NAJWAN DARWISH ~

 

To That Room

And I return to that town,

to that house,

to that room,

the bones of the dead beneath me;

they know me

though I do not know them.

I'm surrounded by the books and papers

of other dead;

I know them

though they do not know me.

This earth: the remains of strangers

naturalized by death.

I return

because one must return,

because the dead must rise again.

A Distant Country

How many bedrooms do I need

to get a bit of sleep?

How many chairs

to sit myself down?

How many roads

to walk back to you,

my distant country?

This time I've gone

and I'm not coming back.

Your job, now, is to slip out,

lovesick and afraid,

and come in search of me.

Lightning Writes Poetry

Lightning never sits down at a table

to write poetry,

yet it is poetry's only embodiment.

It lights up the whole universe

then disappears.

What poet hasn't dreamed

of becoming lightning?

As For My Singing

"Sing, sing before we slit your throat."

Did they think fear

would disturb my song?

True, I was scared of life,

but death

is the last thing I'm afraid of.

Why would a free man fear

to meet a friend?

So let our embrace be tinged with blood.

As for my singing in this moment,

I want it to be perfect.

My freedom lies in this:

No matter what they do,

the murderers still

cannot disturb my song.

______________

Najwan Darwish

No One Will Allow You Tomorrow

translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

Yale Univ. Press, 2024

YIELD ~

 

Anne Truitt

  R E A D    M E

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY : LETTERS ~

 

R E A D    M E

Yale 2023

RALPH J. GLEASON ~

R A L P H    J.    G L E A S O N

Music in the air

The selected writings of Ralph J. Gleason

edited by Toby Gleason

Yale University Press 2016

Ralph Gleason was more than likely the first music critic I ever read back 50 years ago 

and his selected writings hold true to this day — from Jazz to Rock with much less

the authority on display of many current music critics and more an ease

and conversation and friendship with the music and musicians.

Few can take you by the hand from King Oliver and Louis Armstrong

to Bebop and John Coltrane as Gleason will, or right into

the home of the Jefferson Airplane and the California

music scene of the 1960s. He was instrumental at organizing

 one of Bob Dylan's finest press conferences as well

at being one of the founders of the Monterey Pop Festival

and the starting pistol to the original Rolling Stone magazine.
Plus he wrote about the souls of Billie Holiday and Carmen McRae
with more soul than anyone.
Icing on the cake — he quoted in 1966 the hip poet Philip Whalen —
everything was usable to Gleason if it had the wonder.

All the while well past the age of 30 back then and younger than yesterday.

He was gone, already, by 1975.

No one like him before or since.

This collection gathered up by his son Toby

will show you why.