A GREAT GRAB~BAG OF
HEAVEN & EARTH LOVERS
LXIII
My home's a hole,
and a hole's where nothing is.
Pure, clean, emptiness, to venerate. . .
A blazing flower of brightness, sun oh sun . . .
Food? Wild plants will make this meager body maigre feast,
and a cotton robe's enough to robe illusion . . .
Bring all your thousands of Sages, all sorts, here to meet me,
what's left of me, and the Heavenly Buddha!
Han Shan
COLD MOUNTAIN POEMS
EDITED & TRANSLATED BY J.P. SEATON
Shambhala
Nothing in the world is finer than more Han Shan, and mostso from the nimble strong-ankled mind of J.P. Seaton. Included in this capsule of heaven are the likes of Han Shan, side-kick Shih Te, and much lesser known devil may-care Wang Fan-chih. Those familiar with Longhouse publications have seen this crew at work, via Seaton's care, for some years now.
Neil Young
FORK IN THE ROAD
Reprise CD
The Canadian folk rocker's finest fest in years. Back to a grinding
guitar used as chain saw and lyrics that take on Empirical rogues.
He may be a millionaire, but he shares his wealth.
There's a bailout coming but it's not for me
It's for all those creeps watching tickers on tv
It's for all those creeps watching tickers on tv
PLANTING MELONS
When I follow my nature I'm rash
too careless to earn a living
this year I tried planting melons
in a garden that was mostly weeds
the plants all shared the rain and dew
but mine ended up in the shade
and once spring work got busy
the time for hoeing was past
the farmers laughed at my useless efforts
from dawn to dusk resulting in nothing
clearly this isn't my kind of work
I'll stick with ancient texts instead
Wei Ying-wu
IN SUCH HARD TIMES
TRANSLATED BY RED PINE
Copper Canyon Press
One more outstanding tome to pass down generations. Like J.P. Seaton's Han Shan above, Porter's scholarship and trail wise ways offers a steady hand at the poems and enriched commentary throughout. Drop out of college for awhile, find the good books!
www.movingmtn.com
guest editor: Clemens Starck
From the heart of the Pacific Northwest & ranging a bit down into the Sierra for some of the poets & writers & carpenters & gardeners & fishermen & woods workers & plain fine storytellers that bursts this issue. Seekers please take note.
WOMEN
I'm doing dishes.
It's summer.
My wife and my mother
are outside
sitting by the fire
laughing so hard
I have to set the pans
aside
and watch.
It's important to
pay attention to joy.
To love that is serious.
Now they are showing
each other earrings,
mom's silver bracelet,
Pat's jade teardrops
looped around her neck.
The night sky
bringing its own
slow jewelry to bear.
It hasn't always been like this.
I wasn't an easy son.
To those who say
redemption
dwells only in the house
of the Lord,
I say:
you haven't met these women.
FINN WILCOX
Are we finally tired of all the documentary films showing pursuists climbing Everest at $40,000 per person and at last count leaving 200 dead bodies up on the mountain? Despite the surf music they often use in these films, everybody doesn't come home. Try the much quieter and brotherly film Blindsight (2006) directed by Lucy Walker. Six blind Tibetan toughies (children) take off on a trek with adult guides to scale 23,000 foot Lkakpa Ri, a northern neighbor of Everest. They share the same Advanced Base Camp. Keep an eye and ear on Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind climber to reach the summit of Everest — he provides just the care as a guide throughout this beauty.
Rebecca Solnit
A PARADISE BUILT IN HELL
THE EXTRAORDINARY COMMUNITIES THAT ARISE IN DISASTER
Viking
Yes! my very thought: the rebellion will come against Kindle and all the toys. The human psyche and frame can take just so much of watching itself dissolve into a micro-bite. It will want itself back. And the young people will rebel against the notion of no books, no vinyl records, no real paintings, no touch. Humans aren't stupid. Individually many are. But this act will come from a unity of spirit and an overview of how the landscape is looking depleted of life. I'm finishing Rebecca Solnit's new book on disasters (like 9/11, like Katrina, earthquakes etc) and the overpowering courage and community that evolves from the survivors. Written during the author's own struggle with an illness, with a pinpointed survey on the media, Hollywood, varied authorities & vigilanties who often think they rule the roost. Here's a cry out to the passionate ones.
