Julie Ezelle-Patton
In 2011, I proposed to the Belladonna board that we publish a book of Julie Patton’s poetic off-the-cuff emails. They were gorgeous and fun (and they still are). Everyone at Belladonna was excited about the project. An intern, Jamila Wimberly, worked with Julie and me. We gathered a lot of emails, but our lives took different directions and that project was never completed. Recently, Lisa Rogal and I went through the emails and selected some of them to publish in Long News Poetry & Poetics. Most of these were written in 2011 and 2012, but the first one is an extract from an email Julie wrote Andrew Levy in 2002. Recently, Andrew explained the context: “The email excerpt from Julie was part of the correspondence we had at the time, and more specifically, it was her reply to my asking if she could say something that I could share with my students prior to attending her gig at the Jazz Gallery on October 3, 2002 with Andy Milne’s band – Julie was the vocalist, and she performed both her experimental explorations as discussed in her email and some traditional singing – and sometimes both simultaneously. It was a wonderful performance on everyone’s part, and my students LOVED it.” My thinking is that Julie’s explanation of her creative process for Andrew’s students reflects also on her improv poetics in her emails.
-Barbara Henning
TO: ANDREW LEVY
Sept 2002
I am only going to do 2 "songs" per set, dunno what the rest of the music may be like for the students—Andy Milne’s the pianist for Steve Coleman and together they explore crazy . . . whaaaaat . . . I dunno. But he is one musician keenly interested in the human voice, and uses an improv/free flow rapper name Kokai that a lot of avant garde musicians like…
My plan is to manipulate words, notes, sounds, blurbs from different texts on stage: books, stuff I wrote, scroll objects, and my favorite—the newspaper as current events—basically to see what the situation writes—"automatic writing" in air instead of on page, based on a "reading"of the moment as current event/divining rod. Right now, I am very interested and disturbed by what I am picking up in the multiverse. I am going to try an experiment. I just purchased a book that deals with metaphysics and sounds, tones and letters to dig deeper into this play with wordPower and try to cast a spell to reverse all the bullshit spelling we get from the press and talking heads. Tom Rayworth's experiment with channels and blurb. I first heard the term “stocastic resonance” in a Poetry Project workshop with Erica Hunt(er) of words and music.“Noise heightens the [radio] signal.” Inspired by poet, musicologist, vocalist Jeanne Lee whom—along with poet David Henderson—I consulted with and then hired, to help teach a poetry and jazz curriculum to District 5 Harlem grade-schoolers. An experience which helped me rethink Field Hollers, Shouts—human speech (as scat). And tracing that sonic scale of instruments harkening back to voice and vice-versa—to my own eye and ear. The wail prevails in both. Also Call and Response, and other kinds of doubling which goes conversational as "jass, "nonsense, sound as sense, and how sound is visualized (as "writing", typography, calligraphy, etc.) is often on me mind as I search out a way to understand my own sense abilities, inclination. Oftentimes, I end up settling on the letter EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE— my father exclaims as 1 solid note of frustration. Coming home I realize how arguments, the expert laughing theatre of my mother, my siblings, and my Dad's sense of vowels letting off steam, in forms my own crazy "sense" of hearing—how to free language.
TO: DAVINE LOVELY
April 12, 2012
Ahhhhhh
please dont give up on me yet
crazy as it all seems
will tell all when we DO finally get together!
I hope you are well (my computer is obviously unpunctual
it has punktuation instead)
jolly rotten
be us say geez
soon
see bees
jesus
CVS
healing aisle 6
sick Bowery
clown lights
by a nose
how the neighborhood rose
so it goes
ail fable saints
muse up
ick
went Hendrix
julie
TO: BRAD JONES
Subject: train been long gone! trains long as a gown (stretch truth & track him...her down)
April 15, 2012
dear Brad
ere bad
i haven't been in contact
of late. so sad
you'd think my he.art was
brrrr...
wintering
withering
broke or busted
in the snow of petals
Dogwood, lilac
conversation
about the windy life we
leaf
criss crossing Thompkinspark
wind
next time we leaf
blown about
air
muse
sucks @returning
calls: O, where,
where's our little dog
wood tree. On a
leash
a leap
a life of
keys!
open the door
more
friends
pen
mention (my name)
& see if I
sprang!
b-rrring... a rr-ring...
