Tom Haines on Richard Martin

Binghamton’s favorite atomic painter reminisces about his old friend, poet Richard Martin. The pair reunites this month on the 25th anniversary of publishing Martin’s White Man Appears on Southern California Beach.

There once was a great subterranean poetry scene in this town created and sustained by the Binghamton Community Poets. It ran roughly from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s.

Renowned poets from all over America came and read, including excellent local poets as well. A bridge between the Binghamton University, SUNY Broome, and the community was strong, vital, and open. This fourteen-year series included the likes of Robert Creeley, Diane DiPrima, Bob Holman, and many others from out of town as well as BU’s Milton Kessler, Jerome Rothenberg, Martin Bidney, Jack Vernon, Liz Rosenberg, Bob Mooney, and others. The Binghamton Community Poets, consisting of Tom Costello, Michael Kelly, Phil Sweeney, John Miller, Tom Kolpakas, Bern Mulligan, and myself, Tom Haines, were led by Richard Martin. Many incredible nights were spent listening to great poetry in the back rooms of Swat Sullivan’s, Benlin’s, and The Amsterdam, just to name a few of the venues.

Out of this scene, a remarkable book of poetry, Richard Martin’s White Man Appears on Southern Califonia Beach, emerged. Remarkable because it was, and still is, a terrific read loaded with creative “leaping” poetry coming from an intelligent, compassionate, and hungry heart.

On Saturday, November 12th at Atomic Tom’s (196 State St., Binghamton) from 7-10 pm, Dick will read and I will reminisce about publishing the book and creating the front cover as we celebrate its 25th anniversary.

The manuscript was written by Dick in the mid-80s after he won a National Endowment for the Arts (pretty big stuff!) for the poems that would become Dreams of Long Headdresses: Poems from a Thousand Hospitals. He and I became friends in early 1986 but sealed the friendship when he visited me in Paris and we side-tripped to Ireland. As we crossed the Irish Sea at night, he slid a poem across the all-night table to me titled, “A Man in Dublin.” We had been inseparable in Ireland. I had seen and heard the same as Dick in every landscape and every bar. We both kissed the Blarney Stone and read Walt Whitman’s and Dick’s poetry at the gravesite of William Butler Yeats. But when I read this poem about all the things we had seen and realized that he had made much greater connections with what was going on in the world in 1986, I was amazed! Such craft and intelligence that I knew this was someone to support.

When I returned from Paris, Dick asked me to do the cover for the White Man book. I happily accepted and did four different covers for the owner of East Coast Poetry Press to choose from. But the press folded before the book came out, so I decided to publish it and established Bottom Fish Press.

Back then and to this day, I find beauty in what others consider junk. If you’ve been to Atomic Tom’s, you’ve seen the tin on the walls and ceiling and the bar top made of carerra glass. I consider all of it “found” since I discovered the tin in garbage piles and basements and the glass I literally removed from a downtown building façade. But the found objects that are important for the book are what make up the cover. The buildings on the left as you cross the Court St. Bridge I’ve painted twice, in 1991 and recently. The money I made from the first job funded the book. By trade I’m a painter and renovator and have worked on many many buildings downtown in the last twenty-seven years. When you look at the art on the cover (forget the words for a second), you see an icon of a red-haired guy in sunglasses smiling out at you from a beach. The guy also happened to be my favorite house painting cut-in brush at the time with a metal shirt found on the street and a painted beach backdrop. You also see a bronze man (Bottle Man) cast from a found bottle in my farm house. The other character is a lighter with a stone turban found in Spain. The whole cover other than the painted backdrop is found objects, hence the name Bottom Fish Press.

Now about the White Man. After he won the NEA, he headed to California where he fell asleep on Venice Beach, awoke with a brutal sunburn, and in a delirium of three days wrote the amazing long eponymous poem that anchors the book. I was fortunate enough to hear Dick read countless times. He is a great reader, raconteur, poet-artist who I highly recommend.