Philomene Long

This book is a mind movie: conversations about conversations; remembrances of things past; weaving past and present. Its images are high contrast black and white, as in film noir (Charles Bukowski's favorite genre). Bukowski in the Bathtub is cinema verite on the page. Bukowski in the Bathtub is a portrait of Charles Bukowski by Beat Poet John Thomas. He was an intimate friend of Charles Bukowski between the years of 1965 through 1971. This book is based on the Thomas / Bukowski visits and conversations during that period. Of John Thomas, Charles Bukowski has said, "...he made a place when / there was no place / a place to go when all / was closing in... he lent the easy / saving / natural grace..." (Excerpt from "strong man", a poem about John Thomas printed in Black Ace / Temple of Man).

Poems by Philomene In this collection of poetry, Philomene expands the vision of her book The Dream Awakening. Once again the theme is that of the struggle of the muse to survive in our contemporary wilderness. But whereas the music of the preceeding volume was that of incantation, the tone of this work, Odd Phenomenon in an Abandoned City, is one of lamentation, of cries amongst the ruins. Inspired by a series of paintings by R. L. Penney depicting the ruins of a mythic civilization, these poems echo the agony of a forgotten muse crying in the desert of collective memory. Like hieroglyphics from a distant past - these images arch into an unknown future. They reflect and interact with the tones of the paintings to create a synthesis of painter and poet. Jason Kugelman Pacifica Radio

This is a story of fire-the fire which incinerates all, incinerates any face of God, so that nothing is holy, so that all is holy. It tells of fire which illuminated America in the late 1950s with the Beat Generation, the fire which in Southern California ignited an ecstasy of word and flesh so intense that in Venice the seagulls would follow poets down the Boardwalk. This memoir of fire is a record of how it inflamed and finally consumed one poet of that generation, how its blaze called me to a Catholic convent in the late 50s. In September, 1958, Philomene Long knocked at the door of a convent atop a mountain overlooking the great stretch of Los Angeles and the sea. It was the late 50s, when the bible of adolescents was Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger and Rock and Roll was in its first generation, as was Elvis' pelvis. Cars had become modern, with chrome and wings. James Dean had died in a car crash. Teenagers, including Philomene, sneaked behind their parents' backs to see the movie "Blackboard Jungle". Sputnik was up. Beatniks were down. All over America, jazz was the sound. Black was the color. America was on the move. It was the time of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Allen Ginsberg's "Howl". Beat poets Gary Snyder and Joanne Kyger were on the road in Asia and Japan, both practicing Zen at a monastery in Kyoto. Beat poet William Everson (Brother Antoninus), like Philomene, had entered a Catholic monastery. The Beat Generation was disregarding the values and materialism of postwar America. It was the time when Japanese Zen masters were arriving on American soil: Suzuki, Roshi and Maezumi, Roshi (with whom Philomene would later study Zen for twenty-one years, until his death in 1995). They brought with them the golden seed of Buddhism. And Philomene, having just turned eighteen, a teenager with an affinity for booze, cigarettes and poetry, and for making out in the back of her boyfriend's car, prepared to leave that world and enter the nunnery. This was not to be effortless...