Aleppo

Any one with a television or a tablet or phone can feed on whats going on in Syria, and to be honest what you see reflects what you believe. William Joyce has always been a fierce critic of the hypocrisy of the ' Civilized ' world and the personal responsibilities we all share. He sent me this small incendiary and I think it reflects him thoroughly................

            Aleppo is symbolic of the Western powers futility to help innocent people being bombed.  Aleppo highlights the uselessness of the entire liberal, gooey Western mentality of alliances, the U.N., NATO, the universities from which they all hail, the quicksand of the language they use each day.  2,000 children had their legs or arms blown off.  If the European nations or Canada and the U.S. had any validity, this never would have happened.

            Aleppo is also proof that that the bourgeoisie don't care what happens as long as it doesn't affect their cappuccinos.  That battered city in Syria is final proof that might is right and the hell with language that might save the arms and legs of children. What can any parent in Europe or North AMERCIA say to their own children when they ask, "Why did so many children have to die in Aleppo?" 

           But the fact is that the children of Cappuccino Lickers are coached from day one not to ask such questions.  The issue of Aleppo or why children anywhere go to bed hungry doesn't come up at the dinner table or in classrooms.  Children are coached to play the group game, to deny their individual consciences so they can begin an ascendancy toward a BMW and a home in the suburbs and fuck anybody in need.  This they learn for group approval by age 10.

          What should have been done?  Very simple, organize and march on the streets.  The streets are now used for everything else.  Do not allow the stock markets to march their merry way till the children of Aleppo are escorted to safety.  This should have been done a year ago.  Now it is too late.  Aleppo is then an announcement at the end of the civilized world, of the absolute futility of all of its institutions. It is an announcement that soda pop and guns won out over Voltaire, Homer, and Miles Davis. 

Michael Kruger's Benediction by William Joyce

 

                                  Publisher Michael Krüger's Benediction, June, 2013

      "I have no explanation for the fact that modern societies have invested tons of money into schools and universities only to find that horrible books are much more loved than the good ones."

       This was probably not the first time that Krüger mentioned the decay of the book world.  Why didn't some magazine, some reporter pick up on this? Why didn't the better writers of Europe rally to Krüger's defense?  Why didn't some TV station make a two-hour program  around a panel of European intellectuals?  Krüger tried to make a fuss about something that needs answering.  TV programming is 98% shit, why not have something nutricious?

       Because. if Krüger is right, those with the least sensitivity to language  are dominating language.  That means the best writers, the best publishers, best reviewers are being trashed.  It raises, in turn, another question:  should people be offered language at all??

       It remains, then, for good writers, sensitive readers to ask what shoiuld be done?  Should someone start a bomb school for discontented writers and publishers?

A reply to Fintan O'Toole by a 75 year old American Poet living in Guatemala

  

There was much controversy in the election of Donald Trump as future president of America. I thought I'd seen it all until I witnessed the rage and protest of the mob not getting their own way.

The educated masses are in bewilderment, the liberal elite aghast and the racists and the xenophobes are out in gleeful mood. Ireland's own Fintan O'Toole wrote an excellent piece on his view and our own William Joyce replied.  

Letter to Fintan O'Toole of the Irish Times

                   Guillermo O'Joyce

                   Antigua, Guatemala

                                            Dear Fintan O'Toole,

                                                                              Thank you for your fluid and far-reaching perspective on King Donald the XIV.  But His Majesty would never have gotten into a position of running for Power if he hadn't been worshiped because he had Money.  And money is nothing, a dreary medium of exchange inflated to Godhead. And the people who have it are Zeroes, dull personalities turned to vultures, who can't sing a song nor tell a story.  Worse, they have no ability to listen to a story nor sit still for a song.

                                                                              What is called an Upset in Politics is nothing more than a Mirror Reflection of a lot of people outside the power centers crying  out for revenge against the college-educated power brokers.  And whether they are from the Rural Areas, the college towns, or the derelict cities, they all share the same phenomena: they eat bad food, drink bad liquids, and gulp each day an astounding array of pharmaceutical pills.  The U.S. is a nation of junkies, a desert whose soul jumped into a gear box in 1998.  

