Literchoor Is My Beat
a life of james laughlin
publisher of new directions
Farrar, 2014
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
MOROCCO HOUSEHOLD ~
Village on the southern slopes of the
High Atlas Mountains, Morocco
photo Ivo Grammet
Monday, December 15, 2014
LEON LEVINSTEIN ~
Eighth Avenue and 41st Street
Times Square
1975
Untitled
New Orleans
1975
Los Angeles
1975
New York
1968
Untitled
Coney Island
no date
Leon Levinstein
Bob Shamis
Steidel / Howard Greenberg Library
2012
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/recognition-from-the-art-world-he-shunned-in-life/
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Saturday, December 13, 2014
ANNOUNCING GO WEST ~
Bob & Susan Arnold travel by trains, lots of trains, across America, across Canada.
This book — filled with poems and travel photography — shares one cross-country trip the couple took in the mid-1980s to California from Vermont.
Go West was first published by Coyote Books
twenty-five years ago.
This revised and expanded edition
now shows the photographs from that adventure across
and broadly stateside in California.
Go West by Bob Arnold
Longhouse 2014
144 pages, perfect bound, 5.5 x 6.25 inches
70 photographs
70 photographs
$15
order here through Paypal, plus $2.00 s/h (US shipping only) / international shipping, plus $12
Friday, December 12, 2014
JIM KOLLER & PETER GARLAND SPEAK ~
Lato Selvatico "Libraria"
Strada Digagnola, 24
46027 Portiolo
Mantova
Bioregione Bacino Fluviale del Po
ITALY
morettig@iol.it
www.sentierobioregionale.org
November 2014
James Koller photograph: Maggie Brown
Peter Garland photograph: Esperanza Esquivel
Thursday, December 11, 2014
WALKING ~
Jim Koller w/ empty boxes, Bert Koller, Carson Arnold, Bob Arnold
circa 1986, Vermont
Jim was visiting with his family a few years after I built a house for a couple down this road and around the corner.
The couple had asked if I could come down and help them move a piano and I brought along a little army with me.
Susan was with us, too. She took the photograph.
photo © susan arnold
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
DARK EYES ~
http://wyndhambaird.bandcamp.com
"And if you don't like me, well, leave me alone"
Dylan should be just left alone. He pretty much says that, too. I've been enjoying watching him survive long enough to have a croaking voice, a young voice, a mellow voice at Newport (64), a cracking rocker's voice (Newport a year later: Maggie's Farm), his Judas period in Manchester with the audience, then the phony bike wreck, the mellow Lay Lady Lay, come back with The Band in NYC — jean jacket, good stare, handsome — then we wind down through the religious period, Wailing Wall, fucked up songs, good songs, Lenny etc. By the time he lands in Springfield, MA and we buy Jim Koller a ticket to meet us there for it (1992), Dylan can barely fill the seats.
We come into the dirty city and see Koller moving sideways up one of the sidewalks biding his time, maybe hitting a bar, at the concert our seats have rainwater on them and we go talk to the bosses who move us all almost to the front. Dylan in hood.
I meet another old friend there. I built his house five years earlier in the woods, he's wearing gloves in September, that jittery at being in the city and shaking hands, he shows me a little zippered pocket on the top of the gloves where he keeps change for panhandlers. He's well prepared. Country folk still come into the city like the settlers in Shane with an old wagon and a knock to the back wheel. Don't blame them.
Dylan makes one more comeback pretty much after the second Woodstock (nothing ever in Woodstock but all of Woodstock attends) and we meet up with one of his shows, again, this time up in the woods of Stratton Vermont and lo and behold Janine is in the audience, come over from Woodstock, and she'll follow the tour to the Woodstock event the next night. Stratton's obviously a warmup for Dylan and the band. I never heard "Rainy Day Woman" any better. He was on fire.
Years and years later we'll catch him again in Northampton at Smith College, 2000 in attendance, Allen Ginsberg has just died, Dylan has a huge portrait on a screen behind him on the stage of AG. Dylan in Stetson looking like a Jewish kid Bill Monroe. He can pull off anything he wants. We have balcony seats. We're catching a train that night from there to New Mexico.
In '75 we also saw Dylan and Rolling Thunder down in Hartford. Got there, November night, sleet storm, almost two hours from Vermont, and halfway there the windshield wipers bust on our VW bug that never had heat. To get home we had to wait for the storm to pass. No sleep. Youngsters. The best age for Dylan. Even for him. He's approaching that old blues singer voice now. He may, eventually, get side by side with Skip James. . .
. . .way back in the 60s Susan saw Dylan at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, his polka dot shirt period. Same time, same state, Koller's Coyote's Journal was growling.
