Vagabond's OUTSIDER OF THE MONTH is Jack Saunders. Nineteen years ago, Vagabond published Screed, Jack's first "real" book. He'd already been hard at it for ten years at that time. He had 10,000 unpublished manuscript pages stacked in his closet and one poem and one recipe in print. He began publishing his own stuff--pamphlets and chapbooks that he sent out to hardcore followers he called and still calls his Buzzard Cult. He sent some of these chapbooks to Vagabond, and that led to Screed.

That's how it should work. You write something good, you send it to publishers, they recognize that it's good, and they publish it. Of course that is not how it works. At first publishers stop publishing what is good in its own right out of deference to profit, and after awhile they couldn't recognize something good if it bit them in the ass.

Now, almost twenty years after Screed, Jack is still churning out the pages and the chaps. He's long since come out of the closet--the closet wasn't big enough to hold him. He's had to invest in storage space, one of those big metal sheds that you stick in your back yard. A few other very independent presses have published some Saunders, but the fact remains he has written a whopping 161 books which have been rejected numerous times by numerous New York, university and less glitzy publishers. What gives? Is Jack that bad?

Jack's neither that bad nor that good. Good and bad have nothing to do with it. He steamrolls right over good and bad. What he is is a phenomenon that intensifies as time goes on. His writing is unflinching, unyielding and unique. It is of one organic piece, and if you take the time to expose yourself to enough of it (which is the only way to fully appreciate Saunders), a world will come alive and grow inside you without your having much to say about it. One day you will just realize that it is there, and once it is there, it is permanently there. Think about that. Think, if you still can, about how the vast majority of what passes for art in today's micro-swift world is commercial hype that slices, lacerates your core and detracts from your dignity. Dignity! Hot damn! I don't use a word like "dignity" very often.

In the realm of the spirit and the written word, Saunders is an outsider's outsider. My suggestion is to send him ten or twenty dollars and ask him to stuff a mailer full of his "stack writing" and send it to you. Pamphlets, loose pages, a book or a poem. I can guarantee he'll send you your money's worth and then some. The thing with Saunders is, you can jump in anywhere along his thirty-year organic continuum and spread out from there in all directions like an ink blot on a tissue.

Jack Saunders
Garage Band Books
Box 1392
Tucker, GA 30085

Quoting Saunders will give a taste of what he is about in one of his many modes, but no quote can capture his scope, which amounts to a synthesis of his personal world and anything society has to offer-art, literature, music, politics, the work place, etc. With that in mind, a few quotes from recent pamphlets:

"I heard back from Laurel Speer about Potter's Ashes and Taint. She said they were a fine tribute to Potter and I wouldn't have been able to publish them (or write them) if I had had a conventional career, writing the kinds of things publishers publish. Which is the kinds of things they hope will be an Oprah Book Club selection.

Any more than Potter would have been Potter if he had sung lead for Bill Monroe. Instead of leading Old Truck. Old Dogs and New Tricks..."

"No publisher will make fun of Oprah Winfrey, no matter what he thinks, privately, of the kinds of books she selects. Fine. It's their company.

The problem is, no publisher will publish a book that makes fun of Oprah Winfrey, for fear that she will retaliate, against other books on the company's list. Books aimed at her muffin-faced viewers.

Our literature diminishes itself, by self-censorship. By the throttlehold the gatekeepers have on what gets through. Our gatekeepers, and their minions, caponize themselves..."

THE SUBTERRANEANS

Brenda and I went to see Potter and Suzette
in Niceville,, when they were living in a CBS apartment
that looked like Bob's Country Bunker in The Blues Brothers.
You could practically hose it out between families
of Mexican farm laborers. Orange bean-bag chairs.
A half gallon of wine under the bed with a corner in it
for emergencies. It was on the road down by the bay
that splits off from Highway 20, and goes in front of
the hardware store, the fish company, and Giuseppe's Warf.
I had no idea how to find it, but came out of the turn
I would come from and there Potter was, waiting to direct us
with hand signals. Semaphore. Extrasensory perception.
Thoughts have wings, say the Rosicrucians.

GROUND SAFETY HAZARD

When we stayed with Potter and Suzette
at the A-frame house on Choctawhatchee Bay
I ate so much take-out fried chicken
my burps tasted like gas off a septic tank.
Their toilet was backed up, or I had a bug.
A gall bladder. I also remember Potter cooking
wilted turnip greens, and he threw them, washed,
in a skillet full of hot bacon fat, and they went
to popping and spitting. This is the part I hate,
he said. Little pinhole burns, like sparks on a blanket.

STREWING POTTER'S ASHES

We went straight to the dock.
Eddie Parker, Stanley's son, drove the boat.
Gerald recited Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar."
We steamed out to the pass.
Donny opened a small white box
containing Potter's ashes, and dumped them
overboard. The women cried.
Coming back, two porpoises followed us,
and a bird flew by, scavenging.
I wrote a poem once, that said,

At Janice's the core group consisted of Janice,
Lowell, Balder, Jimmy Legette, Larry Miller,
Macon Richards. Joan on harp. Glen Tyson.,br> Owen came and went. Mike brought oysters.
So did Gerald. We brought a ham and bread.
Lowell made a seafood gumbo, and rice.
Austin brought collard greens. I think he might
have stewed some oysters. The pickers from Marianna
formed a separate jam session in the back.
Danny went out and got ice. Got up firewood
for a bonfire for the young-uns.
Balder sang Jimmy Rodgers' "T.B. Blues,"
and yodeled. He sang Potter's song about Crooked Island.
Some Leon Redbone. He sure sounded like the lead
guitar player/singer for Old Truck, recently deceased.

There's a taste. What I realized as I typed in these excerpts, is that from year's of exposure, the people he talks about are alive my head. I mean alive. They exist there not just as a conglomeration of things Saunders has said about them, but in totality. This is big testimony to Jack's--Jesus, I hate to use a word like "dignity" and a word like "genius" in the same context! But I think that's the case. The thing about Saunders, he is so matter-of-fact, so mundane even in his writing style, that this can easily cause an impatient, surface- skimmer to miss the subtle profundity of what he accomplishes. What he is accomplishing. What he has been doing for nearly 30 years is seamless and vast. I'm not sure how many people realize this...