years after Nagasaki, eight years before The Gulf of Tonkin. Duck and cover drills were a real thing, though memories of them seem like a kind of minimalist surfiction. Leftwich as a poet, as a visual poet, as an asemic writer, as an experimental essayist, has been nothing if not prolific. Another world is possible, even if the poet has to write it into existence. Poets are the unacknowledged registrars of the world, adding incessantly to the stock of available reality, carrying little notebooks and a pen in the shirt pocket above their hearts. Leftwich matriculated in the mid-70s as an English Major hoping against hope that he might grow up to be a Professor Poet. But he hated Robert Browning, and Alexander Pope was even worse. He studied the history of jazz, until he came upon Archie Shepp's opinion of the word (articulated, perhaps, during Bill Dixon's October Revolution In Jazz festival (October 1 - 4, 1964)). He studied art history. He moved out west. He moved back east. He got married, 34 years ago. He edited the micropress magazines Juxta and Xtant. He wrote tens of thousands of pages of poetry. By the time you read this he should be somewhere between the Mojave Desert and the Oregon Coast. Traveling with Sue, in a van, with their cat. Gas prices in California are very high. Water levels in Lake Mead are very low. It has been written that Donald Trump was the first declinist President of the United States. Don't believe a word of it. Every American president since Eisenhower has been a declinist.
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