MURIEL SPARK ~

Muriel Spark 

The Informed Air
New Directions
2014

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/what-muriel-spark-saw

Novels:

The Comforters (1957) Robinson (1958) Memento Mori (1959) The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960) The Bachelors (1960) The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) The Girls of Slender Means (1963) The Mandelbaum Gate (1965) The Public Image (1968) The Driver’s Seat (1970) Not to Disturb (1971) The Hothouse by the East River (1973) The Abbess of Crewe (1974) The Takeover (1976) Territorial Rights (1979) Loitering with Intent (1981) The Only Problem (1984) A Far Cry from Kensington (1988) Symposium (1990) Reality and Dreams (1996) Aiding and Abetting (2000) The Finishing School (2004)   Critical Biographies: John Masefield (1953) “Child of Light”: A Reassessment of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1951) completely revised as “Mary Shelley” (1987)   Biography: Editor: Selected poems of Emily Brontë (1952) The Brontë Letters (1954)    Joint Editor: Tribute to Wordsworth (1950) Emily Brontë: Her Life and Work (1953) My Best Mary: Selected Letters of Mary Shelley (1953) Letters of John Henry Newman (1957)   Radio Plays: The Dry River Bed The Interview The Party through the Wall The Danger Zone   Play: Doctors of Philosophy (1963) (staged 1962)   Poetry: The Fanfarlo and Other Verse (1952) Collected Poems I (1967) Going Up to Sotheby’s and other Poems (1982) All the Poems of Muriel Spark (2004)   Short Stories: The Go-Away Bird (1958) Voices at Play (1961) Collected Stories I (1967) Bang-Bang You’re Dead and Other Stories (1982) The Stories of Muriel Spark (1987) The Collected Stories (1994) Open to the Public: New and Collected Stories (1997) All the Stories of Muriel Spark (2001) The Complete Short Stories (2001) The Ghost Stories of Muriel Spark (2003)   For Children: The Very Fine Clock (1969) The French Window and The Small Telephone (1993)   Omnibus editions: Omnibus I (1993) Omnibus II (1994) Omnibus III (1996) Omnibus IV (1997)   Autobiography: Curriculum Vitae (1992)   The following novels were filmed: “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” (1969), which was a Command Performance and for which Maggie Smith won an Oscar. “The Driver’s Seat” (1974), starring Liz Taylor, Mona Washbourne and Andy Warhol “The Abbess of Crewe” (1977) as “Nasty Habits”, starring Glenda Jackson and Melina Mercouri   The following novels have been adapted for TV: The Girls of Slender Means (1975) The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1978) Memento Mori (1992) And the Stories: The Black Madonna and You Should Have Seen the Mess (BBC2)   The following novels have been adapted for the stage: Memento Mori (1964) The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1966) The Girls of Slender Means (2009)   The following novels have been adapted for the radio: The Ballad of Peckham Rye (winner of the Italia Prize for Dramatic radio 1962) The Girls of Slender Means (1964) The Comforters (1957) Memento Mori (1964)

Srečko Kosovel ~

 Srečko Kosovel

( 1904-1926, Slovenia )

AUGUST

I love the quiet August rain

that cools the forests and fields,

the gray sky, the fresh wind

that comes to the heart's quiet.

Quietly it comes to the carefree heart,

which is quietly open to sadness.

No longer crushed or glum,

grief giving way to joy.

Now all is fulfilled, the gray

clouds fragrant and melancholy.

In the rain and in the field

the dark wet poplars rocking.

MY POEM

My poem's an explosion,

savage rending. Dissonance.

My poem won't reach you,

who by God's will and providence

are dead aesthetes, museum moths.

My poem is my face.

A SMALL COAT

I would like to walk around

in a small coat of

words.

But hidden underneath should be

a warm, bright world.

What is wealth?

What is luxury?

For me it is this:

a small coat I have,

and this coat is like

no other.

I WENT FOR A RIDE

I went for a ride in a golden boat

across the red waters of evening

through the trees

and along the grassy shore.

