Larry Goodell

CLOUDS is poetic structures merging with dramatic form, begging the reader to read aloud and sound these poems out. I am fond of unique combinations of repetition and variation, especially when they play with syntax and satirize even cauterize political dumbness or societal insanities. I like puns and wordplays, which often lead to humorous lines that reverb back onto the main topic of the poem. The repetition can accumulate, double, or even triple up. Many times hilarity prevails and suddenly downright serious Earth tragedy leads to Earth hope. Each poem is different when read aloud, and at times italics give distinct emphases on the printed page. Often I use the same word as both noun and verb and it's all Father Sun and Mother Earth opening a path through the turmoil. Only poets and artists who are attuned to the world as a whole have the primary power to warm over the hearts and allow illusion to cast its spell. Our imagination places auras around the specifics of our daily lives. Not all the time, but sometimes. Good fun is the only escape so be prepared for that as well as occasional foxhole prayers. I am a performance poet, a native New Mexican. I express the dirt and sky and landscape and beauty of my life here in very vocal poems.

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

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

"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

COMMONS includes Earth in Oligarchal Grip - 2017 poems, Thunder - 2018 poems, and Early Riser - 2019 poems. As in previous recent books the poet includes many of the drawings from his notebooks interspersed with the poems. "It is a beautiful book, and so much inside to take in bit by bit. I love the little drawings scattered among the poems." - Margaret Randall To Larry: "Poetry isn't the property of Academe. It's an alive art --- & you prove that." - Joy Harjo "He is a master reader, and you have to imagine these pieces read. No, rather performed. For Larry truly breathes shape into the words. They take on attitudes. Costumes. He is their animator, as well as originator." - Art Goodtimes"I feel fulfilled that we claim a poet here unafraid of voicing his rancor at the ruthless betrayers of the heart, and, fulfilled that he is honest not to comprise or gloss over serious concerns of our age." - Jimmy Santiago Baca

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."

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

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

"For something like 60 years now, Larry Goodell has been the Poet of our Conscience. It's an ancient occupation, and Larry does not shirk his responsibilities. Love poems. Garden poems. Sorrow poems. Political rants. Joyful life celebrations. Wherever his quirky imagination takes us, he is always reminding of our place on this precarious Spaceship Earth as it navigates around the sun and through the universe. Enjoy his poems, always be ready to laugh out loud, but, please, pay close attention. Take heed. This is important work." Bobby Byrd, poet and editor of Cinco Puntos Press in El Paso. Three new books from Larry Goodell, New Mexico Poet. Broken Garden features all geared to read aloud and drawings that occurred at the time of the poems - 2011 & 12. Digital Remains - 2013 - and Pieces of Heart - 2014 - are also new. These books of poetry include hundreds of the poet's notebook drawings Robert Creeley: "Larry Goodell talks a truth in terms that grab you by the ears and give you a good shake. There is generous wisdom in this genial poet, which is why the horny toads still love a hoe-down, if Larry plays the tune." Gino Sky, the Cowboy Buddha: "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. He is what we all strove for when we first started on our quests as revolutionary poets. Walt Whitman stuffed in our back pockets, Francois Villon, Emily Dickenson, John Keats, William Blake, Tillie Olsen, Rosalie Sorrels. Poetry's a revolution, and Larry's our peace-loving drum major." Bob Holman, premier US performance poet: "Now that spoken word and performance poetry have pushed poetry back into the public eardrum, now that poetry slams and hip hop, Billy Collins and Garrison Keillor have all conspired to create a US Poetry Renaissance, dear Larry Goodell can lean back on his caterpillar legs and other poetry costumes and ask, "Where ya been?" Goodell, as unknown at 70 as he was at 20, has a half-century's worth of revolutionary poetics under his belt, and is laughing all the way to Utopia. Nobody has done more, nor been recognized less, than this Legend of Placitas, New Mexico." Judson Crews, legendary Taos New Mexico Editor & Poet: Larry Goodell is "the consummate performance poet." Beatlick Press in Albuquerque is proud to present these 3 new works: Broken Garden, Digital Remains" and Pieces of Heart. Thank you, Pamela Hirst, as we honor the memory of world travelor and troubadour, Joe Speer.