‘The bard of Placitas’

Larry Goodell is 90 years old and poetry still fills up many hours of his day.

Goodell continues to write, read and self-publish his poetry.

As he does all that, he champions poetry in New Mexico.

“I like to call him ‘the bard of Placitas,’” John Roche, Goodell’s friend, neighbor and fellow poet, said.

A Roswell native, Goodell said he was initially attracted to poetry when he was studying literature and music at the University of Southern California. He started writing poetry there.

“It wasn’t any good. I was enamored with Dylan Thomas. That was a waste,” he said in a phone interview.

Because he was displeased with his musical compositions, he began writing poems about music.

After two years in the army, he came to Albuquerque and took a University of New Mexico course from Robert Creeley, an important American experimental poet, and heard him read in Old Town.

“That changed everything,” Goodell said.

Both men lived in Placitas, and Creeley often invited Goodell to his home when some of his friends who were nationally known poets came to New Mexico to visit.

Goodell said his own poetry was influenced by some of these visiting poets.

He also took Creeley’s advice to attend the 1963 Vancouver Poetry Festival. He was glad he did.

There he studied with such noted poets as Denise Levertov, Allen Ginsberg and Philip Whelan.

In the mid-1960s, Goodell started working at Albuquerque’s Living Batch bookstore off and on for about 15 years. He said it gave him the opportunity to set up and record poetry readings.

Goodell said he developed a style of reading aloud that he described as “performance poetry.”

From about 1969 to the mid-’70s he performed his work at the Thunderbird Bar in Placitas, which gained a reputation as a Mecca for local musicians.

“Some of my performance pieces I premiered there. I went through a period when I used backdrops, costumes, a floor lamp, a muscle shirt, masks,” he said.

“When I did a reading, I considered it a performance event. Even now when I read poems, I enunciate so that people might think of me as a performance poet … but not so much anymore,” Goodell said.

Generally in his readings, Goodell said he stresses the sounds and the rhythms of a poem’s words and phrases.

“They’re not dramatic readings,” he said. “I think of poems as a musical score. ... The written text is a guide to how to read the poem.”

Goodell has retained movements and gestures as elements of his reading style.

In the mid-1960s Goodell started duende press as a mimeographed magazine. Early issues featured poets Margaret Randall, Larry Eigner and Kenneth Irby among others.

Duende press published 14 magazines in all, each devoted to a single poet.

The press has continued to publish other magazines with multiple poets in them, including a poetry series called “Fervent Valley.”

Since its start, duende has published hundreds of broadsides.

“From 2015 on I started actively publishing books, at least one a year,” he said.

In 2024, duende press released “Dance Book: poetry and dance.” The issue contains Goodell’s poetry alongside photographs of local dancers he collaborated with in the 1980s. Those dancers included Lee Connor, Licia Perea and Lorn MacDougal, as well as the local dance group Danzantes.

The book also shows images of the flyers announcing some of the collaborative concerts.

Duende’s most recent publication is Goodell’s poetry collection “clouds: poems 2020-2025.” It is evidence of his still-vibrant wordplay.

Here are the opening lines of the poem “The Pain” from “clouds” that displays that vibrancy:

“Hold me in your heart

Hold me in the part of your heart that creates healing.

And let go as I serve just so much.

Humility has to do with pain as well.

There is just so much healing to go around

but I can share in that good part of your heart.”

Billy Brown, who organizes and hosts the monthly Albuquerque-based Fixed and Free poetry readings and publishes the quarterly Fixed and Free poetry journal, thinks Goodell’s readings of his poems have remained performance pieces.

“When Larry does a poetry performance, it’s really outrageous. Outrageous in an entertaining way,” said Brown.

“Larry has a lot of poetry that’s very playful, but also a lot of his poetry is sharply political,” Brown said. “He’s very enthusiastic and very emotive.”

Another aspect of Goodell’s life in poetry is that for a long time he has gathered photographs and videos of regional poets.

Much of that material that Goodell has collected — copies of duende press books, photographs and recordings of poetry readings — are now part of the Larry Goodell/Duende Archive at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

For 12 years Goodell was an organizer of the Duende Poetry Series at Anasazi Fields Winery (now Placitas Winery).

Goodell continues to host a 30-minute weekly program on the radio station kupr.org at 5 p.m. Tuesday. On the program, he reads his poetry and plays recordings of other poets reading.

Goodell’s poetry, prose and musical compositions — he is a longtime jazz pianist — can be found on YouTube, larrygoodell.com and duende.bandcamp.com.

Goodell’s wife Lenore’s paintings, photography, sculpture, objects and organic gardening have informed his poetry.

“Her influence on me is incalculable,” he said.