YESTERDAY ~
photo © bob arnold
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
FRONTIER ~
Now isn't that something — up in the woodlot today on snowshoes I followed deer tracks picking away obediently and steadily right in my broken trail from days and days ago. Now who is following who?
Overlap is the message that we are all here together. Just keep it balanced.
I came back indoors and rebuilt the fire and listened to the news how New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was so swift at acting on gun banning legislation. The world of journalism wonders how he could act so swiftly? Because he can and he does. I don't care what his party politics are — this is the sign of a good worker. He strikes while the iron is hot. He strikes before the opposition can bunker in. These days opposition can be worse than nasty. It can ruin your life.
In The New York Times today Joe Nocera has something to say about how nasty things have become. How rotten the system is. How deranged and futile little gets properly accomplished. He's hitting a ringer here:
"People who do these kinds of settlements regularly say that the world has become so complicated that, more often than not, it is simply too expensive to figure out who was harmed and who was not. So best just to throw a little money at everybody and make the problem go away.
"That is what the federal government did last week in its settlement with the banks. It’s nothing to be proud of."
He's right. We're cowards. Many are too tired, beaten, whipped to continue the fight. The fight is to live honestly and with fellowship, and it takes no money whatsoever, it takes courage and belief. A helping hand is a wonder, too. It helps greatly to have backup, to have partners, to have support. Are you supporting anyone, lately?
As to Andrew Cuomo — I have a rifle and no one is getting it. I've had it since I was a kid. It understands what a target is. It understands a varmint — two-legged or four-legged a varmint is a varmint. Stay where you belong. I do. In the track, following deer following me. Ban all the heavy artillery, ammunition, assault rifles and revolvers. Now. None of it belongs in a civilian life. Chop down the military budget while we're at it, and decrease their weaponry. Enough has reached enough. When children are being massacred in their playgrounds this is a message and a lesson all at once: we're too big. And unfortunately for us, we're too stupid.
Love and hate, violence and peace, these are subjects that take broad minds that can think small and big at once. That have versatility. That know beyond themselves. I have had small minds tell me, with my simple rifle, I've slaughtered. Like small minds they've done this publicly, never having met me, never having seen what was evidently slaughtered. I guess they mean varmints that dangerously chew on household wiring, or destroy property, or foul food sources? Again — enough is enough — one selectively diminishes the problem with an occasional shot, and stops listening to the small minds.
Mr. Cuomo is right on target. Certainly it's not yet perfect, but it's time to save ourselves. And honor the correct frontier.
Now isn't that something — up in the woodlot today on snowshoes I followed deer tracks picking away obediently and steadily right in my broken trail from days and days ago. Now who is following who?
Overlap is the message that we are all here together. Just keep it balanced.
I came back indoors and rebuilt the fire and listened to the news how New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was so swift at acting on gun banning legislation. The world of journalism wonders how he could act so swiftly? Because he can and he does. I don't care what his party politics are — this is the sign of a good worker. He strikes while the iron is hot. He strikes before the opposition can bunker in. These days opposition can be worse than nasty. It can ruin your life.
In The New York Times today Joe Nocera has something to say about how nasty things have become. How rotten the system is. How deranged and futile little gets properly accomplished. He's hitting a ringer here:
"People who do these kinds of settlements regularly say that the world has become so complicated that, more often than not, it is simply too expensive to figure out who was harmed and who was not. So best just to throw a little money at everybody and make the problem go away.
"That is what the federal government did last week in its settlement with the banks. It’s nothing to be proud of."
He's right. We're cowards. Many are too tired, beaten, whipped to continue the fight. The fight is to live honestly and with fellowship, and it takes no money whatsoever, it takes courage and belief. A helping hand is a wonder, too. It helps greatly to have backup, to have partners, to have support. Are you supporting anyone, lately?
As to Andrew Cuomo — I have a rifle and no one is getting it. I've had it since I was a kid. It understands what a target is. It understands a varmint — two-legged or four-legged a varmint is a varmint. Stay where you belong. I do. In the track, following deer following me. Ban all the heavy artillery, ammunition, assault rifles and revolvers. Now. None of it belongs in a civilian life. Chop down the military budget while we're at it, and decrease their weaponry. Enough has reached enough. When children are being massacred in their playgrounds this is a message and a lesson all at once: we're too big. And unfortunately for us, we're too stupid.
