Spade: Cantos 1-33
David Bromige & Rychard Denner
Introduction by Robert Grenier
Cover collage by Luis Garcia
Sebastopol , 2006
176 pp, Perfect-bound

100 CANTOS

A lively/funny, sorrowful-hopeful, utterly serious/skeptical endearing-ongoing dialogue between a monk (Rychard) & an eminence gris (David, apparently) which adventures to discuss/propose (even!) ‘what is the case’ -- then (for fun! & possibly as goad, to see if further understanding may follow) irreverently attacking ‘one’s own principles’ in print!
It’s the two of them made into one (in the text, we can read/presented) -- I’m glad for that example (of peaceable recognition/de light in another’s ‘sense of it’) -- how contemporary thinking could move (w/out stupidity or violence) from mutual interest in speaking to each other (as ‘utter strangers’/’intimates’) toward the example of ‘civility’ & deep inquiry demonstrated in this soul-satisfying, collaborative long poem -- only the most extreme affection (for each other &) for the entire ‘sentient world’, combined with a skeptical, ready intelligence in conversation/delight in such is likely to bring this about !

When you get to a certain age, there’s no problem about ‘feeling’ vs. ‘thinking’ (the ‘gap’ between them (?)) -- nowadays it’s just a double responsibility of DOING ! -- what CAN BE DONE during the day ! !

100, age of Methuselah -- how dreadful that so many Americans may live to 100 (or 969 ) ! ! Not me !

Neither will blink (but both ‘blink’ all the time) !

A ‘happy chance’ ! !

It’s a ‘COLLABORATION’ in the (ancient) sense of combining talents to get something done (PLANT THE FIELD) -- in this case, the (‘sculpted’) ‘record’ of some part of what was said between them, in their Ongoing Communication & Association (May it Continue!) -- we ‘later’ persons have it to read ! -- as EXAMPLE TO US ALL ! ! -- i.e., BEFORE I DIE , I will have spoken to / with someone I love & said everything I can think about/can say !

No Greek could have written this, nor any Roman ! (‘American’!)

A godsend to David & Rychard alike ! -- Opportunity (as if one ‘had all time’ to converse) -- I’m happy to find them engaged in their conversation & alive of an afternoon -- May we all Make Time to do this, in the time remaining ! !

A bright number, 100 (maybe I’ll live to 110!), with plenty of ‘historical precedent’ (beyond my knowing, certainly) -- Dante, Pound, Plato’s Dialogues, the intimate exchange (unrecorded) between many a man-&-wife ! Right here !

I’ve said nothing about the work in question !

Robert Grenier
September 16/2005

What readers have to say:


Spade manages to be witty, insightful, silly, cantankerous, profound, hilarious, and thought-provoking all at once. In a narrative resembling several phone conversations cutting in and out, the threads of story woven through these cantos combine pearls of real-life whack and wisdom with lively voices and uncanny juxtapositions of reference and imagery to create a vivid, unexpected ensemble. You must read it for yourself, and laugh out loud, to understand its glorious, goofy power.
                                                                                          Kathryn Christman

What a stunning book you have made...the size of the print, the shape of the book and most of all, the words! The tone, the chattiness, the history, turning it all over with a SPADE.
                                                                                          Joanne Kyger

I enjoyed your cantos immensely...was nervous at the start that I wouldn't have the back up tools to follow the threads (being ignorant of all but the most superficial of received Buddhist philosophy)...so I just decided to take a deep breath and free fall through it!! What seemed like densely interwoven separate threads initially became clear individual narratives – rare to read something that has you wincing with pain one moment and then laughing out loud the next (or both – am thinking about the old guy pissing in the fridge!)...it also ties its floating abstract thoughts down to earth with the prosaic. There's just so much going on there...and yet it works. I think you're pulling off quite a feat! Am curious as to how it was conceived...I'm assuming it's been composed as a real back-and-forth dialogue between the two of you? The changes in voice, if so, work surprisingly well. They're distinct and yet flow seamlessly from one to the other.

                                                                                          Deborah Swain

Good God Almighty, I just got around to reading some of The Cantos . What a way to start Sunday morning. I think if you had Indian names, they would be He Who Feeds Back Into Himself. Or: He Who Recycles the Recycled. Or: What Goes Around Comes Around. I mean, nothing seems to drop by the wayside in your world, everything is plowed back in, reconfigured, and the thing just keeps growing and growing. It's really quite a phenomenon.
                                                                                          John Bennett