Interview With Russell Streur, Writer, Poet, Editor, @ The Camel Saloon-See below Writers/Links/Tidbits More Information!


Editor Notes About Russell Streur.
I must start out by saying I find Russell Streur to be a unique blend of human and beyond personal traits:  eccentric, pragmatic, and strong-willed with firm opinions and convictions.  Russell hits me as someone who has visited many places, done many things, hit the coffee shops, wrote his poems on napkins or torn sheets of yellow paper, and tapped into more than his share of local bars.  After all, he is the "Barkeeper" at The Camel Saloon:   http://thecamelsaloon.blogspot.com/.  All patrons treated with respect and welcome to come in.   On a personal note, I have found Russell to be open to new ideas, ways of expanding his website, great with insights, and very generous and responsive with his time.
I found this introduction bio of Russell at the Blues.Gr!  I'm only using a part of it here:  http://blues.gr/profiles/blogs/talking-with-poet-writer-russell-streur-of-on-line-poetry-bar-the
"Russell Streur is a born-again dissident residing in Johns Creek, Georgia.  His work has been published in Europe, certain islands and the United States.  He operates the world’s original on-line poetry bar, The Camel Saloon, catering to dromedaries, malcontents and jewels of the world at thecamelsaloon.blogspot.com.  He cofounded Poets Democracy in 2010 with Christi Kochifos Caceres and ---is the author of The Muse of Many Names, The Petition to Free Zhu Yufu, and other works."
http://api.ning.com/files/ihF*csLe*MLCUxD-f-UbbpDRk2-0o7KY3Q4nK0pGdk64ooTs1KF7XGXX*hpAj7iPaBY8v-wV9z4Rv7ecM9pKe5pmFdGOnmRz/russellstreur.jpg
"Many heartfelt thanks to all who voted for The Camel Saloon in the 2013 Preditors and Editors Readers Poll.  The Chicago vote is in and I am delighted to share the news that the joint has won this elusive award."
 
Interview With Russell Streur, Writer, Poet, Editor, Local Barkeeper @ The Camel Saloon- Johns Creek, Georgia
 
Nine Questions with Russell Streur
(I gave him nine questions, and told him to feel free, to be original-and Russel starts out with a baseball game-I warned you he was different)
 
Questions According to Russell Streur
 
Why nine?
 
Baseball.  Nine innings.  It’s a good number.
 
Does that count as the first question?
 
And the second.  It’s a tough game. 
 
NEWSOM-80-1.jpg
 
Who’s your favorite player? 
 
Bobo Newsom.  One of the all-time great arms of the game.  Pitched forever, pitched for everybody, only guy to pitch to Babe Ruth and to Mickey Mantle, that’s how long he pitched.  Also, one of the all-time great mouths of the game.
 
Late one game on the mound against the Indians, a line drive off the bat of Earl Averill smashes into Bobo’s knee and down goes the big lunk in a heap.
 
His manager comes bounding out onto the field and asks Newsom how he feels.
 
“My knee’s broke,” he says.
 
“I’ll get a reliever in for you,” says the skipper.
 
“Take me out of the game?  Are you kidding me?” says Bobo.  “I said my knee was broke.  I didn’t say I was dead.”
 
You know the baseball immortals poem by Ogden Nash?  Bobo’s the only guy mentioned in it who isn’t in the Hall of Fame.  Course, Nash gives him an honorary place in the hall.  Says Bobo talked himself into the place.
 
Big drinker too.  Might have been a little hung over one day in spring training.  He walked three straight batters.
 
“Hey, Ump,” he yells from the mound.  “Stop wriggling the plate!”
 
Dirt floor bar in Florida he used to go to after he finally retired, always stood in the same place.  After he died, cirrhosis of the liver, they encased his footprints in concrete. 
 
There’s a thousand stories about him, dig through old Sporting News issues in the thirties, forties and fifties, he’s all over the pages.
 
They could’ve nicknamed him Poet, because he told his stories in diamonds.  Bobo was from what he called everybody else, so everybody called him the same thing back, and there was already a player nicknamed poet, Poet Kenna, early 1900s, if you want to look him up, the bard of Kanawha County.  The sportswriter Charles Dryden said Kenna was ‘long on meter but pitched ragtime,’ whatever the hell that is supposed to mean.
 
Are you a big baseball fan these days?
 
Nah, I’m a traditionalist.  They ruined the game when they started wearing gloves.
 
Do you write poems about baseball?
 
I wrote one once, about Jesus tripling to the wall in right.  He tried to stretch it home.
 
Then what?
 
Got nailed at the plate.  Cut-off man had a good arm.  I know, blasphemy.  Get over it.  I’ll give you blasphemy, The Ten Commandments.  Comes out of two places.  One is a Ten Commandments I read somewhere and don’t remember, an avant-garde piece from the 1920s or so, a Ten Commandments of the Sun or the Sun God or somebody, and the other place is from The White Goddess by Robert Graves, what he says in the foreword to the 1966 edition: “The function of poetry is religious invocation of the Muse,” he says, “its use is the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites.”
 
You bet it is.  
 
And he ends the foreword with this:  “How you come to terms with the Goddess is no concern of mine.  I do not even know that you are serious in your poetic profession.”
 
Get in tune with that.
 
