tearsofotp

Rockford poetry will never be the same, as Dr. Henry Wolfsburg has signed a two year deal to join the Rockford Pages of the Outsider Poetry Slam League of America. 

Seen here riding a bike while his wife Diana Bingenbottom skates, Dr. Wolfsburg is an outsider poet, curator of The Hall of Bad Dudes, and an editor here at The Journal of Outsider Poetry. 

The signing, which should give the Rockford Pages a shot in the arm after they failed to win a contest in the 2016 OPSLA season, was announced Tuesday at the Taco Bell, voted Rockford’s best Mexican Restaurant, on Riverside Blvd. 

Wolfsburg celebrated the $10.78 contract by walking down the street and getting some one dollar ribeyes and macaroni and cheese at the Dollar Tree.

Several other transactions occurred this week in the OPSLA, including Game of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage joining the Chemung Shamans, and the fourth Dr. Who, Tom Baker, joining the Rancho Cucamonga Kookamungas.

It was also announced in the winter meetings that eight new teams will join OPSLA next season, including the Yakima Yakkers and the Hell Hollerers. It is unclear if Dr. Wolfsburg will step down from his position as assisstant league commissioner. 

The serialized batches of poems from The Blood Dark Sea are almost gone. These start on page 89 of the 100 page book. The book release party is scheduled June 11th at J.R. Kortman Center For Design. Here are a few last poems from the book of Outlaw Poetry The Blood Dark Sea, by Rockford poet Dennis Gulling.

FRED CARVER

3 days after Fred Carver

Was shot dead

In a craps game

We all gathered

At Sparkman’s Funeral Home

For the visitation

I was standing

Behind Fred’s ex-wife Thelma

When she reached into her purse

And dropped something

In the casket

I leaned over her shoulder

And watched a black spider

Crawl up Fred’s face

And disappear in his hair

DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE

She’s standing next to the police car

A cop is slapping the cuffs on her

When the paramedics bring him out

With a screwdriver

Sticking out of his chest

He’s trying to sit up on the stretcher

But he’s strapped down

And all he can do

Is give her the finger

As they’re putting him in the ambulance

She blows him a kiss

And says to one of the cops

He doesn’t really mean it

He’s just having a bad day

JESSUP

Jessup lay curled up

On the back seat

Both hands pressed over

The bullet hole in his gut

Trying to keep the blood in

Katy was at the wheel

Doing 80 down the Daysville Blacktop

Sirens and flashing lights

A hundred yards behind her

He’s saying her name

Over and over again

As his life leaks away

But she can’t hear him

Over the roar of the engine

The bag of gas station cash

Is on the passenger seat

Loose bills falling out

When the car screams around curves

Her knuckles are white on the wheel

Her eyes locked

On a darkness

Beyond the headlights

LOVE HAPPY

She’s scratching at her chest

Digging her nails

Deep in the soft white space

Between her breasts

The red furrow gets wide

Longer

She looks at him

With dead baby doll eyes

And tells him

She’s trying to scrape

His poison love from her heart

Recently I read an article that Outsider Art is a trendy investment idea. Art collectors, and just speculators are snapping it up. I didn’t read this in an art publication, but an economic magazine. 

It made me angry.

And sad.

For reasons I will no doubt be insufficient in explaining, but the heart of the sadness and anger is this: most Outsider Art is created from intense suffering and sadness by those who never profit from it, or even receive the help their work may be crying out for. To make the matter worse, it is often those who would have the money to buy their trendy work who were the ones who denied them access to that help in the first place. 

Dovetailing with these thoughts are two stories I read this month. Both astounding and fascinating. The first is of the Dunning House in Chicago. A story done in 2013 by Robert Loerzel, but just came to my attention last week. 

The opening line, “For a long time, Chicagoans were scared of Dunning. The very name “Dunning” gave them chills. People were afraid they would end up in that place” rings true, because here in Rockford the threat to the unruly was “You’ll end up in Singer.” You’ll end up in a place of unholy despair from which there is no escape and where they can do whatever they want to you without anyone to intervene on your behalf because you have been forsaken. 

I know people who make their living and sell their books exploiting places like this with “ghost tours” and so-called psychics retelling the stories of those who died in hellholes like this. These are people who suffered and died, often forsaken and at the mercy of those who showed none. To profiteer from that seem like another betrayel of what they went through. 

The second story was about the Henry Darger Room. A man who lived a lonely life in a Chicago apartment for forty years, creating an amazing assembly of paintings, collages, and stories about the fictional Vivian Girls. His early life was much like the one of those at Dunning House, and what is astonishing about Darger is that he was able to maintain his autonomy for those forty years while he made his art. Very few Outsider Artists can.

They are very rarely able to use their own creations to enrich their own lives, let alone even sustain basic necessities like food, clothing, and shelter, but long after their deaths these vultures swoop in and profit from their work. To me this seems like a second atrocity. 

I believe the work of these artists needs to be preserved and honored, but profited on like rice, oil, or cotton? That seems distasteful and wrong. I know a few dozen Outsider artists who create without much acclaim or recognition, and seldom make any profit from their work. Many have been institutionalized, homeless, and gone without treatment and the barest human essentials. It makes me sad to think only their death will allow them to be recognized. 

Since Reagan de-institutionalized American mental health facilities in the 1980′s the mentally ill have had a diaspora, ending up in homeless shelters, church homes, prisons, and abandoned structures throughout America. Here several freeze and die every winter in the parking garages. These are people who have had their very humanity stripped from them. To steal the art that some of them make on top of this seems like a crime akin to stealing the fillings out of victims of genocide’s mouths. One can only hope these artifacts have some humanizing effect on those who are plundering them. 

