In the Pines

I liked a lot about last night's Longmire episode, "In the Pines," but took slight exception at the heart of the standalone episode. My review here.

My Dinner with Allen Ginsberg

Ron Scheer had asked if he ever told me the story of the time he had dinner with Beat legend Allen Ginsberg. Of course, that was too intriguing to pass on and thinking that it would be a perfect story for The Fall Creek Review (which I occasionally help find content for), I asked Ron if he wouldn't mind writing it up for TFCR. And, he kindly obliged. Here is "My Dinner With Allen Ginsberg" by Ron Scheer.

Pluvial Gardens

Me at Pluvial Gardens. The sign was just installed this week. Kyle would have gotten a kick out of his poem becoming a real garden.

Nigel's Take

One Man's Opinion: THE LIZARD'S ARDENT UNIFORM by BEAT to a PULP.

Into Words

                                              At Pluvial Gardens. June 17, 2014.

Miss Cheyenne

My review of yesterday's Longmire episode, Miss Cheyenne, at Criminal Element.

Terrie Farley Moran with Dust to Dust

I’ve been blessed to be friends with Terrie Farley Moran for a number of years now and have always been touched by her kindness and steadfast support she has shown to me and my family. And I’m a big admirer of her work--I read whatever she’s done that I can get my hands on. In her writing, you won't find cheap thrills or unnecessary violence; instead, you'll find solid character development within a rich, powerful storyline slowly building to an emotional crescendo that'll stick with you long past the conclusion.

Terrie reached out to me after my nephew’s death and a back and forth discussion brought up the words "the laconic dust"--something Kyle had written in his dream journal--which she said could possibly be in reference to Emily Dickinson (who tops a Google search of those words). I mentioned to Terrie that Kyle had a collection of Dickinson poems on his bookshelf, and then asked if she’d be interested in spinning a story for The Lizard’s Ardent Uniform based on that prompt. She readily accepted, and I was floored when she sent along “Dust to Dust.” It’s one of the finest short stories I’ve ever had the privilege to publish. Please take a few minutes and read Terrie's story here.

And, thank you, Terrie. I owe you much more than a simple gratitude but know it is heartfelt and deeply appreciated.

The Story Behind The Lizard's Ardent Uniform (Veridical Dreams Vol. I)

I’m running through a dense forest—fast. My middle-aged body strong as I soar over fallen limbs and push aside branches. I hurtle over a mound of dirt and shrubbery, and crouch down at the edge of a vast, open field as arrows begin dropping all around me. I see a castle—my destination—in the distance. Off to the right of it is a small embankment and a familiar figure motioning for me to join him. He shoots a slew of arrows for cover and I make the run while cannon fire tears up the earth near me. With my last surge of energy, I leap wildly, landing next to my nephew who’d been providing protection.

“Glad you could make it, Uncle David,” he says with a grin.

I’m gasping for air but manage, “Wouldn’t miss this adventure for the world, Kyle.”

Together we travel on to the base of the fortress. I shudder at the sheer size of the wall that stretches high into the sky above us. I look at Kyle, his muscles are corded, flexing for the challenge of the climb. He’s ready to tackle it head on.

 

This recurring dream has a habit of varying in interpretation. At first it represented my concern with getting Kyle’s work published, in doing it right, to perfection, trying to avoid a barrage of sharp arrows of criticism, and also in getting his work out there, trying to climb that impossible castle wall of marketing and distribution. In spite of my own anxieties, I admired how he was ready for the challenge. Then, in lucid dreams the castle became death itself, my own human fear of passing over, and his brave wide-eyed fighter’s stance. He had perished in a horrific house fire that twisted the steel girders on which the home stood. Could I face death with as much strength as he showed in my dream?

Dreams.

In March of 2013, Kyle and I were talking (in one of our last face-to-face conversations) in his home along Fall Creek in Freeville, New York. He was telling me how he thought that a human’s nighttime voyages could be more than a breakdown of past events and a sweeping up of life’s daily debris or more than learning about one’s character and secret desires. He believed that dreams could be used effectively to reach one’s inner creativity and, perhaps, to reach the beyond. I listened politely, careful not to appear overly disapproving of something I felt wasn’t particularly plausible.

A little backstory is needed here to appreciate our relationship. It had taken awhile for Kyle and me to get back to just sitting, relaxing, and enjoying each other’s company: talking poetry, books, movies, et cetera. He was coming into his own as a man and a writer, and I was slowing down from globe-trotting for my day job. During the first seven years of his life we were very close. I was the zany uncle who would swing him and his younger sister, Kayla, (who’d referred to me as a human jungle gym) high in the air, upside down, and around and around. I even got down on his pre-K level to play in our pretend rock band, The Skeletons. Years later, Kyle would cringe as we’d watch our juvenile performance on primitive VHS video, and I would laugh. In the home movie, he’s wearing sunglasses and jamming on guitar, leaping from imaginary heights off his bed to the stage below and continuing to rock on while I banged away, off beat, on a tiny toy drum.

Then, at twenty-three, I entered the Army which was the beginning of a slow separation. As each year passed, my visits back home became fewer and shorter. We knew each other less and less as Kyle was growing into an adolescent. At first, we made idle chitchat, but, eventually, the silence between us filled the all-too-short visits. Our closeness had become a shadow of the days gone by.

