Any Oregon poet from Oregon City who writes a poem with the title \u201cKY Jelly and Mt Hood.\u201d deserves an ode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So here is your ode, Walt Curtis, from a friend, fellow graduate of Oregon City High School, a fan since I first saw you read in 86 or 87 on the Satryicon stage wearing a diaper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The unofficial poet laureate of Portland they called you for decades. A Columbia River torrent of poems, reports, protests, performances, stories, histories, zines, essays, articles, books, interviews, drawings, events, ideas, visions, rants, delusions and all around literary mischief, enlightenment, entertainment and insurrection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There had been nothing like it before in Oregon, certainly nothing since, certainly not in the future. No Oregon poet will ever top your verve and versatility. You never bored and frequently fomented outrage. You tore down the sacred totem and erected poems about erections!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Naturally the MFA crowd hated you because they loved precious writing and you wanted it precocious. They creaked along with discussions of craft and how to find an agent. You were cavalier, they were cautious. They wrote with frosting spreaders and whisks. You wrote with a serrated blade and hatchets. You took your writing to the streets and gave it away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You gigged with William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Elliot Smith, Nirvana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You played soccer with Bill Walton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You played hackey sack with Native American revolutionaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You drained half a jug of Gallo red during our interview in the KBOO studio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You helped elect Bud Clark Mayor of Portland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You gave Gus Van Zandt the story that made him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You wrote my favorite sentence about Jack Kerouac: \u201cBefore Kerouac boozed out, tubed out, whatever, his Catholic, Buddhistic angelic sentimental spirit was the sweetest thing America had going for it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ken Kesey once told you in the back seat of a car on the way to a far out counterculture conference in Bend, \u201cOregon is the citadel of the spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You wrote \u201cCosmic Spawning,\u201d quite possibly the sexiest piece ever written about salmon and not because it contained the word semen<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You resurrected Portland interest in John Reed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You supported countless of Oregon writers in ways most Oregon writers never support one another today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And my dearly departed friend, you addressed a heckler at one of my events who was complaining about my take on the current irrelevant iteration of the Portland Trail Blazers, not the legendary stoner championship team of 1977. You stood up from the second or third row, probably drunk, and shouted, \u201cQuit bitching! Matt Love is an Oregon visionary!\u201d The heckler shut up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And finally, thank you Walt Curtis, for calling me in the immediate aftermath of my existential destruction<\/p>\n\n\n\n and offering me encouragement. It was just you and another friend, another mad Oregon poet, the only writers to call. You two are also the only poets who could ever seize the room in a noisy dive bar, dragoon the drunks to listen to your poems, and not think it unusual at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Any Oregon poet from Oregon City who writes a poem with the title \u201cKY Jelly and Mt Hood.\u201d deserves an ode. So here is your ode, Walt Curtis, from a friend, fellow graduate of Oregon City High School, a fan since I first saw you read in 86 or 87 on the Satryicon stage wearing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10032,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,942,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-city","category-poetry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10031"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10034,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10031\/revisions\/10034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}