JOHN BRADLEY'S SPELLS ~

 

Stopping By Words Spell

Whose words these are I think I know.

Who can really own them, though.

No one will see me stealing here

To watch these words become my own.

My sturdy tongue must think it weird

To mouth such blather far and near

Between your ears, that lovely space

Where song makes clatter something dear.

You give each word a goodly shake

And ask if this is some mistake.

This tune, so familiar, must leak

From the pillow used by Willy Blake.

These words are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have syllables to keep,

And text to eat before I sleep,

And text to eat before I sleep.

________________

John Bradley

As Blood is the Fruit of the Heart

Dos Madres 2025

NATURAL MAGIC ~

 

R E A D   M E

     Princeton, 2024

BIRDS THROUGH INDIGENOUS EYES ~

 

R E A D   M E

      Princeton 2024

MAKING THEATRE IN KYIV, SPRING 2024 ~

 

R E A D   M E

      Wordville, 2024

JOHNNY ACE ~

 

PICTURES BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN ~

 

R E A D   M E

A N D

      Houghton 2021

THEODORE ENSLIN WOULD BE 100 TODAY ~

 

Little Wandering Snowflake

Ah, little wandering snowflakes are how I watch the day today, now ending March and the thin ice melting and refreezing each day on the pond in the back lot of the yard — ducks we found out there the other morning — a pair of mallards — just imagine the alert green head of the male, the brown muss of the hen hidden nearly in cattail stalks. Ted would. He would want to tramp out there with me to see, stay as long as he wanted, then perk a further walk off somewhere else. We did that one winter day when he visited from Maine. Maine is Ted’s home (largest of the New England states, occupied by more than 5000 rivers and streams, with a state motto Dirigo : I direct), so is New Mexico, Cape Cod, early spring in Philadelphia; early spring anywhere for that matter. Ted is a man at ground level, refurbished daily by the day, and it is clearly your own fortune to meet the man, find the poems and song that come forth from a living earned. Nothing special — and Ted wouldn’t want the undue excitement nor attention — but let’s not upset the magnificence of over one-hundred books of poetry, prose and literary chorales (ie., Forms, Synthesis, Ranger, Axis); and would it be unbelievable in this day and age of stroking champions and making such a fuss over some little big name in the poetry world that Ted would read his poetry across the United States in the old days traveling by bus, selling his books, making friends of dear strangers, recalling fondly those small mountain open towns in Nevada, then returning to his rural home and family, garden and woodcutting detail, tending to the cranberry and blueberry harvest, pressing apples, clamming, a supper table devoted from the land and the sea. The very utensil. It’d be easy to want to quote young Henry Thoreau when thinking of Ted — but why Henry, when we have Ted? —

And if he sings

                          with care,

he sings 

                   a new song

made of old

                     flints struck.

O.K. He sings his source.

and then some. Do yourself a favor and say hello.

                                                — Bob Arnold

       Bob Arnold & Theodore Enslin

Fort Atkinson, WI., 2003

  photo by Susan Arnold

L I N K   T O   T H E   R E A D I N G:

https://mville-edu.zoom.us/j/81912000037

also:

PENN SOUND

WEIJIA PAN ~

 

Ultimatum

If I forget one character a day,

I will have forgotten Chinese

by the end of 2042.

Sooner or later I will forget

my quarrel with my father,

I will forget if

I ever wrote to you.

And the new language

I will have acquired

will not be the same

as the one that bit me.

____________________

Motherlands

Weijia Pan

Milkweed Editions

2023

SHY OF THE SQUIRREL'S FOOT ~

 

R E A D   M E

      North Carolina University Press,

    2024

PRESSURE DROP ~

 

R E A D   M E

Omnibus Books

2024

THE VIETNAM WAR ~

 

R E A D   M E

    Basic 2024

JOSHUA BURKETT and LAU NAU ~

 

JOSHUA BURKETT & LAU  NAU

      Mystra Records

BOB ARNOLD'S FANCY ~

 

A collection of ten new poems

_________________

Anthem

It was the most exciting country in the modern age. It had

mountains and rivers and cities and towns and villages and prairies

and canyons and dead ends and avenues and broadways and even

a sunset strip. A Big Muddy. It was an empire, and a folk song, and

a parade. A myriad of languages and skin color and appearances.

It had been away in world wars and bombed and also been bombed

upon, millions had died and also been born. The sun came up, the

sun went down. Stars at night overlooked all of it. Nothing was

spared. It was working, not perfectly, which is what made every

day involving. If the land was perfect, the sun and moon and stars

wouldn't have been needed. They came to help. All the people had

to do was also help themselves, and one another. It was already

there the way each person was made with two legs and two arms

and hands and two ears and eyes and a mouth that could talk. The

ability to talk! Animals couldn't talk but the people could talk to the

animals, they could talk to anything. To themselves, to a stranger, to

a loved one, while wandering lost in the woods. You are never lost

because you can talk. Until that day you refuse to talk and instead

you lie, which isn't talk, but backward words. And one comes and

lies and then another sees that easy advantage and they lie and soon

a room is lying, a whole building, all the town, into the bright lights

of the cities and soon lies sweep across the prairies. In less time than

you think everything that was working well, is now broken. A vast

majority have decided broken, somehow, is best. There are millions

of people who will now take over and lead this broken existence. In

basic electronics it is called a loose wire. Left to its own devices, it

will burn a house down.