I was rowing,

I, the golden boatman . . .

But a storm blew in

and the sun fell

from its height,

so that everything less golden

shone forth

more clearly, more alive,

newly born —

I stepped ashore.

Red clouds tore

from my heart.

I saw them,

and I followed them

across the world.

STREET LAMP

Why be human if being human

is so difficult? Become the lamp

by the roadside that quietly sheds

its light on man.

Be as it is, for as it is

he will always have a human face.

Be good to him, this man,

and impartial like a lamp

that quietly illuminates the faces

of drunkards, vagabonds, and students

along the solitary road.

Be a lamp

if you can't be human,

for being human is difficult.

A human has just two hands

but he should help thousands.

So be a lamp by the roadside

shining on a thousand happy faces,

shining for the lonely, the aimless.

Be a lamp with a single light,

man in a magic square

signaling with a green arm.

Be a lamp, a lamp,

a lamp.

SAD HOUR

The old world is dying in me.

A sad hour comes.

In a streak of gold comes

new mysticism.

Human mysticism.

Magnetic blaze of the heart.

Human eyes glow —

radium in the night.

Death — a retreat from life.

O happy death.

_____________________

 translated from the Slovene by

Ana Jelnikar & Barbara Siegel Carlson

Look Back, Look Ahead

The selected poems of Srečko Kosovel 

Ugly Duckling Presse

2010  

ONCE IN VERMONT ~

 

Traditional dancing at the Malikha lodge

  photo ~ Brigitte Lacombe for The New York Times

It isn't Vermont, but present day Myanmar, although I can remember a time in back hills Vermont

where this lush description of pure simple nothingness/everything, was also my own habitat:

"Here, local people tend to retire and rise with the sun. Each new day is announced not by cellphones, clock radios or the beeping of other digital devices, but by the first insomniac rooster’s prelight reveille, a clarion call that quickly triggers a wrap-around sonic cacophony, as every other backsliding rooster in the neighborhood joins in to herald the dawn. Then from across the river, where rice paddies step down to the shore, come the sounds of crying babies, laughing children and the chopping of wood. Only then does the sky begin to brighten and smoke begin to curl up from cooking fires. And when the sun finally does burst forth to limn the frieze of jagged, snow-capped peaks behind the forested foothills, it is, indeed, like being present at creation."



Read more of this fascinating article by Orville Schell, long in the tooth with Asia, old & new, as well as the whole of the Pacific Rim.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/travel/in-far-flung-myanmar-a-land-of-contradictions.html?hpw&rref=travel&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

NEW! CID CORMAN OF VOLUME 4 & 5 ~

                                                                                                       OF


                                                                             So many days and

                                                                             so many nights ex-

                                                                             act infinity



                                                                            The petals of the

                                                                            flowers of an in-

                                                                            dissoluble light.


                                                                                                                 CC

ANNOUNCING

The final volumes to Corman's opus in one book ~ 

of

volumes 4 & 5

by

C I D   C O R M A N

_________________

1500 poems

850 pages

edited by Bob Arnold

available in a limited edition from

L O N G H O U S E

____________________

ORDER HERE ~

Shipping is priority mail only for US orders

insured with tracking

$50 
plus $7 US mail priority

Paypal, credit card, or check

~

International orders, $50
 plus $25 air priority rate

Paypal or credit card

Longhouse
 Publishers & Booksellers

PO Box 2454

West Brattleboro, Vermont

05303 

OTHER NEW TITLES FROM LONGHOUSE

_________________________

CARSON ARNOLD
If I Blinked Through
These Windows
Collected Music Writings     
a big soaking book of youth      ~ $20

 









 J.D. WHITNEY
 Sweeping The Broom Shorter ~
 Selected Poems     ~ $15


two different covers ~ take your pick!