~
Since postmoderniem reshaped the intellectual landscape, it has been problematic to even use the term human nature, with its implication of a stable and universal human essence. The study of disasters makes it clear that there are plural and contingent natures — but the prevalent human nature in disaster is resilient, resourceful, generous, empathic, and brave. The language of therapy speaks almost exclusively of the consequence of disaster as trauma, suggesting a humanity that is unbearably fragile, a self that does not act but is acted upon, the most basic recipe of the victim. Disaster movies and the media continue to portray ordinary people as hysterical or vicious in the face of calamity. We believe these sources telling us we are victims or brutes more than we trust our own experience. Most people know this other human nature from experience, though almost nothing official or mainstream confirms it. This book is an account of that rising from the ruins that is the ordinary human response to disaster and of what that rising can mean in other arenas — a subject that slips between the languages we have been given to talk about who we are when everything goes wrong.
REBECCA SOLNIT
TEN SEASONS
EXPLORATIONS IN BOTANICS
EDITED BY GERRY LOOSE
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MORVEN GREGOR
Luath Press www.luath.co.uk
autumn wind
still alive and seeing ourselves
you and me
~ ONITSURA
version by Gerry Loose
TEN SEASONS grew out of Gerry Loose's three
years as Poet in Residence at Glasgow's Botanic
Gardens. This gathering of texts, along with
stunning photographs, shows that poetry,
although presented here on the page, in its
most portable form, exists off the page, on
scraps of material, in stone, even in water. The
book both celebrates a particular residency
and offers a rich resource for the interaction of
botanic gardens and creative language. Plant-
lovers and poetry-lovers will find much to
enjoy in its pages.
~ Scottish Poetry Library
~
And then this beauty just walked in the door today. . .
one large volume collecting twenty of John Martone's
small, beautifully fugitive books of poems. You gotta have it.
John Martone
KSANA
RED MOON PRESS
PO Box 2461
Winchester VA. 22604-1661
www.redmoonpress.com
holding
a stone
moss holds
~
no gloves
no money
these pockets
~
washing
dishes first
then shaving
~
autumn
woods
on my
knees
~
stream
boulder
sheep
color
JOHN MARTONE
THE DEAD WEATHER
HOREHOUND
With an album cover to die-for. No one in this house says "CD cover". Back to the roots ladies & gentlemen. Not all of the album holds, but just unload one-cut "Rocking Horse" (it goes great back-to-back with Beck's "Youthless") with the windows open on the highway late at night and the summer ending — you're ready for winter. With shades of 13th Floor Elevators and produced by johnny-everywhere Jack White (also on drums & vocals), along with Alison Mosshart and other surprise guests.
Philip Whalen
THE COLLECTED POEMS OF PHILIP WHALEN
Wesleyan
If you own a poetry library, and don't have this book yet, think Loser. Almost 1000 pages of primo and it's not just the poetry, it's the attitude and perseverance and scope and humor and love and protest of the poet that is essential. And it's probably best not to eat too much all at once, so the book becomes truly a companion for months on end. And before you know it, you can't be without the book. The editor and publisher and layout crew have done a splendid job. As terrific as the poems are, don't forget Whalen's brilliant and tricky mind, so read the prose and all the appendix slots at the back of the book. In fact, maybe read those first, like a trail guide before heading in nibbling raspberries. I've selected one stunning poem that has reverberated in my bloodstream for decades, and then a hot lick example of PW prose.
THE LAUNDRY AREA
Each time I hang up a washboard
The slenderest thread of cold water
Runs down my wrist and into my armpit
Without wetting my clothes.
Tassajara 22:iii:78
If my friends had not helped me, I should have starved or gone, at last, to the nuthouse. They fed and clothed and housed me, arranged poetry readings for me, got my work published and reviewed, made other people buy my books, and now they faithfully write letters to me, which I answer promptly. These experiences made me realize that I didn't need money in order to write: what I needed was love and poetry and pictures and music in order to live. This knowledge not only freed me from a lot of old hangups, it also changed my feeling towards poetry and all the other arts. I saw that poetry didn't belong to me, it wasn't my province; it was older and larger and more powerful than I, and it would exist beyond my life-span.
