Amber Tamblyn [Tamblyn - Free Stallion

free stallion

SIMON & SCHUSTER
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2005 by Amber Tamblyn

Foreword copyright 2005 by Jack Hirschman

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Book design by Einav Aviram

The text for this book is set in Rotis.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tamblyn, Amber.

Free stallion : poems / Amber Tamblyn.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-0259-1 (hardcover)

ISBN-10: 1-4169-0259-7

eISBN-10: 978-1-4424-0728-2

1. Young adult poetry, American. 1. Title.

PS3620.A66F74 2005

811.6dc22

2004029152

Dedicated to Jack Hirschman, deep in the you know what

My grandmother Sally, for her immortal beauty. My grandfather Alex, for his hardy Scottish heart and violin. My two other grandparents, Marian and Eddie, who I never knew physically, but still see almost every day. Tin Tin, Rudy, and all my Clann, Murrays and Tamblyns alike. My moo, Bonnie, who sits in Council daily with the young, and whose guitar and voice set the rhythm in my blood (the O.G.A.D.). My father, Russ, simply, for teaching love and perspective. Glenda; Uncle Larry; my sister, Chinawe are welded for life; Elton; Dylan Pickle; and Vivian Raquel, the queen of tigers.

Billy Williams, Raymond Travis, and San Franciscokeep my heart, youve earned it. My girls: Michaela, Brianne, Mandy, and Juliet. The Girardi family and JOA crew. Leslie Charleson, Stuart Damon, and the Qs. Beyond Baroque for their love and support. The Bernthals, Laurel Schmidt, Madeline Leavitt, Kenzo, Jamy, the Nolan/OBrien Clann, The Courtyard, Tommy, Sheila, and Chi. Martha Meredith Mastersjust for being born with that name (when will you give up your day job for that night one?); David Lust; and The Femme-Bots: Leanne, Joan of Hyler, and Courtney.

George Herms for rust-love, and Pixie, you are one smart apos!; Neil; Amber Jean; Pegi; and my Greendale family (Art Green walks among you); Michael McClure; Wanda Coleman; Lawrence Ferlinghetti; Diane Di Prima; Bruce Conner; Dean Stockwell; David Lynch; Dennis Hopper; and the king of ALL wolves, Wallace Herman. Alexandra Cooper, David Gale, and my family at Simon & Schuster for all the support. Brian Lipson and everyone at Endeavor. Bernie Pock, Ani DiFranco (Pick me!), Broccolesus crew, Krishnamurti, Woody Guthrie, Thelonious Monk, Barbara Hall, and the anamchara Paul Francis. To strawberries and all nouns starting with the letter S, everywhere.

I am happy to introduce the poetry of Amber Tamblyn to a wide audience. I hope readers will recognize that this is the work of no mere twenty-one-year-old, but of an exceptional young woman whose development as a poet must be both nurtured and anticipated.

In these works, one finds a voice grounded in life, everywhere struggling for liberty against the colonization of the mind and body, to a degree that is, at least, unusual and, at most, remarkable.

Remarkable in the sense that Tamblyn has already attained a distance from herself as an actress (and an accomplished one, at that), and is able to use her work in television and movieswith all the attendant image extensionsas content in a rebellious attack on all forms of commercialization that obstruct or violate the clear liberty that is for her the expression of her humanity in poetry.

So, these works are not from a hobby of crumbs left over from a loaf of fame and offered as a supplement to the big issue of Amber Tamblyn, superstar.

These poems are the real thing: the journey, the exploration, and the structuring of a woman in her growing pains and determination. Amber is among those who know that poetry is the most powerful human expression on Earth, and is dedicated to it like the sea is dedicated to the moon.

She has had around her from childhood an environment that has been open to, if not opened by, the arts. Her father, the noted actor and dancer Russ Tamblyn, is himself an excellent artist of collage. Her mother, Bonnie, is a woman of great range and depth as a singer of folk and popular songs, as well as a teacher in a local progressive school. The Tamblyn home has always been open to artists and poets of every stripe. Old friends like the artist-poet George Herms and the actor-artist Dean Stockwell, as well as renowned poet Michael McClure and myself, have been part of Ambers life since her birth. In addition, all of us are fraternally devoted to the memory of Wallace Berman, a verbo-visual artist who was killed in an automobile accident some years before Amber was bom, but whose name has always floated about the Tamblyn home and into her ears because, if anything, Wally was a maker of poets. Amber has been writing since she was a child, and when she was sixteen, I had a poem of hers, Kill Me So Muchwritten when she was twelve-published in San Franciscos Caf magazine. Even then she was showing signs of being a genuine creator. Later, she self-published a couple of chapbooks, circulating them among friends and schoolmates.

At the outset of 2004, she asked me to read with her at the Beyond Baroque cultural center in Venice, California. There, she astounded the crowd by reading her Pax Vobiscum poem, a tremendous homage to Woody Guthrie. Her feeling for Guthrie and for the proletarian story of America was exemplary, even astonishing for one so young. A couple of months afterward, that poem appeared in the Beat Bush issue of Long Shot magazine on the East Coast, edited by New York poet Eliot Katz. On the West Coast, her poem Free Stallion appeared in Csaba Polonys Left Curve magazine.

Those poems are part of this collection.

Other poems will reveal her liberating poetic spirit as well. Tamblyn writes from a core of forthrightness that is maturing with every poem. Shes not afraid to take risks with the language, and in some of the poemsIm thinking especially of the two parts of Numbers (perhaps because the theme is so close to her heart, i.e., the violation of the soul as well as the body of woman)she really swings out the hammer of poetry in an exclamatory rally cry for justice.

There have been poets of high quality in the past who have had relationships with image-making machines like movies: Antonin Artaud acted in many films and wrote while he was doing so. Pier Paolo Pasolini was a great film creator and never stopped writing poetry. And I have had the honor also of translating Katerina Gogou, a marvelous poet who had appeared in Greek cinema and who wrote some of the most contemporary and provocative poetry in the Greek language.