Eric Chaet

Eric's web page (where you can find his poetry, his music and his autobiographical book titled People I Met Hitchhiking on USA Highways): http://ericchaet.wordpress.com/

Norbert Blei's Poetry Dispatch (featuring Eric Chaet): http://poetrydispatch.wordpress.com/2007/10/24/eric-chaet-one-letter-and-four-poems/

 

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I MET ERIC CHAET briefly in the early 1970s through the Stanford University art-student grad program. Not through the program itself, but out at the three barn-like buildings on the edge of campus in the middle of some pasture land where the grad students (painters, sculptors and one in-on-the-ground-floor computer art student) worked. And played. It was a sweet, crazy scene, an anomaly for a place like Stanford, which also gave us another anomaly--Penny Lane, where Ken Kesey and the early Merry Pranksters lived and dropped acid. I was there because my wife at the time was one of the grad students. Eric's sister was the lone computer-art student. And Eric was passing through.

All I remember about Eric from that chance meeting is that he wrote poems. Beyond that, there was a lingering, amorphous impression.

Here's Eric's memory of that encounter:

"I remember our meeting at Stanford. I was hitchhiking here & there, in full emergency alert, briefly sleeping on the floor of Vicky's (his sister) little studio, in which she, too, was sleeping on the floor. Neither of us had much to eat, & I certainly couldn't stay long. You & a friend were playing some sort of game, I mean literally, into which you invited Vicky & me. It involved some sort of question & answer, & winking. I couldn't wink, tho, having suffered some sort of minor nerve damage to my face. I didn't mention that, I just couldn't play... You were an impressive fellow, lots of hair & self-confidence. And, then, I was back on the road, going I knew not where---but not having to earn rent, so, able to keep working in my little pocket notebooks..."


Over thirty years passed before I ran into Eric again, this time through one of Norbert Blei's email-list projects, Notes from the Underground. Eric was commenting on some issue, and what caught my attention wasn't the issue (I've forgotten what it was) but the tenor of the response. It was the same tenor that lingered in my mind from that first brief encounter at Stanford, and if I had to make a stab at defining its core characteristic, I'd say integrity, in the most incorruptible sense of the word; integrity and a deep sense of self. Then I ran into some of Eric's poems in Blei's Poetry Dispatch #101, and I sent him an email.


Eric Chaet is a poet. And a philosopher. And a teacher. And a musician/song writer. And a technical consultant. A veritable Renaissance man anchored deep in a moral conviction that informs all the activities of his life. A rare bird.

And so I thought, let's make Eric Chaet the featured poet on the Hcolom Press website. Except he's so much more. So we're making him the Featured Human Being--one of the flexibility benefits that comes from being impoverished and running your own show...

John Bennett

Two Poems

by

Eric Chaet

A MAN SWERVES HIS CAR

A man swerves his car as tho to hit me where I stand on road shoulder torn between thumbing a ride east from Kansas City & watching a crew lay bricks on a new-built wood skeleton.

At the last moment, he turns aside.

He wants me more aware of death & of himself & myself if I’m going to stand in midst of world that’s driving him back & forth along highways.

A TALE FROM OLD BUZZARD’S YOUTH

Buzzard hears of a tribe that worships him, skims hillside & forest, & soars high in slow circle of observation & contemplation.

Below him, villagers flying kite in his image, burning incense, laying out sacrificial meat.

Touched by the meat, he dips a wing & drops straight down.

But villagers shoot arrows & yell, No! No! Holy meat for holy buzzard!

Buzzard rises up, dives, catches & crushes kite-buzzard in claws, shits on several archers & a priestess, scoops up meat, & eats with clenched brows in limbs of huge cactus, deep in Southwest.

Makes him so sick, he pukes 2 days.

Said the old buzzard Old Buzzard used to call Old Buzzard: The art of forgetting is the radius of circle-soaring, slow, slow, in blue geometry of sky & bird.

 

Brief Biography/Bibliography
(in Eric's own words...)

Born 1945, Chicago,U.S.A. Baseball, race riots, library books. Factory, warehouse, office jobs. Demonstrations against racial discrimination—in Mississippi, Missouri, & Chicago; & against continuing U.S. participation in the war in Indochina. Then teaching, then odd, odder, & not odd enough jobs across the U.S.A.

1974, Old Buzzard of No-Man’s Land, book of poems, Coach House Press, Toronto, Canada.

1977, Solid and Sound, vinyl LP album of songs, Tick Crick Records, Lee’s Summit, Missouri, U.S.A.

1984 to 1994, silkscreened posters on rectangular scraps of cloth, & hitchhiked back & forth across the U.S.A., stapling 1500 to utility posts. Others posted some in public places in South America, Europe, Asia, & Australia. The “signs” featured same face as on album cover, plus sayings, such as, “You’re like me in this respect, what you do has its effect,” “Seek truth, develop capacities,” “Help one another succeed,” & “Anxious to serve.”

Unable to earn, privately & intensely studied technologies & underlying sciences, accounting, & business methods—&, during the 90’s, found solo consulting assignments, doing technical research regarding, on one hand, obsolete industrial equipment involved in accidents, &, on the other, technical, commercial, & political aspects of Space exploration: rockets, space ports, satellites, sensors, transmitters, life-support systems, space stations, lunar bases, helium-3, etc.

1990, How To Change the World Forever For Better, brief book of philosophy, self-published, second edition, 1994.

This past decade, I’ve tried to grasp human history, near, far, long ago, recent. I try to integrate that with what I go out of my way to learn about present-day economics, commerce, & politics—& my own situation.

I studied literature, religion, psychology, sociology, & the arts, mainly, when I was younger, & now ingest them about as I do air, water, & food—taking care with quality & quantities.