                                                                             Had Donald Duck or Chauncy the Gardener been elected President of the U.S. it wouldn't have mattered.  None of the 100 million voters got up this morning and praised the amazing miracle of the hydraulics of their intestines that ushered mounds of shit into the toilet bowl thus granting them Resurrection.  No!   One group is celebrating a defunct Casino Manager while the other group is now on the streets protesting his ascendancy.  It is only a pretense this protest on the streets.  What this mob is really upset about is their mother's advice: "It's not What you know but Who you know."  

                                                                             The college professors enforced Mother's advice by preparing their wee charges for exams, not Life.  Now the suck-asses from the colleges and the cities are flailing in all directions, blaming their lack of direction on  a pathetic ex-groper who's in shock now that he's running the show, in shock that he may have to redeposit all his caustic remarks into the vault of the always-neutral Money Machine to be laundered like the real estate funds that vaulted him to power.  

                                                                             If language can't spare the children of Aleppo, Laos, India, and South Chicago, it is Nothing more than a front for the Bullies to lubricate their Killing Machines.  Get rid of it.  Let's have silence while we wait for the bombs to fall.  Let the bodies pile up.  Give the birds and the stray cats and the streams a chance to breath.  

                                                                            Finally, none of this is new.  It is only a reminder of what an Irish poet said in 1916:  "The worst are full of passionate intensity while the best lack all conviction."

                                                                              

Donald Trump

I woke up today to find Donald Trump the President Elect of America and if  I only looked at the Media I would think that the world had ended. I read the intelligent comments of some, the complete paranoia of others and the self serving hypocrisy of others.

As always I looked to what William would think ?

And here is what he had to say.



Trump was a victory for Fat People over Skinny People.  These were the people who were ditched, by even their mothers, and took up Ready Whip on top of their jello, whose pizzas have all the toppings.

It was the Fat People who finally highlighted the blatant hypocrisy and loss of reality of the intellectual crowd-----pollsters, reporters, publishers,professors, researchers.  Fat people sat on the heads of the pundits and Hillary's army of curly-haired ungroped hellions at private girls' schools wept into their manicured palms. How could the world be so cruel?

Trump should reward his ferocious squadrons of Fat People from the Rural Areas by putting one million of them in his inaugural parade.  And give each one a pizza, WITH ALL THE TOPPINGS.  

Knowing Your Audience

                                                         Knowing Your Audience

I got this superb poem just a few hours ago from William in Guatemala and I have to say it shows all the sense of play, and at the same time the incredible steely understanding I associate with his work.
He says it emerged out of " A fiasco at coffee bar "

Enjoy.


                                         
                                                                                              Know Your Audience


                                                                                      That's what everyone
                                                                                       told me
                                                                                       when I confessed
                                                                                       I read a poem
                                                                                       about a dental assistant
                                                                                       mounting me
                                                                                       when I was wigged out
                                                                                       on novocane
                                                                                       to some bouncy girls
                                                                                       who were Born Again Christians.

                                                                                       I don't know
                                                                                       if my poem
                                                                                       made these trumpeters
                                                                                       for Jesus
                                                                                       hot
                                                                                       or they just shucked me
                                                                                       off
                                                                                       as one more sinner
                                                                                       in need
                                                                                       of reform.

                                                                                       What I do know
                                                                                        is that if I ever
                                                                                        took the time
                                                                                        to really know
                                                                                        my audience
                                                                                        I wouldn't write
                                                                                        at all.
                                                                                        I would cut through
                                                                                        all ambiguity
                                                                                        all prejudice
                                                                                        all interpretation
                                                                                        by buying an AK-47.

                                                                                        The history books would
mention
                                                                                         in footnotes
                                                                                         that poetry finally
                                                                                         found a way
                                                                                         to reach
                                                                                         the masses.



With the permission of William Joyce                

                                                          The Truth


Everyone has it:
on the streets laughing
with friends at age 8,
or in the woods,
farm fields.
Life then was the joy
of the moment
and lively companions,
sunlight , inventiveness.

