WALTER FRANCESCHI










THE GARDENERS' GANG



They have their base in an old garage in ruins

at the end of a short gravel driveway

hidden behind a big green iron gate

and I run across them almost every morning

a few minutes to eight

as they get ready for another working day

bringing ladders, chain saws and any kind of tool

that they might need during the day

from the garage to the street where their trucks are parked

over breezy chats

five or six guys in boots

all young, around my age

and all confident-looking

and as I walk by I wonder how it might be if one of these days

instead of continuing my walk toward the office

I stopped by and joined the gang

Walter Franceschi is the author of Little Satori from Longhouse, see image of booklet below. From his home in Molino del Piano (a small town 15km from Florence) he has been writing to me of the goings-on in his neighborhood, and sometimes about these workers. I suggested he write a poem or two, and he's good for that and maybe even more. His poems often celebrate the very things we may overlook and may even miss entirely. There is great value in that.

IRA COHEN










GOD’S MIRROR


Dreaming about the mirror,

I think of God’s affliction,

about the necessity of freeing Him from the mirror

without breaking it,

His presence so subtle

you cannot see it there.

Several days I have

awakened with this on my mind,

not sure of

the nature of my concern,

yet sure of its importance,

the answer must lie in

the way a mirror is made.

this poem is hidden away with more in this new Longhouse publication for 2009. Ira Cohen is known in the most mystical corners of the globe, even on the stars. His poetry, prose, art work and living has earned him a reputation and friendships everywhere.

READERS PARADISE

These are just a few of the books / music on the nightstand or packing with us on road trips. Some are old timers brought out from the golden shelves, others are brand new for Spring 09. All should be bought used or new and preferably from independent booksellers, or from your local library, or read free that rainy day in Barnes & Noble. Take charge, reader! Kindle is for sissies! A real book in hand or pocket or satchel is man's best friend. Stroke a book.




Rae Armantrout
Versed
(Wesleyan)









Equals

As if, after all,

the thing that comes to mind
squared
times inertia

equaled the "real".

2.

One lizard
jammes headfirst

down the throat
of a second.

Clayton Eshleman

The Grindstone of Rapport
selected poetry, prose & translations
(Black Widow Press, www.blackwidowpress.com)

I'm most fond of early Eshleman poems — long before the clap-trap of alchemy and self-analysis inflicted his poems, these are best left for prose ruminations where he is far superior. There is a brotherhood in all of this book that comes through with a power and a force to reckon with. An involved artist of many talents, Eshleman ranges well and often fearlessly — from editing original matter like Caterpillar and Sulfur publications, into literary and philosophical essays and inquiries, pushed with a passion for all-lands poetry and translations where an alchemy of sorts is finely tuned. This is a book to own and fuss with and pass along.






Alec Wilkinson
The Protest Singer
(Knopf)

In Washington DC there are many monuments and portraits in oils hung on display and millions have walked before them — a showcase of leadership and goodwill, and in some cases thieves and downright murderers in sheeps clothing. One day America the beautiful may wake up and show a portrait for all to see of Pete Seeger, an American lad who crossed all the world singing songs of freedom and civil rights. Easy songs. Songs as lullabies and things to whistle to. And he had the greatness to sing the songs of many others and believe in those even more than his own. A great great caring soul. Alive at 90 years of age just like the gods planned it for us.






Robert M. Thorson
Beyond Walden
(Walker)

Things about kettle lakes, glacier deposits and emerald water (as seen at Walden Pond) are some of the subject matter here — but it's only a jumping off point for this fine geologist's mind to mull over civilization and how one evolves and perhaps withstands and hopefully provides. Water doesn't just run through one's fingers here.





Gideon S. Golany
Chinese Earth-Sheltered Dwellings
(University of Hawaii)


I first took notice of earth dwellings in China where those were burrowed in and making habitats in the Great Wall. Yaodong (below-ground habitats) have been used continuously in China for the last four centuries and today house more than forty million Chinese. This book's detailed survey of the culture and adaptation by the inhabitants is one for the ages. Well-paced illustrations and text work take you on a journey, and mostso provide lessons for modern architecture, urban design, and survival.







Stephen Addis
77 Dances
(Weatherhill)



Simply exquisite — the first book on Japanese calligraphy by poets, monks and scholars that shows the Momoyama and Edo periods (1568-18680) in large format illustrations. The Zen, the haiku, the landscape, the gossamer. Less talk, go look. The author is a thoughtful practitioner himself and trail guide.








