|
BACK
Paris My Heart (2017) • On Saint Ronan Street (1976)
Two Novels, Same Story, 40 Years and Two Cities Far Apart.
ABOUT:
00
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
6. So, as I went to press, I had a bright idea…
I combined the two books into a duet titled (yes, 27duet). It struck me that Jon Harney and and Charles Egeny were like long-separated birth twins finally reunited years later.
So I not only published a volume of Cymbalist Poems, but also included some of my poetry pseudo-pseudo-nymously in the novel On Saint Ronan Street.
From there, it was only a simple step to also publish both books in one volume, which I titled 27duet. In using that number, which is about the age at which I stopped writing poetry and turned those energies more deeply in to prose, I was conscious of several things. It is the notorious age when a number of creative artists like Jim Morrison (The Doors), Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix died.
On a much larger scale, I think, *27* or so represents the apex of all life, the prime biological mating age, to which we rise, and from which we (in the Standard Model) sail across a plateau of labor, parenting, love, and so on until one day we… oh well, for another day and another story.
So again, I was conscious at an early age (as a UConn undergraduate, taking a memorable German Literature class with Professor Uhlig) that (according to Prof. Uhlig) by age thirty most lyrical poets like Rilke and a long list of others have burned out and either died or moved on to other things (mostly prose fiction, as I did).
In short, when I turned 27 in a totally new world (California, Army, Europe, etc.), I had been long since prepared for the change and felt no regret about being largely done with poetry writing.
That was the closure I sought while typing my poetry in New Haven Harbor at age 23, to salvage what I could from a box of napkins, torn notebook pages, envelopes, and other debris at my feet. Even then, I had to guess for each poem when and where I might have written it. Most dated back either to high school (ages 13-17), college (ages 18-22) or my days as a starving artist and USA-hitcher (ages 23-24). I did some writing in SoCal during the half year before my active duty date just before the end of the Vietnam Era, and took all my stuff with me to Germany (1975-1980). There, I again made closure, creating my first self-published book Pauses around 1978-1980. I vaguely recall visiting a German printing shop to pick up some vellum or parchment, board covers, special glue, and advice. On the printer's advice, I bought some string and a curved carpet needle at a carpet shop, which proved to be excellent for case binding my little manuscript (and its copier-made, somewhat faded pages). It was a raw job, but a labor of love, and I still have a few copies in my library today. Again, that is my poetry and just as much the work of Charles Egeny, the fictive alter-ego and pseudonym of the fictional Jon Harney in my manuscript Jon+Merile
TOP | BACK
|
|
