CAN YOU IMAGINE ~

Can You Imagine

Can you imagine this

Being your life at six

Years old walking out

The woodshed door as

A blue heron lifts up

From our old truck

And you run inside

Even though you

May be late for

School to tell us

About the bird this

Big (arms can’t spread

Yet big enough) as

We look into your

Expression loving that

Bird we missed

Two Spoons

It’s Valentine’s Day —

We are 22 years married

And share strawberry shortcake

At midday, the waitress saw

To bring two spoons

Our son comes home from

Fifth grade, says Kevin

Gave Angela a $30 bracelet

And she didn’t want it — all he can

Remember is most of the class cried all day

Summer

one more

day of

school

and then

he is

morning

noon

and

night

Little Ones

I went out before the rain and scythed the roadway. Only me out there, though Kokomo, our kitten, would certainly follow me anywhere. Yesterday I was scything and a neighbor was walking by, she limps and her elder dog wheezes. I can hear them coming from fifty feet off with my back turned on an old dirt road. She knows the pooch is going to die any time now, but I mentioned how she still wags her tail. What a heart an animal has. I’ve tried to learn my lessons from birds and animals and the great Mother more than other humans, but occasionally a human being becomes a spectacular moment. So as I am saying adieu to the neighbor and her dog heading up river for the mailbox, I turn and look down behind the stonewall and there’s my buddy Kokomo who has made his silent stay all the way to the road and by my boots where I stand. . .peering out with those glorious eyes. Beaming. It was his first look at a dog. I left myself and thought more about him. I know he is everything to me that I give to my one grown son. It can’t be helped.  

————————————

BOB ARNOLD

I'm In Love With You

Who Is In Love With Me

Longhouse 2012

 

JUTTA HIPP ~

J U T T A      H I P P

PSYCHEDELICS ON FILM ~

HIRATO RENKICHI ~

Her Garden


In order to decorate her garden

In order to burn her moist jewels

The night came, above the soft grass

Above the graveyard, inside the tombstones the night came

Above the graveyard, inside the tombstones she stands

Memories vividly burn

Memories moist from sweet nectar

From that border the blue bird again

From that border again flying back to her garden.



I shall scoop the night dew from the thicket of asparagus

Like a cutworm on a tomato flower

I shall seek her fragrance there

O, but her spirits have been gradually wilting

As expected from a distant blue sky

As expected from going after that little bird's shadow

Right now            on a leaf of grass a cabbage butterfly

Idly folding wings and falling asleep

As expected, she is like the heart of that small insect

As expected, she is here quietly sleeping.



——————————
Hirato Renkichi
Spiral Staircase
Collected Poems
Ugly Duckling Presse
2017






M O R E !!!

RIVER RUN ~

ALL MY RELATIONS ~ (book 2)

COUSIN SMOKE:



Tree  

        become

ghost.








COUSIN CROW:



What a big

family

          you

sometimes are!







COUSIN LIGHTNING:



How

        you can

throw

your voice!







COUSIN SUNFLOWER:



As

     the earth

turns.







COUSIN HORNED-TOAD:



Remember  

                   how

many years

ago

       I

held you

in

    my

child-

hand

         just

like this?



———————————

JD Whitney
All My Relations
(book 2)
Many Voices Press 2018





Meet your cousins !
This is a back-pocket size book
ready for you to take anywhere.

LAST WORKS ~

———————————

Strong, personal, deep-seated essays on

Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Blanchot, Freud,

Derrida, Poe, Woolf, Hemingway,

David Foster Wallace, Melville,

Thoreau —

with now and then odd quibbles:

the author describes Melville's Pittsfield home "Arrowhead"

which "lay at the base of Mount Greylock."

Far from it, miles away. Greylock actually 

overwhelms the small old mill town of Adams

which lays at the base of Mount Greylock.

Quibbles. Stones in a spring stream rushing

down the Thunderbolt Trail.

An important book.

Yale 2018

DOUGLAS CRASE ~

The essays in this handsome collection are so toothsome, so vital, so nourishing I begin to feel while holding the book and reading, say about Niedecker, or immersing into Emerson or George Bradley's cosmos (so few have since heard of this poet) and then the author spotting Ursa Major "standing on her tail" over Times Square, as if I am holding a picnic basket, and the gingham cloth for over the spring grass, and I'm with the girl, or the boy, however you prefer, and we are tempting our meal to never end. There is the slope of the hill, the splendid view, and since when has a book of essays on poetry and poets felt this good to you? Or think of it as toolbox, and I can in my combined life of feasting and working hard, as you grab in the slot for hammer, cat's paw, nail-set, 12 point handsaw, just as exact and precise each tool for the job are these essays. You'd be a fool not to own this book for your poetry library. It could very well be the first book for your poetry library.

