YEAR OF THE MONKEY ~

knopf /  bloomsbury

2019

If you want a quiet book

of brotherhood

here it is

CAPTAIN BEEFHEART AND THE MAGIC BAND ~

JANIS ~

I’ve just finished the new biography of Janis Joplin by Holly George-Warren. Great eye-catching photograph of the native Texan on the cover, a photo I always liked (half naked) but done here in a detail exposure of Janis all in the face. I have read over the years many of the other biographies and likewise watched those titles disappear or go into the fog. Janis has had her time. Watching her old videos on You Tube hasn’t helped her cause — mainly catching this highly vulnerable and native wonder in rough catches on the Dick Cavett Show (never missed a show when she was on, or Hendrix) all comes off now loose hippie, so for good measure I return to the D. A. Pennebaker film work at Monterey Pop ’67 where she is in fine Texas form. She only performed with a name for herself over four years and while few seemed to like Big Brother’s make-shift band, I always thought it captured the very best of Janis in its loud, made up, seat of the pants heroin guitar work and clash. Sit for awhile with the album Cheap Thrills. Most overlook the fact that the likes of the Airplane, Quicksilver, Moby Grape, Country Joe and the Fish, Big Brother and even the longer lasting Dead, were all a golden ball element of its time, and sound. Don’t try to make good musicians out of some of them. It’s a blip in musical history for time span, but it is essential stuff. Albert Grossman wanted to make a star of Janis Joplin, and did, but he lost her sound. It’s a cleanly written book, and remarkably carries on a two-step nature of providing a biography and a timetable of the era. You’re there.

[ BA ]

Simon and Schuster
2019

POSTCARDS ~

R E A D      M E

YOKEL ( 4 ) ~

Fitzcarraldo

The time we worked in the woods

Cutting trees in the old sugar stand

Opening back up to the light and the

World some of the largest maples we

Had ever seen, Sweetheart called the

Job our Fitzcarraldo, after the Herzog

Film, when they cut a wide swath over

The mountain in a jungle to pull the

Ship over to reach another waterway —

But we were after no waterway

Just cutting tree after tree and

Brush and piling it all but still

Like the movie Sweetheart

Said she had the same opera

Music playing in her head

for Susan

Preacher

If you don’t think a name

Or job description means

Anything let me tell you about

Preacher’s place when the high

Winds of summer went through one

Year and shook his woodland hills

Where at the base was built some

Time ago a prefab log cabin by the

Date I liked to look at on the stone

Chimney and though the cabin wasn’t

Much and Preacher came from out of

State to visit he must have lived here

Long enough for a guardian angel

To watch over his place because he 

Hired me after one of those storms

And said I might want to bring Native

And his tractor along and when we

Got there, sure enough, tall white

Pines had flopped down in the winds

As if placed by a higher being

And not a scratch to any of the

Four sides of the dinky cabin 

With its many windows vista

But it was something to see

The building boxed in by trees

That took most of the day to cut

Innuendo

Curious-lady always used to think every

Man in the village was a peeping-tom

Until she decided, in fact, who was her

Peeping-tom. Since Curious-lady lived

With her mother and was attractive with

A pink ribbon often trailed off in her

Chestnut hair we liked visiting with 

Her while tolerating these lame brain

Stories of nocturnal visitors she got-a-

Good-look-at-this-time. More often than

Not she would stop in the middle of a

Conversation and ask us pinpointedly

Just who was that woman or man we

Were with the last time she saw us and

When satisfied would nod her head and

You could almost see her gears turning.

Months even years later Curious-lady would

Remind us about our friends as if waiting

To hear a little more, needling some secret.

The peeping-tom in the village was a little

Guy who had a lowly government job in town.

His wife was nuts and kept a human scale

Baby doll in a glass top coffee table in their

House and a life-size doll in colonial dress

Out by the old stone water well. It’s too much

To think about. Though Curious-lady when got 

Going liked to talk about how peeping-tom 

Dressed the doll and other cruel innuendo. 

This is somewhat of a clue how folks made

It through these long dark winters.

Rule of Thumb

don’t stay

long in

any

town

with

out a

real

hard

ware

store

_______________

Bob Arnold

Yokel

Longhouse

2011

TOYS, DREAMS ~

Toys, Dreams



Tonight my mother was born



her infant cry

filled our house

at the outskirts



bathed and so clean

I wrapped her

                        in a diaper

and laid her in a crib



from the corner I brought

toys

         blew twice

into a small plastic trumpet



Made the black wooden horse rock



____________________

Novica Tadic
Night Mail: Selected Poems
translated by Charles Simic
Oberlin College Press

WALKING TO EXTREMES ~

R E A D      M E

McPherson & Company

2008

SUFI ~

I M M E R S E

Shambhala

1996

LONG DREAMS ~

She climbed Everest nine times

and set a world record – so why doesn’t she have sponsors?

C L I M B

photograph ~
Kayana Szymczak/The Guardian

LAURA VAN DEN BERG ~

I N T E R V I E W

UNDERLAND ~

R E A D      M E

Norton

2019

IDA O' KEEFFE ~

I D A    O'  K E E F F E

Dallas Museum of Art

Yale

2018

YOKEL ( 3 ) ~

Earrings

He’d plow snow

All his life and

First with his

Father lights

Whipping the

Woods recall

From a heated

Cab tonight

Coffee thermos

Between the legs

And his own

Two boys riding

Along no matter

How late but damn

Things are getting

Strange how he’d

Never seen a woman

So pretty on this

Back road nor with

Four earrings in

Each ear and her

Friend had one

Stuck through

Her nose

Poet

Poet came to visit us from Arizona —

Not a country boy but with poet causes. 

He stood right up in the Howard 

Johnson’s next to our table and

Where his bus had come in and

Did a little routine that still

Makes me laugh. 

Back home in our woods 

Where he stayed a week

Poet wanted me to show 

Him how to split wood,

And then in the evening

Walking the flickering

Darkness of fireflies he

Asked, what were those?

Stars

Bigger as the night got later.

Nearing winter.

I’d walk out last thing of the day.

Bring in two armloads of stovewood.

For the next morning.

That’s when I heard the gunshots.

Unreal. In the middle of nowhere.

Louder than anything I’ve heard for weeks.

Native knew I could hear him jacking deer.

No one else in the world was down here.

One of those things we never talked about.

Occupied

Early morning

Walk into

The woodlot

Where birds sing

Soon enough

Our voices and

Sound of bow saws

Where birds sing

Where birds sing

We stop work and

Listen awhile

Until we sing

_______________

Bob Arnold

Yokel

Longhouse

2011

CRAWFORD, SAVOY, SUGAR ~

Before coming to Vermont at twenty years of age

I was raised in the Berkshire hills and around

the New Hampshire White Mountains.

Recently Longhouse went back on a road

tour to some favorite locations ~

Crawford Notch coming in from the south

on the edge of Savoy, Massachusetts

and looking to the White Mountains

from where Robert Frost had a peek

in Sugar Hill, N.H.