Now to modern times — here is Wyndham Baird who gets at the very hard work at crossing generations, with quality, as is being done here. I don't put Wyndham at all in the momentary Dylan-doing-Woody Guthrie mode; it's more Ramblin' Jack Elliott-doing-Woody, and it's a toss up who did Woody songs best between those two. In Dylan's case NO ONE yet or ever will do Dylan better because it's all about the mystical which he has down as well as Blake.
Untouchable.
"Dark Eyes" all for Jim
image: by Alec Mcleod
Title from the Celtic song "The Moonshiner"
"And if you don't like me, well, leave me alone"
Dylan should be just left alone. He pretty much says that, too. I've been enjoying watching him survive long enough to have a croaking voice, a young voice, a mellow voice at Newport (64), a cracking rocker's voice (Newport a year later: Maggie's Farm), his Judas period in Manchester with the audience, then the phony bike wreck, the mellow Lay Lady Lay, come back with The Band in NYC — jean jacket, good stare, handsome — then we wind down through the religious period, Wailing Wall, fucked up songs, good songs, Lenny etc. By the time he lands in Springfield, MA and we buy Jim Koller a ticket to meet us there for it (1992), Dylan can barely fill the seats.
We come into the dirty city and see Koller moving sideways up one of the sidewalks biding his time, maybe hitting a bar, at the concert our seats have rainwater on them and we go talk to the bosses who move us all almost to the front. Dylan in hood.
I meet another old friend there. I built his house five years earlier in the woods, he's wearing gloves in September, that jittery at being in the city and shaking hands, he shows me a little zippered pocket on the top of the gloves where he keeps change for panhandlers. He's well prepared. Country folk still come into the city like the settlers in Shane with an old wagon and a knock to the back wheel. Don't blame them.
Dylan makes one more comeback pretty much after the second Woodstock (nothing ever in Woodstock but all of Woodstock attends) and we meet up with one of his shows, again, this time up in the woods of Stratton Vermont and lo and behold Janine is in the audience, come over from Woodstock, and she'll follow the tour to the Woodstock event the next night. Stratton's obviously a warmup for Dylan and the band. I never heard "Rainy Day Woman" any better. He was on fire.
Years and years later we'll catch him again in Northampton at Smith College, 2000 in attendance, Allen Ginsberg has just died, Dylan has a huge portrait on a screen behind him on the stage of AG. Dylan in Stetson looking like a Jewish kid Bill Monroe. He can pull off anything he wants. We have balcony seats. We're catching a train that night from there to New Mexico.
In '75 we also saw Dylan and Rolling Thunder down in Hartford. Got there, November night, sleet storm, almost two hours from Vermont, and halfway there the windshield wipers bust on our VW bug that never had heat. To get home we had to wait for the storm to pass. No sleep. Youngsters. The best age for Dylan. Even for him. He's approaching that old blues singer voice now. He may, eventually, get side by side with Skip James. . .
. . .way back in the 60s Susan saw Dylan at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, his polka dot shirt period. Same time, same state, Koller's Coyote's Journal was growling.
Now to modern times — here is Wyndham Baird who gets at the very hard work at crossing generations, with quality, as is being done here. I don't put Wyndham at all in the momentary Dylan-doing-Woody Guthrie mode; it's more Ramblin' Jack Elliott-doing-Woody, and it's a toss up who did Woody songs best between those two. In Dylan's case NO ONE yet or ever will do Dylan better because it's all about the mystical which he has down as well as Blake.
Untouchable.
"Dark Eyes" all for Jim
image: by Alec Mcleod
Title from the Celtic song "The Moonshiner"
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
SIMON PETTET ~
Simon Pettet
POEM ("can't get enough of that")
can't get enough of that
kora music
inscribing letters on a
full moon
each of the notes then
each of the letters
crystal clear
incised on the moon's cheek
absolute in a way
as she tumbles
(they tumble out)
onto the page
or into the sky
(that blanket of emptiness)
followed by cascades
(and shimmers)
of gold and black dust
and pinpoints of light
that's you
POEM ("You still here Franco. . .")
You still here Franco
where?
in your daughter's face
calling Franco in spirit world
can I come in? yes,
no.
you would have flipped over e mail!
POEM ("coyote howls on the crossroads")
coyote howls on the crossroads
crop dusters spew noxious vapors
as we speed by industrial chemical plants
and factories and prisons
and set out on to the open plains
are not wolves
(look in their eyes)
brother animals?
and should we not protect them?
as we supposedly (but hardly!) protect ourselves.
___________________
S I M O N P E T T E T
As A Bee
Talisman House, Publishers
P.O. Box 102
Northfield, MA 01360
Monday, December 8, 2014
MARTIN PARR ~
Martin Parr
Val Williams
Phaidon, 2014
http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/06/meet-the-totally-unorthodox-fashion-photographer.html
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