Lew Welch
Hermit Poems
(Four Seasons Foundation)













I saw myself
a ring of bone
in the clear stream
of all of it

and vowed
always to be open to it
that all of it
might flow through

and then heard
"ring of bone" where
ring is what a
bell does





TOWNES
For a Steve Earle recording — singing like Steve Earle, with hand claps and yells and sometimes as if through a bullhorn — this isn't disappointing. But since he is singing all Townes Van Zandt songs, he's about ruining every song with all of the above. It's a mottled mess. Of the two-disc CD, head for "the basics" CD. Townes Van Zandt sparkled and generally reached the backside of heroic. He wasn't singing his songs, he was giving them to us. Hand delivered. Listening to his good friend try his ever-loving best to even attempt a delivery is all heart and with thanks. But now go to the originals and be scared to death.






Journal of the short poem, No. 7, Spring 2009
NO/ON, edited Philip Rowland
Minami Motomachi 4-49-506
Shinjuku, Tokyo, 160-0012, Japan
noonpress@mac.com


A Japnese bound treat of special wonder. Now 7 issues, over years of practice and particular care. The poets range internationally and move well together.



take care
of being
taken care of
of the moment
by the moment
for the moment
— Sheila E. Murphy








Thomas Meyer
Kintsugi
(Punch Press
810 Richmond Avenue
Buffalo, NY. 14222-1167)


Done up in the full glory once championed by Jonathan Williams at Jargon Press — bold stroke cover design and title page with no misunderstanding where you are about to be engulfed. Here is this long poem/reverie, even personal prayers, by Thomas Meyer, gentleman and long time companion to Williams. New publisher in Buffalo, Punch Press has done this well. Robert Kelly has come forth with an introduction. With visual images by the one and only Erica Van Horn. Kintsugi — the practice of repairing ceramics with gold-laced lacquer to illuminate the breakage. One lover speaks to another's passing.




All dogs bark his name.
He who has gone

there from here
past time's gap. Jumped.




Lorine Niedecker
Immortal Cupboard

Living for years in the solitude of rural Wisconsin, poet and experimental writer Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970), chose what many might see as a lonely path. Out of her very deliberate and austere lifestyle came a poetics of observation so acute that some literary critics have described her as the 20th century's Emily Dickinson. Taking cues from Niedecker's work, filmmaker Cathy Cook combines original live-action footage, animation, archival images and the poet's only audio interview (with Cid Corman) to unfurl the poet's psychological and physical landscape. Through a repetition of images, text and sounds that mirror Niedecker's own processes and forms, Cook gives new voice and visibilioty to the extraordinary works of this very private poet. Longhouse will soon have DVD copies of this excellent film available.




Patti Smith
twelve


Ample time now for you to have listened to the Steve Earle noted above and either agree with me, or be sick of me, and to substitute the Patti Smith cd in your play list. This is exactly what we did the other day in the hot sun while on a job painting a house — the Smith and not the Earle got us through the late day strtetched hours of finishing up fussy cornice and window trim painting. Smith does twelve cover songs here that she has pretty much grown up with, as we have, as her crackerjack band has, and the familiarity and play-to-invention shows. Highlights occur with Hendrix, Neil Young, the Stones, even Tears for Fears, George Harrison (The Beatles), Allman Brothers, and these days few do Bob Dylan better than Patti Smith, and probably her turn of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit is the best track on the cd. Her take on The Doors, Paul Simon, and the Airplane don't quite hit it. But with each song you can finally hear the words! Leave it to a poet.



Agha Shahid Ali
The Veiled Suite the collected poems
(Norton)














SNOWMEN


My ancestor, a man
of Himalayan snow,
came to Kashmir from Samarkand,
carrying a bag
of whale bones:
heirlooms from sea funerals.
His skeleton
carved from glaciers, his breath
arctic,
he froze women in his embrace.
His wife thawed into stony water,
her old age a clear
evaporation.

This heirloom,
his skeleton under my skin, passed
from son to grandson,
generations of snowmen on my back.
They tap every year on my window,
their voices hushed to ice.

