AIMEE MANN

With an independent streak that first showed itself when she quit the Berklee School of Music for a Punk band, and ever since wanting to keep the spirit of the music as music with each one of her seven albums in fifteen years, listen to Aimee Mann tell her stories.

photo: blogs.denverpost.com/.../2009/10/DSC_0273.JPG

MAY DAY ~

8 DAYS A WEEK, JOB SITES
celebrating the international worker and the cross purposes of winter then spring. Rejoice!




monday





tuesday





wednesday





share & talk





thursday





friday old workmate repairs





saturday






dun

all constructions & photos © bob arnold

EARTH ~

NORMAN SCHAEFER


~


LITTLE SIERRA NEVADA POEMS

WITH PHOTOGRAPH BY KEVIN GARNER LOOKING FROM LONE PINE TO MT. WHITNEY





If you would like to purchase the new booklet, please link here


For the complete Longhouse titles we offer, please link here

Norman's another one of those Pacific coast wild birds, west of Seattle. I edited these poems from almost 100 that were a complete joy to read and sift. It took only one night, easy stuff when poems are this good. The hard part was getting the collection down to its size, which meant leaving great poems on the floor. The poems on the floor are hardy, they all picked up and went back into the woods on strong legs. This collection of two-dozen come off the Sierra trails. Slick rock and moonlight. Welcoming anyone who wishes to come along.

Mountains are a cold and icy place

for someone seeking

fame and fortune,

yet a haven

for an empty-handed wanderer.

EARTH ~

TOM WAITS

~

Born and raised in southern California of school teachers ~ with trips to Mexico as a child that rubbed onto his eyes and ears.

We're going to let the singer rest his distinctive song and storytellin' voice and go an instrumental.

photo: pathfinderpat.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/tom..

EARTH ~

MY FAMILY

photo © bob arnold

EARTH ~











GRAYSON PERRY

Do you know the work of Grayson Perry?

Greek pottery meets folk art. Works in the bold coiled method, not thrown.

Came upon pottery as almost a caper. After Punk. Gave it a try. Controversial ceramic vases ensued.

He also has a female alter-ego by the name of "Claire" who shows up in the darnedest places.

Once a wild kid, of course wild because of his sensual orientations, fantasy, past family abuse and struggle... once he started dressing the part/ expressing the part, the art and lifestyle flowed. Seems unstoppable, and likewise appears most alive and most vulnerable. He dresses as "Claire" some of the time, has a wife, a family, the pottery has only increased and become more defined. He's gone through the outcast role. His commentary in a large retrospective of his work is candid and sweet stuff. He seems incapable of ever wanting to fib or play up to stature. What would be the point? His commentary (words action) goes onto a glazed pot for all the world to see.

Many flee to the land of enchantment: India, Japan. Learn lessons. Bring them home, or stay. It doesn't matter after the lesson is learned, throw it away. Throw this away.

I rather think one makes the land of enchantment from one's own outpost, dead center NYC included. An isle is there as long as you are there.

Perry is childlike, authoritative, and fearless. He will make bold comments on his pots and vases against the very museums that showcase his work. He'll ponder in public his and our mistakes. He'll make sure he is all part of the mess he is in, we are in.

I like anyone who comes to the campfire, uses the stash of dry wood, leaves behind more dry wood. Or a pot to piss in, and not to be crude — as others before me have lived and stated — the highest condition of art is artlessness.





photo: search.independent.co.uk/topic/craft-pottery
see more: lmaclean.ca/LisaMacLean/nfblog/?p=929

Saint Claire 37
2003, Earthenware
84 x 55 x 55 cm

EARTH ~









In Susan's arms is Pal Goose. He was a pet of the family for 25 years. A good old friend. Fierce when he had to be, comical and enduring otherwise. We always liked it how he turned his head sideways to give us, or anyone, the real hairy eye. I wrote a poem to him just after he died. It's the least I could do after so many fine years. He greened our lawn. He had his wives and girlfriends. When he was old and alone he even took on the role of a chicken with a new herd of feisty and young chickens who pretty much said to him in the pecking order: "We know you are a goose, but with all of us you'd better act like a chicken." So he did. I could see that he did. Twice as large and twice as bright as the chickens he humbly took his course. When selecting poems to read in public I try not to read "Pal Goose". It makes someone I love cry.