2001, People I Met Hitchhiking On USA Highways published--fiction/philosophy, Turnaround Artist Productions, De Pere, Wisconsin, U.S.A.

After teaching writing, philosophy, and mathematics; and while writing books of fiction and philosophy—from curiosity and in order to thrive, for many years, I studied physical and life sciences, economics and history, marketing and finance. I don't claim to be an expert—but I can understand and help experts. My brain and hands are my main equipment.

More Writing

WE GET USED TO - Eric Chaet

We get used to the strangest things. We get used to birth & death & the world. We get used to breathing in & out. We get used to drinking, eating, & elimination. To falling asleep, dreams, & waking up. We get used to birds, trees, grass, sky-scrapers. We get used to a small group of distant people making decisions we don’t like that affect us. We get used to passing among strangers. We get used to schools & hospitals. We get used to solids, liquids, gases, glass windows, to flies, mosquitoes, sneezing, coughing. We get used to female & male, young & old. We get used to milk, coffee, cheese, gasoline, bread. We get used to prevailing prices & wages. We get used to the lack of love & the varieties of the antitheses of love— or we get used to love, & it evaporates! We get used to the stories we’re told about long-ago founders of religions & nations. We get used to the narrow range of controversy among those who seize power seriously defined for us by commentators & historians tho those who seize power are generally normally or abnormally crazy & their leadership leads to or maintains great suffering. We get used to the celebration of celebrities & to the anonymity of those ruled by Roman, Chinese, & British emperors & kings & by the ruling classes of empires & financial & military elites. We get used to Roman-style buildings in Washington D.C., to talk of democracy, justice, brotherhood, God. We get used to languages & to eating other beings. We get used to the sun & stars & clouds & the blue sky. We get used to gravity & momentum. We get used to living in construction zones, to the constant competition for wealth, security, status. We get used to handles & valves, hinges & doors, wheels & axles, to all of Edison’s inventions, to internal combustion engines, mass-produced appliances. We get used to the victims of oppression & folly. We get used to the products we buy again & again that are processed from plants & minerals from everywhere, we get used to the benefits of millions laboring for us. We get used to airplanes roaring by overhead, & roads & highways full of cars & trucks, & to walking & driving. We get used to using credit cards & receiving & paying bills. We get used to taxes & lack of control over how they’re spent. We get used to our chronic ailments & resentments. We get used to what we have been told & what we have decided. We get used to not knowing what’s really happening & indecision. We get used to the results of contested elections, to feudalism, capitalism, war, constant preparation for war. We get used to failure & consolations. We get used to becoming part of what we were trying to overcome, in order not to be starved to death by those who were used to being part of what we were trying to overcome.

Maybe we notice before we die, & manage to get free—usually not: but even if we get free, it’s in the midst of those who are used to neither being free, nor imagining not being used to defeat, who are used to rationalization of situations into which they’ve been filed by default.

ENEMIES - Eric Chaet

So, you’ve organized again to break down & possess what’s greater than you, recruiting support by blaming others doing the same thing– blowing up anyone who won’t be governed by you, harassing travelers & anyone else unwilling to serve as your soldiers, mocking conscientious students of anything other than serving your pleasure, destroying the most useful people by praising those posing as useful people, assuring them that The Invisible Hand loves their efficient selfishness, treating kind, generous development & contribution of originality as naive immaturity– you’re just the ones to teach kind generosity to put on its costume & make-up & solicit–under streetlamps, along curbs–sex dates-for-pay with dissolute heirs of conquest, fraud, conspiracy, & intimidation, whose only so-called work is baiting traps at the ends of mazes.

It’s the Cultural Revolution, McCarthyism, burning of witches, khans, vikings, Jim Crow, pogroms, nazis, caesars, black list, shunning, black shirts, brown shirts, snobbery, Inquisition, lynching, morals police, Khmer Rouge, Taliban, slavery, powdered wigs, bullying gangs, yet another attempt at totalitarianism disguised as defense of liberty– & everyone who has been trying to relieve human suffering is forced to use up their courage just facing the morning, while all the cameras & microphones are aimed at your laughing & celebrating puppets–of you who imagine your final triumph is assured & near– instructing the deluded how to destroy their would-be benefactors, & trade the time, attention, & effort of their lives for safe little cubes, toys, & a lullaby.

But what’s greater than you is greater than you, & truth is as real as birth, age, & death– if your schemes require keeping truth hidden, sleep with one eye open– & without rest, the beats of your heart are compressed & carefully rationed– & your only allies are as dishonest & greedy as yourself– & I, born & raised in, & undefeated by just such a struggle–not unique in this way– am perfectly aware, tho you pose as my protector, that I’ve only survived so far because I have nothing you want, & because you believe it’s good economy to eliminate others you fear more first.

THE TIME BEFORE THE COMING TIME - Eric Chaet

The generation rebelled, was punished, & fell back, abashed, to made the best of what remained– its hopes & compensations out of reach, ashamed of its failure.

But it hadn’t failed– only its success took longer than expected, & would be part of something neither rebels nor those who punished them could imagine.

And those who either slyly, or because oblivious to all but advantage, never rebelled, but only did what was required to impress those most liable to reward them, ruled–ashamed, too–again, unless deluded– over a time in which every failure & every success required cagey representation–never was what it was meant to be– was always part of something none dared yet conceive even the price, let alone how lives would be arranged once its tentative alien sprouts projected leaves, flowers, fruits.

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Contact:

e-mail: echaet@gbonline.com

phone: 1-920-532-4798

snail mail: Eric Chaet
1803 County Road ZZ
De Pere, Wisconsin 54115-9629