In 2010, fate, thankfully, managed to wind back the clock’s rusted hands … just a little. It would never again be how it was, but we did achieve some common ground in books and writers. Kyle introduced me to the work of Vladimir Nabokov and I turned him into a Charles Bukowski enthusiast. Some literary-minded folks might say I got the better deal but not so. Kyle and I were in agreement: a good book was a good book whether it was what is considered literary, pulp, or in the case of Buk, dirty realism. We reveled in talking about Sylvia Plath, J.D. Salinger, and the Beats. I know we were both relieved that the uncomfortable silences were filled with gratifying conversation and spirited discussions. As much as I would like to paint a picture of all sunny days, I can’t because, as with most families, it was laced with struggles that barred an unfettered rapport. All considered, in a nutshell, that was our relationship from 1989–2013.

Back to March 2013 and dreams. I listened to Kyle talk about tapping into the undiscovered self and realms through our unconscious voyages, and while I did concede that I believed we can manipulate dreams for our own pleasure and use them to learn more about ourselves, I now know that he gave me a wizened look of, “There’s so much more,” and we moved on to other subjects.

Sadly, we didn’t delve into a topic of common ground: dream journals. I had never mentioned to Kyle that years before I had kept a dream journal, and I didn’t learn until after his death that he had also kept one on and off. When my sister, Meta (Kyle’s mother), showed me the large stack of notebooks and papers he had left at her house, I dug through finding early poems, letters, and different versions of already published prose as I began preparing his posthumous release, Celebrations in the Ossuary. Then, farther down in the box, I came across several battered notebooks. Like an overexcited child, I yelled, “We have his dreams!” It may have sounded foolish in the moment, but for me, as someone who had missed out on so many years of his life, it gave me a chance to discover more about him on a different level—from the surreal dreamscape cultivated under cover of rapid eye movement.

This beguiling world where he lived, loved, fought, escaped mazes, and time traveled was begging to be further explored. Kyle had read the BEAT to a PULP webzine and books, and he was familiar with the work of each writer involved with this collection. With his family’s blessing, I called on these friends, asking them to turn fragments of Kyle’s dreams into short stories. I picked out a handful of thought-provoking lines (for this first volume: “the lizard’s ardent uniform,” “the laconic dust,” “celebrated stomach of copper” and “two blurry rabbits,” “my body was hanging from a conveyer belt meat rack being pulled into a sky,” “I sold my soul to the devil for drugs,” “a lonely hitchhiker was walking down the road on a sunny afternoon,” “I went back in time … and tried really hard to warn him it was the boots that he used to take-off like a space ship”), and I sent off these prompts to each writer along with a bit of insight into Kyle. The rest was up to them to create anything they imagined from the dream prompt, and they all turned in stories I know Kyle would have found positively engaging.

Only after his death did I find out that, like me, Kyle was a fan of Dr. Who, and in an episode from season three of the new series, when David Tennant, playing the famous time traveler, says, “Some people live more in twenty years than others do in eighty. It’s not the time that matters, it’s the person,” I think of the twenty-three-year-old Kyle Joseph Knapp and the many lives he lived as a poet, naturalist, musician, son, brother, friend, and dream voyager.

He lived a robust life, and in a way he’s continuing to do so … you’re holding the most current example.

I hope you enjoy. He would want you to.

 

End

I'm at an end, so to speak. Here.

“Of Children and Travelers”

My thoughts on last night's Longmire episode.

The Lizard's Ardent Uniform & Other Stories

There will be more on this very personal BEAT to a PULP release in the next week. But for now here is the cover and description.

"All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream."--Edgar Allan Poe

The Lizard's Ardent Uniform and Other Stories (Veridical Dreams Vol. I) takes you on several voyages into every day nightmares, bizarre detours, and hellish worlds. Enlisting the talents of authors Chris F. Holm (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine), Terrie Farley Moran (Well Read, Then Dead), Patti Abbott (Home Invasion), Evan V. Corder, Steve Weddle (Needle: A Magazine of Noir), Hilary Davidson (The Damage Done), and Garnett Elliott (Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine), thought-provoking fragments from the dream journals of Kyle J. Knapp (writer and poet of Pluvial Gardens and Celebrations in the Ossuary, who passed away in 2013 at the age of twenty-three) are fleshed out into seven stirring tales of crime, science fiction, literary, and fantasy. Edited and with an introduction by BEAT to a PULP's David Cranmer.

Stories:
The Lizard's Ardent Uniform -- Chris F. Holm
Dust to Dust -- Terrie Farley Moran
Twin Talk -- Patti Abbott
The Malignant Reality -- Evan V. Corder (including "The Needles" poem by Kyle J. Knapp)
Ghosts in the Fog -- Steve Weddle
The Debt -- Hilary Davidson
The Zygma Gambit -- Garnett Elliott

A portion of the proceeds from this collection will go to higher education.

Longmire 3.01: Season Premiere “The White Warrior”

“The White Warrior” opens with Walt Longmire (Robert Taylor) thundering across the dusty landscape in his SUV with Deputy Branch Connally’s bleeding body in the back en route to the nearest medical service: a clinic on the reservation. He skids to a stop in front of an attendant sitting outside. When the man hurries around and notices Branch’s injuries, he asks, “What did you do to him?” and in a flashback, we see Longmire sewing up the gunshot wound with fishing line to slow the bleeding.

Read the rest of my review at Criminal Element.

Longmire Season 3 Opener

Walt Longmire and his posse returns tonight on A&E and I will be reviewing (under my pen name Edward A. Grainger) the new season for Criminal Element. If you are already a fan I hope you join me each week for a recap and if you are new to this top rated program I hope you jump onboard.