PAL GOOSE



On that sunny day

I opened your pen door

And let you out —

You loved the sun

Sun on snow

Making tracks to the pond —

Because it got too busy

But I have no excuse how

I forgot to close your

Pen door and left home



Sometime in the evening

Faraway, thoughts to you and

The open door but I would get back

The moon was out, and you

Loved the moon —

The raccoon was out, and he

Hunts by the moon —

The next morning you were

Found dead with eyes open

Suddenly flat and huge on the snow



Too big for raccoon to even bother with

Whose blood-tracks tricky designed away

And then as if he noticed how obvious

Seemed to wash his murderous paws

Off in the snow and vanished



You were our third gander

In twenty years, flocks of

Geese once upon a time mixed

With ducks and chickens and when

Our rooster died you were the new

Rooster for the chickens —

It looked funny, it looked

Practical, you fit



I miss you now when I split

Wood and wait to hear your call

Loud and sudden and part of me

photo © bob arnold

EARTH ~

--TRAVELER

We were in Newfoundland in 1975. Just went. Used bug and the two of us. Drove until the highway ended in North Sydney and someone said a ferry was heading out through the night to Newfoundland. We looked at one another, "let's go?" Let's go. I almost missed getting on by going over to talk to a truck driver who was standing outside his rig smoking a cigarette and watching everything load on. I was watching, too. We talked. Rain and splashed lighting all over the earth at that moment. Slam crash sounds. Big boat loading up. We took a shower on that crossing, six hours of little sleep in what felt like a swishing bowl. We swishing. When the boat landed, and all for little money, we drove off and drove for some days heading northward until the road just sort of ruined out.




photo © susan arnold

EARTH ~

RACHID TAHA

Native Algerian who immigrated to France with his family when he was 10 ~ between a drumming earth voice and the mandolute, he owns the air waves where he goes.

photo: http://www.le-terrier.net/Christophe/portraits/rachid_taha.jpg

EARTH ~











KO UN




AFTERLIFE


I won't come back as a human.

Ever.



For the afterlife,

an animal will do.

Not a big one;

small will do.

Even

so small it can hardly be seen.

An amoeba will do.



I didn't want that a few years ago.

I could have been reborn

not a man but

an ignorant woman who had lost a few

of her eleven children.

She would do.



But I won't be born as a human being ever again.





translated by Clare You & Richard Silberg
from THE THREE WAY TAVERN by Ko Un
(U/Cal.)







With 135 books published of poetry, prose, drama, essays, travel, translations from classical Chinese and much more, Ko Un was born in 1933. During the Korean War he was both emotionally and physically ruined when he lost family and friends. It was during this time the poet became a Buddhist monk and upheld a monastic life for the next decade. A life of struggle, suicide attempts, an activist in the democracy movement for South Korea, Ko Un had been imprisoned countless times between 1974-1989; at one point there was a terrible plan to lock him away twenty years for treason. A general pardon spared him. His greatest writing achievement may be Maninbo (Ten Thousand Leaves) which holds over 4000 poems in 30 volumes addressing every person the poet has ever met personally or in his studies. His shadow
holds to earth.


photo : www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=10,8972,0...

EARTH ~










REAL LIFE



It was a hot day thrown suddenly cool

By that hard rain, poured off the slate roof barn

When the boy was hit by lightning.

Standing safe, he thought, in the large doorway,

Eaves above him tapping,

Farm trucks shining up.

Big for his age, father’s overalls, watching things,

Whole complexion tan like pure maple syrup

The stuff he gathered with his grandfather and horses.

His old man and older brothers stoke and boil the wood fire,

Spend those long nights in the sugar-house.

The way the light spills out of the small steamy windows

All over snow, dreamy in the valley.



Well a mean bolt came down from the sky to end that,

A splitting axe flying.

Water dripping smooth from the roof edge

Splashes onto his boots and cuffs,

Hayseed still itching his back,

Cows poking behind him in their stalls.

Need a light already it’s getting so dark, he thought —

Struck him from the forehead straight down

Cracked him open like nothing should be.

The family dog lay nearby on a broken bale

Like he has for 15 Julys,

Large head on his paws tilted and watching

Rain burning the ground.

photo © bob arnold

"Real Life" from Where Rivers Meet by Bob Arnold (Mad River Press, 1990)

EARTH ~

HUT PALS

Bob & Carson get out of the strong sea breeze in a hut Carson built from debris,

driftwood and dribbles found along a once Cape Cod beach.







photo © susan arnold

EARTH DAY







The Sacred Shakers
Twelve Gates to the City

EARTH ~

CID CORMAN



A Language Without Words




If you would like to purchase the new booklet, please link here



For the complete Cid Corman and Longhouse titles we offer, please link here

5/

Alone is

beautiful

painfully


One sun for

each one of

us today.

copyright 1972, 2010
first published by Byways 6, 1972
Gerry Loose, Essex, UK.
Our ever thanks to Gerry, and Bob Arnold
literary executor for Cid Corman, to reprint
& bring this one back into the fold.