We lose all this:
a hammer comes down--
obey, obey, obey.
The eyes lose their glow,
the shoulders their suppleness,
the hips their swing.
50 years later we wonder
where it all went ?
At age 8 we could have
learned anything,
been anybody,
done anything.

At age 8 we were
so tricky,
so beautiful,
so undaunted,
all of civilization
could have fit
in our right front pocket,
the one with the hole in it.

At age 8 we should have
had a loving affair
every three weeks.
At age 8 we were
pure juice.

Quit talking.
Learn to sing
or play
on a garbage can top.
Or just listen
and learn to love
the silences.
The truth is still there,
somewhere.



With the permission of William Joyce

                                          Richard Godwin Interviews William Joyce



William Has gone to Guatemala where his life can be lead with more peace and of course where his limited financial resources can be used more effectively. The struggle he speaks of in this fantastic interview was not an abstract one, but rather a day to day issue which made it harder to do what he does best, which is of course write. It is great to read him in full flow and I'd like to thank Richard Godwin for giving him the space to speak freely and for taking the time to go out and find a writer that should matter more than the world currently thinks appropriate. Please read the interview and of course I would urge anybody to go out and read Williams work be it his Poetry, Novel, Short stories or indeed his Criticism (Under the name Guillermo O'Joyce)  I'll be putting up some more poetry and prose over the next few days.

http://www.richardgodwin.net/blog


 

At Nikos Kazinstakis' tomb in Crete

Some thoughts on Zorba The Greek and First Born of An Ass

Just Some thoughts after a holiday with Zorba The Greek........



I always loved Crete, it's a special place to go and luckily for me I have just had the good fortune to spend eleven days there.

I always keep specific books to read when I go, and this time, amongst others, I brought Nikos Kazantzakis' 'Zorba The Greek'. I had read other pieces by him but somehow I had managed to ignore his most famous work (I know, I know, 'Last Temptation' is pretty famous too) and I'm glad I did. The book was a joy to read. It was full of life and people that even today we don't like to acknowledge or think about. The cruelty and violence and ignorance which is a reality in any newspaper pervades our little societies and we still pretend we've moved on. Damaged and wounded by our inability to look our demons in the eye we need a 'Zorba' to show us a path. Life and action instead of thinking about living our lives 'Someday' . laughter and love and music and play as essential to being free, instead of a side order to a main plate of drudgery and pain. I can't recommend it enough.

Of course all these ideas are the meat and drink of the work of William Joyce. I was constantly reminded of his 'First Born of An Ass' as I read. Both books possess a love of life and a playful curiosity. They both have characters that create world's where they can exist as themselves because no one else is going to do it for them, and both display a constant inventiveness and lightness of touch that mirrors the very nature of our beings given even a glimpse of a chance. Remember the joy of seeing the smile of the first person you fell in love with and tell me that life doesn't value play. Kazantzakis and Joyce value play.

In my opinion it is William who has gone further. The character of 'Zorba' is a man in his sixties while 'Gorm' is still just a child. Joyce pushes the boundaries of his world in an attempt to flex its reality in the face of the utter madness of contemporary society. It is reality's mirror in a similar vain to Gogol's 'Dead Souls' and in many ways just as much a tightrope walk for the Author to complete. I read reviews of 'Zorba' and many of the poor ones spoke of the sexism and violence towards women in it as if the same instances were not prevalent today. Again it is this pretence at an abstract way of living instead of looking the forces of darkness in the eye and getting sweaty for the fight. William is a 'Golden Gloves' champion of this fight. He delivers body blow after body blow in his Poetry and Prose to assumptions that I had never questioned and he has never bowed to the new gods of modern survival.

Nikos Kazantzakis had his fight in his day. I went to visit his tomb in his home city of Heraklion where officially no priest attended his burial ceremony and internment. He was beaten to the Nobel prize in Literature by one vote after the Greek Orthodox Church lobbied against him (Camus won for 'The Stranger') and still holds a strange place in the Greek mind.

William still wages war at 75. His battles don't reflect well on the treatment of Artists in the modern world or our willingness to let someone else pay the price for our own lack of courage. He writes like he fights and he plays, no half measures.