Love and hate, violence and peace, these are subjects that take broad minds that can think small and big at once. That have versatility. That know beyond themselves. I have had small minds tell me, with my simple rifle, I've slaughtered. Like small minds they've done this publicly, never having met me, never having seen what was evidently slaughtered. I guess they mean varmints that dangerously chew on household wiring, or destroy property, or foul food sources? Again — enough is enough — one selectively diminishes the problem with an occasional shot, and stops listening to the small minds.
Mr. Cuomo is right on target. Certainly it's not yet perfect, but it's time to save ourselves. And honor the correct frontier.
photo © bob arnold
JOSHUA BURKETT ~
On the road with troubadour composer Joshua Burkett from the summer 2012, with traveling companion Ralph White
Signed limited edition $15.
Unsigned $10
(International orders kindly inquire)
order here through Paypal with free shipping
On the road with troubadour composer Joshua Burkett from the summer 2012, with traveling companion Ralph White
Three color booklet of new poems
by Joshua in fold-out splendor.
Both signed and unsigned editions.
from Longhouse
by Joshua in fold-out splendor.
Both signed and unsigned editions.
from Longhouse
Signed limited edition $15.
Unsigned $10
(International orders kindly inquire)
order here through Paypal with free shipping
Monday, January 14, 2013
Saturday, January 12, 2013
PUT YR HAND IN MINE ~
We did the 31st climb of Sugarloaf yesterday and snow machines have hard packed a sort of mush trail to the summit, over and over again as these machines and riders seem to like to do it. The drive from our back door to the mountain trail and back is the length of this jukebox.
music box by BA 1/11/13
photo © bob arnold
Friday, January 11, 2013
THE WRITER'S WRITER ~
Evan Connell
1924-2013
"The subjects that interested him ranged widely, frequently consumed him
and rarely rewarded him financially. Until the success of “Morning Star”
when he was 60, he lived modestly, working at whatever job he could
find — reading meters, delivering packages, accepting résumés at an
unemployment office — so that he could devote himself to writing. He
never married and had no children. He spent nearly every day writing or
researching his often dense subjects."
The New York Times
Thursday, January 10, 2013
SOME BOOKS ~
Once In Vermont films © bob arnold
__________________________________________
Persona, A biography of Yukio Mushima : Stone Bridge Press
Poetry of the Taliban : Columbia University Press
Letters of Samuel Beckett : Cambridge
Rational Zen : Shambhala
Selected Poems of Alden Nowlan : Anansi
Scott Nearing, An Intellectual Biography : Temple University
Geronimo by Robert M. Utley : Yale
Robert Skelton’s Pitchfork, With Mike Mauri : Lil Shack Records
Now All Roads Lead To France, A Life of Edward Thomas : Norton
The Keats Brothers by Denise Gigante : Harvard
The Russian Version by Elena Fanailova : Ugly Duckling Presse
The Correspondence of Paul Celan and Ilana Shmueli : The Sheep Meadow Press
Gonzo Republic, Hunter S. Thompson’s America : Continuum
Alaskan Travels by Edward Hoagland : Arcade
The New Beautiful Tendons by Jeffery Beam : Triton
The Broken Flower by Jeffery Beam : Skysill Press
30 Songs for The Days of September (CD) : William Clifford Burke on Baritone Sax
Torus by John Martone : Samuddo / Ocean
Carrot Cake by Nonny Hogrogian : a discarded library book : Greenwillow Books
Poetry of the Taliban : Columbia University Press
Letters of Samuel Beckett : Cambridge
Rational Zen : Shambhala
Selected Poems of Alden Nowlan : Anansi
Scott Nearing, An Intellectual Biography : Temple University
Geronimo by Robert M. Utley : Yale
Robert Skelton’s Pitchfork, With Mike Mauri : Lil Shack Records
Now All Roads Lead To France, A Life of Edward Thomas : Norton
The Keats Brothers by Denise Gigante : Harvard
The Russian Version by Elena Fanailova : Ugly Duckling Presse
The Correspondence of Paul Celan and Ilana Shmueli : The Sheep Meadow Press
Gonzo Republic, Hunter S. Thompson’s America : Continuum
Alaskan Travels by Edward Hoagland : Arcade
The New Beautiful Tendons by Jeffery Beam : Triton
The Broken Flower by Jeffery Beam : Skysill Press
30 Songs for The Days of September (CD) : William Clifford Burke on Baritone Sax
Torus by John Martone : Samuddo / Ocean
