Thursday, April 30, 2015
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
RAIN BEAR by BOB ARNOLD ~
Bob Arnold's first children's book
"R a i n B e a r"
____________________________________
____________________________________
New and available now from Longhouse ~
50 pages
Perfect bound softcover
with photographs ~
& drawings by
Jason Clark
____________________________________
$12.95
Shipping $2.00 ~ U.S. orders with Paypal
Buy now through easy-to-use Paypal
Shipping $2.00 ~ U.S. orders with Paypal
Buy now through easy-to-use Paypal
International orders ~ complete $25 with Paypal payment
all orders may be made by Paypal, credit card or check ~
mail order here:
Longhouse
PO Box 2454
West Brattleboro, Vermont 05303
Longhouse
PO Box 2454
West Brattleboro, Vermont 05303
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Monday, April 27, 2015
THE POCKET HAIKU ~
After a long nap,
the cat yawns, rises, and goes out
looking for love
Give me a homeland,
and a passionate woman,
and winter alone
Brilliant moon,
is it true that you too
must pass in a hurry
Thus spring begins: old
stupidities repeated,
new errs invented
I S S A
In pale moonlight
the wisteria's scent
comes from far away
Light winter rain
like scampering rat's-feet
over my koto
In a bitter wind
a solitary monk bends
to words cut in stone
Moon in midsky, high
over the village hovels
and wandering on
B U S O N
But for a woodpecker
tapping at a post, no sound
at all in the house
I'm a wanderer
so let that be my name —
the first winter rain
Winter showers,
even the monkey searches
for a raincoat
The morning glories
bloom, securing the gate
in the old fence
B A S H O
____________________
the pocket haiku
translated by Sam Hamill
Shambhala 2014
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Saturday, April 25, 2015
RAREST 78 RPM RECORDS ~
Joe Bussard
Scribner 2014
Hands down, this book is a delight to read, so don't hesitate. The author goes to almost every extreme
imaginable, starting with putting up with the wackos of the collecting world, something I know a little about. But in this case, a last of a breed — 78 record hustlers — lovers and devotees. We find the author even taking scuba lessons, renting gear, and diving into some of the murky old rivers of Wisconsin in the region of defunct record pressing plants, like Paramount's in Grafton, Wisconsin, on a brainstorm that she might even find a box of old records tossed away long ago as worthless. Out of the rivers she visits some of the basement haven boarders of terrific record collections, like Joe Bussard (above) priceless in their hands; and what's a book on the subject without a lengthy back history on Harry Smith, compiler and genius of The Anthology of American Folk Music, the musician's
Leaves of Grass.
[ BA]
Friday, April 24, 2015
LARRY EIGNER ~
Larry Eigner circa 1950
From the sustaining air
from the sustaining air
fresh air
There is the clarity of a shore
And shadow, mostly, brilliance
summer
the billows of August
When, wandering, I look from my page
I say nothing
when asked
I am, finally, an incompetent, after all
so the words go up
so the words go up
into thin air
parlor the speaking
room
birds pass the window
a plane lengthens through fog
or cloud bends away
the curves together
the phone the hallway
all my life
Old Man
two big pigeons on the new roof
below which he grew corn
ten years back, one year .
the wind like an ocean
the wind like an ocean
but sometimes the sun stills it
and the surface is solid
why shouldn't life pass as in a dream
or a dream itself, there are different degrees
or different dreams reality
at one with a dream
the naked sea
stinking
is fresh
in time,
(o shut your eyes against the wind
All Intents
once a man is born he has to die
and that is time, the
position of the moon
the earth is never still in one spot
or perhaps it is, it is
(part way
it is round
and we are always here
though every sound perhaps not
but here we are, we are
stand on one foot
stand on one foot
like a tree
the law
is
gulls change
the angle
air
pressing through leaf
you cannot mount
the green
sound of
small world of stars
A bird flies under
leaves close
in the heavy day-long rain
still keeping up
the roofs glistening
____________________
Selected Poems / Larry Eigner
edited by Samuel Charters & Andrea Wyatt
Oyez 1971
"Larry Eigner (1927–1996) wrote over three thousand poems on a manual Royal typewriter (a bar mitzvah gift) with the thumb and index finger of his right hand. Disabled by a forceps injury at birth, Eigner lived with cerebral palsy his whole life; able to walk only with support or assistance, he made his way through the world in a wheelchair. Until his father died and his mother was too old to care for him, he lived at home in Swampscott, Massachusetts, writing many of his poems in the glassed-in front porch that served as his office. In 1978, Eigner relocated to Berkeley, California, at first living in a communal house for adults with disabilities and then residing with poet-friends, mainly Robert Grenier and Kathleen Frumkin, who also served as his caregivers. "
— George Hart
is fresh
in time,
(o shut your eyes against the wind
All Intents
once a man is born he has to die
and that is time, the
position of the moon
the earth is never still in one spot
or perhaps it is, it is
(part way
it is round
and we are always here
though every sound perhaps not
but here we are, we are
stand on one foot
stand on one foot
like a tree
the law
is
gulls change
the angle
air
pressing through leaf
you cannot mount
the green
sound of
small world of stars
A bird flies under
leaves close
in the heavy day-long rain
still keeping up
the roofs glistening
____________________
Selected Poems / Larry Eigner