Read 'Zorba The Greek', read 'First Born of An Ass'. You won't regret either of them

REVIEW OF  " FOR WOMEN WHO MOAN " POETRY BOOK BY WILLIAM JOYCE

It's a rare thing in life to find courage, all the more so in the written word where too often pose and self consciousness takes the place of freedom of expression. It's highly understandable because it can be frighteningly real to show your true self to the outside world. It is the difference between someone who writes poetry and a Poet. For me William Joyce is a Poet.

Years ago I saw Keith Richards , one hand aloft playing the intro to 'Honky Tonk Woman', and I swear that even if he had no guitar the sound would have still come out of him. The Music was who he was, no barrier, no curtain, just the extraordinary ability to be exactly as he is. I had a similar experience reading 'For Women Who Moan'. It is musical and profound, funny and angry. I came away with the impression the poems forced their way out of Mr Joyce. They were born with a song of their own.

The poetry itself Spans twenty years (68-88) and covers Sex, Childhood, The mundane and Travels in Mexico and The West Indies. No review could possibly do justice to the quality of ideas, the absolute freshness of tone, the commitment to self expression or the talent of the work involved. I found its 104 pages to be as large as a continent and as small as the life of a mosquito. I had lines pop into my head in the middle of the day " A hand is its own grace " (The Lady's Departure Speech to Her Lover) and " I have traveled to your center of gravity and stepped back in amazement " ( For a Mouth That Never Resigns Itself to Sorrow ). And at night these poems have led me to think of the ubiquitous witnesses to poverty and unfairness of this life. Many times they are Children trying to sing their own songs in a world as hard as any killing machine. As Joyce himself writes " Songs always identify us for someone else's palm. That is why so many are voiceless." It takes courage to live your own life and not compromise. If we were all as brave as William Joyce or even some of the people he writes about, the world would be a quieter, saner place. It can take courage to read as well as write

Les Edgerton on Writing: THE BEST BOOK I'VE EVER READ

Les Edgerton on Writing: THE BEST BOOK I'VE EVER READ: Hi folks, This is the best book I've ever read. REVIEW FIRST BORN OF AN ASS William Joyce I’ve never written a review like this...

Now This is what I call.......

This is what I call book collection.






.

MONEY

With the permission of William Joyce




                                                                        MONEY

Money is the last line
of defense
before we hit hatred.
With money we can
still pretend
there is hope.
On Friday we can
still dance
to shitty music
after someone has handed us
our shitty money
for a weeks work
of producing shit.

God bless money !
Our children are coached
to kiss its ass.
And our children
fall asleep
before they are 20.

The hills and valleys too
dream of money
and are scooped into subdivisions
to cradle our childrens' children.
And when the trees are planted
they dream also of money
growing in the fifty feet
of emptiness
between them and the next sapling.

Everywhere in every country
it is money, money, money, money.
Don't you dare ask
anyone to sing a good song.
Money strangles throats
and the airwaves;
there is no real voice
from Nova Scotia to Patagonia.

To break the bondage of money
parents put their children in a car.
They go to Mt. Rushmore
where the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
is singing, "Hallelujah, hallelujah
oh money, more money, hallelujah,"
and Washington winks at Lincoln
and Lincoln winks at Roosevelt,
and Jefferson smiles
at having hidden his Black concubine
in the attic,
while the deer in the bush
weep
at the horror of it all.

                                   
With the permission of William Joyce





                                                     My Career With the N.Y. Times


When the balding professor waved
the N.Y. Times at our class
and said, " All the news
that's fit to print, "
I said to myself,
"I'll write all the news
that's not fit to print."


I did and was rejected
everywhere till Oakes came along.
Oakes' real name was "Ochs"
and he was about to inherit
several millions of N.Y. Times' money.
He was  assistant
to a famous publisher
and had arrived
at a state of rebellion
through reading.


Oakes hated everywhere
he'd ever been
including Paris and New Orleans
but thought the talking turds
in my novel were just the thing
to shake up the publishing industry.


He arranged for the famous publisher
to buy my novel
but the famous publisher drank a lot
and forgotten he'd sold
his famous press to an oil heiress.
So, he sent Oakes and my novel
to an old buddy publisher
from their Paris days.


