Duane Locke
duane locke
Tampa, FL.


 

     [BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Duane Locke, Doctor of Philosophy in English Renaissance literature, Professor Emeritus of the Humanities, was Poet in Residence at the University of Tampa for over 20 years. Has had over 2,000 of his own poems published in over 500 print magazines such as American Poetry Review, Nation, Literary Quarterly, Black Moon, and Bitter Oleander. Is author of 14 print books of poems, the latest is WATCHING WISTERIA ( to order write Vida Publishing, P.O. Box 12665, Lake, Park, FL. 33405-0665, or Amazon or Barnes and Noble). Since September 1999, he became a cyber poet and started submitting on-line, and since September 1999 he has added to his over 2,000 print acceptances with 1,195 acceptances by e zines.
     He is also a painter. Now has exhibitions at Thomas Center Galleries (Gainesville, FL) and Tyson Trading Company (Micanopy, FL) Recently a one-man show at Pyramid Galleries (Tampa, FL)
     Also, a photographer, has had 116 of his photos selected for appearance on e zines. He photographs trash in alleys. Moves in close to find beauty in what people have thrown away.
     He now lives alone in a two-story decaying house in the sunny Tampa slums. He lives isolated and estranged as an alien, not understanding the customs, the costumes, the language (some form of postmodern English) of his neighbors. The egregious ugliness of his neighborhood has recently been mitigated by the esthetic efforts of the police force who put bright orange and yellow posters on the posts to advertise the location is a shopping mall for drugs. His alley is the dumping ground for stolen cars. One advantage Of living in this neighborhood, if your car is stolen, you can step out in the back and pick it up. Also, the burglars are afraid to come in on account of the muggers.
     His recreational activities are drinking wine, listening to old operas, and reading postmodern philosophy.]


• What do you do for a living?
Nothing.

I always hated using my intelligence to make a profit for the stupid who have the power. My highest income is from my paintings, usually bought at high prices by college professors. Photography brings in some money, but not much. People have not become educated or sensitive enough to see the supreme beauty in the trash that I find in alleys and photograph. Poetry brings in very little money, except when I publish in American Poetry Review, or other honored and respected inferior publications.

• Who are your favorite artists?

My favorite current poets are Steve Barfield, Alan Britt, Paul Roth, Jeff Royce and Scott Toler. From the near and far past: Andrew Marvell, William Blake, Federico Garcia Lorca, Karl Krolow, Yannos Ritsos, and the Surrealists. As for painters, Alessandro Magnasco, Jacopo Bassano, and Jan Vermeer.
• What influences you to write about/how you do?
I write for the same reason as did Artaud, to get out of hell. The human race has turned this beautiful and exciting earth into an ugly and dull hell. I write as I do because I love words, words so often hated by the popular mind.
• Where do you see the underground writing scene in 25 years?
Since today the underground is really the ordinary and commonplace, I look for a change. Poets can only stand so much quotidian writing. I see in the future, the birth of intense and complex poets who will disdain the tepidity so prevalent in current poetry and struggle to create more enriched and intense verbal expressions. This poets will be sensitive to the radical singularity of the concrete particular and eschew universals and absolutes. These new poets will recognize that the "language men really speak" is a language of empty signifiers and a false signified, and will invent a linguistic reality That is engendered from the radical singularity of the concrete particular.
• from cait - re-enact your wildest fantasy that you haven’t carried out yet - and tell us about one that you have carried out that you didn’t want anyone to know about – til now.-------be Xplicit
What a strange question. I have no concern for fantasies. I want realities. I am aware that an overwhelming majority of mankind live by fantasies and speak a language that refers to fantasies. I want to do something almost impossible, experience the real.. People's conceptualizing mind destroy the real.

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