Friday, July 31, 2015

LESSON ~













L  E  S  S  O  N






You’ve lived

long enough


to see official


human beings


shoot civilians


on the nightly


news





this means it’s

permitted




this means


yr dead






______________

© Bob Arnold


for
Sandra Bland
Tamir Rice
Renisha McBride
Natasha McKenna
Tanisha Anderson
Rekia Boyd


 

Thursday, July 30, 2015

MY FAVORITE GIRL ~






sweetheart



KENNETH IRBY ~




  
 K E N N E T H    I R B Y

(Bowie, Texas November 18, 1936-July 30, 2015)
 







HUMMINGBIRD ~










Hummingbird

 

a few seconds

with me

in the doorway






______________________

© Bob Arnold


from DUO ~
Longhouse 2015 





Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

BIRDS ~









Birds
 



The other day on a rooftop greenhouse a birdcage was

in there with all the moist damp plants. You never would

have guessed birds when climbing the stairs to get there.

We are on a northern campus, construction we hear

reaching a billion dollars has been going on here for

almost a decade. As we stepped up, and no one is in the

greenhouse but the two of us, a pair of birds looked out,

their nest covered with more than enough straw and

bedding. It was in their beaks, around their heads and all

over the place. A crowded obsessive little room. Someone

had given them way too much. The birds knew they

looked ridiculous.




_________________ 


© Bob Arnold


from DUO ~
Longhouse 2015







Monday, July 27, 2015

NANAO SAKAKI ~










Soil for legs


Axe for hands


Flower for eyes


Bird for ears


Mushroom for nose


Smile for mouth



Songs for lungs


Sweat for skin


Wind for mind





__________________________

Nanao Sakaki











Friday, July 24, 2015

GUNMAN ~







Jean-Patrick Manchette



If you're read Chandler, Goodis and Jim Thompson
 and not Manchette,
well then you've missed Manchette.
 Get cracking!
The New York Review of Books will be more than helpful.
I've read The Mad and the Bad and I've let some time lapse
before I curled up and died with Fatale.

Go!



 





Thursday, July 23, 2015

MORONS ~








Back Road Chalkie
July 2015

J. D. Salinger

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

WANG WEI ~







Stone Gate Monastery on Mount Lantian




In the setting sun, mountains and waters were lovely.

The tossing boat trusted the home-blowing wind.

Enjoying the strangeness, unaware of distance,

I followed all the way to the source of the spring.

Afar I loved the lushness of clouds and trees;

At first I thought the route was not the same.

How could I know the clear flow turned?

Suddenly I passed through the mountain ahead.

I left the boat and readied my light staff,

Truly satisfied with what I encountered:

Old monks — four or five men,

At leisure in the shade of pine and cypress.

At morning chants the forest has not yet dawned;

During night mediation, mountains are even stiller.

Their minds of the Tao reach to shepherd boys;

They ask a woodman about worldly affairs.

At night they lodge beneath the tall forest;

Burning incense, they sleep on clean white mats.

The valley stream's fragrance pervades men's clothes;

The mountain moon illumines the stone walls.

Seeking again I fear I'd lose the way;

Tomorrow I will go out to continue my climb.

Smiling I'll leave the men of Peach Blossom Spring:

When blossoms are red I will come to see them again.



________________


Wang Wei
tr. Pauline Yu
ZEN POEMS
Everyman Library Pocket Poets, 1999
ed. Peter Harris

http://gallery.sjsu.edu/oldworld/asiangate/chinesepainting/PAINTING/BIO/BIO.HTM





Tuesday, July 21, 2015

César Aira ~







New Directions, 2015




If Julio Cortazar and Italo Calvino had a literary child
 (where's this going?)
 it just might be César Aira.
Have a look into The Musical Brain (New Directions 2015)
 and tell me what you think.














Friday, July 17, 2015

RAE ARMANTROUT ~





Rae Armantrout
photo: Becky Cohen




T H E    S C O R E



          1


One poet

slips out



what each sentence

begins to say —



a magician

freeing himself



from the underwater

cage.




          2


"They tell me I got this

Alzheimer's. I don't



know," he says

to the moderator,



as if doubt

were a way



to catch

one's fall





          3



Folds

in the clear



curtains, columns

at dusk



scored by slant

ripples,



marked by stacked

apexes,



making some points



_________________



Rae Armantrout
ITSELF
Wesleyan University Press 2015

















Thursday, July 16, 2015

ALFRED HAYES ~








New York Review of Books, 2013



If you like film noir, and noir novels, this may be one you missed. An absolutely ideal book to read in one-sitting under your favorite summer shade tree.




Alfred Hayes (1911–1985) was born into a Jewish family in Whitechapel, London, though his father, a barber, trained violinist, and sometime bookie, moved the family to New York when Hayes was three. After attending City College, Hayes worked as a reporter for the New York American and Daily Mirror and began to publish poetry, including “Joe Hill,” about the legendary labor organizer, which was later set to music by the composer Earl Robinson and recorded by Joan Baez. During World War II Hayes was assigned to a special services unit in Italy; after the war he stayed on in Rome, where he contributed to the story development and scripts of several classic Italian neorealist films, including Roberto Rossellini’s Paisà (1946) and Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948), and gathered material for two popular novels, All Thy Conquests (1946) and The Girl on the Via Flaminia(1949), the latter the basis for the 1953 film Act of Love, starring Kirk Douglas. In the late 1940s Hayes went to work in Hollywood, writing screenplays for Clash by Night, A Hatful of Rain, The Left Hand of God, Joy in the Morning, and Fritz Lang’s Human Desire, as well as scripts for television. Hayes was the author of seven novels, a collection of stories, and three volumes of poetry. In addition to My Face for the World to See, NYRB Classics publishes In Love


David Thomson, film critic, writes a fine appreciation of Hayes fitting the tone .


"The most vivid picture of Hollywood since Nathaniel West's
 Day of the Locust."
Nelson Algren 







Tuesday, July 14, 2015

BAD GUYS ~







Knopf 2015


Where was this book when I needed just this book for a four day journey by train across America, or Canada, back in the years when I did such a thing with my true love? This book takes about 14 hours to read, stomach, stitch all the names together and study the map of where you will be in Mexico. It's also Don Winslow's best crime caper to date after a pretty lucrative career of many such novels. This is the zinger. Don't hesitate.

Monday, July 13, 2015

CORSINO FORTES ~






C O R S I N O    F O R T E S




P R O P O S I T I O N




Year by year  

             skull by skull

Faces circle

             the eye of the island

Where stone wells

             open

             in a goat's eye



And the earth's limbs

                    Erupt

In the mouths of the streets

            Statue of bread alone

            Statue of the sun's bread



Year by year

             skull by skull

Drums break

             the promise of the earth

With rocks

Restoring to the mouths

The lode

             Of many oars




______________


CORSINO FORTES
Selected Poems
translated from the Portuguese
by Daniel Hahn and Sean O'Brien
Archipelago Books 2015





Saturday, July 11, 2015

JONATHAN WILLIAMS ~









Limited to 450 copies and a special edition of
50 copies signed by the photographer and authors and accompanied by a signed limited print
 from Corn Close by
Rueben Cox.


Designed and typeset
in Eric Gill's Golden Cockerel and
Jovica Veljovic's Agmena Pro
by Jonathan Greene.


G R E E N    S H A D E
P.O. Bo  668
Salisbury, CT. 06068