NEW BOOKS! ~

 

Steven Manuel, The Fire (New Books)

Tao Yuan-ming, Returning Home (White Pine)

Ronald Baatz, squeezing an orange on a snowy morning (Black Fig)   

Dennis Maloney, Windows (White Pine)

VINOD KUMAR SHUKLA NEW! FROM LONGHOUSE ~

 

Vinod Kumar Shukla has won the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature for lifetime achievement in literature, one of the most coveted literary prizes worldwide, after decades of composing acclaimed novels like Naukar Ki Kameez (1979) and poetry collections like Sab Kuch Hona Bacha Rahega (1992).

__________

Limited to only 100 copies:

$10

Free shipping in USA

Overseas please inquire

OR

signed copy by translator

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

$15.95

Issued from Longhouse, 2023

Paypal, use our email of longhousepoetry@gmail.com

[we can invoice you]

or check to ~  Longhouse, PO Box 2454, West Brattleboro, VT 05303
or contact us by email for information

FAREWELL KEITH WALDROP ~

 

K E I T H    W A L D R O P

Dec. 11, 1932, in Emporia, Kan.  ~  2023

JHUMPA LAHIRI ~

 

R E A D     M E

JACK HIRSCHMAN ~

 

August 2021 MERCHANDISE  |  PUBLICATIONS  |  EVENTS Photo of Jack Hirschman by Dennis Letbetter. Jack Hirschman 1933 - 2021 Our friend, poet Jack Hirschman, passed away on August 22nd at age 87. His presence in North Beach will be missed, especially here at City Lights, where he was a frequent visitor. Jack touched the lives of so many, especially young poets. He was a fixture in the poetry scene right up until his passing, reading at virtual events, relentlessly writing and translating. We are the proud publisher of his poetry books Lyripol (1976, now out of print), Front Lines (2002), and All That's Left (2008), his translations of Antonin Artaud, Artaud Anthology, (1965) and In Danger: A Pasolini Anthology (2010), which he edited, as well. On our blog we’ve posted a poem by Diane di Prima, written on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 2013. We think it's the perfect tribute to the poet's poet. We send our love to Jack's wife Agneta Falk, to his family, and to all who will miss our comrade. Read Diane di Prima's Poem to Jack >>

LIU TSUNG-YUAN ~

R E A D      M E

Miscellany Presented In Reply To

Scholar Lou About To Leave For Huainan

I was sent far away to enjoy life alone

who would have guessed I would meet an old friend

taking pity on broken wings with kind words

soothing ragged fins with life-saving water

our feelings as colleagues haven't changed

but the joys of companionship are new

wandering without a goal wasting time

immune to the pains of spring dancing drunk

even if the pleasures of wind and moon have ceased

the stars and frost we've shared has brought us closer

treating fame as a calamity

we chose the Tao for our neighbor

our schemes were roof tiles in a storm

our suspicions simply misperceptions

wearing an official's hat I still write poems

despite your poverty you still carry a sword

suddenly our parting is today

this happy time won't come again

what is it that's dragging you off

my spirit is leaving with you on the river

I'll have to console my shadow on this side of Heaven

what can I do on that stream to the west

what can I do alone but go fishing

_________________

Liu Tsung-Yuan
translated by Red Pine
Written in Exile
Copper Canyon Books

THE RETURN OF SAPPHO ~

STANDING BY MY BED



In gold sandals

Dawn that very

moment awoke me









AT NOONTIME



When the earth is

bright with flaming

heat falling straight down



the cricket sets

up a high-pitched

singing in his wings









CYPRIAN, IN MY DREAM



The folds of a purple

kerchief shadowed

your cheeks — the one



Timas one time sent,

a timid gift, all

the way from Phocaea









AWED BY HER SPLENDOR



Stars near the lovely

moon cover their own

bright faces

                       when she

is roundest and lights

earth with her silver









I HAVE HAD NOT ONE WORD FROM HER



Frankly I wish I were dead.

When she left, she wept



a great deal; she said to

me, "This parting must be

endured, Sappho, I go unwillingly."