BOB ARNOLD & JASON CLARK
 Sapline     
maple sugaring in Vermont     ~ $12










 

 

 MALCOLM RITCHIE
Small Lines On The Great Earth

poems from Scotland     ~ $15

BOB ARNOLD
My Sweetest Friend  
poems from brother to sister     ~ $15










DUDLEY LAUFMAN
 The Islandian 
Poems & Fables
journey to another land     ~ $12

    

 


BOB ARNOLD   
Go West
c'mon! travel westward by train   ~ $15














BOB ARNOLD  
Start With The Tree
photographs by Susan Arnold
a lifetime of building & marriage      ~ $20

FORTHCOMING BOOK TITLES BY~

JANINE POMMY VEGA

LORINE NIEDECKER

ROBIN MAGOWAN

SNOWY OWL ~

S N O W Y    O W L

Photograph: Christopher Millette/AP

Rare — we caught two snowy owls

in flight above a family neighborhood
flying spruce tree to spruce tree

of western massachusetts in late 2014

PIPELINE ~

Waldarbeiter beim Holzsägen, Jean-François Millet (II)

FAIL SAFE ~

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/01/19/noam-chomsky-obamas-drone-program-most-extreme-terrorist-campaign-modern-times

HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS ~

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/19/sex-offenders-florida-town-sofia-valiente-miracle-village-photography



HATCHET JOB ~

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/16/books/james-laughlins-story-told-in-two-new-books.html?ref=books




AMERICAN SNIPER ~

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175941/tomgram%3A_ann_jones%2C_answering_for_america/



RUMBLE ~

http://vtdigger.org/2015/01/18/state-erica-heilman-rumble-strip-vermont/



KISS & TELL ~

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/poetry/poet-bill-berkson-lets-himself-off-the-hook/#.VLVBooWqkZ0.facebook

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERNESTO CARDENAL ~

Ernesto Cardenal

born January 20, 1925

Granada, Nicaragua 

from  Zero Hour


Translated By Donald D. Walsh


 
Tropical nights in Central America,
with moonlit lagoons and volcanoes
and lights from presidential palaces,
barracks and sad curfew warnings.
"Often while smoking a cigarette
I've decided that a man should die,"
says Ubico smoking a cigarette . . .
In his pink-wedding-cake palace
Ubico has a head cold. Outside, the people
were dispersed with phosphorous bombs.
San Salvador laden with night and espionage,
with whispers in homes and boardinghouses
and screams in police stations.
Carías' palace stoned by the people.
A window of his office has been smashed,
and the police have fired upon the people.
And Managua the target of machine guns
from the chocolate-cookie palace
and steel helmets patrolling the streets.

Watchman! What hour is it of the night?
Watchman! What hour is it of the night?


The campesinos of Honduras used to carry their money in their hats
when the campesinos sowed their seed
and the Hondurans were masters of their land.
When there was money
and there were no foreign loans
or taxes for J.P. Morgan & Co.,
and the fruit company wasn't competing with the little dirt farmer.
But the United Fruit Company arrived
with its subsidiaries the Tela Railroad Company
and the Trujillo Railroad Company
allied with the Cuyamel Fruit Company
and Vaccaro Brothers & Company
later Standard Fruit & Steamship Company
of the Standard Fruit & Steamship Corporation:
                        the United Fruit Company
with its revolutions for the acquisition of concessions
and exemptions of millions in import duties
and export duties, revisions of old concessions
and grants for new exploitations,
violations of contracts, violations
of the Constitution . . .
And all the conditions are dictated by the Company
with liabilities in case of confiscation
(liabilities of the nation, not of the Company)
and the conditions composed by the latter (the Company)
for the return of the plantations to the nation
(given free by the nation to the Company)
at the end of 99 years . . .  
"and all the other plantations belonging
to any other persons or companies or enterprises
which may be dependents of the contractors and in which
this latter has or may have in the future
any interest of any kind will be as a consequence
included in the previous terms and conditions . . ."
(Because the Company also corrupted prose.)
The condition was that the Company build the Railroad,
but the Company wasn't building it,
because in Honduras mules were cheaper than the Railroad,
and "a Gongressman was chipper than a mule,"
                     as Zemurray used to say,
even though he continued to enjoy tax exemptions
and a grant of 175,000 acres of the Company,
with the obligation to pay the nation for each mile
that he didn't build, but he didn't pay anything to the nation
even though he didn't build a single mile (Carías is the dictator
who didn't build the greatest number of miles of railroad)
and after all, that shitty railroad was
of no use to the nation
because it was a railroad between two plantations
and not between the cities of Trujillo and Tegucigalpa.

