Karl Gluck/Altan Ogniedov (1964 - 2016)

Albany Art Gallery, 2/26/93

That great open mic poetry reading in the sky is getting mighty crowded. I was saddened to hear of the death of Karl D. Gluck, who also wrote as Altan Ogniedov. Karl was an active member of the Albany, NY poetry scene in the very earliest days of the late 1980s, when he was a student a the University at Albany studying Russian language & literature. I used to greet him with the faux Russian I had learned from the Marx Brothers, “Pissanya.”

He was one of the editors of Open Mic: The Albany Anthology (Hudson Valley Writers Guild, 1994) which included 2 of his poems, “So What We All Wear Black” & “Untitled: for Kevin Factor & Mary Ann Murray.” I have a fat file of many poems & correspondence dating from 1988, including a poem he read at the QE2 in Albany (10/22/88) then crumpled up & threw it on the floor. I retrieved it, & others that he gave the same treatment to at other open mics. At a Halloween open mic at the QE2 in 1989 he stripped to his long underwear & a Mayakovsky tee shirt, then to just his underpants, to read a poem about being an exhibitionist; the picture of him in his long underwear was the one used in Open Mic & also appears on my Flickr! site.

Later on he gave me copies of his poems, including an early typed version of Phantasmagoria, with “Altan Ogniedov” as the author. A later version was photocopied, dated 1990, with author(s) as Karl D. Gluck “with Altan Ogniedov.” Eventually this was published as a more conventional poetry chapbook in 1993, by R.E.M. Press with the author as Altan Ogniedgov. In the earliest typed version there was an author’s bio stating Ogniedov was born in Russia in 1964. In the 1993 book version there is this note:

Altan Ogniedov is the alter ego of Karl D. Gluck.
Alton Ogniedov was born after Mr. Gluck’s disastrous love affair and subsequent failed engagement to a certain woman who resides in Moscow. It was this experience that brought about the poems in Phantasmagoria.
Mr. Ogniedov occasionally makes his presence known in Mr. Gluck’s life, forcing him to break into tears at work (as a translator for Russian immigrants and social workers) and other inopportune moments, as well as occasionally writing a poem in Russian for Mr. Gluck who, by the way, has entirely recovered from the “Moscow Incident.”

Albany Art Gallery, 12/7/89

He was the featured reader at the Albany Art Gallery series on Jefferson St., run by Don Levy, in December 1989 & he included in the reading 2 poems in Russian, with English translations, that he gave as hand-outs. His poems were melancholy, angst-ridden (he was in his mid-20s after all), but spiced with sardonic humor & often with references to Russian literature.

In 1991 he self-published a small chapbook of 8 poems, Brooklyn: Brutal Poems from Exile by Altan Ogniedov. Around 1990, after finishing at UAlbany he moved to Brooklyn, but was a frequent visitor to Albany & the poetry readings here. We exchanged a number of letters at that time as he struggled to make his mark on the New York scene. We met & went to a couple readings in the City on my visits there for my job. The most recent poems I have from him are from 2002, after he had married. He & his wife Lan had a daughter, Vivian, then divorced.  In October 2002 he returned to Albany for “7-Year Itch,” a reunion reading at Valentines (the QE2 gone by then) with many of his old friends.

It only seems just that I should end this brief tribute with a poem by Karl (or Altan as he would have it). This is the introductory poem from Phantasmagoria.

Statement of Purpose

I am a poet.

I write.

Poems.

I know nothing

of computers —

never take the easy

way out.

I am a poet.

I write.

Poems.

By hand.

In Gothic Blackletter.

On stone.

By candlelight.

Blindfolded.

I am a fraud.

I scribble in margins

of library books.

In pen.

I avoid bill collectors

and keep my good name

with close collegues

who always have something

“new” to say.

Voice activated IBM’s.

Late at night,

after a hard day

of selling matchsticks

or pencils

from a cup

on street corners

in the rain

I write.

Poems.

By hand.

In Gothic Blackletter.

On stone.

By candlelight.

Blindfolded.

And I have

this stolen slogan:

Quality, not quantity.

We chisel a name

for ourselves

the old-fashioned way:

one crack

at a time.

Hey Karl, Pissanya!