EARTH ~

construct & photo 4 may 10, © bob arnold

EARTH ~







GENNADY AYGI





A SELECTION FROM FOLK-SONGS OF THE VOLGA REGION



Once I had a horse —

you could stretch out on him and sleep!

Water could lie on his back

and not a drop spill.








There's no way to still my pain,

half my soul remains in that field!

I say nothing, but beyond the hill like a child

a marten weeps out loud.








My voice is soft as the cuckoo's,

it will be carried off by the wind

and echo long

by the abandoned house.








Mother, you will start sweeping the room,

and remembering me, perhaps,

you will stop short

by the door and burst out crying.








The dancing begins,

and you must light such candles

that all — my girl's — beauty

shall be illuminated.








And at last I fell to my knees

in the middle of the field,

not because I was tired,

but because my soul was burning,







Have other hands touched her? I touch her lightly;

she writhes like a snake (they have touched her),

or she twitters like a swallow

(they haven't).





translated from the Russian by Peter France









Look around and you will find the beautiful books of poetry and dreams by the late Gennady Aygi. New Directions has done us well with GA, as have Zephyr and a few other small press publishers.

Gennady Aygi was born in 1934 in Shaymurzino, a Chuvash village. Chuvash natives are descended from the Huns of Attila. Maybe two million inhabitants have settled near Kazan along the Volga, with even more settlements across river and people with similar looks but different languages and all of this within the Russian Federation. Even with different languages and different religions: the Tatars with Islam/the Chuvash holding to Christianity, intermarriages with the people thrived and amongst this shared peasant culture songs and poems arose. No demarcation.

Gennady Aygi was there to hear these songs and know them, later to collect them. I show a small selection above. He drank all of this, along with Russian Symbolism, the ramparts of Futurism and the modern era, steeped with ancient customs, rural hollow and souls, producing a bristling new poetry for himself.

image: lib.blcu.edu.cn/qkbdzdd/025.htm

EARTH ~



seat







construct & photo © bob arnold

PASSING

-----------------------------

Watching the winter in the blood really getting out of the way ~ yesterday we left at 4 AM for another town (one where I once traveled at the same hour to be in a small college radio station to speak to the BBC who were calling to ask me to say a few words about Cid Corman's passing...) and by the time we arrived a little after 5, it was still 25 degrees. Nothing like a town waking up. Any town really. Or city. I can remember Las Vegas at dawn. The streets the night before a human whoring and splash of whirling lights. At 5 AM it's a desert town. No makeup. The faucet dripping from the night before, a whiskey bottle spinning on the sidewalk, the bum who looks up from his lotus position from the cement, and the lighting of that desert, spreading like a butter throughout all the toilet rinsing city. Santa Fe even finer. In this small town it's the birds awakening, owning all day at that hour.

Everyone was once a lover, even the worst. I read every morning in the local paper obituaries of people I've never known (but we have) and within those capsules are teaming life wanting still to be known as lived and shared. The woman of 50 years, knocked dead by a heart attack, never married, lived with or closeby to her parents is a world of hurt and longing, and yet finding all sorts of smaller passions for herself. I wish I had known this before she was gone. She might lift her eyes and clearly hear a friend read my poem "Passing" during his own public reading. The kindness of sharing that poem by this friend. At that moment it is his poem, then anyone's poem.

I've always read another poet in my readings. On the street readings I read easily 50% from others.

-ONE MUST BE AN INVENTOR TO READ WELL ~ EMERSON

I spoke to someone yesterday in chilly awakening town who had just attended a forum regarding 40 years ago when the Bank of America was lit up in outer Santa Barbara. Sweetheart, who has a quiet knack of being in the right places at the right time, was up in a tree during the unfolding event of some figures in nondescript clothing just showing up and suddenly inflammatory was everywhere, the bank was torched. It was going to burn. The intentions were direct. This storyteller had been there, like Sweetheart, as a student at the university...but in those great days the university had been stormed and shutdown by the students, there was business to tend to, a war to end (imagine the youthful power), a bank burned to the ground. As we drove into sleepy New England town there was a bank on the corner, never there when I was a kid. Pillars. I looked up to the sign the Bank of America. Yes, indeed, ugly enough to burn to the ground. Where is the local banker? To this day they never found who burned the California bank. A job well done.

It's a good day whenever poetry can be heard. We work in inches. Sometimes fire. It is occasionally rash and destructive, but so is burning whole villages live, whole cultures, destroying one person, all neighborhoods, town after town with no forgiveness. I've built many buildings. I never like seeing anything destroyed. No one to be hurt. And then again there is the human wave, or building, of sentiment and cause wishing to rise and care for the brutality wasted onto others.

Of course nothing beats the natural ~ so children, animals, the day dawn. The truest purveyors of what is up. We saw all ages of kids all day running and laughing and those wide expressions and an undying fearlessness and wonder.

I once wrote a poem looking out into a field and seeing a lone figure at work. It could have been me, it could have been you. The time was Spring.



PASSING


It is Spring

Already you relax in a cotton skirt

Passing through mountains is a strong feeling

Fields plowed, new wood split, a hawk floating

Puffs of softwood in the gray hills

A river runs with snow melting

A small bridge neatly built to get by

There is pleasure in such places

An old woman and her huge straw hat

Raking the far corner of a hayfield

"Passing" from Where Rivers Meet, Bob Arnold

may day moonlight, photo © bob arnold

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