Someone's at the door. B-rrring...
"Answer it!"
"Brad home?
or is he away?"
Bring a b-ass whip'n
case
O the blues...O
whar, whar is
Jewels
for cryin out
LOUD!
She-I is
Is she? or
wind...a
way
un
til
TO: PATRICIA SPEARS JONES
June 1, 2012
Am I dreaming? Can this be true...a real frank, hands on hipster take no poets kinda blues about u know who... wha...? Da P-funk? As in Patricia spears Po Project pre-bama post rash take on rare glimpsed parceptions. I am washing dashes with this ring on...hope it fails down the drain and a fish swallows it, grants we a wish that you can get your hands on how things went down (or up). That would be Lorenzo in the candle flame. Lit to his star...lit to Lit he illuminated the ink and the page. Man u scrappy ivory tickler. Get on with book binding...The great Uniter & untier, heart book open and never ending. He played the book and the bookers (cure-ators as in Af Am thee-ater) like a well tuned piano, the black and white of it slightly off key...speech-ears blue note spheres. You got it Spear. now play it again. The project that desires another look and reassessment choses you. Congratulations. Help set the record straight. Speed up, go back in time. 33 is too slow and 88 crazy fast. Let it bleed.
J
TO: BARBARA HENNING
June 8, 2012
Dear Ms. Pen'ng,
Mailbox laid an egg today! Quack, quack... A golden 9 x 11——yell lo & behold——yolk (yoke?) 'tween you and eye, your solid pupil. Lots of messages in the air today. Out of all the vowels, currents that move our s's, z's and b's, it had to be an e envelope for mail. "Eeeeee!" was my father's expression for being fed up, exasperations vent. So here we go, letters be, Henning. I wasn't aware of it at the beginning of this letter but your last name suits the opening reference to po'try (ul and oe reading white of eye plots). All sow opening word of my first real po-um, in slightly poor taste, based as it was on confusion of tongues. When I glimpsed how lit I had t...read from my peeps—ye olde hometown turf (like I had gone around the corner for a loaf of bread and took 10 years coming back). Gone black or "back" is always a crossroad. Eeeee! Nappy politics or fried hair. Legend says "evil travels in straight lines". Contemporary creative writers must sense that...going with nature is curly q thinking, fraying thought edges, paper naps. Julie crack code & Barbara cares.
Thanks for hearing me out, B.
julie
TO: EDDIE DENGG
Subject: When can I have a word with you, O, re...
June 14, 2012
Dumbing down patterning in so
sigh utter
least
word use "bush-is'm lame scale pro (least) ticians O hi o, o, o... is
full O frk'n hood
whig par tie yoke around our face eddy. This is code...
For what I really
WASH! out
TO
SAY:
Ecopetics vs Scoundrel drills
will get flustered like
Heat vs Thunder! Tonight, today—write
NOW (or call me & I'll clarify
butter than this attempt at hiding my feelings about
What J. Skinner's calls the "deliberate praxis of . . .” we earthlings here on earth. I beelieve
if you put in even more swell cultivated word use the
Creature of habit (you know who) will get flustered, or intimidated trying to change it!
To something simple
minded!
as(s) All-us-stick'n to gather money or power don't bother to THINK! true
languages thru. You know what I mean?
Super eddying about...
the point
A.
(get my drift?)
3 clues
FOR Wish THIS is granted: the less "SCENIC" the better, or else we play into ?'s pocket
book for turd graders (sorry to be degrading, but . . . )
See What eye mean:
Research Center, and/or Outdoor laboratory (as in appendix to natch'l herstarry
museum).