~ PHILIP WHALEN
I'll ignore just how expensive and ridiculous some of these treehouses are, since many are spectacular, and in the right frame of mind & hand can be built by true builders with used and found material and become genuine arboreal habitats. In my time, I've built a few. And they can't be beat as just the crow's nest to climb into and read all the books mentioned above & below.
~
From Italy:
Just read the Shiki that Walter Franceschi shares with us here and your troubles are over poet!
Kindle-Dindle is what I call it, and publishers going out of business, and great bookstores and all the whoa-is-me. Publish yourself and let the chips fall! Blake and Whitman did; Walter now has. It's in the morning mail for 9/11. All the way from Italy. There were many poems that unfold in the manner we publish in booklets regularly from Longhouse, but I'll keep things somewhat private since Walter expected these for our eyes only, but he already knows I can't help myself and will enjoy sharing a few poems with you here.
Walter Franceschi
A FEW MOMENTS
OK Buddha (Italy)
Gerrit Lansing
HEAVENLY TREE, NORTHERN EARTH
North Atlantic Books
www.northatlanticbooks.com
A long time coming these collected poems of Gerrit Lansing and done with precision and grace as the inaugural volume in a new series of cloth editions from North Atlantic Books. If this beauty, designed by Jonathan Greene, is any indication of what's ahead, we will have well chosen and lovely books ahead. A big book by Kenneth Irby is next in line.
OCTOBER SONG
Who is rich in love will lay
An autumn table for his guests
And shape in autumn ornaments
The shapes and omens of his love
So from these purple frets his love
Will take for sure that when they lay
Away all summer ornaments
And evening is the normal guest
He will not be surprised. What guest
Would snub his friendly honest love
That laughs at foolish ornaments
And tumbles them in straw to lay
A guest in ornaments of love?
GERRIT LANSING
Mary Oliver
EVIDENCE
Beacon
In this collection of new poems something has happened with Mary Oliver since the last book. Something important. A loss or a gain or both. She is addressing this theme on almost every page, or wishing to, and May I never not be frisky, / May I never not be risque. Congratulations to a poet who practices what she preaches, or sings.
YELLOW
There is the heaven we enter
through institutional grace
and there are the yellow finches bathing and singing
in the lowly puddle.
LI PO AND THE MOON
There is the story of the old Chinese poet:
at night in his boat he went drinking and dreaming
and singing
then drowned as he reached for the moon's reflection.
Well, probably each of us, at some time, has been
as desperate.
Not the moon, though.
SNOWY EGRET
A late summer night and the snowy egret
has come again to the shallows in front of my house
as he has for forty years.
Don't think he is a casual part of my life,
that white stroke in the dark.
WATER
What is the vitality and necessity
of clean water?
Ask the man who is ill, who is lifting
his lips to the cup.
Ask the forest.
and, lastly greatly~ PHILIP WHALEN
Pete Nelson
NEW TREEHOUSES OF THE WORLD
Abrams
NEW TREEHOUSES OF THE WORLD
Abrams
I'll ignore just how expensive and ridiculous some of these treehouses are, since many are spectacular, and in the right frame of mind & hand can be built by true builders with used and found material and become genuine arboreal habitats. In my time, I've built a few. And they can't be beat as just the crow's nest to climb into and read all the books mentioned above & below.
~
From Italy:
Just read the Shiki that Walter Franceschi shares with us here and your troubles are over poet!
Kindle-Dindle is what I call it, and publishers going out of business, and great bookstores and all the whoa-is-me. Publish yourself and let the chips fall! Blake and Whitman did; Walter now has. It's in the morning mail for 9/11. All the way from Italy. There were many poems that unfold in the manner we publish in booklets regularly from Longhouse, but I'll keep things somewhat private since Walter expected these for our eyes only, but he already knows I can't help myself and will enjoy sharing a few poems with you here.
