Dear Nadja is autobiographical writing, from 1982, a kind of journalese, that became Borderwalker, seven years later.
“Dear Nadja was written as letters to my sister, Nadja, who doesn’t exist and never did, but when I thought of killing her off, several demanded I not do that. She’s as real as the narrator, who lived another kind of life, a long time ago.”
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SWIMMING is a coming of age novelization of autobiographical stories.
“These novels will give way, by and by, to diaries or autobiographies – captivating books, if only a man knew how to choose from among what he calls his experiences that which is really his experience, and how to record truth truly.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
“Since my past is a familiar life story, like a novel, it seems more true to tell my story as a novelistic autobiography rather than an autobiographical novel. Steve Brooks and I share identical histories, but we are not the same. His life is in this book. Mine is in this moment. You could say that this is a personal true story, or you could say it’s fiction, and both are true. By telling my life story as if it’s about someone else, I can tell both kinds of truth, the literal and the literary, the true story of Steve Brooks.”
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A Likely Story (Altered Egos) is a collection of mostly fictional stories of the famous and infamous in history, with an added section of stories about contemporary figures.
“After floating for two days on the open sea, kept afloat by parts of her own demolished airplane, Amelia Earhart washed up on an island, where she was rescued by island natives, who had never heard of her and took her to be a blessing from the gods. They thought she was a visitor from an unidentified flying object they’d seen, days before, when it flew low and fast over their heads like a winged canoe in the sky.
Amelia herself finally accepted the role she denied at first, and became the most famous aviator in the world, Amelia From the Heart of the Air, She Who Crossed The Sky in a Winged Canoe.”
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I Spilled Coffee on the Buddha is a collection of poems written in ’91. Each poem is accompanied by a drawing related to the story line in the poem.
“I reached for my coffee, and in a broken moment, I spilled coffee on the Buddha. Without innocence and without guilt, my fingers knocked against the lip of the cup. I looked up, horrified, my devil of a heart was laughing, and the Buddha was gone. In his place, in the doorway, was a family of hungry patrons, entering the ordinary cafe.”
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I Spilled Coffee on the Buddha (text)
These surreal transliterations, Let Me Burn are influenced by the poetry of Andre Breton, Arthur Rimbaud, and Federico Garcia Lorca. I’m not fluent in French or Spanish, so these transliterations are original, to a degree impossible to determine. Let Me Burn was written in the early 70s.
“The words of a poet who travelled the roots of the heart and captured the word, sometimes by force, and other times, it was given him by the hidden muse.” Ankido (Sami Farhat)
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This collection of poems, The Dancer in the Heart, culled from the previous thirty years, with paintings, was published by Laura Beausoleil, under her imprint, Philos Press, in 2001.
“There is something remarkable in these poems. I especially liked The Eternal Ruse and Sweetheart.” Robert Bly
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Art from The Dancer in the Heart:
The Queen of the Rhumba is a collection of poems written in San Francisco in the late 70s.
“Still, she says she’s tired of poetry,
and wants, expects, more for me.
More? More than poetry?”
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The Awakening is a chronicle of the immediate aftermath of 22 years of drinking. Every such change is a kind of death, and every survival is a kind of rebirth, when something has died, and something, if anything, is born. It is also the furthering chronicle of the life of a poet. The Awakening ’85 is the third in a trilogy of journalese autobiographies along with Savage Amusement ’75 and Dear Nadja ’82, in the book, A Poet in San Francisco.
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Walking in San Francisco was written on the streets of the city in 1975. I was able, thankfully, while living on unemployment from my job as the donation can collector for St. Anthony’s Dining Room, to walk and ride the streets of the city and record impressions of life in the city I loved. I tried the same thing, in Ellensburg, Washington, in the summer of ’08, and the experience was entirely different but not unrelated. In Ellensburg, I was able to see things at a speed and in a frame of mind, that was slow and frameless, like being a child. I saw and felt things that I hadn’t seen or felt from my car, on my bike, or even walking with a purpose. Walking in such a busy city as San Francisco, I could not stay in that innocent apprehension of the incidental, but something similar did occur, way back then, that was more like a snapshot that one savors upon reflection. In Ellensburg, I was often on the street, alone, in the spirit of the moment, but in the city, the moment is crowded with purpose. This habit continued in Asheville, North Carolina, and in New York City.
The drawings that accompany these poems may become available in the future.
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Steve Brooks (Abhaya) - Poetry, Prose & Art 