Doug Lang in America [Terence Winch]
[This post appeared first on the now defunct Best American Poetry blog on July 31, 2008. Updates appear at the end of the post.]
In 1973, the last American ground troops left Vietnam, the World Trade Center opened for business, the Watergate scandal rolled downhill, the IRA bombing campaign was in full swing. Agnew resigned. Allende was overthrown. And Doug Lang arrived in the U.S.
His arrival was historic—it changed my life, as it did the lives of his many friends, colleagues, and students over the past three decades. Doug came here from England, by way of Wales, where he is from. Specifically, the town of Swansea (also Dylan Thomas’s hometown).
In the 1970s, I used to write Clerihews about my friends. Doug’s was:
Doug Lang
likes to be one of the gang.
That’s why he talks funny and always wears a hat.
In Wales, everyone does that.
Doug has taught writing at the Corcoran School of Art since 1976. He is revered there, and elsewhere. His work is hard to characterize because he has succeeded at many kinds of writing on many different levels. Just before coming to this country, he published two novels, one pseudonymously. I think he told me that each took about six weeks to write. Today, they are extremely rare (though I seem to remember Ray DiPalma telling me he once came upon a stack of Freaks in a Manhattan bookstore).
We used to collaborate a lot in the old days. We wrote a sonnet sequence in the mid-1970s, which was never published, but to which we gave one of my all-time favorite titles: Take the Qua Train.
Doug has written a great deal during his years in America, but has not published all that much. A big new collection of his writing is in the works, to be brought out by Edge Books, Rod Smith’s press here in DC. Meanwhile, Titanic Books published a collection of his poems called Magic Fire Chevrolet in 1980. I re-read MFC on the Metro today, and was knocked out anew at the intense energy and sheer force of the poems:
THE DEPRESSION
Charlie Green was a member of Fletcher Henderson’s
Orchestra, played trombone, cut 38 sides with Bessie
Smith, froze to death on the doorstep of a Harlem
Tenement during the depression. The snow keeps coming
Down. Well, let it come down. The city gets
Kind of white. Your body is cool.
I forget when I look in your face how far back.
Details, standing around. Everything goes out.
Face back. Heat eases
Up. Suspended. You bring wine, you talk. I like
To hear you talk, the way you talk.
I get nervous, anyway. Follow me up, through
The clocks, Mister B.
B for boss. The book I toss.
She who longs for the red hot songs of Robert Johnson.
And so the bread is baked by you now, maybe draw
Some beer & sit for hours, you had it spaced wrong.
Saturn a bromide & Irish cream & footsteps on Sullivan
Street & Burgundy from the mountains, the mountains
Of romance, talk to me. Fat chance.
Tight wire risk.
The onion & onion.
Umbrellas from you, all broken.
Drunk & stoned & crazy 3 in the morning phone ringing.
The most difficult a relationship
Of air & what is wrong.
Trying to remember where the wall is.
Margaret Johnson came in from Kansas City &
Played piano on one record date with Billie Holiday,
Buck Clayton, Dickie Wells, Lester Young,
Freddy Greene, Walter Page & Jo Jones.
& Lester Young said, “I have eyes & I can see.”
Magic Fire Chevrolet also includes one of Doug’s most popular poems, “The Americans,” which has always been a personal favorite of mine. I believe you will have a hard time finding MFC, but if you can lay your hands on it, it’s a brilliant book. In the meantime, check out two more recent poems of Doug’s on the McSweeney’s sestina site. And the new issue of Smartish Pace, the excellent Baltimore journal, includes a poem of Doug’s. Don’t forget Doug Lang’s own blog, but don’t expect daily installments. (See here also.)
photo by Sandra Rottmann
“…The door held ajar by a 2-by-4, our
Bodies calm as rocks on a coastline at low tide, rumba
Drums & another cup of coffee, a perfect blend
Of mass & rotation or distance & everybody’s asleep
As the earth and the other earth direct our attention
To an as-if experience”
[from “McDonald, PA”]
______________________________________________________________________
Doug passed away on Nov. 22, 2022. Here are several remembrances from the St. Mark’s Poetry Project newsletter by me, Phyllis Rosenzweig, and Rod Smith.
