Sunday, November 10, 2013
Saturday, November 9, 2013
VIA MEXICO ~
The Mexican tiles, 6 x 6, that went into the stone work of the sun room, now completed, had to come from somewhere. We found a company that ships from Mexico via Texas in the crummiest boxes imaginable, and not one chipped tile inside. Wrapped like Easter eggs.
I've kept the styrofoam to recycle in our wrapping book orders that will go everywhere, and the newspaper in the box from Mexico and bright wrapper I show here.
© Once In Vermont Films, 2013
Friday, November 8, 2013
DOORYARD ~
We had snow this morning. It stuck. I awoke and peeked from the bed through our broad windows and I could see what looked like white blossoms on the trees. I thought, just maybe, I had slept through winter and it was the first of spring and the shad trees were again blooming like they did in our dooryard . . .
. . . melted by noon
. . . melted by noon
photo © susan arnold
6 am
MALCOLM RITCHIE - Two New Booklets from Longhouse
Text & photographs by the author
Each of the two booklets published by Longhouse shown here contain a chapter selected from Malcolm Ritchie's recently completed (unpublished) memoir, The Crows of Gravity.
"A Village at the End of Culture is a cameo from our three-and-a-half year sojourn in the remote farming/fishing village of Sora, on the Japan Sea coast. It describes our realization that what we were experiencing and witnessing was the last living breath of a profound culture still lived at the cradle of its birth in the cultivation of rice, and under the tutelage of its ancient gods. The fragile survival of a holistic way of life, somehow still extant, but fast disappearing with the demise of the aged inhabitants of Sora and its neighbouring communities. A way of living which expresses the true definition of the term ‘culture’ with its roots in the Latin cultura and its meaning of ‘cultivation’ – connection with the natural environment and the seasonal cycles, and its association with cultus, to worship. The loss of a meaningful life being hastened by the ravening appetites of Western materialism/consumerism and its global markets, which had already transformed mainstream Japanese culture and distorted its traditional cultural mind-set."
"A Village at the End of Culture is a cameo from our three-and-a-half year sojourn in the remote farming/fishing village of Sora, on the Japan Sea coast. It describes our realization that what we were experiencing and witnessing was the last living breath of a profound culture still lived at the cradle of its birth in the cultivation of rice, and under the tutelage of its ancient gods. The fragile survival of a holistic way of life, somehow still extant, but fast disappearing with the demise of the aged inhabitants of Sora and its neighbouring communities. A way of living which expresses the true definition of the term ‘culture’ with its roots in the Latin cultura and its meaning of ‘cultivation’ – connection with the natural environment and the seasonal cycles, and its association with cultus, to worship. The loss of a meaningful life being hastened by the ravening appetites of Western materialism/consumerism and its global markets, which had already transformed mainstream Japanese culture and distorted its traditional cultural mind-set."
Use Paypal to Order Malcolm Ritchie's
A Village at the End of Culture ~
A Village at the End of Culture ~
Text & photographs by the author
"Encounter with the Great Mother recounts my experience with the
psychotropic plant ayahuasca, referred to as Mother Ayahuasca by the
peoples of the Amazonian rainforest, and worked with as a sacramental
medicine in their sacred ceremonies. It describes my encounter with a
profound intelligence which spoke to me both cosmically, and with a deep
knowledge, or seeming familiarity with my own individual psyche – the
compassionate heart/mind of the planet we are in the habit of calling,
while forgetting the truth of, ‘Mother Earth’."
Use Paypal to Order Malcolm Ritchie's
Encounter with the Great Mother ~
Encounter with the Great Mother ~
Thursday, November 7, 2013
SUCCINCT ~
Poems by the ancients, translations, world wide poets, many famous, beautifully stylized and form-fitted to the page
from WH Auden in modern times to Louis Zukofsky
from WH Auden in modern times to Louis Zukofsky
plus ~
Gary Hotham, Ce Rosenow, John Phillips, Bill Knott, Ted Kooser, Ann Deagon, Jeffery Beam, John Brandi, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Ciaran Carson, Jim Clark, Thomas A. Clark, Cid Corman, J.V. Cunningham, Bill Deemer, Claudia Emerson, Robert Francis, Jack Gilbert, Jonathan Greene, Sam Hamill, Stephen Holt, Joseph Hutchison, Thomas Johnson, William Kloefkorn, George Ella Lyon, Jeff Daniel Marion, John Martone, Michael McFee, Thomas McGrath, Paula Meehan, Samuel Menashe, Ruth Moose, John Montague, Robert Morgan, Adam Morton, Lisel Mueller, Les Murray, Mike O' Connor, Alexis Rotella, R.M. Ryan, Steve Sanfield, Norman Schaffer, Jack Sharpless, Paul Curry Steele, James Still, Joseph Stroud, Richard Taylor, William Thompson, Charles Tomlinson, James L. Weil, Robert West, Jonathan Williams, Miller Williams, Joe Zaratonello, Isabel Zuber, Fred Chappell, Bob Arnold, William Harmon, Albert Goldbarth, George Garrett, Louis Bourgeois, R.L. Barth, Max Albern.