[ BA ]

PRESSED WAFER

375 Parkside Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11226

www.pressedwafer.com

HEREDITARY ~

Small Difference

We bought

a jackknife

for our son

his first

I thought the

blade was sharp

you liked the

pretty handle

Autobiography

I stopped thinking

About my name today

When in the truck

Returning home with

My son after working

Together at a farm

Splitting wood

Picking kindling

Around the chopping

Stump, slinging manure

Onto the winter garden

And later hiking

High into the heather

Pasture, now in the

Truck with his gloves

Still on he sized it

Up by saying he didn’t 

Like the name Bob — it

Was too short, only three

Letters — and it sounded

Like a name half-city

Half-country

Suddenly Mississippi

he lost his

lucky rabbit’s

foot, green with

a key-chain in

Greenwood, MS

so returning to

find it wait-

ress brought

it to us on

a tray

Hereditary

I kid him

& he argues

with me which 

turns me to

argue with

him as he

begins to

kid me

————————————

BOB ARNOLD

I'm In Love With You

Who Is In Love With Me

Longhouse 2012

FRISELL ~

III ~

R E A D     M E

I have followed this musician's career from the start and on the bright-side: this is the father of Rufus and Martha and equally sweet singer Lucy; also Loudon Wainwright and Leonard Cohen were related (Rufus had a daughter, Viva, with Lorca Cohen) and LW can still play, from time to time, a fine, nimble talkin' folk-blues of his own mode. 
Otherwise, the book's storyteller is a wiggler on the edge of irksome.

DENIS JOHNSON ~

Denis Johnson (1983)

Everything Denis Johnson wrote and published was well written. Everything.

None of it was as strong and original and potent as his short and vivid Jesus' Son, but it was still very good, and you weren't going to do wrong, or waste your time. That includes his new book of stories

(and last book) The Largesse of the Sea Maiden. Again, don't go expecting Jesus' Son, it isn't there, try as he might. Every writer wants to top his best book. Denis Johnson is now dead. He left us a small library to read — nine novels, one novella, two books of short stories, five collections of poetry, two collections of plays, and one book of reportage, Seek: Reports from the edges of America & Beyond that should be really hunted down and read. I happen to like, and I read each of his books as they appeared over time, his poetry, Jesus' Son (naturally), his little crime caper Nobody Move and Train Dreams. The other books were fine books but the ones I mention were Denis Johnson as played by John Garfield.

I always think of John Garfield when I read Denis Johnson.

[ BA ]

Random House 2018

BLIND WILLIE MCTELL ~

ONE LESS BELL TO ANSWER ~

sorry, another dud — not every apple on the tree. . .

WHY BOB DYLAN MATTERS ~

Bland title, one great photograph (the cover), handy size volume,

and all written by a senior professor of Latin at Harvard University

where ages ago Dylan curled up in the grass with guitars and Eric Von Schmidt.

The reading won't hurt you.

In fact, it will help you grow!

M O R E

Dey St. / Morrow

2017

PABLO NERUDA (SONG) ~

TRAVEL PICTURES ~

“There was still a unity in the world and there were complete poets."

And Heine was one of them in more ways than one.

(1797-1856)

R E A D      M O R E

Archipelago Books

TINY ISLAND ~

TIM HARDIN ~

SKIP JAMES ~

BIG MAMA THORNTON ~

SPREAD YOUR LOVE ~

THE ANDALUCIAN DOGS ~

BOOGIE WOOGIE COUNTRY GIRL ~

IF I WERE A CARPENTER ~

PATSY CLINE ~

ELLEN BASS ~

Prayer


Once I wore a dress liquid as vodka.

My lover watched me ascend

from the subway

like I was an underground spring

breaking through.

I want to stop wanting to be wanted like that.

I'm tired of the song the rain sings in June,

the earth, her ornate crown of trees

spiking up from her loamy head.

There are things I wanted, like everyone.

But to this angel of wishes I've worshiped

so long, I ask now to admit

the world as it is.


————————
ELLEN BASS
Like a Beggar
Copper Canyon Press, 2014





Oddly, Copper Canyon Press claims Like A Beggar is the poet's third book of poetry,
neglecting to note her first book of poetry — one that I fell for at the time — 
I'm Not Your Laughing Daughter (Univ. Mass. Press, 1973). Find that neglected book.