No, they won't let me out of winter,
and I've promised myself,
even if I'm the last snowman,
that I'll ride into spring
on their melting shoulders.


and forthcoming, early Fall 09
Will Alexander
The Sri Lankan Loxodrome
(New Directions, 2009)



Loxodrome - or rhumba line - the word origin from the French 'point of compass' or the Dutch ' space, room'. The imaginary line (made imagined by Alexander's nautical cosmotics) across the earth's surface bisecting all meridians at the same angle, this being the standard mechanics for plotting a ship's course on a map. With Will Alexander's book of meditations, or homages in grip with Cesaire or on the horns of Sun Ra, we have one lone Sri Lankan sailor, traveling eastward from Madagascar to Sri Lanka, with invasive spectres / amidst the constellations, where one calls the monsoons hermits.


I look through myself
as through the wayward rum of the Sufis
& near the Maldives I know
some greater apparition will appear
unlike Gianini
at the core like a singular upward double
crossing the inward "Chinvat Bridge" *
the crossing point to "the beyond"
unlike the force that corrupts the eyes from without
creating its force from strict material biotics

I am carrying the inks which dissolve the corruption of the gravid
with their weighed negative conservation
with their glossary of urns that imprisons
& denies the sacred impediment
the susurrant infamy which listens

therefore I've cracked
the inner botulism doors
the profane obtrusion
the egalitarian as mystery

as I wander
I travel across the core at eclectic meridians
never canceling my wavering
my dread
my magnetic "failure to observe"*

*Chinvat Bridge: In Sufism 'the threshold of the beyond'
*failure to observe": inaccurate recording of a 'series of events because of divided attention...'



Enjoy the Reading, the Music, the Sparks!

in memory

David Carradine
David Bromige
Harold Norse
William Witherup

JANINE POMMY VEGA






MAJIK’S MALA
( for Harris Breiman )

Majik’s mala click clacking in a quiet room
jerky moves of the bone beads slipping
down the string
Places you wouldn’t think pain knew about
open up, we are re-instructed:
Mother Buddha’s string of beads,
and a hopeful puppet in her sixties
still on the lookout for freedom
It may not come climbing mountains
as before, or plumbing the depths
and positions of sexual nature
It may not come running high speed
through the woods like a dog in the summer hemlocks
May not come trekking out to find death sitting alone
in infinitudes of winter
But in slowly giving up, in the hand unclenched
the personality cooked like soup
inside the skull
Come all you who are hungry
Come and eat.
Too long fixed in place, the body
becomes an ironing board,
a bicycle standing against the wall,
it creaks into use, the slow spokes,
screech of legs propped up in the living room
Locked in a photo frame one has time
to observe mortality click clack
it is not unhappy.


No fixed opinion
when fluid motion is yanked away
it might just as well be heads
as tails click clack
these things do not matter.
Freeze frame of Majik Labdrom’s mirror
the absurdity of us marching dignified
to a graveyard one step two step Oops!
off the curbstone, down like a man in profile
The Punch and Judy Show
to a crowd of San Francisco children
Wap! He’s down! Wap! He’s up again!
click clack click clack clack
An umbrella opens, the taffeta hangs tattered
the spokes like a ribcage sing
in the wind
Fluid moves so rare we notice now
when they come up, like animated movies
Gooy drops his gumball down the sewer
Minnie holds onto her hat as she plunges skyward
off the cliff like a kite.
No references, no grave demeanor
considered opinions melt in the soup bowl
of the skull, click clack
Hey! Comes a moment, Hey!
No limping, no hunched shoulders, no stiff elbows
a body is moving easily over the landscape
Hey, what happened?
Majik Labdrom in meditation
her mala serenely around her neck
each bead in motion, in static grace
each bead in fluid motion.


Majik Labdrom, pronounced ladron,
like a Puerto Rican second story man,
The nice thing about God as a thief
is she takes it from you
willing or not, knowing or not
she takes it, you wake up one morning
and it’s all decided: mobility (or good looks
a perfect ass, a capable memory)
has disappeared.
Coming out of sleep, the chrysalis
kicks off its cocoon, the (choose one)
praying mantis katydid grasshopper’s
arms and legs are littered across the plain
and works of art, the diamond rings
are swimming down in the muck with the snails.

Willow, NY, January 13, 2005

Majik Labdron: Female “Mother” Buddha. Inventor of the chod ceremony, she is often depicted dancing, usually in a graveyard.

Mala: String of prayer beads, worn around neck, or on wrist, or in hand. Each bead can be used for a repetition of the mantra.

Poet, translator, teacher, Janine Pommy Vega is the author of Poems to Fernando (City Lights) to newer titles from Black Sparrow, Godine, and many presses. Long a champion of the underdog, the imprisoned, and the songful, she has made her homes on the west coast, east coast, South America, the Catskills, and traveled much of the world.