NATIVE NATIONS ~

 

R E A D   M E

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF "THE DEBATE"

 

      Backroad Chalkie

     September 2024

KEITH JARRETT ~

 

1977

featuring his 'American Quartet' ensemble which included Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden, and Paul Motian. 

 …

TRANSCENDENT ~

 

H E A R   M E

   Melville House 2023

PAUL BUTTERFIELD BLUES BAND (1967) ~

 

   Elektra Records

  1967  

KUBRICK ~

 

R E A D   M E

Stanley Kubrick on the set of the film Barry Lyndon (1975)

IS THERE GOD AFTER PRINCE? ~

 

R E A D   M E

The University of Chicago Press

2023

WOMAN LIFE FREEDOM ~

 

R E A D    M E

      Saqi Books, 2023

CLIFFORD GIBSON~

 

RUSS TAMBLYN ~

 

R E A D   M E

Black Stone 2024

ANTHONY HECHT ~

 

R E A D   M E

I'll read a ton of poets before I sit down again with Anthony Hecht's poems,

but I have read him, and this biography performs a miracle raising the ante

on a somewhat dragged through the dust poet. Give me Stevens, of course,

and all by Berryman, Delmore Schwartz, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop

before Hecht, but read this biography — Hecht's literal writing 

and continuing and finally surviving is his poem.

    St. Martin's 2023

JOE HILL LOUIS ~

 

THE FORCED DISPLACEMENT OF THE NORTHERN SAMI ~

 

R E A D   M E

Minnesota 2024

RAJA SHEHADEH ~

 

R E A D   M E

     Other Press, 2024

ALICE NEEL IN THE QUEER WORLD ~

 

R E A D   M E

David Zwimer 2024

HAIKU (THREE SIMPLE LINES ) ~

 

R E A D   M E

     poets wondering ~

     don't hesitate, it's a slim

      genuine wonder of a book

JOY WILLIAMS THINKS FRANZ KAFKA ~

 

R E A D   M E

Franz Kafka, Selected Stories

translated by Mark Harman

Belknap Press 2024

ANNIVERSARIES ~

 

Los Lobos, founded in 1973

Two great music sets we love — one is quite recent, informal, a miniature powerhouse. The longer concert is beautifully shot: exquisite pan shots of the full stage, clear as a bell right up on the stage with the performers, back-shots, side-shots, the instruments are in your hands.

Imagine (you can) this group hasn't been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

They are the Americas (south and north) Songbook

Today is our 50th wedding anniversary — Bob & Susan

We've played these guys throughout all the years, and Susan is from L.A.

Oh, the one-of-kind film Texas Chain Saw Massacre is also

50 years old this year. Here is film director Eli Roth's

smart cookie contemporary eye to the film classic:

"Texas Chain Saw Massacre” unnerved me in ways I didn’t expect. I didn’t know it was going to start with those solar flares, and the strange music that blurs the line between score and sound design. The actors didn’t feel like actors. I wasn’t scared by it. I wanted to live in it. It was a movie just dripping with mood and atmosphere, and it felt like it had been made by serial killers."

REMEMERING PEASANTS ~

 

R E A D   M E

Scribner 2024

PESSOA ~

 

The Keeper of Sheep

[  23 July 1930 ]

56

Now that I feel love

I'm interested in things that have a scent.

I never used to be interested in the fact that a flower had scent.

Now I experience the scent of flowers as if life were utterly new.

I know perfectly well that they always had a scent, just as I knew that I existed.

These are things one knows out of habit.

But now I know this from the deep in-breath that comes from way back in my head.

Today the flowers taste good to me on a palate that can also smell.

Sometimes when I wake now, smell comes before sight.

Every day I wake full of joy and sorrow.

I used to wake feeling nothing at all; I simply woke.

I feel joy and sorrow because I lose what I dream

But can still inhabit the reality where my dreams live.

I don't know what to do with my sensations,

I don't know what to do on my own.

I want her to say something, anything, so that I can wake again.

_________________

Fernando Pessoa

The Complete Works of Alberto Caeiro

translated from the Portuquese by

Margaret Jull Costa & Patricio Ferrari 

New Directions, 2020

THE CUES ~

 

TOM BROWN ~

 

T O M   B R O W N

B. Jan. 29, 1950, in Toms River, N.J., ~ 2024

WISDOM~

Pepe Mujica, Uruguay’s sp

A decade ago, the world had a brief fascination with José Mujica. He was the folksy president of Uruguay who had shunned his nation’s presidential palace to live in a tiny tin-roof home with his wife and three-legged dog.

R E A D   M E

IRANIAN WOMEN PHOTOGRAPHERS ~

 

B R E A T H I N G   S P A C E 

Thames & Hudson, 2023

ANDY IRVINE / PAUL BRADY ~

 

FRANCINE PROSE ~ ( 1974 ) ~

 

R E A D   M E

There are three books I've read, and then re-read over the last year — each about the same size (under 300 pages), each with less than attractive book design to its merit — in fact the Prose book, perhaps by accident or intent, appears to have been published in 1974: the book's size, Milton Glasserish design, cheap paper stock, an old Doubleday-feel etc., and all three books are straight-up originals. There is something about being relaxed, even confident, and telling it like it is. With a buoyant style.

If the authors aren't personal friends, they should be.

The Prose is shown above, the other two, not to miss, are below.

      Francine Prose, Harper, 2024

TIA BLAKE ~

 

Paris, France

1972

PHIL DONAHUE ~

 

1935 ~ 2024

MICHAEL ONDAATJE ~

 

November

Where is my dear sixteen-year-old-cat

I wish to carry upstairs in my arms

looking up at me and thinking

be careful, dear human

Sixteen years. How many days since

I found you as if an urchin in a snowstorm

and you moved in assured

learned the territories of the house

and what became your garden

Only now do we see the horizon

where you pushed two or three times

then slipped into

Was it too soon or too late

that last summer of your life

when we watched your walk

down to a river to take a sip

from its ongoing flow

Oh Jack I miss your presence everywhere

in the corners of rooms, in every chair,

or nesting in a cardboard box

Take me back where the past can again enter

those early remembered rooms, our snowbound street,

lift me upside down in your arms, I cannot stand it

I need a journey too. Have I slept my life away,

do I understand anything? Will I wear a bell

like yours into the afterlife where language

no longer exists and we gather only linked sounds

like oars from a passing boat,

                                                 those few syllables

to recall tenderness

You no longer wait for us

All day long, Basho wrote,

A lark sings in the air

Yet he seems to have had

Not quite his fill

_________________________

Michael Ondaatje

A Year of Last Things

Knopf, 2024

For all the kitten cat videos you watched

Now read the best one

STICK McGHEE ~