Carrot Cake by Nonny Hogrogian : a discarded library book : Greenwillow Books
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
BEAUTIFUL DAYS ~
Taking A Book Off The Shelf
The mystery or the irony
or whatever you wish to call it
may be this —
the writer you read
whom you consider great
may be a true son of a bitch
in real life, this life we live in,
he or she may have solid wisdom
in the pages, though is impossible
to live with, or to live, period —
but what must not be forgotten:
this great work that has for whatever
reasons made you feel great
is enduring
and you may be, too
___________________
Bob Arnold
from Beautiful Days
(Longhouse 2013)
Taking A Book Off The Shelf
The mystery or the irony
or whatever you wish to call it
may be this —
the writer you read
whom you consider great
may be a true son of a bitch
in real life, this life we live in,
he or she may have solid wisdom
in the pages, though is impossible
to live with, or to live, period —
but what must not be forgotten:
this great work that has for whatever
reasons made you feel great
is enduring
and you may be, too
___________________
Bob Arnold
from Beautiful Days
(Longhouse 2013)
photo © susan arnold
Monday, January 7, 2013
EARTH ~
Fair Warning
I keep a lunatic chained
to a beam in the attic. He
is my twin brother whom
I'm trying to cheat
out of his inheritance.
It's all right for me
to tell you this because
you won't believe it.
Nobody believes anything
that's put in a poem.
I could confess to
murder and as long as
I did it in a verse
there's not a court
that would convict me.
So if you're ever
a guest overnight
in my house, don't
go looking for
the source of any
unusual sounds.
Mistaken Identity
It's good sometimes
to be mistaken for
someone else, although
it usually ends
badly.
Getting down from
a bus in Boston
in 1951, when I was
seventeen, I stepped
into the arms of
a fat woman whose
breath smelled of
beer, and she kissed
me on the mouth and
said, Walter, Walter,
and I was so lonesome
that for a second I
was almost tempted
to pass myself
off as whoever she
thought I was; but
what I did was
mumble something
about there being
a mistake, and even
before I spoke she
had realized that
and was pushing
me away.
Another time
a beautiful young girl
blew a kiss at me
from the open window
of a cab in New Haven,
Connecticut, and
shouted, Hi, Davie!
She wore a red scarf,
I remember. And I waved.
Then because I wanted
her to keep smiling
at me, lovingly, I
very quickly
turned away.
In the Operating Room
The anesthetist is singing
"Michael, row the boat ashore,
Hallelujah!"
And I am astonished
that his arms
are so hairy —
thick, red, curly hair
like little coppery ferns
growing out of
his flesh
from wrist
to shoulder.
I would like
to reach up
and touch
the hairy arm
of the anesthetist
because it may be
the last living thing
I will ever see
and I am glad
it is not
white and hairless
— but if I reached up
and wound
a few wisps
of his hair
around my forefinger
as I would like to do
they would think
their drugs
had made me silly
and might remember
and laugh
if I live,
so I concentrate
very hard
on the song
the anesthetist
is singing —
"The River Jordan
is muddy and cold,
Hallelujah!"
And soon
everything
is dark
and nothing
matters
and when I try
to reach up
and touch
the hair
which I think of
now as
little jets
of fire,
I discover
they've strapped
my arms
to the table.
He Sits Down on the Floor of a School for the Retarded
I sit down on the floor of a school for the retarded,
a writer of magazine articles accompanying a band
that was met at the door by a child in a man's body
who asked them, "Are you the surprise they promised us?"
It's Ryan's Fancy, Dermot on guitar,
Fergus on banjo, Denis on penny-whistle.
In the eyes of this audience, they're everybody
who has ever appeared on TV. I've been telling lies
to a boy who cried because his favourite detective
hadn't come with us; I said he had sent his love
and, no, I didn't think he'd mind if I signed his name
to a scrap of paper: when the boy took it, he said,
"Nobody will ever get this away from me,"
in the voice, more hopeless than defiant,
of one accustomed to finding that his hiding places
have been discovered, used to having objects snatched
out of his hands. Weeks from now I'll send him
another autograph, this one genuine
in the sense of having been signed by somebody
on the same payroll as the star.
