Poetry; Pages: 36 pages; Published 1983
Redress by David Omer Bearden
Limited edition chapbook of 18 poems. Dedicated to the memory of singer/songwriter Judee Sill.
“Redress is remarkably good. This poet isn't afraid to take chances. He writes with conviction and has a keen sense of detail.” — Crad Kilodney
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Excerpt from Redress
THE DESK IS A FROZEN SEA*
& HE STRAINS TO SING ABOUT TIME & AGE
ALAS HIS HEART WILL BREAK IN THREE
& A LINE TRICKLES OUT ONTO THE PAGE:
He dozes & dreams for miles
of white sea-ice, which he must limp across
needing badly to ease his bowels
knotted like frozen clods. So soon he squats
in an embarrassing wind
baring himself, & saying, “Let me shet.
O God, why do you make me whine
in pain for any birth?” The place he sits
is terrible ice, & coldly
cut by the thin wind which does not sing.
So straining and hurt at that pole
he makes one tortured turd which tears & hangs
bleeding into the blank snow.
It lives! It is strung with throbbing black veins!
He touches it & whimpers: “O
God, this horror twined with my own membrane
is shame! Pain with no defense!
I take from my pack my critical knife
& sever this experience,
of which I’ll never speak, if I survive!”
* “The Desk is a Frozen Sea” was considered a scatological poem that first appeared in The Censored Review, 1963, edited by Ron Padgett. It came about after the administrators at Columbia University objected to Ron’s intention to include poems by Ted Berrigan and David Bearden in an issue of The Columbia Review, the university’s official literary magazine. Ted’s poem was deemed obscene for using the word “fuck,” and David's was considered to be unacceptably scatological for containing the words “shit” and “turd.”
Because of the ban, a furor erupted that was covered by the local press, and Padgett was even interviewed on TV. The student editors of The Columbia Review resigned in protest and The Censored Review was printed by an off-campus social organization. Priced at 25 cents, it sold out all 800 copies immediately and was a prototype for the type of inexpensively produced chapbooks and magazines that would flourish in the 1960s and ‘70s as the “Mimeo Revolution.”
About the Author
David Omer Bearden is the surviving brother of twins born in the desert town of Blythe, CA in 1940. He dedicated his creative life to writing poetry, starting from the post-Beat era, until he passed away in 2008 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. From 1958-1962 he studied English Literature at the University of Tulsa, where he discovered the writings of the “Beats” and began publishing his own poems in numerous literary magazines and journals. Bearden published three poetry chapbooks of his own: So Long at the Fair & Down at the Palomino Club & Other Poems, 1976, The Rosace in a Star Chamber, 1981, and Redress, 1983. He edited and published anthologies Le Feu Du Ciel, 1965, and Smoking Mirrors, 1974, as well as Dominion, a collection of poems by Alan Russo in 1977. A novel titled The Thing In Packy Innard’s Place was the last manuscript he completed in 2007. He is known as the “Apocalypse Rose.”
To learn more about the author visit: davidbearden.com