edited by Samuel Charters & Andrea Wyatt
Oyez 1971
"Larry Eigner (1927–1996) wrote over three thousand poems on a manual Royal typewriter (a bar mitzvah gift) with the thumb and index finger of his right hand. Disabled by a forceps injury at birth, Eigner lived with cerebral palsy his whole life; able to walk only with support or assistance, he made his way through the world in a wheelchair. Until his father died and his mother was too old to care for him, he lived at home in Swampscott, Massachusetts, writing many of his poems in the glassed-in front porch that served as his office. In 1978, Eigner relocated to Berkeley, California, at first living in a communal house for adults with disabilities and then residing with poet-friends, mainly Robert Grenier and Kathleen Frumkin, who also served as his caregivers. "
— George Hart
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
FRANCIS PONGE ~
translated by Lee Fahnestock
"Born in 1899, Francis Ponge studied both law and philosophy before
taking up a variety of editorial and teaching jobs. Le parti pris des
choses, published by Gallimard in 1942, caught the attention of writers
and artists. Wide recognition came in the sixties when Gallimard
published several large collections of his poetry and essays. Ponge
avoided appeals to emotion and symbolism, and instead sought to minutely
recreate the world of experience of everyday objects with playful
neologisms and his own phenome- nological ballet. He described his
poetry as "a description-definition-literary artwork" that avoided both
the drabness of a dictionary and the inadequacy of poetry. He died in
1989. Lee Fahnestock is a translator and critic. Long an admirer of
Ponge, she has published translations of Vegetation, The Nature of
Things, and The Making of Pre. Her translation, with Norman MacAfee, of
Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables and her translations of Jean-Paul Sartre’s
letters to Simone de Beauvoir have been widely celebrated."
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
SPRING LETTER ~
SPRING LETTER FROM HOME
for Sam
Sweetheart and I are both down with very bad colds, or maybe it's the flu? It’s been years since we’ve experienced this sort of wrangle, and after a tough winter. Not fair! Have to laugh.
I can hear the goldfinch calling out in the rain as I type. Most of the snow is gone except for the snow that always lasts until May 1st at the back door. A big pile there. I checked yesterday.
I tore down the old duck shed/tool shed I built 35 years ago of salvaged lumber — pine boards and even the oak floor joists I yanked out of this main house when I renovated in 1977. The joists were heavy gang plank mothers, worked perfectly in the old shed for the roof. Lasted. This time around I slid them out and bucked them up for firewood and now they heat the very room where I once pulled them from. You can go home again.
I salvaged 3/4 of the old lumber and have now built a tool room extension to the studio building. It sort of looks like Thoreau’s hut with his woodshed addition. It will take the mowers (which you don’t like) and all other tools for landscape work. I got it framed up, raftered, purlined, and sheathed over the weekend. Just to put on the white cedar wall shingles and evergreen steel roof. Let all future snowfalls slide off.
I’ll also put a blue steel roof on the stone hut in May. It will turn 30, with Carson.
© Bob Arnold
Spring 2015
Monday, April 20, 2015
DRUM ~
DRUM
Early morning climb to the roof
Cold dew on pebbled tar, taste of
The galvanized nails in your mouth
Work — nail shingle to shingle tight —
Each hammer pound echoes another
Pound in the hills, enough to wonder
Where it ends and who hears it then
____________________
© Bob Arnold
from Where Rivers Meet
Mad River Press 1990
Sunday, April 19, 2015
ANYWHERE YOU LOOK ~
Anywhere You Look
in the corner of a high rain gutter
under the roof tiles
new grasses' delicate seed heads
what war, they say
_________________________
Jane Hirshfield
THE BEAUTY
Knopf 2015
Saturday, April 18, 2015
JOAN COLOM ~ THE STREET ~
Joan Colom
I Work the Street
photographs 1957-2010
Museu Nacional D'Art de Catalunya
2014
Joan Colom at work
Friday, April 17, 2015
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
CHARLES SIMIC, THE LUNATIC ~
THE HORSE
I awoke in the middle of the night to find
A horse standing quietly over my bed.
My friend, I'm so glad you're here, I said,
It's snowing and you must've been cold
And lonely in your stable down the road
With the farmer and his wife both dead.
I'll throw a blanket over you and check
If there is a lump of sugar in the kitchen,
Like the one I saw a man in a top hat
Slip to a mare in a circus, but I fear you might
Be gone when I get back, so I better stay
And keep you company here in the dark.
__________________
CHARLES SIMIC
The Lunatic
Ecco, 2015
"All writers have some secret about the way they work. Mine is that I write in bed."
CHARLES SIMIC
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Monday, April 13, 2015
SAM HAMILL FROM THE CHINESE ~
Crossing the Yellow River
A little boat on the great river
whose waves reach the end of the sky —
suddenly a great city, ten thousand
houses dividing sky from wave.
Between the towns there are
hemp and mulberry trees in the wilds.
Look back on the old country:
wide waters; clouds; and raising mist.
________________________
Wang Wei
translated by Sam Hamill
Tiger Bark Press
2013
Sunday, April 12, 2015
Saturday, April 11, 2015
THE GREAT JUDITH MALINA ~
Judith Malina
Ms. Malina was born in Kiel
a port city in northern Germany
June 4, 1926 ~ April 10, 2015
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
