Counterpoint, 2013
Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder
with 3 CDS
over 3 hours of
the poet reading
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
FROSTS / ROTH ~
Just finished one of the more interesting Frost documents: Robert and Elinor's correspondence with their children, but mainly Leslie, the prettiest one and the one that best survived. Then I started in on Dieter Roth's DIARIES. I doubt there is a bigger leap between books. Not intentional, it's just the way things came about and no doubt the way I am feeling in the extremes of summer between construction work, or planting flowers. Bee balm is a month ahead. Daylilies aren't as magnificent as last year (what and who is?), the deer have munched down the hosta plants from here to Hanover. They know a second growth comes with the plant and they'll be back to actually munch down the rebirth. Survival of the fittest. Robert Frost. Dieter Roth.
Roth was a mischief-maker at making his own handmade books, as few as 10 per title and he made these like Fruitmarket Gallery has chosen to go to great lengths to make this heavenly volume: grey boards with gauze to strengthen the spine. Simple is best.
Family Letters
of Robert
and Elinor Frost
edited by Arnold Grade
State University of New York, 1972
~
Diaries
Dieter Roth
Fiona Bradley, Sarah Lowndes,
Jan Voss, Andrea Buttner, Bjorn Roth
Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 2012
Yale University
Yale University
Monday, July 14, 2014
JOSE ANGEL VALENTE ~
Cover painting by Henri Michaux
please move the screen left to right
Jose Angel Valente
Landscape With Yellow Birds
Archipelago Books 2013
Sunday, July 13, 2014
JOY WILLIAMS ~
Joy Williams
Speaks to The Paris Review (but a taste).
I read this in a bookshop cafe, actual copy, off the shelf, book in hand.
Highly recommend.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
GREAT STORYTELLER ~
Jean Shepherd
at WOR
"Jean Parker Shepherd (July 26, 1921 – October 16, 1999) was an American raconteur, radio and TV personality, writer and actor who was often referred to by the nickname Shep.
With a career that spanned decades, Shepherd is best known to modern audiences for the film A Christmas Story (1983), which he narrated and co-scripted, based on his own semi-autobiographical stories."
With a career that spanned decades, Shepherd is best known to modern audiences for the film A Christmas Story (1983), which he narrated and co-scripted, based on his own semi-autobiographical stories."
Friday, July 11, 2014
WESTWARD THOREAU ~
Gosh, what an ugly looking book. Your hand might not want to reach for it, but you should, the reading is a delight from both Henry David Thoreau's own time when he traveled by train in 1861 (one year before his untimely death) with young Horace Mann, Jr. (also an early fatality) from Massachusetts to Minnesota and back, to the 21st century author Corinne Hosfeld Smith's charmed and friendly prose. She's a librarian from Paxton, Massachusetts and I want to imagine an ideal one. She has much the same vigor, humor and hankering for detail that Thoreau had and she shares it throughout this sturdy portrait and study. This is the longest and least known of the Thoreau's excursions, which included up and in and around New England and the American Northeast, Canada (Quebec), Maine Woods and Cape Cod. As Thoreau scholar Laura Dassow Walls shares in her excellent introduction, "Walking became a form of thinking, which took shape as writing — he (Thoreau) once remarked that the length of his walks marked the length of his journal entries — and in his second essay, "A Walk to Wachusett," he wrote that "the landscape lies far and fair within, and the deepest thinker is the farthest travelled."
Go west, young man.
___________________
Westward I Go Free:
tracing Thoreau's last journey
Corinne Hosfeld Smith
Green Frigate Books, 2012
greenfrigatebooks.com
Thursday, July 10, 2014
ICEHOUSES ~
Another lovely slight of hand primer from a British press that showcases the humble and forgotten old architecture of thatch roof and stone structures with full elegance, at under 60 pages, and you walk away from the reading fully enriched.
Shire Books, UK, 2014
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
BIRTHDAY GIRL! ~
Back Road Chalkies 9 July 2014
Chalkie created 5:30 AM barely enough light for a photograph
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
WANTED MAN ~
Bob Dylan with his first wife Sara poking her head out the door — there are some terrific Dylan oddities packed in here, including this great cover photograph, which if I recall correctly was inspired by a Bobby Vee album jacket, or maybe the other way around? Plus an interview with Eric Clapton setting down the rule of law, followed by one with Ron Wood, a look at some of Dylan's cinema work, Johnny Cash also chimes in, as does Joe Boyd re Newport '65. The Girl From the North Country (Jaharana Romney) fills us in. D.A. Pennebaker, Paul Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Raymond Foye, Leonard Cohen, Roy Orbison, Daniel Lanois — it's quite a cast.
Wanted Man
In search of Bob Dylan
edited by John Bauldie
Citadel Underground,1991
Monday, July 7, 2014
MASAOKA SHIKI / DONALD KEENE ~
Spring breezes —
How'd I'd love to throw a ball
Over a grassy field.
After killing
The spider, what loneliness —
The cold of night.
Trampling through
Insect cries, I create
A path through the fields.
Columbia, 2013
Donald Keene
Masaoka Shiki (1867 ~ 1902)
haiku / tanka master
cover self portrait watercolor
translations by Burton Watson
translations by Burton Watson
baseball lover; prolonged spinal illness
the last 7 years of Shiki's life were confined to his sickbed
when he wrote the majority of his work
leaving behind at his death at 35
22 volumes of writing
each book is 500 pages long
Shiki is buried in the cemetery of Tairyu-ji
a temple in the Tabata Section of Tokyo
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2013/09/28/books/book-reviews/biography-of-masaoka-shiki-excels-in-the-expanded-details/#.U7C8qKge4pQ
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Saturday, July 5, 2014
Friday, July 4, 2014
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
HANDMADE HOUSES ~
A fine combination of homes and locations situated by architects, or definitely wanting nothing to do with the influence of an architect. Full color and full crafted. Not quite as wood-edged and maverick as Lloyd Kahn's tall, glossy masterwork volumes (ie., Tiny Homes; Home Work etc.) but on the same tool belt.
Cabin of Howard Waite, built with Rufus Blunk, from Handmade Homes, 1973
photo: Nancy Waite
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
COLLECTED RON PADGETT ~
Ron Padgett
Collected Poems
Coffee House Books, 2013
Here's the whole house, and the kitchen sink, but not the collaborations with others, nor as I recall the fine translations. I am reading a borrowed copy. But I am reading and reading and reading. And happy to say the book is as impressive as it looks.
Collected Poems
Coffee House Books, 2013
The Love Cook
Let me cook you some dinner.
Sit down and take off your shoes
and socks and in fact the rest
of your clothes, have a daiquiri,
turn on some music and dance
around the house, inside and out,
it’s night and the neighbors
are sleeping, those dolts, and
the stars are shining bright,
and I’ve got the burners lit
for you, you hungry thing.
Sit down and take off your shoes
and socks and in fact the rest
of your clothes, have a daiquiri,
turn on some music and dance
around the house, inside and out,
it’s night and the neighbors
are sleeping, those dolts, and
the stars are shining bright,
and I’ve got the burners lit
for you, you hungry thing.
Here's the whole house, and the kitchen sink, but not the collaborations with others, nor as I recall the fine translations. I am reading a borrowed copy. But I am reading and reading and reading. And happy to say the book is as impressive as it looks.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Saturday, June 28, 2014
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