My self portrait, I’ve been painting off and on for almost 50 years, in three stages, a pop-art stage in the 60’s, then a burst in the early 80’s when I got remarried and had to pause to make a living for all of us, for Joan and the kids, Chandos and Cybele, then a more productive period after I retired in 98.
I started poetry at Berkeley in the fifties, but then went and became a un-degreed physicist working mainly in optics; at the end as a self employed consultant. During the Berkeley awaking in the late 40’s and fifties Jack Spicer, Robin Blaser, and Rocert Duncan were my mentors. Most of my work has been written in the last twenty years. I was the treasurer of the Gloucester Charles Olson society which we terminated in 2015, and am one of the Cape Ann Poets who gather every 2 weeks
I live in Essex Mass, next to the great marshes, used to sail a Nonsuch out of Manchester, and with my wife, Joan, a catboat on the Essex river.
I’m 88 in this photo of me taken June 2016, still writing and trying to get a new book, ‘The Nightcap Poems’ published.
I urge everyone to look at or get my new book, ‘Kartharsis, Sifting Through a Mormon Past’ which was published.at the end of last year and which is available on Amazon, and at my publisher Harvard.com/bookstore/Kartharsis. It is a long poem, with prose passages, describing my upbringing, in Utah and San Francisco, my rejection of Mormonism, and the history of one branch of my family coming from Denmark in 1850, joining the Mormons and hauling a handcart 1300 miles through the Rockies to Salt Lake City, and about the fate of people living in the arid and difficult west.
The Poem on the back cover I included to illustrate my sense of Kartharsis as a cleaning out of the defining old stuff within oneself.
After a child learns to see and walk,
it’s why? Why is the grass green,
the moon yellow then white,
what’s good, what’s bad?
You’re big, they’re small,
they believe, they invent
and they want you to tell them
how is Santa Claus, and every
thing you say sticks inside
where neurons form forever.
The true and the untrue alike,
the moral and the immoral they see
all the viruses of belief
get stuck inside,
and its hell to get them out.
Hi Kent,
Not sure if you remember me but we worked together at Itek in the mid-80’s, locked in a vault, with Stonehenge-sized gratings panels and a 4ft diameter integrating sphere that looked like Mickey Mouse. I stumbled across this website today doing a search on seaside artwork. I wasn’t sure it was yours until I saw the self-portrait.
Someone asked me recently about people that shaped my career and two people came to mind. My first manager at Schafer Corp (who was my mentor for my 25yr stint there) and you. I was a pretty green optical systems engineer, not 3 yrs out of school, when you showed me that it was ok to think independantly from the system, to have convictions to follow your ideas through, and to not let a bureaucracy get away with the simple path if it was the wrong path.
So I just want to say “thank you” and I’m glad to see that you are enjoying life.
All the best,
Bill
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Hey,
My name is also Kent Bowker I am 30 and live in Brisbane Australia. I have read your poetry for a while now initially because your name was exactly the same as mine but also because it was good and I actually do enjoy it. It must be the name or something that makes us creative. I make my own electronica tracks using my home setup which you can listen to at https://soundcloud.com/kent-bowker I apologize in advance if you were considering speaking some of your poetry and uploading it to Sound Cloud as I have taken your domain name. But then you got one better and have the domain kentbowker.org already. Damm.
I was considering creating an ambient track with one of your poems spoken over it or making a track with the same name as one of your poems and trying to convey how the poem made me felt via sound. It’s quite abstract but if I ever do get around to creating it I’ll send it to you first before anyone else to see if you like it or not.
Regards
Kent Bowker
Interesting!!, How do I get to hear your work? Facebook? Kent
Hello,
I just want to be clear first, I’m not trying to spam you. However, I wanted to ask if you’d be interested in reading my work, maybe writing a review, or even featuring it in some way if you think it’s any good? I would highly value any criticism or praise, any eyes to look at my work. I’ve got two books of poetry, one of which will be free until December 31st of this year. You can download it for the kindle (a free app to read on the Kindle or a computer just so you know) here: http://goo.gl/TyrwvL
An interested reader of yours,
Vincent Teetsov
I love these responses, but I’m still confused.