Then I'll feel less ashamed. Now everyone is signing,
"Old MacDonald had a farm," and I don't know what to do
about the young woman (I call her a woman
because she's twenty-five at least, but think of her
as a little girl, she plays that part so well,
having known no other), about the young woman who
sits down beside me and, as if it were the most natural
thing in the world, rests her head on my shoulder.
It's nine o'clock in the morning, not an hour for music.
And, at the best of times, I'm uncomfortable
in situations where I'm ignorant
of the accepted etiquette: it's one thing
to jump a fence, quite another thing to blunder
into one in the dark. I look around me
for a teacher to whom to smile out my distress.
They're all busy elsewhere. "Hold me", she whispers. "Hold me."
I put my arm around her. "Hold me tighter."
I do, and she snuggles closer. I half-expect
someone in authority to grab her
or me; I can imagine this being remembered
for ever as the time the sex-crazed writer
publicly fondled the poor retarded girl.
"Hold me," she says again. What does it matter
what anybody thinks? I put my other arm around her,
rest my chin in her hair, thinking of children
real children, and of how they say it, "Hold me,"
and of a patient in a geriatric ward
I once heard crying out to his mother, dead
for half a century, "I'm frightened! Hold me!"
and of a boy-soldier screaming it on the beach
at Dieppe, of Nelson in Hardy's arms,
of Frieda gripping Lawrence's ankle
until he sailed off in his Ship of Death.
It's what we all want, in the end,
to be held, merely to be held,
to be kissed (not necessarily with the lips,
for every touching is a kind of kiss).
Yes, it's what we all want, in the end,
not to be worshipped, not to be admired,
not to be famous, not to be feared,
not even to be loved, but simply to be held.
She hugs me now, this retarded woman, and I hug her.
We are brother and sister, father and daughter,
mother and son, husband and wife.
We are lovers. We are two human beings
huddled together for a little while by the fire
in the Ice Age, two hundred thousand years ago.
My Father's Body Was Found by Children
My father's body was
found by children.
Boys from the neighbourhood
who thought
he was asleep
in his chair until
they came back next day
and saw he hadn't moved.
Children often visited him,
I'm told. He'd wrestle
with them if he was drunk,
converse with them soberly
at other times. His shack
was the sort of dwelling
a twelve-year-old would
build for himself,
in his last years he lived
the way a small boy would
if allowed to live alone.
Huck Finn at seventy.
To think he might have been
a child all his life
if less had been asked
of him and more been given.
To think I'm afraid
of him, even now,
half-expecting to look out
some night and see him
standing there:
I fear that most.
___________________
ALDEN NOWLAN
Selected Poems
(Anansi 2003)
Alden Nowlan
Fair Warning
I keep a lunatic chained
to a beam in the attic. He
is my twin brother whom
I'm trying to cheat
out of his inheritance.
It's all right for me
to tell you this because
you won't believe it.
Nobody believes anything
that's put in a poem.
I could confess to
murder and as long as
I did it in a verse
there's not a court
that would convict me.
So if you're ever
a guest overnight
in my house, don't
go looking for
the source of any
unusual sounds.
Mistaken Identity
It's good sometimes
to be mistaken for
someone else, although
it usually ends
badly.
Getting down from
a bus in Boston
in 1951, when I was
seventeen, I stepped
into the arms of
a fat woman whose
breath smelled of
beer, and she kissed
me on the mouth and
said, Walter, Walter,
and I was so lonesome
that for a second I
was almost tempted
to pass myself
off as whoever she
thought I was; but
what I did was
mumble something
about there being
a mistake, and even
before I spoke she
had realized that
and was pushing
me away.
Another time
a beautiful young girl
blew a kiss at me
from the open window
of a cab in New Haven,
Connecticut, and
shouted, Hi, Davie!
She wore a red scarf,
I remember. And I waved.
Then because I wanted
her to keep smiling
at me, lovingly, I
very quickly
turned away.
In the Operating Room
The anesthetist is singing
"Michael, row the boat ashore,
Hallelujah!"
And I am astonished
that his arms
are so hairy —
thick, red, curly hair
like little coppery ferns
growing out of
his flesh
from wrist
to shoulder.