They corrupt the prose and they corrupt the Congress.
The banana is left to rot on the plantations,
or to rot in the cars along the railroad tracks
or it's cut overripe so it can be rejected
when it reaches the wharf or be thrown into the sea;
the bunches of bananas declared bruised, or too skinny,
or withered, or green, or overripe, or diseased:
so there'll be no cheap bananas,
                         or so as to buy bananas cheap.
Until there's hunger along the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua.

And the farmers are put in jail for not selling at 30 cents
and their bananas are slashed with bayonets
and the Mexican Trader Steamship sinks with their barges on them
and the strikers are cowed with bullets.
(And the Nicaraguan congressmen are invited to a garden party.)
But the black worker has seven children.
And what can you do? You've got to eat,
And you've got to accept what they offer to pay.
                        24 cents a bunch.
While the Tropical Radio Subsidiary was cabling Boston:
"We assume that Boston will give its approval to
the payment made to the Nicaraguan congressmen of the majority  
         party
because of the incalculable benefits that it represents for  
       the Company."
And from Boston to Galveston by telegraph
and from Galveston by cable and telegraph to Mexico
and from Mexico by cable to San Juan del Sur
and from San Juan del Sur by telegraph to Puerto Limón
and from Puerto Limón by canoe way into the mountains
arrives the order of the United Fruit Company:
"United is buying no more bananas."
And workers are laid off in Puerto Limón.
And the little workshops close.
Nobody can pay his debts.
And the bananas rotting in the railroad cars.
                   So there'll be no cheap bananas
                   And so that there'll be bananas cheap,
                              19 cents a bunch.
The workers get IOUs instead of wages.
Instead of payment, debts,
And the plantations are abandoned, for they're useless now,
and given to colonies of unemployed.
And the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica
with its subsidiaries the Costa Rica Banana Company
and the Northern Railway Company and
the International Radio Telegraph Company
and the Costa Rica Supply Company
                     are fighting in court against an orphan.
The cost of derailment is $25 in damages
(but it would have cost more to repair the track).

And congressmen, cheaper than mules, Zemurray used to say.
Sam Zemurray, the Turkish banana peddler
in Mobile, Alabama, who one day took a trip to New Orleans
and on the wharves saw United throwing bananas into the sea
and he offered to buy all the fruit to make vinegar,
he bought it, and he sold it right there in New Orleans
and United had to give him land in Honduras
to get him to break his contract in New Orleans,
and that's how Sam Zemurray appointed presidents in Honduras.
He provoked border disputes between Guatemala and Honduras
(which meant between the United Fruit Company and his company)
proclaiming that Honduras (his company) must not lose
"one inch of land not only in the disputed strip
but also in any other zone of Honduras
(of his company) not in dispute . . ."
(while United was defeating the rights of Honduras
in its lawsuit with Nicaragua Lumber Company)
until the suit ended because he merged with United
and afterward he sold all his shares to United
and with the proceed of the sale he bought shares in United
and with the shares he captured the presidency of Boston
(together with its employees the various presidents of Honduras)
and he was now the owner of both Honduras and Guatemala
and that was the end of the lawsuit over the exhausted lands
that were now of no use either to Guatemala or Honduras.






 _________________




Ernesto Cardenal


“Zero Hour” (excerpt)
 Zero Hour and Other Documentary Poems
 New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1980
 translated by Donald D. Walsh

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/03/world/americas/science-fuels-writing-and-faith-of-a-nicaraguan-poet-.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news