The Concrete Poet
by Jim LaVilla-Havelin
I. this is the first trans
mission
of the con
crete
poet
report on exhibit
at co-op gallery
no press release
no postcard
no crackers
no brie
II. the alter
native
paper critic
who is sometimes
too smart for words
but still uses them
found her way there
wrote:
“_______ has found
an alphabet of disaster.”
III. somewhere between
the calligraphic epics of
Cy Twombly
the incised mud-silica
of Dubuffet
the Rosetta Stone
and J.G. Ballard’s CRASH
IV. was this my fifteen
minutes of fame?
hiding in the basement
while the police
streamed through
the sleek gallery
asking everyone
my name, my des
cription, my
whereabouts
V. the art critic for
the daily
who also reviews
restaurants, books,
and covers the auto
show
describes them as
“a grammar of
happenstance or
perhaps
mishappenstance”
VI. I don’t know when
I first began to
see them
as
messages
scraped by metal
onto barriers
stories in stone
VII. out with the truck
with the pneumatic lift
cones, flashers
the jackhammer and
the blow torch
it comes to me
we’re not in art school
any more
more dangerous
than pastels
VIII. it is the opposite
of graffiti
I remove
de-construct
re-contextualize
present an outlaw
aesthetic that
makes art-speak
go
tongue-tied
IX. I am so tired
of the language
meta
phor
I went to the wall
to escape
words
I hacked out these
sections of
barrier to
see silence
as much
as any
markings
deaths
or near scrapes
with it
may have left
I’m not telling stories
I’m hammering away at walls
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THE CONCRETE POET is the third volume of a five-book sequence. Though this section was written in 2010, the book is just now (2024) reaching its conclusion. This was the first section I wrote. It’s a favorite because it lays out some of the extent of what the long poem will include. A road map? A first shot of a voice? A catalogue of possibilities.
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JIM LAVILLA-HAVELIN is the author of eight books of poetry, including two forthcoming in 2025, Mesquites Teach Us to Bend (Lamar University Press, 2025) and A Thoreau Book (Alabrava Press, 2025). He is the co-editor of the Houston University Press, Unsung Masters volume on Rosemary Catacalos (2025) and as Literary Executor for Catacalos’ estate, he is assembling her unpublished work for a volume Sing!. An educator, editor, and community arts activist for over 50 years, LaVilla-Havelin coordinates National Poetry Month activities in San Antonio. Awarded the City of San Antonio’s Distinction in the Arts for Literary Art, he teaches at The Cyndi Taylor Krier Juvenile Correctional Treatment Center for Gemini Ink’s Partners Program, teaches senior citizens in the Go Arts Program through Bihl Haus Cultural Arts, and high school students as Poet in Residence at the Young Women’s Leadership Academy.