I said, "Go, and be happy

but remember (you know

well) whom you leave shackled by love



"If you forget me, think

of our gifts to Aphrodite

and all the loveliness that we shared



"all the violet tiaras,

braided rosebuds, dill and

crocus twined around your young neck



"myrrh poured on your head

and on soft mats girls with

all that they most wished for beside them



"while no voices chanted

choruses without ours,

no woodlot bloomed in spring without song. . ."









THANK YOU, M DEAR



You came, and you did

well to come: I needed

you. You have made



love blaze up in

my breast — bless you!

Bless you as often



as the hours have

been endless to me

while you were gone









YOU MAY FORGET BUT



Let me tell you

this: someone in

some future time

will think of us









PAIN PENETRATES



Me drop

by drop









I HEAR THAT ANDROMEDA —



That hayseed in her hay-

seed finery — has put

a torch to your heart



and she without even

the art of lifting her

skirt over her ankles









YOU REMIND ME



Of a very gentle

little girl I once

watched picking flowers









_________________

Sappho
a new translation by
Mary Barnard
Wesleyan 2019

PETER COLE ~

The Prayer Book




For years I've wanted to write a prayer book.

Why? Because I've learned

that the solid hangs upon nothingness.

Because I've found that the sentence is a kind of petition.

And because I've found that in all that I've said

in all that I've said I've said only thank you.

So, little by little,

                       in fact I've written that book

and today it weighs some two hundred pounds

and soon it will celebrate its fiftieth birthday

and yesterday I bought it shoes.


Aharon Shabtai (translated by Peter Cole)







Kharja / Closure






 "Oh, I'll

love you alright;

         so

   long as you

manage to bend



   both of my

anklets

back to the

   thin silver

earrings you gave me."


(Anonymous, Mozarabic, 12th century
 translate by Peter Cole)








Palestine: A Sestina


Hackles are raised at the mere mention of Palestine,
let alone  The Question of — who owns the pain?
Often it seems the real victims here are the hills —
those pulsing ridges, whose folds are tender fuzz of green
kill with softness. On earth, it's true, we're only guests,
but people live in places, and stake out claims to land.

From Moab Moses saw, long ago — a land
far off, and once I stood there facing Palestine
with Hassan, whose family lives in Amman. (We were his guests
at the Wahdat refugee camp.) Wonder shot with pain
came into his eyes as he gazed across the green
valley between Nebo and Lydda beyond the hills.

Help would come, says the Psalmist, from one of those hills,
though scholars still don't know for certain whether the land
in question was Zion, or the high places of Baal. The green
olives ripened, and ripen, either way in Palestine,
and the memory of groves cut down rings on pain
for those whose people worked them, for themselves or guests.

"I have been made a stranger in my home by guests,"
says Job, in Hebrew that evolved along these hills,
though he himself was foreign to them. His famous pain
is also that of those who call the Promised Land
home in  another tongue. Could what was pledged be Palestine?
Is Scripture's fence intended to guard this mountain's green?

Many have roamed its slopes and fields, dressed in green
fatigues, unable to fathom what they mean, as guests.
And armies patrol still, throughout Palestine,
as ministers mandate women and men to carve up its hills
to keep them from ever again becoming enemy land.
The search, meanwhile, goes on—for a balm to end the pain,

though it seems only to widen the rippling circles of pain,
as though the land itself became the ripples, and its green
a kind of sigh. So spring comes round again to the land,
as echoes cry: "It's mine!" —and the planes will bring in guests,
so long as water and longing run through these hills,
which some (and coins) call Israel, and others Palestine.

The pundits' talk of Palestine doesn't account for the pain—
or the bone-white hills, breaking the heart as they go green
before the souls of guests-on-earth who've known this land.