Two dozen poems flying freely

22/


So clear a

moon


Breath opens

to

photo © courtesy Cid Corman estate

EARTH ~

-------------------------------------------------------------------------4/20

drawing © bob arnold

EARTH ~

WHERE






down

along

slipped

moss dark

hollow never

too wide so

we can leap

back &

forth I

like to see

your hair

brighten

through the

hemlocks

stream










photo © bob arnold

EARTH ~

David Shapiro is still a young fellow and has lived many life times. His first collection of poems January was published long before he was twenty years of age, by Holt, and with an endorsement from Jack Kerouac. For decades he has taught many poets and art lovers from around the world. His craftsmanship as a musician is yet another of his whole worlds. When young guys, David with his close friend Ron Padgett, compiled one of the finest anthologies of the legendary New York School of Poets. Just about everyone who should have been in there was, with a photograph. Cloud bursts of poems, too. One day in early spring David sent to me this gift poem, tucked in a letter because he knew I might like it, and he knew I might print it up into a tiny broadside to frame. He was correct. Anyone can write us for a copy, and a few are signed.

Designed, printed and published by Longhouse 2010 and available here

EARTH ~

Here's one of my photographs from the polaroid series going back some dozen years. I'll include a few more as time goes along. I use a Canon digital camera now — plus make one to two minute films with it. We can't seem to find the film for my old polaroid, clunky and beautiful in its time at making finished photos roll out. My father used his for years. He kept his film in the refrigerator. All this human province of moves and even errors of taking pictures, storing film, having the miracle of the developed photograph in your hands, after a little bit of precious waiting (which is like listening which is like talking which is like thinking) is becoming lost.

photo © bob arnold

EARTH ~

SAMUEL MENASHE

It was one of those early Saturday morning drives straight up the countryside of the open highway, barely any traffic, clear weather sailing, and I read all of Samuel Menashe's New and Selected Poems (The Library of America). Many to myself, some aloud to Sweetheart at the wheel. Sunshine in the fields and pastures. Just a hint of the dark Connecticut River coming into view between the hills. Music also on low. Menashe doesn't at all seem to mind. You can almost read any one of his poems aloud between the songs. That short. Often that memorable. I'll share all the ones I read to Sweetheart. It's easy enough to do.



Pity us

By the sea

On the sands

So briefly






Always

When I was a boy

I lost things —

I am still

Forgetful —

Yet I daresay

All will be found

One day






The hill I see

Every day

Is holy






SURVIVAL


I stand on this stump

To knock on wood

For the good I once

Misunderstood



Cut down, yes

But rooted still

What stumps compress

No axe can kill





SLEEP


gives wood its grain

Dreams knot the wood






APOTHEOSIS


Taut with longing

You must become

The god you sought —

The only one






FASTNESS


I shoulder the slope

that holds me

up to the sun

with my heels

dug into dust

older than hills






I left my seed in a grove so deep

The sun does not reach through the trees

Now I am wed to the wood and lord of all leaves

And I can give the green blessing to whom I please






In the Fall 2010 Samuel Menashe will be 85 years old. A New Yorker by birth and by right, except for some occasions in Europe, including as an infantryman at The Battle of the Bulge in 1944, Menashe has been at home in New York City. At the 1944 Battle he could just as easily have been beside my father, also an infantryman in that battle and one year older. A mere 20 years old. Like other American poets Menashe received his first taste of recognition in England, and it stands that way to this day. In 1961 Kathleen Raine rose to his short and often spiritual poems, as did Donald Davie. He's been honored by The Poetry Foundation with their "Neglected Masters Award", and if he's lucky, he'll remain happily that way. It's always been just the nest to thread poems.

photo of Samuel Menashe on the beach by Martin Duffy

ARCHIVE

Here is Once Upon a Time on the campus of Bowdoin College in Maine where James Koller invited poet friends like Ted Enslin, Gary Lawless, Bern Porter, myself and others to wear sandwich board signs with our poems nicely hand-printed and mix in the crowd at a Maine Arts Festival busy with boat builders, weavers and knitters, musicians, jugglers, farmers and their animals, and we poets wandering around with our sandwich poems, and in our hands we carried copies of the poems printed on postcards. If you liked the poem, we'd hand you a postcard of the same poem to keep.

Ain't life grand?

bob arnold, photo © susan arnold