105 year old aboriginal Australian artist Loongkoonan proves that it is never too late to become an Outsider artist, or to pursue your ambition to create a body of work that can become a source of inspiration for others. 

Born before official records were not even officially kept, Loongkoonan estimates she was born in 1910. She works in the traditional aboriginal style of acrylic dots on linen.

Perhaps the most incredible thing about Loongkoonan is that she didn’t even start painting until the age of 90. Here at the Journal of Outsider Poetry and Art we say rock on Ms. Loongkoonan. May you paint another 100 years.

What a luxury it is to be an outsider in the world of poetry. Nothing expected. No responsibilities. No criticism, really, either. Just silence. Silence and time. And that’s all any poet really needs to create. 

Not like some of those so-called outsiders who seem to spend more time in the inner sanctum of their so-called enemy than the enemy themselves.

I’m not sure how one defeats the man by taking the man’s money, eating at the man’s table, then delivering oratory about defeating the man from the man’s own lectern.

But it’s your lie, you tell it.

I’ll tell my own lies. No better, no worse, just different.

Poetry from Rockford. Just posted some at Zombie Logic Review. I receive mostly small press macho bro stuff, but this was an attempt at some language poetry. Almost like Dada poetry 

Also, I’ve been working on a fictional poetry slam league that originates right here in Rockford, but has thirty-two teams across America. Paducah, Kokomo, Podunk…

There are a lot more Podunks than one might think. America is full of Podunks. Still early in the evening, but I’m going to watch Death Bed: The Bed That Eats again then try to find something even worse than that to watch. The You Tube video is strewn with ads for APMEX and the 2016 Silver Eagles. They seem to know I’ve been contemplating a plunge into silver. Well, I’m certain they know that, at least in general they know I’m interested.

Maybe a picture of something is in order here.Maybe from one of the fictional Outsider Poetry Slam teams. 

That’s the team captain from the Kokomo Oralists 

History of Poetry Therapy

It is no coincidence that Apollo is the Greek god of medicine, and the first doctor in recorded history to recommend poetry therapy was the Roman physician Soranus in the first century BCE. But poetry and it’s lyrical precursors were used by humanity in many different forms, and in many different cultures, dating back to primitive man, but certainly being used by the Egyptians as early as 4000 BCE. Shamanistic rights in various cultures involved a spiritual leader, who also served as a healer, reciting incantations designed to elicit higher understanding, altered states of consciousness, and ultimately transformation and healing in a tribe of people.

Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital in America, founded by Benjamin Franklin, was known for using methods such as music, writing, even publication of patient’s writings as a therapeutic method. The chief proponent of art and music therapy at Pennsylvania Hospital was Dr. Benjamin Rush, and the newspaper he published of his and his patient’s writings was called The Illuminator. Quite an enlightened start to treatment of the mentally ill in America. Things would not always be so civilized and advanced.

Pennsylvania Hospital 1755

In the 1920’s a former pharmacist and lawyer named Eli Griefer set out to prove the healing power of poetry, and it turned out to be a lifelong quest that did a great deal to prove the efficacy of poetry therapy. He organized groups such as The Remedy Rhyme Gallery in New York City with the goal of providing palliative fellowship in the power of poetry. He organized what is though to be the first poem therapy group at Creedmore State Hospital in the 1950’s, and in 1959 organized a poem therapy group at Cumberland Hospital with the assistance of two attending psychiatrists.

Ann White is someone who carried on the work begun by Eli Griefer, and was the first to introduce poetry therapy to several institutions while working with the Nassau County Recreational Department she introduced the healing power of poetry to institutions, drug rehabilitation clinics, and schools for special needs children. Another pioneer in the field, Joy Shieman’s method was known as thera-poetics, and presaged right brain/left brain findings by suggesting a realignment of the brain and the spirit could release an individual from many types of suffering.

Invigorating visit with friends tonight. Talk of Rockford poetry, music, and art scene. A few Stella Artois. Talking about The Rockford Files and magic realism. 

I really do not want to watch Sports Center, but I’m too lazy to go get the remote control. You can speak into it now and tell it what you want it to do, but that doesn’t matter too much if you can’t get to it. 

The moon should be nearly full when I can finally see it out the window. Before then I have cardio and a shoulder workout to do, and my diet has been horrible all week. Culminating in buying a case of Tab Cola, a sleeve of snack size Milky Way Bars, and a six pack of Stella Artois tonight. I really need to crack down and take it easy on my stomach this week, get The Blood Dark Sea sent to the printers, and watch some heavy Rockford Files. 

Finished the top site for The National Outsider Poetry league of America tonight, and the logo. 

Pretty apparent why I don’t work in graphic design there. 

Eight minutes to Carson. Maybe some heating pad and another Tab Cola, then I’ll go downstairs and finish the laundry and ride the stationary bike, then watch some more television and maybe I’ll be done today. 

We had corned beef tonight. It’s one of my favorites, but I can’t eat it anymore because it is too fatty. Put up some Outsider art by Roo Bardookie at Zombie Logic Review tonight. 

Brown Dwarf 

They raged briefly against  

The dying of the light, 

Bargained with their cut rate gods, 

Turned off their televisons.

And said goodnight forever.

-Thomas L. Vaultonburg