AGNES VARDA ~

 

R E A D   M E

     A new biography surveys the prolific and pioneering

 career of the filmmaker Agnès Varda.

Norton 2024

DUBRAVKA UGRESIC ~

 

R E A D   M E

&

M O R E

A Muzzle for Witches

University of Rochester

2024

CATHY MERRICK ~

Cathy Merrick, Advocate for Indigenous People in Canada,

 Dies at 63

Ms. Merrick during a candlelight vigil outside a Winnipeg courthouse in April during the trial of a white man accused of killing four Indigenous women. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paid tribute to her after she collapsed while speaking to reporters on Sept. 6. Credit...Sebastien St-Jean/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

C A T H Y   M E R R I C K 

CLIFFORD BURKE ~

 

     Desert Rose Press

     2024

JELLY ROLL BLUES ~

 

R E A D   M E

Censored Songs & Hidden Histories

THE BOOK AT WAR ~

 

R E A D   M E

Basic Books 2023

SUPREME CIDER DONUT ~

 

This is a supreme cider donut

melt in your mouth donut

the clincher of a September day

after picking blueberries at

Green Mountain Orchards in

Putney, Vermont ~

No promo — they don't

know us and we don't

know them — even if

we have been scrambling

their bountiful hillsides

 picking there for decades,

the best cider donut

we have ever had —

thank you!

    ______________________

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 ~