Have You Seen This Man?

kevin said:

Gorky, this contest sucks. I want my my Mother.

Yes, we win!

Contest over.

RPM said:

Samuel Clemens popsicles pens, I’ll have you know. He tickles them there ink rods with his Wyatt Earp ‘stache when he’s not writing, sucking the marrow of creativity like goat milk mixed with moonshine. Mmm, Momma. He’s left-handed, a southpaw, with a wicked curve that digs into molasses, smears it from the base of the neck down, because he knows no one cares about the rest of his body. He’s thinking of words for you. Words like shit and fuck. He’s waiting for Time to invent them, and Time will. In the solitude of posterity with plaquered eyes he’s watching you. He’s wearing a glove with fake nails. He’s Hank Morganning it out to you, Sawyering your whitewashed fence. Suck. Suck. Suck. You can’t see it, up top, but he’s wearing a tonsure just for you.

Britt said:

I recognize the man in this photo. He’s Dmitri Constanovich Denestrov, a Russian poet who lived from 1892 to 1969. The son of a wealthy fur trader, Denestrov grew up and was educated in St. Petersburg until the revolution. His friendship with Rilke and other members of the German and Austro-Hungarian literary circle was very influential on his writing and his political thinking. although sympathetic to the Bolshevik cause, he was forced to go into hiding, and finally flee, due to his upper-class status. Like many other Russian ex-patriots, he eventually found his home in Paris.

Denestrov was a formalist at heart, but felt comfortable with the changing landscape of poetry in the early 20th century. He wrote primarily in French, but continued to produce poetry in Russian as well. His best work is considered to be “The Flowers of Eden,” published in Russian in 1924, but eventually translated into French, English and Italian. One of the most memorable poems of this collection is “Marigolds,” a work indicative of the shift from old world to new. It begins,

Eggs of human questions balance themselves
on the edge of an inquisitive barstool
prepared to fall towards the correct gravity

Other than the obvious metaphor of eggs on a barstool, which borders on innuendo, the poem conveys the turmoil of the early twentieth century — the uncertainty of what were once absolutes. Denestrov’s style, though, is still balanced and hopeful. In the advent of the German occupation of France during World War II, he once again fled, this time to the United States. This experience led to the creative shift in the publication of his book, “Gifts from Jupiter,” in 1953. In the poem, “Soft Jewel,” Denestrov writes,

Our conception begins with ore
ore begins with indecision, indecision
ends with pebbles on a shoreline

While he retained much of his internalized formality, Denestrov is very much a man of his time. Indecision is a theme, but the hope of conception has passed us by. The rest is subject to the whim of tides. Denestrov passed away while still teaching at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. While not well known, his work continues to speak of an important intersection in the cultural paths of modern poetry.

Mel Bosworth said:

That would be Two Inch McGoot, author of “Fishing with Two Inch,” a non-fiction work based on his youth in the wilds of Kentucky.

Born in 1899, Two Inch spent his childhood, and the bulk of his adult life, in a hollow with his older brother, the notorious Four Inch. The brothers worked a moonshine still for years, and thrived during prohibition, thus allowing the younger Two Inch to spend some time in Shreveport where he piddled away much of his fortune on whores, but where he managed to fulfill his childhood dream of becoming an author by penning “Fishing with Two Inch” in the backroom of a brothel before his funds were completely exhausted.

He lived out the remainder of his days in the same Kentucky hollow in which he was born. Four Inch died of tuberculosis in 1944, and Two Inch was soon to follow- not from TB, but from a raging, unmanageable case of syphilis he’d contracted in Shreveport that was never treated.

“Fishing with Two Inch,” a moderate success during his lifetime, went on to bigger and better things after his death. In 1970, the book was honored with the prestigious “Best Fishing Book of the Century” award based out of Trenton, NJ. The award, founded by longtime moonshiner and writer Pumpanut McDuggin, celebrates “Great writing about fishing and moonshine.”

Two Inch is pickled in a moonshine barrel and can be viewed for free. If you can find him. But his bastard bloodline is everywhere.

kevin said:

Each of you get a copy! HAHAHAA!

RPM, Mel, Britt, none of you were right but all of you are all right with me.

Send me your addresses and I’ll mail you a book. It’s a certified lady killer.

(editor@darkskymagazine.com)

By the way, that fella up there is Maxim Gorky.

KM

Mel Bosworth said:

success!!!! thanks, dark sky. you are handsome.

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