Wednesday, July 23, 2014

IVAN ALBRIGHT ~

Once upon a time, between train rides, we caught this show in Chicago. I wouldn't find the catalog to the show until many years later, on the bottom of a slush pile, a little damp worn, all intact. I'm having a little trouble shooting this short film since I'm holding the camera in one hand and moving the book around with the other. The river is spring gorged and rainy outdoors rushing by. The very first time I saw an Albright painting was again passing through a northern town, maybe Hanover, New Hampshire that time, and the paintings were up on display and they were thickly gaudy wonders of immense power. Daring. Meant to be neglected. Coming forth after a long time of neglect. Albright could have been someone Rembrandt would have talked to. Here's a bit of his world passing by the camera.

once in vermont films 2014 © bob arnold

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

FRANK O'HARA'S LUNCH ~

The great book. Now re-issued in its original format by its original publisher but for the first time in hardback with all its glory orange shining off the bookshelf. John Ashbery offers a short introduction which somehow could have done better. Beside the poems, still fresh as bananas, is the facsimile correspondence between publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Frank O' Hara at the back of the book, which includes O'Hara's polite request for Ferlinghetti to reconsider putting the gem poem "Personal Poem" back into the final manuscript. He did.

Frank O'Hara

Lunch Poems

City Lights 2014

Personal Poem

Now when I walk around at lunchtime
I have only two charms in my pocket
an old Roman coin Mike Kanemitsu gave me
and a bolt-head that broke off a packing case
when I was in Madrid the others never
brought me too much luck though they did
help keep me in New York against coercion
but now I’m happy for a time and interested

I walk through the luminous humidity
passing the House of Seagram with its wet
and its loungers and the construction to
the left that closed the sidewalk if
I ever get to be a construction worker
I’d like to have a silver hat please
and get to Moriarty’s where I wait for
LeRoi and hear who wants to be a mover and
shaker the last five years my batting average
is .016 that’s that, and LeRoi comes in
and tells me Miles Davis was clubbed 12
times last night outside BIRDLAND by a cop
a lady asks us for a nickel for a terrible
disease but we don’t give her one we
don’t like terrible diseases, then
we go eat some fish and some ale it’s
cool but crowded we don’t like Lionel Trilling
we decide, we like Don Allen we don’t like
Henry James so much we like Herman Melville
we don’t want to be in the poets’ walk in
San Francisco even we just want to be rich
and walk on girders in our silver hats
I wonder if one person out of the 8,000,000 is
thinking of me as I shake hands with LeRoi
and buy a strap for my wristwatch and go
back to work happy at the thought possibly so

1959

JOHN ASHBERY ~

edited by Rosanne Wasserman and Eugene Richie

Farrar, 2014

Monday, July 21, 2014

THE DAY JACK KEROUAC DIED ~

https://ia600304.us.archive.org/34/items/JeanShepherd1969/1969_10_28_Jack_Kerouac.mp3

Sunday, July 20, 2014

KYOTO ~

KYOTO
the forest within the gate
Heian-Kyo Media / White Pine Press
2013

Edith Shiffert, poems
John Einarsen, photographs

Saturday, July 19, 2014

LEE MORGAN ~

Here's Lee Morgan (1938-1972), already a veteran jazz trumpeter at age 21, joined on his eighth album with a stellar cast in this 1960 recording on the Vee-Jay label. Clifford Jordan on tenor sax, Wynton Kelly flowing on piano, Paul Chambers holding bass and the genius Art Blakey making drums. Morgan was shot to death by his common-law wife Helen More in 1972. The ambulance was reluctant to go into the neighborhood of New York's East Village where Morgan lay wounded and would bleed to death from one shot, in the jazz club called "Slug's Saloon."