In 2013, Phyllis Rosenzweig's Primary Writing Books published a dazzling collection of Doug's poems called dérangé, brilliantly designed by Susan Campbell. And just days after he died, Edge Books published a fabulous selection of Doug’s writing called In the Works. I’m happy to say that I was able to show him a PDF of the book on my phone not long before he died, and he was delighted.
In 2012–14, before his short-term memory began to fail, I was able to record a multi-part, 6-hour conversation with Doug, something I am forever happy we were able to do. It is a consolation for me to be able to go to any spot on these recordings and bring his voice back into my life. Thanks to Charles Bernstein, you can hear these recordings at Penn Sound.
Doug Lang’s literary archive is among the holdings at Boston College’s Burns Library.
Doug had an extraordinary gift for friendship, often listing the names of friends in his poems: Sandra Rottmann, Diane Ward, Phyllis Rosenzweig, Bernard Welt, Susan Campbell, Pete Inman, Tina Darragh, Lynne Dreyer, Tom Mandel, Beth Joselow, Becky Levenson, Rod Smith, Buck Downs, Dan Gutstein, Tom Raworth, Casey Smith, Cathy Eisenhower, Leslie Bumstead, Michael Lally, Andrea Wyatt, Chris Mason, Jesse Winch, Maria Cunningham, Mike Zito, Toby Thompson, Ted Greenwald, Mel Nichols, James Huckenpahler, Arthur Gary, Lee Haner, Tom & Linda Green, Steve Szabo, and I know I'm forgetting many more (including all the Corcoran students he befriended over the decades). We all miss him.
______________________________________________________________________________
Selected comments on the original 2008 version of this post:
Thank you, Terence. You are kind. I was glad that you didn't divulge the fact that I was really born and raised in Wyoming and that I came to DC in the Witness Protection Program after giving evidence against Louis Untermeyer during the famous American poetry anthology scam hearings.
Whatever I might have told you before, The Sex Clinic was written by 3 chimpanzees on amphetamines in 10 days, and Freaks was plagiarized from the secret diaries of Princess Margaret---took about 3 weeks.
Great work on this blog. You the man, man.
Yachi da,
Doug
Posted by: Doug Lang | August 01, 2008 at 11:11 AM
My favorite evening with Doug Lang was during the summer of 1983. We watched "Psycho Two" outside at the Waldorf Drive-in, then joined others for cowboy dancing at a hillbilly bar in Southern Maryland. Doug had been in the States at least 15 years, but he shook my hand and said, "Thanks, I've finally had Saturday night."
Posted by: Toby Thompson | August 01, 2008 at 07:16 PM
Another great post man. I can't comment on all of them, or feel like I shouldn't, but you do a great service to those of us who not only love Doug Lang's writing, all of it (I remain a big fan of FREAKS, much to his dismay, or so he seems to feel), but also love the man himself. His presence was and is a great gift in my life no matter how infrequently I encounter him in person. And that final photo above captures his thoughtful charisma better than any I've ever seen of him. ML (aka MDL)
Posted by: Michael Lally | August 03, 2008 at 01:02 PM
Although I have never read any of Doug's book's, I did have the pleasure of being taught by him at Corcoran College of Art and Design. Doug Lang has opened my eyes to a whole other side of creative writing, and poetry I never thought I would be interested in. He's caring and very passionate about what he does, and he took liking to my poems. Since then I have been writing poems or Niyku's as I like to call them.
Doug Lang is my inspiration =]
Posted by: Niya Donnelly | August 09, 2008 at 03:00 PM
©Terence
Winch
Permission
required to use any of the contents of this post.
Terry: Brilliantly done. Thanks so much for this.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Pat.
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