                                                                           ~ Bob Arnold

________________________________

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PABLO NERUDA ~

 from  The Book of Questions 

Why don't the immense airplanes

fly around with their children?

Which yellow bird

fills its nest with lemons?

Why don't they train helicopters

to suck honey from the sunlight?

Where did the full moon leave

its sack of flour tonight?

Is it true that voluptuous crocodiles

live only in Australia?

How do the oranges divide up

sunlight in the orange tree?

Did salt's teeth come

from a bitter mouth?

Is it true that a black condor

flies at night over my country?

Whom can I ask what I came

to make happen in this world?

Why do I move without wanting to,

why am I not able to sit still?

Why do I go rolling without wheels,

flying without wings or feathers,

and why did I decide to migrate

if my bones live in Chile?

And why is the sun such a bad companion

to the traveler's in the desert?

And why is the sun so congenial

in the hospital garden?

Are they birds or fish

in these nets of moonlight?

Was it where they lost me

that I finally found myself?

Why was I not born mysterious?

Why did I grow up without companions?

Who ordered me to tear down

the doors of my own pride?

And who went out to live for me

when I was sleeping or sick?

And which flag unfurled there

where they didn't forget me?

Can you love me, syllabary,

and give me a meaningful kiss?

Is a dictionary a sepulchre

or a sealed honeycomb?

In which window did I remain

watching buried time?

Or is what I see from afar

what I have not yet lived?

_________________________

Pablo Neruda

The Book of Questions

translated by William O'Daly

Copper Canyon Press, 2001

JESSE COLIN YOUNG ~

 

Queens, NY 1941 ~ March 16, 2025, Aiken, South Carolina

photo: Ed Perlstein/Redferns, via Getty Images

AFRIZAL MALNA ~

 

Portrait of a Felled Tree

I told him, today at seven in the morning.  A

Tuesday scented with screwpine leaves.  Tomorrow,

Wednesday. Yesterday, a jackfruit tree whose fruit

just grew in the hot season had an appointment

to meet Wednesday tomorrow morning.  But my neighbor

says, this is Friday.  I don't know whether

this is just a matter of a difference in grammar between

me and my neighbor.  Of course there are traditions

between us,  between

humans,  like using chaos as a

way to organize ourselves.  And surviving things that

don't make any sense.  For example:

There used to be a family here, says the jackfruit

tree.  You can see the traces of a gas stove,

sand that still holds the smell of your pillow,  tears

that bind your books and make your dreams

into a frame that lets loose a portrait of me

on the edge of a Sunday.

___________________________

Document Shredding Machine

Afrizal Malna

translated by Daniel Owen

World Poetry 2024

KNEECAP AND THE IRISH LANGUAGE ~

 

    Belfast, Northern Ireland

THE MAVERICKS ~

 

      December 12, 2022

THIS BAKER WORKS ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS ~

 

       Trent Cooper

JOE BOYD'S TERRIFIC BOOK OF MUSIC ~

 

MORE!

First ZE Books, 2024

LEE GRANT ~

 

L E E   G R A N T

A C T O R,  A C T I V I S T,  F I L M M A K E R

W A S   B O R N

   O C T O B E R  31, 1925

TODD WEBB, I SEE A CITY ~

 

T O D D   W E B B

      Thames & Hudson, 2017

JOYCE MANSOUR ~

 

Beneath the Central Tower

            for Matta

Hands wandered over the keys

And strange words issued from Her

Floated on the surfaces of the stream

I heard the dialect of undressing sexes

Hands wrote on the valves

Twenty-four seven

And assassinations would have to follow

In the same bluish twilight where the steel serpents hiss

Where seagulls cry and mature women flourish

With inflamed pistils and junky wounds

I was a little intimidated

It would have been so luxurious

To have the power to piss in the street

_________________

In the Glittering Maw

Selected Poems

Joyce Mansour

translated by C. Francis Fisher

World Poetry 2024

RED PINE MEETS TAO YUANMING ~

 

Drinking Alone During Constant Rain

All lives come to an end

since ancient times it's been so

we hear the names of Song and Qiao

but where are they now

an old friend gave me some wine

he said it would make me immortal

I tried a cup and my cares disappeared

I poured again and forgot about Heaven

how could Heaven be other than here

nothing surpasses accepting what's real

celestial cranes with their magic wings

might reach the world's edge with a flap

since I embraced this truth

I have made it through forty years

my body may have changed long ago

my mind without doubt is still here

________________________

Tao Yuanming

translated by Red Pine

Copper Canyon Press, 2023

ON THE BANKS OF MONKS POND ~

 

R E A D   M E

     Broadstone Books

     2004