“That get-up is perfect for you. You’re the gangster poet, after all.”
- Harold Norse to Eddie Woods (Amsterdam, 1984)

“But I am the gangster poet of this age. And I have enough fucking ammunition to wipe out as much opposition as will ever come up against me. And every fucking bullet will hit the mark, because I am a good shot.- Eddie Woods (in the telephone prose-poem “Bloody Mary”)

From time to time I send out informative literary/cultural mailings, some of which later get posted below. If you are not already on my mailing list but would like to be, send a note via the Contact page requesting that you be added. Include your full name and email address (always hidden on all mailings). Also what country you’re in. The Contact page is here

Further, if you’d like to comment on anything you see or read on this website, you can do that too via the Contact page

Hello Book Lovers!

As many of you know, Tsunami of Love: A Poems Cycle appeared in print in September 2005. While two years later, I released a CD version, with me reciting the entire cycle. Now Barncott Press in London has published the book in an Amazon Kindle edition, complete with a newly expanded introduction.

Hey…

Anyone who manages to survive as long and wonderfully as George Whitman did, surely deserves more than a mere RIP when they pass on.

George, the iconic proprietor of Paris’ legendary Shakespeare & Co. bookshop, died on December 14th 2011, just two days after celebrating his 98th birthday!

Here’s the Guardian’s obituary

And for those of you who have not yet read it, here is the story I wrote about my experiences with George, as published in the online magazine Parisiana:
A Place to Change Trains

Along with my condolences to his lovely daughter Sylvia, and his very many close friends, there’s nothing else to say other than:
Bon voyage, mon ami.
When the good Lord made thee,
he certainly did break the proverbial mold!

Salute!

EDDIE

Shakespeare & Co. website

Hello again, dear people.

I do not usually send out back-to-back mailings. But I did say in my previous mail that this announcement would be coming soon.

And so…

The Faerie Princess & Other Poems
has just been released on audio cassette by Sloow Tapes in Belgium!

Hello All,

As many of you know (hell, some of you are in there!), the Eddie Woods Archive was acquired by Stanford University in the summer of 2003. With another important file added in 2007. Now, at long last, practically the entire collection (except for Special Books & Magazines, which will be ready soon) has been processed and digitally cataloged. You can get to the electronic Finding Guide, as well as the Catalog Record, via the introduction page

Or, if you prefer, go directly to the Finding Guide

Bop around in there under the Table of Contents (right-hand side of the page). And then do name searches, if you like. By selecting Find under Edit on your web browser and typing in what you are looking for.

Hi y’all,

I was initially intending to do this as an email signature only. But then, looking through my mailing list (which is several hundred strong), I realized that many people on it are either themselves filmmakers (though not necessarily animators) or have contacts in the film world. So hey (thought I), why pussyfoot around? Just go for it and send out a mailing. The old tried and true Babe Ruth theory.*

And this is what I have to say:

Wanted: Animators (and producers/directors) for The Faerie Princess
I would like to see The Faerie Princess (my erotic fairly tale in verse) done as an animated film. Using the complete text of the poem, exactly as written (there are 63 quatrains, all of them rhymed). The animated visuals could either be sexually explicit (as per some of the action/activities described in the poem), or softer but nonetheless romantically sensual. The difference between what I believe in Japanese anime is called hentai and ecchi.

Friends,

There’s not much I can tell you about it. Mel fell ill a some weeks ago and was taken into hospital. The doctors seemed to think it was severe anemia but didn’t know for sure. All the tests were inconclusive. He was apparently unable to make his own blood, so they kept giving him transfusions. Eventually his body stopped accepting the transfusions. There was nothing more they could do. He was discharged and transferred to a hospice. He passed away peacefully at 2:30 a.m. (San Francisco time) on Monday, September 26th. Mel Clay was 79 years old.

Hello All,

I never thought I’d find myself making a point of saying something positive about drug companies. Given that in far too many respects the pharmaceutical industry must certainly rank in the upper echelon of criminal organizations. (I’ve read enough learnéd articles, watched enough in-depth documentaries, spoken with enough ‘insiders’ to know that I’m on fairly solid ground in making this assertion.) Which doesn’t mean these dudes don’t frequently shower us with any number of exceptionally beneficial products. Far from it. Not only do I regularly gulp my fair share of Ibuprofen (you know, like when I’m feeling a trifle tired and still have work to do or places to go); but as someone who managed to get the clap all of eight times, rest assured that I heartily applaud (hah!) the happy existence of antibiotics. And did all the more so after reading how gonorrhea was treated before penicillin came along. (For an especially harrowing description, see Vance Bourjaily’s novel Confessions of a Spent Youth.) So yes, there are plenty of top-notch drugs around, including legal ones -:) Notwithstanding past horrors like Thalidomide, and despite a shameful plethora of harmful to outright deadly drug-industry malpractices that are still rampant today. From making sure the world stays awash with unneeded (and yet highly profitable!) medications to freely using the peoples of so-called third-world countries as guinea pigs for their potential poisons. In between which the list goes on and on, ad infinitum and ad nauseam.

So what then in God’s name could I possibly have good to say about the buggers?!

Dear Friends,

IRA COHEN, who sadly passed away earlier this year, did many wondrous things in his life. (I am borrowing the word ‘wondrous’ from William Levy; he used it with reference to Ira’s works in an essay entitled “The Art of Hate,” which appeared in his book Natural Jewboy, Ins & Outs Press, 1981.) But one of the things Ira definitely did not do was write The Hashish Cookbook. Hence, contrary to popular but terribly misinformed belief, Ira was also not the pseudonymous author Panama Rose. That was instead Ira’s then-girlfriend Rosalind. We’re talking Tangier, Morocco, mid-1960s. Rosalind invented the recipes, Rosalind wrote and designed the book. At Brion Gysin’s suggestion. Meaning that it wasn’t even Ira’s idea. What Ira did do, in New York 1966, was publish the book under his Gnaoua Press imprint and sell it. 10, 000 copies in six weeks. Oh yes, and then over the years usurp authorship credit, by allowing everyone who wasn’t there at the time (and thus knew better) to believe that he was Panama Rose. This ruse, this historical lie, became such a cornerstone of Ira’s personal mythology that practically all the obituaries led with it: in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Independent, as well as a touch more coyly in the Guardian.

Sacha de Boer is now a guest contributor on the Eddie Woods website. You will find her pages, as well as those of other contributors, here

All contributors to this site have an ‘organic connection’ with yours truly and appear by invitation only. Should I ever decide to do a one-off online issue of Ins & Outs magazine, you’ll hear about it. Until then (a less than 50-50 chance at best), please do not send me manuscripts or artwork for publication. Thanks and all best, TFE -:)

Dear Friends,

I simply cannot resist sending this out. That’s how truly chuffed I am (as the English like to say).

bart plantenga, author of the fantabulously wild-cum-surrealistically inebriated novel Beer Mystic, is progressively penning a profile of each and every one of the 40-odd people/websites/magazines/blogs that are hosting chapters of his book. And now it’s my turn. bart’s piece on me is entitled “Eddie Don’t Do Beer.” And the lad is right. Except for the very occasional witbier or Weißbier (with a slice of lemon added!) on a hot summer’s afternoon, I am nowadays pretty much a gentleman wino.