Ah yes.. found the copy of Oddities 7 I misplaced and will continue posting it, delayed and out of sequence. Unique work by Todd Mecklem, Billy Wolfenbarger, Denise Dumars, and others. I wonder what happened to Billy Wolfenbarger? Surrealist small press poet who was published quite a lot, in the 1980s and 70s as well, I believe. I met him once around 1988 in Eugene, Ore. -- he came to my little apartment, hand-rolled and smoked some cigarettes, conversed about Arthur Machen and H.P. Lovecraft; kind of a hippie aura about him. Never saw him again -- actually, I don't know if he's still alive, for that matter. I suppose he was in his 40s then. He and another poet from that era (whom Wolfenbarger mentioned), G. Sutton Breiding, seem to have given up writing and publishing, at the least.
An image of Joe E. Brown is on this sample of Oddities, Earthworm Tractors, forgotten, encrypted comic actors.
Been reading The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett -- really enjoy it for the most part, his attenuated, sly descriptions.
Good stuff.
ReplyDeleteDon't know the last issue of Oddities I saw way back when. We got separated.
D
Thanks--
ReplyDeleteI think Wolfenbarger still lives in the Eugene area. He seems not to be active online. I tried to track him down a while back; in an essay from 1998 (see http://www.amelor.com/skug/skug14/beat_14.html ) he states that Denise and I ignored him at the World Horror Con in Eugene, when in fact we never spotted him! I don't like having him think that we dissed him, even after all these years.
ReplyDeleteHey Todd, thanks for the info about Billy. He lived in Harrisburg Ore. back when that was published, as he wrote under his poem. Sounds as if he might still be there, or somewhere in that area, from what you're saying. Funny how he thought you and Denise "ignored" him -- I didn't really know him well enough to have much of an opinion of him.
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