So I am much less a poet than I am a believer in the Muse.  My Ten Commandments go like this: 
 
And the High One spoke these words saying,
 
I am thy Sole Adored, who raised you from the grave and gave you breath when you were dead and voice to sing when you could not even speak; who brought you out of the Land of Egypt, out of the House of Bondage:
 
Thou shall have no other Brides before me.

Thou shall not be deceived by hollow charms; for I am a jealous and green-eyed WONDER; neither shall false spells beguile you; and neither shall you serve them; lest my anger rise against you and topple you from the face of the earth.

 
Thou shall sound the truth and truth alone like the bellow of the thunder upon a winter sea; for I will not hold him guiltless who takes my love and word in vain.
 
Thou shall honor the serpent.
 
Thou shall honor the vine.

Thou shall wield a Radiant Sword and slay my enemies with ABANDON and GLEE.

 
Thou shall play with fire.
 
Thou shall sow the whirlwind.

Thou shall remember the auburn hours of my outstretched arms and the mighty hammer of my fist upon the gloom of dawn.

 
Thou shall kneel down before no one save for me.
 
For I am thy Fury, thy Grace, thy Muse, who favors you beyond compare and above all others.  Defy me not.
 
And by the way, if you don’t kneel down before the Goddess, I have no idea how you can call yourself a poet.  My suggestion is that you take up prose.  Or be quiet.  The White Goddess is an indispensable book for poetry.
 
What other books does a poet have to have on a shelf?
 
I’m of the belief that poetic language goes back a real long and dark way and the closer a poet can get to the root of that language, the better he or she is going to be able to express whatever it is the Muse wants expressed.  So what I keep near is a dictionary of the Bible, an encyclopedia of symbols, and telling of myths.  Those are the tools I keep, the keys to the old ways.
 
And I have some favorite books, too, ones I have kept forever.  Like those four wonderful books issued by The Peter Pauper Press.  Japanese Haiku (1955), The Four Seasons (1958), Cherry-Blossoms (1960) all translated by Peter Beilenson and the fourth, Haiku Harvest (1962) completed by Harry Behn after Beilenson crossed the river.
 
I just learned recently that the first volume is now in the public domain, the copyright was apparently not renewed somewhere along the way, it can be accessed online among the sacred texts at http://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/jh/jh00.htm
 
It belongs with the sacred text, that’s for sure.
 
Then two books of Chinese poetry, a paperback, The White Pony, and a hardcover, The Jade Mountain, which was due back at the library sometime in 1969.  I’m a little late with that.  So with the west, you know, the Bible and the myths, and the east with haiku and the Chinese classics, and the symbols from the subconscious, those are my essentials alongside Graves.
 
Are you writing much these days?
 
I am writing nothing these days.  I’ve written a lot, at least a lot for me, I am not one of those prolific people with thousands of poems, or what the author says are poems, and I am not about to start repeating myself or typing thoughts in broken lines and pretending it’s poetry.  That’s where the Saloon starts, to stay engaged with poetry on a continual and daily basis, to be the editor and barkeep there.  My ego was satisfied, I had said what I had to say, I had seen most of it published. 
 
I was also becoming more and more personally interested in global free speech and self-expression issues and principles back in 2010 when I opened the joint.  I have been reminiscing about my late friend, Danny Harmon.  We would go to a particular bar and work on poems together.  We would try out lines on not only each other but also other customers and staff.  It was a very social place where we all felt safe to write there.  Even with all the noise with the ball game on and the jukebox playing, all the bustle of the place.
 
So out of all that a resolution to start giving back, to start standing, and to do that in a social environment, and it felt like a bar would be a fine place to do all that in, especially since I was in one in the first place.  Why not, since I spent most of my life in Milwaukee and all the wonderful neighborhood taps there, can't be beat.
 
I'm also in appreciation of a few editors I have gotten to know to one degree or another.  Especially Chloe
Caldwell at Sleep Snort Fuck for the courage it took her to create and run that space.  Also Ross Vassilev of
Asphodel Madness, and Opium Poetry for the sheer energy these sites extended and how much time he must have put in it.
 
And G. Tod Slone of The American Dissident also was in the mix of the Saloon, how he refuses to compromise his ideals and has given a forum to so many people who might not have otherwise found a place in the world for their voice.  I wanted to make something that could redeem that same promise, to create a space in the world for voices.
 
The camel arrived because I was reading Persian poetry at the time; and camels appeared here and there in the poems.  There was an unrelated article I read about the value given to camels in Bedouin poetry, it
seemed fitting for a journey to have a mode of transportation, and so the Camel.  Which is a real interesting animal in the first place as it turns out.
 
The policy at the Saloon is one of inclusion and mostly because of that; it has been very gratifying running the place.  Still, some things just don’t work: condescension of tone doesn’t work, and either does assuming the pose of superiority some poets assume.  That type of arrogance is the antithesis of what the Saloon is about.  So are interior monologs and abstract philosophizing.  Give me some colors of the world, a place and a time of day or a season to share, some language or secret that surprises.  Stuffed shirts, intellectuals and arty, pretentious types can buy a glass at a different joint.
 
Are cats still banned at the Saloon?
 
Yes.
 
Why?
 
That’s the tenth question, so mum’s the word.  Maybe the relief pitcher can answer.  In the meantime, come by the joint: http://thecamelsaloon.blogspot.com/  The door is always open.
 
-The End-
 
 
 
 
CatHoldup.jpg
 
 
 
 
 
 

No comments:

Post a Comment