The old buddy didn't like Oakes
nor the talking turds
in my novel.
Oakes smelled the end coming,
and with access
to the family newspaper,
gave an interview
in which he said
publishers were no different
than shoe salesmen.


Bye bye Oakes, bye bye
my novel.
So I headed south
to Mexico with a grand
Oakes lent me
to write more news
that was unfit to print.


I promptly caught hepatitis
but when Oakes telephoned
I told him I had used
his grand to buy dancing girls.
And when I arrived a year later
at Dulles International
Oakes had a collection agent
waiting for me.


For years collection agents
telephoned but didn't believe me
when I told them
their client had been paid
with talking turds.
When my novel finally appeared
The N.Y. Times reviewer,
a Jesuit priest, said,
"This novel never should have been published."
while Oakes applauded
from his penthouse
knowing one more rebel
had been squashed.

Guillermo O 'Joyce or William Joyce as he is sometimes known is a Poet, Novelist, Short story writer,

Critic and Essayist. His work is brimming with passion, courage, humour, anger and creativity. 

He puts forward a lethal concoction of freedom and fun mixing the ludicrous with the real in a universe

as playful as it is a killer.

"Slow down" Guillermo says, get into the groove, feel the rhythm of your own body and just play.

Loosen up and listen to Nature or music. Laugh at the absurdity of the Mob and give yourself a 

chance to create a place for yourself in the world.Nobody else is going to do it for you even if they

did care. Fight if you have to,don't be soft, but never be too hard, energy my friend, energy.

I came across Guillermo through the utterly magnificent 'Miller, Bukowski and their enemies' 2nd Edition.

A book of critical essays as explosive as they are essential.

The first time I read it I was blown away. The second time I got even more out of it. 

I came across essays on Miller and Bukowski that I think are definitive, but I also got 

introductions to Authors I'd never heard of and advice I never imagined I needed. 

I jumped on these new leads with a vengeance because I always read.

I started with Bohumil Hrabel's 'Too loud a Solitude', then Richard Yates 'Eleven kinds of Loneliness' on to

Albert Cossory, B. Traven, Jean Giono. I was in a new world. Irving Stettner put me over the edge.

I returned to Miller like a long lost friend and saw with better informed eyes the reason he was still in

my head talking away five minutes after I had put his book down.

I was shocked at how good Dick Gregory's biography was, and so at last I went looking for Guillermo's 

other works....

I found out he wrote as William Joyce and had a novel 'First Born of an Ass'.

A stupendous read about 'Gorm' who transforms his body (And life) through weightlifting and

an obsession with his own feces, all the while showing up the killing machine at the heart of US

steel towns of the 1950's. Our hero creating his own world because he has to, while leading us through

a ludicrous but wholly realistic journey to the epicentre of american values.

I read 'The Recorder of Births and Deaths’ A collection of short stories which only impressed me

even more. Funny and thought provoking while looking at the shadows in life that follow us all.

The point was that one man and one book had changed how, what and why I read, had made my life

more enjoyable and funnier, not to mention more my own. I wrote an email to an address I found

just to say a well deserved thank you while expecting no reply or acknowledgement.

A day or two later William replied and we have kept up contact ever since.

I read his poetry, got some of his back story, and gratefully learned that he is still writing.

He is currently working on a memoir of his time in Cuba which is as daring and provocative 

as one would expect from a human being so committed to freedom and joy.

I gained a friend and made contact with a truly unique and gifted human being.

A wise, talented, supportive person who has so far been disgracefully ignored and consciously

hindered by an industry that cannot face itself or its ongoing legacy of failure to be fit for purpose.

We have fallen into a vacuum of conceit where technique is somehow more valued than talent,

luck plays more importance than ever and the 'Market' has forgotten its basis for existence.

The invisible hand swats rather than helps.




Guillermo must be read to keep us all sane.

So this blog is about his writing and my thoughts on it as well as the words of other

Joyce enthusiasts on the subject.

Please feel free to contribute or write to William himself at  guillermojoyce@gmail.com