POETS WHO SLEEP #35 ~

 

P O E T S     W H O     S L E E P

______________________

                                           drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold

The complete series to date ~ please link here

ON THE CHALKBOARD ~

 

Back Road Chalkie

Winter 2021

ROAD THROUGH MIDNIGHT ~

 

R E A D      M E

HANK AARON ~

 

H A N K     A A R O N

RE-READING ANTLER

 

Antler — always startling fresh poems

come from this poet, and in a variety

of venues: early book from City Lights FACTORY (1980)

I highly recommend, plus his selected poems of a sort

in LAST WORDS (hope not) will keep you company

for the rest of your life. Born Brad Burdick in Wisconsin

in 1946, whenever I read Antler he seems ageless.

One of my most favorite poems by him

is the one we published

shown above.

[ BA ]

MORE AMANDA GORMAN ~

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RE-READING OTTO RENE CASTILLO ~

 

Liberty, You Say

Liberty,

you tell me,

is the most beautiful

thing that exists

on our young

planet.

You can't

live without it;

it's like the oxygen

of the soul.

If you have it,

you can never

lose it,

for you would die

from such immense pain.

It is not conquered.

It is carried humbly,

like an afternoon

in the depths of the heart.

But I who live

and suffer my country

like no one else,

I do not agree

with you.

The people here

have never been free.

For many it no longer matters

if the chain is thick

and gets thicker daily.

It doesn't move them to know

that their country,

like a sad, sweet

swallow

slowly agonizes;

surrounded by the cold

and miserable indifference

of her children.

You also don't

know

the brute dictatorship

we suffer in my country.

Nor have you ever

lost your freedom.

And your laughter

is the happiest

of all the laughter

I know.

Your country

is now a series

of simple mornings

that sing at sunrise

for you and yours.

But one day

we

will

also be free.

Then

we will have

to defend

our liberty

every day,

making deep sacrifices

of tenderness and kindness.

Liberty is

within us,

like the night

is in the dawn,

and by our

resounding will

the digits

of her face

are already marked.

You must also

get used to freedom

in order to love it,

and to guard it

every second,

because it's been

hunted

for a long time

so that its smooth, clear

heart of multitudes

could be clubbed to death.

But above all,

when you don't have it,

when you don't know

the particular details

of her face,

then you should fight

to find her,

to liberate her

from the darkest shadow.

This way, liberty

is the triumph

of those who

have never been truly free.

And once achieved,

they should repeat

the action

every day of their life.

translated by Alejandro Murguia

__________________________

Otto Rene Castillo

Tomorrow Triumphant

Night Heron Books, 1984

Scroll up again and look at that beautiful poet's face.

At age 31, in the early spring 1967, in the remote highlands

of Guatemala, Otto Rene Castillo was burned at the stake after

days of being tortured and mutilated by the Guatemalan Army.

It is said, "Castillo met with dignity the prescribed fate of

captured guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) 

of Guatemala. After years of agitation and exile, he had entered

into armed struggle convinced that it was the only way to liberate

his country from a tragic history of oppression and genocide."

[ BA ]

MIKE O'CONNOR ~

We lost Mike O'Connor out in his naive land

of the Pacific Northwest — but then the Far East

could also be said to be Mike's native place as well —

sometime this month. I was just receiving the news

from a mutual friend who also sent to me this photograph

of Mike titled "Mike/Old Growth" when we got slammed

up and down in Vermont with a heavy wet snowfall and

all power went bye-bye for a day and night so there

was no access to nothing except the snowmelt pools

I found to fill us up 15 gallons of water for bathing and

dishes, something Mike would well understand.

Mike's book of poems The Rainshadow remains one

of my standby classics — built, indeed, out of old growth.

How do you not fall for a guy who looks

like this guy in this photograph? 

