Jack Foley, The Tiger and Other Tales, Sagging Meniscus Press, 2016.
jack-adellefoley.com/“His friend had gone. They had embraced, exchanged good-byes. Michael had said, You know, the trouble with me is that I can only be certain I’m alive when I’m in the midst of a crisis. I manufacture them, I suppose. The words stayed in Abraham’s mind: certain I’m alive. It was then that he remembered. Michael was not alive. He had been dead for several weeks. He remembered the letter, Dear Abraham, it is with great pain that we tell you…. Michael had been buried in six feet of ground, he had been at the funeral himself. How could he have forgotten that?”
Stylistically the stories range widely—some are comic, some bring tears. All plunge us into the enigma of the human heart. In a poem about a Christmas tree, Foley writes of
our liv-
ing, dead tree, but dec-
orated with shining life
to tell us death is wild
transfiguration death is
life
loss
wind
time
star
Having never so much as caught an echo
of the name Jack Foley on the wind, and the wind often breathes the
names of avant-garde West Coast poets, this volume was a splendid
introduction to the sort of berserk and bodacious writer who is a
perfect stranger to the phrase “risk-averse”. The tales in this
collection are often in the form of fables, or fablish in nature,
featuring some lemming-like disciples in ‘Broughton Fountain’, a
moronic monster DDD in ‘The Monst’, and a phoney phantom in ‘An
E-Mail to George’. Some of the tales produce wondrous bafflement,
as in the nutty ‘The Ern Malley Story’ or the scrap of script
‘Adventures of Sally Phillips, Girl Detective’. There are stories
in verse, and two short plays, and other pieces of curious humour
that will keep you smirking like a smug smirker. Recommended for fans
of gorgeously designed small press oddball books (i.e. me, and others
like me). - http://www.verbivoraciouspress.org/our-year-in-books-2016/
I can’t get it out of my head that, though I may be “unique,” I am
not an “individual.” The word “individual” comes from the Latin
individuus—indivisible, something which can no longer be “divided.” If
I think of myself as a political entity, then I am happy to be
individuus: the rights of the individual are everywhere to be
respected. If I think of myself as a thinking/feeling entity, however, I am
something very different from that: I am not at all individuus; I am as
divided as I can be. - Jack Foley
O Powerful Western Star: Poetry & Art in California, Pantograph Press, 2000.
This large-format book, which comes with a CD, is full of rich insight into San Franciscos's literary culture. Well-known as the host of KPFA's literary radio show "Cover to Cover," author Jack Foley has lived in the Bay Area for nearly four decades, and his historical, critical, visionary, and poetic observations are born of personal involvement as much as active research. The essays, talks, and interviews of O POWERFUL WESTERN STAR are introduced by Dana Gioia.
"Jack Foley's O Powerful Western Star is not only an engrossing and original book. It is also for Californians--a necessary one. Foley's collection ranks high among the few serious investigations ever written of San Francisco literary culture. It is, however, by no means a conventional study. O Powerful Western Star is by turns historical, critical, philosophical, visionary, and poetic. It is also often autobiographical. Foley has lived in the Bay Area for nearly four decades, and his insights grow from personal involvement as well as active research. Literary criticism is rarely so intellectually wide-ranging, imaginatively suggestive, or unabashedly personal . . ." --Dana Gioia, former head of the National Endowment for the Arts
"Foley is doing great things in articulating the poetic consciousness of San Francisco"—Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Foley's Books: California Rebels, Beats &
Radicals (A companion volume to O Powerful Western
Star.) Pantograph Press, 2000.
A companion volume to Foley's O POWERFUL WESTERN STAR, this book contains reviews and articles on a variety of people, all stemming from Foley's many years of writing and thinking about poetry, Beats, rebels, and radicals. "Literary criticism is rarely so intellectually wide-ranging, imaginatively suggestive, or unabashedly personal"—Dana Gioia
Autobiography
Jack Foley (born 1940) has published thirteen books of poetry, five books of criticism, and VISIONS AND AFFILIATIONS, a "chronoencyclopedia" of California poetry from 1940 to 2005. His radio show, Cover to Cover, is heard on Berkeley station KPFA every Wednesday at 3; his column, "Foley's Books," appears in the online magazine, The Alsop Review. With his late wife, Adelle, Foley performed his work (often "multi–voiced" pieces) frequently in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is continuing to work with others. With poet Clara Hsu, Foley is co–publisher of Poetry Hotel Press. In 2010 Foley was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Berkeley Poetry Festival, and June 5, 2010 was proclaimed "Jack Foley Day" in Berkeley.
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