Moffeit, Tony

Luminous Animal (The Signed, Limited Edition)

Cherry Valley, NY: Cherry Valley Editions, 1989. Signed & Numbered Limited First Edition. Softcover. "it rained in new orleans / a blues rain a jazz rain / it rained in the streets / a mojo rain a voodoo rain / while the musicians played / jug and guitar and washboard / it rained in new orleans / while a wild wild woman / on a french quarter balcony / danced and threw roses..." (From the first poem in the present collection, titled "a blues rain a jazz rain"). With a little imagination, you can almost hear it in Hunter S. Thompson's voice...LUMINOUS ANIMAL...almost reminiscent of something he'd call Ralph Steadman on one of his legendary, rambling, midnight voicemails. The work, however, isn't Thompsonian in the slightest. Tony Moffeit is what happens when you mix one part Jack Micheline, and one part Dr. John...the struck-by-lightning equivalent of a human bayou Sazerac. With one last reference to The Good Doctor, Moffeit has been described as "living at the edge of his nervous system," -- a Gonzo descriptor if there ever was one. The poet's own website, however, claims his predecessors as "Jack Micheline, Ray Bremser, and d.a.levy," going on to elucidate that, "These poets were all marginal Beat poets who had more interest in street poetry, drugs, crime, and going it alone than in the more public scene of Kerouac and Ginsberg. / As an Outlaw Poet, Tony Moffeit is more interested in Billy the Kid rather than the Dalai Lama. What he is searching for in many of his books and chapbooks is the dark American underbelly, the shadowy place where all creative energy originates. His sense of Lorca's Duende is visible in his poetry and blues performances. / For Moffeit, the metaphor of Billy the Kid is really central to his most important work. The Kid, who was a real life Western gunman, is important to both Moffeit's continuing long poem about the Kid and to Moffeit's poetic stance." That stance, he writes, "is a kind of existential attitude...because, if you are a poet, you are one of the last authentic American voices...a storyteller in the wreckage of the human...making an existential choice about the breath and the way." When he performs 'Luminous Animal,' it has been written, "the room begins to shake." With references to "kindred spirit" street poets like Micheline and Bremser--not to mention a shared fascination with Billy the Kid-it is no wonder that Tony Moffeit (b. 1942) gained the respect of Charles and Pamela Beach Plymell, whose Cherry Valley Editions brought out the present volume in 1989. For fans of True Beat Troubadours (like those referenced above), adding the criminally underrated Tony Moffeit to your collection is an absolute "must." [ISBN: 0-916156-86-9]. Trade-format softcover original: the signed, numbered, limited edition of 20 copies (out of a total trade run of 100)...perhaps the defining work in Moffeit's oeuvre, as noted above. Moffeit's signature & limitation--in thin, black pen ink on half-title page--reads: "6 / Tony Moffeit / 1/1/90." (As obliquely noted in the inscription quoted, this is copy 6/20). In very fine condition, virtually as new with only slightest shelf-wear to fine-edges & a few tiny instances of age-typical spotting to back cover & text block. Very Fine. [Item #4947]

Price: $90.00 save 20% $72.00