[ BA ]

 

POETS WHO SLEEP #34 ~

P O E T S     W H O     S L E E P

______________________

                                           drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold

The complete series to date ~ please link here

RE-READING ROCKWELL KENT ~

Some inkling came over me as November 2020 crowded in

with outdoor work to button up before the snow started to fly —

so it was no surprise I went hunting room to room and library

to library in our old farmhouse for my first edition Modern Library

copy of Rockwell Kent's Wilderness. It had been lived in

(Fox Island, Alaska) and written during the rise of the

Spanish Influenza of 1919 and here we are 100 years later

as I go back in time, again, with Rockwell Kent and his nine year old son Rockwell

and their land and boat journey into the wilds of Alaska. Typically Kent

at the helm, with words and his poignant woodslore illustrations,

I was in his hands. Modern Library crafted with him

the ideal book culture. To first enhance my reading

I went back to Rockwellkentian and its "few words and many

pictures" showcasing a bibliography and list of prints compiled

by Carl Zigrosser and Kent's brief commentary, always with

his quill point edge. This brings us up to Kent as of 1933.

He'll be active and thriving almost forty more years.

In 1980 Sweetheart and I took our own voyage on a mailboat

to Monhegan island where Rockwell Kent as a young man built

a masterful house for his mother (later owned by the Wyeth family)

and two houses for himself. This would be in 1905 when he was twenty five

years old and the rocky island life would hold him for the next five years

of construction work and continuing at his painting. After Monhegan,

Kent lived for long periods of time in Minnesota (1912-13),

Newfoundland (1914-15), Alaska (1918-19), Vermont (where he

wrote Wilderness, Arlington to be exact 1919-25),

Tierra del Fuego (1922-23) Ireland (1926) and

Greenland (1929, 1931-32, 1934-35). We can follow

Kent everywhere through his paintings and the many

books he wrote from these sojourns. 

My personal copy of Kent's Rockwellkentian is signed

by Kent — the smallest signature I believe I

have ever seen.

[ BA ]

RE-READING KEROUAC AT THE "WILD BOAR" ~

An uneven (it's strength) collection of essays, memoir, 

poetry, photographs compiled by

librarian and Jack Kerouac climbing partner

(with Gary Snyder) John Montgomery

from The Dharma Bums, a rightfully so

ragtag membership of Kerouac

friends and scholars come forth, be it 

David Amram, Ann Charters, Joy Walsh, 

Gerald Nicosia, Michael McClure.

More more and more.

Seymour Wyse shows his skills

balancing Beat and jazz.

From Montgomery's own press

Fels & Firn, 1986

[ BA ]

GERMANY' S OLDEST BOOKSELLER ~

 

Helga Weyhe in her bookstore in Salzwedel, Germany, in 2018. Her grandfather bought the store in 1871.

Credit...John MacDougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

R E A D     M E

MERRILL GILFILLAN ~

 

from The Warbler Road

                   for Jack Collom

I first heard of the Warbler Road just three years

ago, read of it in a used bookshop in Carolina, and

have thought of it regularly ever since. I was taken

with the term itself: the very idea of a human by-

way, or most anything else for that matter, named

after the wood-warbler group was rousing — no

matter that only a few bird people called it that. I

began to envision the place in the western Virginia

mountains not only as a good area to see birds, but

as a juicy conceptual transect in a most gifted part

of North America, a transect or a partaking, in the

tradition of Fuji viewing or honoring the solstice

at Chaco Canyon. And gradually, inadvertently in

truth, I began daydreaming the Warbler Road as a

sort of Way, a way of ordering one's priorities in life

so as to proceed, at a core aesthetic level, from war-

bler to warbler, something in the nature of Issa and

Basho's "Way of Poetry."

______________________________

The Warbler Road

Merrill Gilfillan

Flood Editions, 2010

Another late night during that Christmas week

fresh with my new bookcase for tiny books, I

pulled out another title I always liked, and by a

writer I've had the pleasure of publishing three

times in the tiniest of fold-out booklets, Merrill Gilfillan.

I've read many books by Merrill and truth be told,

poetry or prose, every darn one is a keeper. Some,

like The Warbler Road from Flood Editions, is

exquisite in its design and printing care.

Imagine holding a book that feels just right

in the hands, just right in the head, and just

right in the heart. You'd want to build

a bookcase for that book.

[ BA ]