Edward Mycue

Edward Mycue  

edmycue@writersartists.net

 

details 

Edward Mycue's first book, Damage Within the Community, published in 1973, was selected by Library Journal as one of the ten best poetry books of that year.

"Reading through small magazines-"those little magazines that died to make verse free," Gertrude Stein called them-one comes across the name "Edward Mycue" quite often, and always with pleasure. Mycue's poems are invariably interesting and alluring, imaginative, sometimes baffling: wonderful work." Jack Foley, The Alsop Review

Continuing this review, Jack Foley writes - "Mycue's poems hold us in a kind of meditative openness which constantly admits to its own difficulties. At the same time, they deliberately "educate" us: "educates-leads-out." The word "education," with its root in the Latin "educere," is one which Mycue has considered at some length. In a 1978 essay, "Methodology as a Theory of Sequence," Mycue writes, 

[Educere is] said to be the word our word for education comes from-and the dryad (a wood nymph, whose life is bound-up with the life of her tree) is very like, to me, the idea of education: education, the word and its root educere (if it really is the root): not that it teach, but that it lead- out what is already there.  As if the whole history of our species and its development is continually present in every further person and that maybe the role of education is to lead-out the history of ourselves.  And the way educere was pronounced I liked, too: not like ed-u-kay-shun but like ay-duke-uh-ray.  Great sound for a great meaning.

 

awards & honours

Damage Within the Community
(Panjandrum Press 1973)
Selected by Library Journal as one of the ten best poetry books of the year

 

 

North Texas State University

Lowell Fellow at Boston University

Macdowell Colony Fellow

Taught American Literature at International Peoples College 
(Elsinore, Denmark).

 

website links

http://www.dirosapreserve.org/lectures/poetspainters.shtml
From 4-26 January 2003 Edward's poetry was featured in a Painters and Poets exhibition (with his partner Richard Steger) at the di Rosa Preserve, 5200 Carneros Highway, Napa, CA  

http://www.ruebella.co.uk
"Ed Mycue, our man in San Francisco, packs enough energy into his poems to light up the Golden Gate Bridge for a month."  - editors, Rue Bella magazine.  You can read and listen to several of his poems on their site.

http://www.sacredgroundscafe.com/poetry/edwardmycue.html  Sacred Grounds Café, San Francisco - from the archive of poets.

http://www.alsopreview.com/foley/jfmycue.html
Review of Ed Mycue's Because We Speak The Same Language (Spectacular Diseases Press) by Jack Foley.

http://www.staceys.com/favorites/archives/stafffaves-ed.html
"Each month, we ask one employee to tell us about their ten favorite books. This list is no holds barred -- any genre, any size -- whatever they really want to talk about. The only restriction is that the books still be in print so that we can help you find them if they sound good. A published poet and mainstay of the San Francisco literary scene, Edward Mycue is always ready with a fascinating story about the writers he has known and whose work has made a difference in his life. This month he shared a few of these thoughts, reminiscences, and recommendations for Stacey's customers."

http://nova.kemsu.ru/biorus/mycue.html
Edward Mycue's page on Syberia Nova Kultura - poem found on http://nova.kemsu.ru/texts/musye.html

http://bostonreview.mit.edu/BR27.2/mycue.html
"13th Street Is Not Called 13th Street. It's Called Baughman" poem in Boston Review

http://www.minotaurpress.com/bsi8/063.htm
Thoughts on Writing Poems (from e-mails to Louisa Solano in connection with judging a poetry contest for the Grolier Poetry Prize, 2002), published on the web by Minotaur Press.

 


Song

from: Night Boats, 1999

At night your strange heart
is music learned in love where moonmilk
is silence. San Francisco,
these are your rites. At your feet
are your children, a deep-pile
garnet rug, broken bisque porcelain
writing our histories on your
lymph that like your promise once
calf-white is now memory-tongued,
eggshell-thin, raving for healing
this desperate geography. Your
skies plum-colored, your boats
oarless bob in the marmalade waves.
Get washed you blind, handsome
city. Your harbor has a stone in
its mouth. A wingless buzzing
rises in grey fusion. This weather
mounts a holocaust song, red, full
like the hope-ruby with its rue and rage.
Now we are old linoleum, littered, torn and
we fight the sunset
climbing our blue humming.


From the 'BUMPS' series of poems

 

100. A PIECE OF ICE

IS ABOUT MELTING
BEFORE YOU KNOW IT
ABOUT LOST STRENGTH
WHITE STEAM AND A BRIEF
MEMORY OF HURRY.

55. BUMPS

BOYS ADMIRED OTHER BOYS'
MUSCLES. GIRLS OTHER GIRLS'
BREASTS. BOTH WANTED THE
BUMPS. WANTED TO SWELL-UP,
GROW-UP, TO BE SOMEBODY
BIGGER, beautiful, BUMPY.
BUMPS MEANT POWER, ROCK 'N
SEX, WHITE TEETH, wheels,
DRINKING BOOZE FROM PAPER BAGS,
LIFTED ARMS AND pecs ALL BUMPY.

 

114. SCAR HUNT

SINCE THEY SPOKE THE SAME LANGUAGE ALL THE PEOPLE UNDERSTOOD
ONEANOTHER AS A FAMILY WHO WANDERED LOOKING FOR A LAND TO LIKE. WHEN THEY
FOUND IT THEY BEGAN TO CHANGE IT INTO A GREAT CITY WITH DECORATED WALLS,
COURTYARDS AND A TOWER TO MAKE THEM FAMOUS EVEN TO TODAY A PROUD PEOPLE WHO
OVERSTROVE BECOMING COUPLED WITH A CURSE OF VOICES LIKE A TEEN GHETTO OF
MUSICDANCINGHUMMING PRESS-ME-TO-YOU TUNE HELPHELPHELPHELP AND LETMEALONE LET
ME ALONE EVERYTHING TODAY ADJUSTMENT ENACTMENT OLDCARSNOISE. NOW.  SO TIME'S
ROUGH FINGERS PRINTED THEM OUT LIKE A STATISTIC OF DEFECTS WHEN THE WHOLE
SYSTEM WENT PIANO.

100. A PIECE OF ICE

IS ABOUT MELTING
BEFORE YOU KNOW IT
ABOUT LOST STRENGTH
WHITE STEAM AND A BRIEF
MEMORY OF HURRY.

43. A MAN CAME OUT OF A TREE

A MAN CAME OUT OF A TREE,
SHE TUGGED ON HIS COAT.
SHE CHASED.
HE SAID HE DIDN'T TOUCH HER, TRIED
TO DODGE,
THEN THE HORSE,
A BIG BEAUTIFUL HORSE
IN THE DREAM CAME AGAINST HIM
CROUCHING HIS HANDSOMENESS
AGAINST HIS CHEST.
HE KEPT TRYING, FAILING
TO UNLATCH
THE DOOR AT HIS BACK.
YES, HE SAID, IT WAS
A DREAM, BUT THE HORSE,
SO BIG AND HANDSOME,
FRIGHTENED ME.
I WAS AFRAID
HE WOULD CRUSH ME INTO HIM.
SO, HE SAID, SIR, PLEASE
DON'T OPEN THE DOOR.

 

75. MEMORIES: steam

IS WHAT YOU WANT MEMORIES TO BE
INSTEAD OF BEING SUCH A MIXED BAG
OF HIPS AND MAGNETS AND DEAD CATS.


(© Edward Mycue)


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