I would like
to reach up
and touch
the hairy arm
of the anesthetist
because it may be
the last living thing
I will ever see
and I am glad
it is not
white and hairless
— but if I reached up
and wound
a few wisps
of his hair
around my forefinger
as I would like to do
they would think
their drugs
had made me silly
and might remember
and laugh
if I live,
so I concentrate
very hard
on the song
the anesthetist
is singing —
"The River Jordan
is muddy and cold,
Hallelujah!"
And soon
everything
is dark
and nothing
matters
and when I try
to reach up
and touch
the hair
which I think of
now as
little jets
of fire,
I discover
they've strapped
my arms
to the table.
He Sits Down on the Floor of a School for the Retarded
I sit down on the floor of a school for the retarded,
a writer of magazine articles accompanying a band
that was met at the door by a child in a man's body
who asked them, "Are you the surprise they promised us?"
It's Ryan's Fancy, Dermot on guitar,
Fergus on banjo, Denis on penny-whistle.
In the eyes of this audience, they're everybody
who has ever appeared on TV. I've been telling lies
to a boy who cried because his favourite detective
hadn't come with us; I said he had sent his love
and, no, I didn't think he'd mind if I signed his name
to a scrap of paper: when the boy took it, he said,
"Nobody will ever get this away from me,"
in the voice, more hopeless than defiant,
of one accustomed to finding that his hiding places
have been discovered, used to having objects snatched
out of his hands. Weeks from now I'll send him
another autograph, this one genuine
in the sense of having been signed by somebody
on the same payroll as the star.
Then I'll feel less ashamed. Now everyone is signing,
"Old MacDonald had a farm," and I don't know what to do
about the young woman (I call her a woman
because she's twenty-five at least, but think of her
as a little girl, she plays that part so well,
having known no other), about the young woman who
sits down beside me and, as if it were the most natural
thing in the world, rests her head on my shoulder.
It's nine o'clock in the morning, not an hour for music.
And, at the best of times, I'm uncomfortable
in situations where I'm ignorant
of the accepted etiquette: it's one thing
to jump a fence, quite another thing to blunder
into one in the dark. I look around me
for a teacher to whom to smile out my distress.
They're all busy elsewhere. "Hold me", she whispers. "Hold me."
I put my arm around her. "Hold me tighter."
I do, and she snuggles closer. I half-expect
someone in authority to grab her
or me; I can imagine this being remembered
for ever as the time the sex-crazed writer
publicly fondled the poor retarded girl.
"Hold me," she says again. What does it matter
what anybody thinks? I put my other arm around her,
rest my chin in her hair, thinking of children
real children, and of how they say it, "Hold me,"
and of a patient in a geriatric ward
I once heard crying out to his mother, dead
for half a century, "I'm frightened! Hold me!"
and of a boy-soldier screaming it on the beach
at Dieppe, of Nelson in Hardy's arms,
of Frieda gripping Lawrence's ankle
until he sailed off in his Ship of Death.
It's what we all want, in the end,
to be held, merely to be held,
to be kissed (not necessarily with the lips,
for every touching is a kind of kiss).
Yes, it's what we all want, in the end,
not to be worshipped, not to be admired,
not to be famous, not to be feared,
not even to be loved, but simply to be held.
She hugs me now, this retarded woman, and I hug her.
We are brother and sister, father and daughter,
mother and son, husband and wife.
We are lovers. We are two human beings
huddled together for a little while by the fire
in the Ice Age, two hundred thousand years ago.
My Father's Body Was Found by Children
My father's body was
found by children.
Boys from the neighbourhood
who thought
he was asleep
in his chair until
they came back next day
and saw he hadn't moved.
Children often visited him,
I'm told. He'd wrestle
with them if he was drunk,
converse with them soberly
at other times. His shack
was the sort of dwelling
a twelve-year-old would
build for himself,
in his last years he lived
the way a small boy would
if allowed to live alone.
Huck Finn at seventy.
To think he might have been
a child all his life
if less had been asked
of him and more been given.
To think I'm afraid
of him, even now,
half-expecting to look out
some night and see him
standing there:
I fear that most.
___________________
ALDEN NOWLAN
Selected Poems
(Anansi 2003)
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