————————————
Peter Cole
Hymns & Qualms
new & selected poems & translations
Farrar, 2017

APOLLINAIRE MEETS PADGETT ~

Inscription for the Tomb of the Painter
Henri Rousseau Customs Inspector



Dear Rousseau you hear us

Hello

From Delaunay his wife Mister Queval and me

Let our luggage go duty-free through heaven's gate

We'll bring you brushes colors and canvas

So your holy leisure in the real light

You can devote it to painting

The way you did my portrait

The face of the stars






There



There are some terrific little bridges

There is my heart that beats for you

There is a sad woman on the road

There is a nice little cottage in a garden

There are six soldiers having an insanely good time

There are my eyes that search for your image



There is a charming stand of trees on the hill

And an old National Guardsman pissing as we go by

There is a poet who dreams of lil Lou

There is an exquisite lil Lou in that big Paris

There is some artillery in a forest

There is a shepherd grazing his sheep

There is my life that belongs to you

There is my fountain pen that flows and flows

There is a curtain of delicate delicate poplars

There is my past which is really past

There are narrow streets in Menton where we loved each other

There is a little girl from Sospel who whips her friends

There is my horsewhip in my oat bag

There are Belgian rail cars on the move

There is my love

There is all of life

I adore you



___________________________

Guillaume Apollinaire
translated by Ron Padgett
New York Review of Books
Z O N E, Selected Poems
2015


Listen to the soldier read:
https://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Apollinaire/Apollinaire-Guillaume_01_Le-Pont-Mirabeau_1913.mp3

RYOKAN
(1758-1831)







I'm truly simple
living among trees and grasses.
Don't ask me about illusion or enlightenment.
I'm just an old man who smiles to himself.
I ford streams with these thin legs,
and carry my bag in fine weather.
Such is my life,
but the world owes me nothing.



translated by Dennis Maloney

a contemporary of William Blake and Henry David Thoreau, playmate with children, calligrapher and hermit, here is one of the finest from Ryokan and one of the finest one will ever find of the playful and dead serious discipline. It's all in the thin legs and nothing. From Longhouse we can offer you Ryokan until the cows come home — plus Dennis Maloney's even blend translations, of which the above is one, may be had from the recently released Between the Floating Mist (White Pine, wwwwhitepine.org)

PAUL CELAN








Ash-Aura back of
your shock-knotted
hands at the three-corners.

Black Sea old times: here,
one drop,
on
the drowned oar blade,
deep
in the fossilized oath,
surf murmurs.

(up the precipitous
breath rope, in those days,
higher than high,
between two knots of pain—while
the brilliant
Tartar moon rose up to us,
I sunk and I sunk into you.)

Ash
aura back of
you three-corners
hands.

Come from the east, the way in front of you
a crap-shoot, terrifying.

No one
bears witness for
the witness.

~ LONGHOUSE VISITS ~

Bill Porter (Red Pine), Bob Arnold, Susan Arnold
March 2009

Okay — here we are recently in town, one day after a slush storm — Bill Porter (Red Pine) has just come down from up north Vermont on the morning bus. He's a long way from home, but he came prepared. Since he has never been to Brattleboro before, I suggested we meet at Amy's Bakery, a fine local hangout of tourists-meet-flannel. So Bill made for himself a hitchhikers cardboard sign, and within five minutes he said he had a ride and was carried from the bus station into town. Nothing like a self-reliant friend. We had missed one another when he was last in Vermont five years ago, and this time we wanted to nail it. Fresh from a session of poets and zen over the weekend in Montreal ( I was generously invited to be a participant but for family reasons couldn't get away ), Bill came down with good cheer for me from fellow friends, plus some gorgeous books as a gift from Myoko; and I thank you Myoko! Poetry is especially lovely for this. Bill presented the books over a table of tea and utensils and sandwiches with a window full behind us of RR tracks, iced over Connecticut River and Wantastiquet Mountain standing strong.

Please check out Bill Porter / Red Pine's 2006 title Dancing With the Dead Language, Poetry and the Art of Translation from Longhouse. Plus his many other titles from Copper Canyon, Counterpoint and Empty Bowl. Each one an exhilaration. If you're heading off to a desert island or mountain cave you might want to take along The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, or, Poems of the Masters.