Kirjahaku

Letters back and forth between two friends - Ann Quin British novelist and traveler, and Larry Goodell poet rooted in New Mexico. Honest close friends open their hearts and their minds to each other with a certain joie de vivre in spite of the increasing mental anguish that finally takes its toll. Quin died at only 37, a tragic loss to energetically creative fiction and a great loss to her friends and admirers.

Poems from The Light No Stars Are Made Of - 2000; Oh Cabezon - 2001; and Breath - 2002, written in Placitas, New Mexico, the poet's native state. This is an ongoing project called "Hear" which publishes selections from the poet's work including primarily poems but also his plays and his prose works."Larry has me sitting up in the middle of the night, wondering about life, love, war, and death, talking with the creator. His poems (and drawings) are clear fables, alien stories, truth parading in spirals. His muse is full of imagination and wonder." Jules Nyquist, founder of Jules' Poetry Playhouse"Breath is really 3 books: 'The Light No Stars are Made Of, ' 'Oh Cabezon, ' and 'Breath' and traverses a time at the beginning of the last decade where Goodell leads us all further into our own heads. I love his playfulness and inventiveness." Don McIver

A quick paced word-play theater, post-Yeatsian, post-Steinian, simply the excitement of verbal dance, the play and byplay of voices bouncing out of his head, hilariously so. Plays for spontaneous as well as rehearsed performance. Plays for leader and chorus, crazy word chant playlets. Plays for the love of it. Hot Art, Alfalfa, Left and Right, Captain Armor, Body Palace, The Football Game, A Fifth Apart, Billy the Kid in Bed, Pecos Bill, Each Other, Rabbit Stew and short short plays called Diversions from the poet playwright performer publisher painter composer Larry Goodell. These plays, whether long as in "Pecos Bill" or short as in "The Football Game," move dialogue entertainingly from the characters to the audience. Some can be spontaneously performed, some minimally rehearsed and performed for the audience's pleasure. One is a full length radio drama broadcast as part of a radio performance grant. Some use the reciting chorus but in a new fashion. Some are poetry as theater, poetry fresh and performed. Gino Sky says, "Poetry's a revolution, and Larry's our peace-loving drum major." Ann Waldman says that Goodell presents in his work "A personal vocal mythology of New Mexico expressed in songs of words."

"Larry Goodell has me sitting up in the middle of the night, wondering about life, love, war, and death, talking with the creator. His poems and drawings are clear fables, alien stories, truth parading in spirals. His muse is full of imagination and wonder." Jules Nyquist, Director of Jules Poetry Playhouse. Hilarity and satire refresh my spirit although someone dear to me was struck down by drugs and alcohol in years 2008 to 2010. Addiction in any family is hell. So, part of my poem-journal is wrestling through the terror of being powerless to bring someone back to sanity. There's despair and there is release. Spoofs and jazzy improvisation lift the soul. Grounded is a 3 book, 3-year journey blessed with surprises that humor can heal at almost every turn. Over 50 drawings interlace and are driven by the poems. I love the breathing space a drawing gives between poems. Even from pain, surprisingly truth and release can be fruitfully generated. Drawings, sketches, despair, humor, satire progress into a personal spiritual search weaving everything together. Fried Dreams the first book lays the groundwork (here presented last). Foxhole Prayers moves in and out of the family angst but with spiritual questions pointing to answers. Poems are the music that saves. Remembering the Present refreshes my sober life. Here I am "grounded" in breathing, the simple repeated lesson. "You write with your experience not about it." I enter the "paradise of my love's eyes" and this book is finished. "Since the 'Sixties, ' Larry Goodell has kept that 'spirit' alive. And he continues getting stronger and more significant in his life and writings. He is a real poet. A true poet who has never once taken the academic way out." Gino Sky

My poetry I performed with dancers, primarily Lee Connor and the Danzantes.

DIGITAL REMAINS includes drawings peppering the poems and deals with addiction, drought, satire, love, compassion, hurt, and the nature of poetry. There's a scathing guttural congressional spoof and a syrupy blast at corporate greed. Gino Sky says that Goodell is "a true poet who has never once taken the academic way out. He is what we all strove for when we first started on our quests as revolutionary poets." And here's the title poem: Your Digital Remains "I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library." Jorge Luis Borges What's going to happen to your digital remains?It remains to be seen.It might be a dream that you're going to be on the beam forever.As a matter of fact someone's going to pull the plugon you, on me, all at once or by degree.That server's going to be hot for somebody elseand then another server will give you upin fact they may all give you upor get too hot to do anything but blow up.Then where will your digital remains be?Not even remaindered like a book, a good ole book, whether ever opened or not, has a helluva longer life potentialthan the ones and zeros of this serious computer gripthat's taken over the world.If the servers are boiled and your disks friedand you lost your thumb drive anywayI'll see you in a book, you know, that's where I'll look. Larry Goodell "Goodell's often musical words are drawn from an enthusiastic awareness of as many roles in life as son nephew husband father bookseller poet publisher gardener homesteader neighbor and lover of life on this planet." Roy Durfee, KUNM-FM, Albuquerque

NOTHING TO LAUGH ABOUT is a compilation of Larry Goodell's poems from 2015, "Voice In The Round" and poems from 2016, "Comic Invasion" with the poet's drawings integral to the poems. "I was not a serious contender in the word-scalpel department nor did I fling my phonetics before the feet of the Kings of Academia. I was locked outside the gates with my feeble inaccuracies, my hodge-podge of innovation wondering why did it all seem so real. There was loneliness and beauty of hills, nature, rocks, arroyos. What wrote itself out of me under the ancient cottonwood and troublesome box elder was the form it took when there was no denial of the back of my head. The other side of everything spoke like a dance in the plaza. I could only come up with the set of my surroundings the set of nature, the set of my desk, the windows, the patio flagstones the volcanic vista which reflected my coming of age later than usual, the music and the dance of my youth formulating a 360 now - I could never be mono but plural as I was starved for affection and the warmth of companionship when it came and the teachers who broke through reality gave me a voice in the round. - Larry Goodell Mia Kirsi Stageberg: I have to tell you that I never knew the breadth, intensity and power of what you've been writing. . . . I'm not sure I've ever seen a more creative and just use of reasonable rage John Nichols: You get my vote as one of the great ones You got moxie, humor, politics, and you're crazy like a dancing Fox