Walter Franceschi
A FEW MOMENTS
OK Buddha (Italy)
Gerrit Lansing
HEAVENLY TREE, NORTHERN EARTH
North Atlantic Books
www.northatlanticbooks.com
A long time coming these collected poems of Gerrit Lansing and done with precision and grace as the inaugural volume in a new series of cloth editions from North Atlantic Books. If this beauty, designed by Jonathan Greene, is any indication of what's ahead, we will have well chosen and lovely books ahead. A big book by Kenneth Irby is next in line.
OCTOBER SONG
Who is rich in love will lay
An autumn table for his guests
And shape in autumn ornaments
The shapes and omens of his love
So from these purple frets his love
Will take for sure that when they lay
Away all summer ornaments
And evening is the normal guest
He will not be surprised. What guest
Would snub his friendly honest love
That laughs at foolish ornaments
And tumbles them in straw to lay
A guest in ornaments of love?
GERRIT LANSING
Mary Oliver
EVIDENCE
Beacon
In this collection of new poems something has happened with Mary Oliver since the last book. Something important. A loss or a gain or both. She is addressing this theme on almost every page, or wishing to, and May I never not be frisky, / May I never not be risque. Congratulations to a poet who practices what she preaches, or sings.
YELLOW
There is the heaven we enter
through institutional grace
and there are the yellow finches bathing and singing
in the lowly puddle.
LI PO AND THE MOON
There is the story of the old Chinese poet:
at night in his boat he went drinking and dreaming
and singing
then drowned as he reached for the moon's reflection.
Well, probably each of us, at some time, has been
as desperate.
Not the moon, though.
SNOWY EGRET
A late summer night and the snowy egret
has come again to the shallows in front of my house
as he has for forty years.
Don't think he is a casual part of my life,
that white stroke in the dark.
WATER
What is the vitality and necessity
of clean water?
Ask the man who is ill, who is lifting
his lips to the cup.
Ask the forest.
MARY OLIVER
edited with commentaries by JEROME ROTHENBERG
TECHNICIANS OF THE SACRED
Doubleday/Anchor
Just look at that book cover! I did 40 years ago this year and bought it because I couldn't help myself, after hitchhiking from a college town back home and two very fine bookstores in that town, but neither had a copy of this book. In fact in North Adams, Massachusetts where now Mass MOCA resides, there was no new bookstore in that town in 1969, though somehow a variety store with a rack of newspapers just happened to have this oracle on display. One long look into the book and I was lost forever, or as the wizardly editor described it, appropriately, that where poetry is concerned, "primitive" means complex. I was in my last year of high school and nothing in those 12 years of schooling had remotely come close to touching this.
ORIGINS & NAMINGS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That there are no primitive languages is an axiom of contemporary linguistics where it turns its attention to the remote languages of the world. There are no half-formed languages, no underdeveloped or inferior languages. Everywhere a development has taken place into structures of great complexity. People who have failed to achieve the wheel will not have failed to invent & develop a highly wrought grammar. Hunters & gatherers innocent of all agriculture will have vocabularies that distinguish the things of their world down to the finest details. The language of snow among the Eskimos is awesome. The aspect system of Hopi verbs can, by a flick of the tongue, make the most subtle kinds of distinction between different types of motion.
~JEROME ROTHENBERG
That there are no primitive languages is an axiom of contemporary linguistics where it turns its attention to the remote languages of the world. There are no half-formed languages, no underdeveloped or inferior languages. Everywhere a development has taken place into structures of great complexity. People who have failed to achieve the wheel will not have failed to invent & develop a highly wrought grammar. Hunters & gatherers innocent of all agriculture will have vocabularies that distinguish the things of their world down to the finest details. The language of snow among the Eskimos is awesome. The aspect system of Hopi verbs can, by a flick of the tongue, make the most subtle kinds of distinction between different types of motion.
~JEROME ROTHENBERG
Keep on bloggin'
Til the power goes out
Your battery's dead
Twist and shout
NEIL YOUNG
Til the power goes out
Your battery's dead
Twist and shout
NEIL YOUNG
REMEMBERING JIM CARROLL