And of utmost imp
TO: LAYNIE BROWN
June 21, 2012
Hey Girl! Best of luck for your new journey. I was lookn forward to getn the video recording of OUR performance. Couldn't wait (not to be a "ghost" of a p.poet any more, sans doc)...finally I tot. Well guess I'm going to have to wait a bit longer...hope not another lifetime. The machines ditched our likeness. Meanwhile I didn't survive the cutn & splicin, dicing & rolln eye sign (for hex sample) of my dismebodied voice. So I'm out there...in that formlessness.—February—black face eating month. No face to go with my voice. So who-who-o-o am I we...you? I'm going to ask my Mammy-how-i-love-she, how I love her to draw me in. Thank you for leaving the audience and taking a seat in my set along with Cecilia V who teaches so mommy of us how to be. CV says the ancients... more on that later. Gotta hit the road. Best to you.
J
TO: BARBARA HENNING, JAMILA WIMBERLY
August 6, 2012
Uh, a wittle slow, a little tow me down to sleep (after weeks of back to back company). It's been good but thy bodymindandsoul dross poettest too much. has been.
Anyway, the logistics of letting out and fixing up, writing and pawing project to project got me hungry for Sacred Space. Where I can do some deep body thinking for a CHANGE. And maybe the first true halt in 10 years. Imagine that! Warfare with the self.
So we are here and u and I are t/here @ the same time. @ is perfect instance. What goes in cycles. eh? eh.
Thus, what... to let you know (let as in tel (another l)) I don' wan' restrict myself to any date. 'specially since i am a moonman on womba time. when I vIt-tal natchore-ail away, away. I wan treefer to cut off my head of paper text she mail quon je suis fin'. Or rather the land is finished with me. securing it. And that very soon.
Well, the cicadas are deepening. fall obliqueness befilling cool nite air whimper, cars are slowing down, me black cat, favorite love is missing. I vital Pinkaboo the Loverly Most graceful generous giving treasure girl cat of all time. 5 days. Sad, but what can I do?
Anyway, me write-a like this riddem to get on your nerves! Jest kid-ink (crooked ink). Truth is the engine for finishing all paperwork for land protection is soon soon soon. And that, being a park is more natura timing than data-dates alone. Womb time. mother of texts, Spring to Fall. Best. Per haps.
Much Love. Belly full with gut sour dough bread (as in money) moved in with new tenant-maker, knower of all kind of systems for sustenance, foresting the building in connection with the land. the land the building, the build up of, out of. Land. Inseparable.
well, goodnite space weavers, text leave-ers. errs and airs. Hate to say it but the most memorable roading of the ghetto is reading black hair, pieces in the streets. WANT a WEAVE. Acrylic poof. Non sense. As in syllablastics (black/plastic) attachments, language of a body moongrating over to Taiwan over! Pam Grier? No! Hair is a filter. The birds want it. Apparently, parenthetically lying there in grass-tip, lines, magic marker felt bwack ughsistence to "cover up"...And bee respectaful. Wild or tame. As in lyin', unbearable manes.
The 3rd wrong of airs, put-on (necessity) to assimilate naps with escaped gardens, plants with everything from overseer to most faithful surrender. To blue sky. Lets remember where...
JULIE EZELLE-PATTON is the author of The Flower Poem (Tender Buttons Press, 2024), and J Walking thru the Alphabet , forthcoming from Nightboat Books. Ezelle-Patton’s work is currently on view in Denniston Hill’s "Exquisite Chimera," Koyo Kouoh’s "In Minor Keys,” 61st Biennale di Venezia, and has been featured in Chicago Review : Vol. 67, 2024, curator Ariana Faye Allensworth’s As Land Remembers: Denniston Hill at Marian Goodman Gallery , NYC; Other Influences: An Untold History of Feminist Avant-Garde Poetry; What I Say: Innovative Poetry by Black Writers in America, and elsewhere. They play the “Tapwriter” with other sound machines, performing solo or with fellow composer-instrumentalists such as Nasheet Waits, Janice Lowe, Andrew Levy, Drew Gardener, and others. Among her accolades are a Foundation for Contemporary Arts (Poetry) Award, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston CORE Fellowship, an Acker, and a Doan Brook Watershed Hero award.