 The Punctual Actual WeeklyPaperback: HiT MoteL Press, May 28, 2007, 1st Edtion Buy the paperback on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. See the other books in this sextet HiT MoteL Press. SummaryThe Punctual Actual Weekly is a novel about the life of the writer in a group of poets, playwrights and artists who associated around the Blake St. Hawkeye theatre in Berkeley, and around Actualism ( a kind of put-on movement that started in Iowa, expanded to the Bay Area and became a source of wonder and wouldn’t die). The time of this story is 1975 − 1976. The Punctual Actual Weekly was the name of a “little” magazine which published works and interviews of admired artists — before zines of the punk underground; back in the days of typewriters and hand-cranked mimeograph publishing and xerox. The story shows how the boys dance in the theatre they called The Pit, it shows their love of composing and reading poetry. It shows the struggle to make a dollar driving a cab, and all the strange denizens of the night there in. There is a scene of the poor poets having dinner at the church with the street people near People’s Park. And cooking in the night kitchen when the food stamps come in and the moon if outside beaming over Oakland. These are stories about the boys working on poems in exquisite corps collaboration. Stories of discovering modern art and ancient Vedanta aesthetics. Examples of beautiful solo theatre and wild haiku ukiyo-e poetry and cogent aesthetic essays in lyrical language that astounds. Here is a cogent explanation of the cover art composition. Table of Contents
Writing Notes for The Punctual Actual Weekly from the AuthorIt was amazing to encounter these writers and actors, in particular the two visionaries John O’Keefe and Darryl Gray. When I came to Berkeley I had two pens with the words Apotheosis Extract printed on the side. One was to be given to O’Keefe, whose sound poetry is what brought me to Berkeley in the first place. The other was to be given to Codrescu, but I met Gray and was so astounded by his poetry of actualism that I gave it to him. A quick note on what is actualist poetry would look at two or three of its main influences. Frank O’Hara (Personism, the easy loose free Lunch Poems), Walt Whitman (the sinewy line with cosmic feelings), and WC Williams (the perception of the ordinary) and Ted Berrigan (movement of video camera through memory). Images from within the book
This is the sound poem in notation. It shows breath in and out with toungue movement articulation of voiced and unvoiced fricatives. It was a wordless rapsodic reach into transcendental being. A pure representation of sound theatre bringing about a blissful state in the performer. When I saw it and learned how ti perform it with Bob Ernst and Dave Schein, I knew I had to come to Berkeley and meet the author, John O'keefe. 
This is the poem of Daryll Gray. It shows humor, the rhythm sereves the subject of rush. It radiates scenes around that rhythm.
Preliminary painting of some creatures in La Hampa.
A version of the cover showing the side of the building and the great psychedelic monstrance of the ray refracting beings we are. 
An example from the art catalog in the book, a watercolor in the Figurative Abstraction style of the Bay area by Peter Loschan 
A page from showing the front and back covers of Darrell Gray's book with a couple of quotes from the book. MapIn Appendix A3, "From the Transcendental Poetic of Actualism" The Punctual Actual Weekly displays an abstruse diagram of the Vedantic philosophy of rasa involved in the structure of poetic text. Much of the book is spent in a round about way ( showing how the poet engages in a programe of self edification in an experiential way).
This is related to a simpler diagram found in a notebook of Darryl Gray.
A page from showing the front and back covers of Darrell Gray's notebook one of many in The Punctual Actual Weekly. |