Since the majority of anthologies are devoted to strictly name poets, or those-in-the-know at the moment, I thought I'd skip the many known poets as I one-finger-type-out each 'other name' poet with my right hand as the left hand holds the book open. There is no table of contents. There is a well thought out balance in the book between renown and elsewhere.
However, if a poem is good, resonates, nourishes, it is all by itself renown.
However, if a poem is good, resonates, nourishes, it is all by itself renown.
Succinct
The Broadstone Anthology of Short Poems
edited by Jonathan Greene & Robert West
Broadstone Books
418 Ann Street
Frankfort, Kentucky
40601-1929
ANN DEAGON
________
I never lust
after a man
as much as
before one.
GARY HOTHAM
_________
fog.
sitting here
without the mountains
TED KOOSER
_______
STARLIGHT
All night, this soft rain from the distant past.
No wonder I sometimes waken as a child.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
SNOW LEOPARDS ~
The male and female cubs, as yet unnamed, were born at NY Central Park Zoo
this summer to mother Zoe and father Askai.
this summer to mother Zoe and father Askai.
Photograph: Julie Larsen Maher/AP
THE COUNSELOR ~
The other day we finally dragged ourselves away from all the construction work, with a rain day helping us along, and saw The Counselor — Cormac McCarthy unwinding more of his southwest devils. Absolutely no one in the theater with us. Matinee. High noon. I believe this is the film McCarthy really wanted instead of No Country For Old Men which probably came across to him as high class entertainment, which it is, and beautifully so. In the new film it's spare, literary, confusing for the general audience that expects everything to be set before them like a calendar — including the hateful time line appearing as a digital readout on the lower part of the screen "Three months later" etc. The Counselor is also nasty, septic, and deadly serious, as Rubén Blades character will remind all gringos. It'd be best to be seen on the wide full screen for the southwest dread and landscape.
It isn't a happy ending.
Monday, November 4, 2013
STUMP FACES ~
These faces, slowly gathering, are now on the shelf over the kitchen stove. They've been made as I make a softwood log chair and cut back on the logs. Each butt end becomes "a face" and is collected on the shelf. So far we have from the left clockwise: Layla, her father Carson, one dog representing all our dogs, Bob, Sweetheart and at 9 o'clock Kokomo the cat.
photo © bob arnold
Sunday, November 3, 2013
ALLAN BLOCK ~
Allan Block
(1923 ~ 2013)
Musician Rory Block with her father Allan Block, New Hampshire 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/nyregion/allan-block-whose-sandal-shop-was-folk-music-hub-dies-at-90.html?hpw
http://www.ledgertranscript.com/home/9051334-95/music-man-remembered
http://www.wirz.de/music/blockfrm.htm
http://www.ledgertranscript.com/home/9051334-95/music-man-remembered
http://www.wirz.de/music/blockfrm.htm
Saturday, November 2, 2013
HONKY TONK ~
"Jukebox", Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, Nashville, Tennessee, 1972
This isn't one of those moments to simply cob photographs from this colossal book straight off the Internet (which I'm doing) — it's to share at just how magnificent a book this is. In fact it might have been naughtier, but it gets darn close to the bone enough, mainly reaching back when the photographer Henry Horenstein, out of New Bedford, MA., and boosted by folksinger Paul Clayton (who owned a music shop then in town) got young Henry's eye to look around with a camera, and what a feast we have. I only wish I could draw up the young photograph of Norman Blake for you, and the recent one of hardscrabble troubadour Spider John Koerner. This book takes you back stage, back road, back down, back up, back back. A keeper.
"Hillbilly Tex," Hillbilly Ranch, Boston, Massachusetts, 1972
"Roscoe Holcomb", Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1972
"Fan and Musician", Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, Nashville, Tennessee, 1974
"Lovers," Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, Nashville, Tennessee, 1975
"Patron (2)", Hillbilly Ranch, Boston, Massachusetts, 1972
"Bluegrass Music Fan Frank Brown," Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 1974
"Curly Ray Cline at Home," Rock House, Kentucky, 1974
"Waylon Jennings," Performance Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1976
"Drunk Dancers," Merchant's Cafe, Nashville, Tennessee, 1974
"Country Western Bar and Grill," Highway 41, Nashville, Tennessee, 2008
"Ponderosa," Near Pikeville, Kentucky, 1974
"Tex Ritter", Hillbilly Ranch, Boston, Massachusetts, 1973
"Connie Smith", Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, Tennessee, 1972
"Henry with Mother Maybelle Carter,"
Lonestar Ranch, Reeds Ferry, New Hampshire, 1973
photo : Lewis Rosenberg
Honky Tonk
portraits of Country Music
by Henry Horenstein
Norton, 2012
Friday, November 1, 2013
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
PETER COLE ~
A Byzantine Diptych
I. Leviticus Again
"And his issue is unclean," 15:3
He is human and so will be humbled
He is flesh and so will fail
He is bone and so will be broken
He is blood and so will be bleed
He has cheated and so will be changed
He has deceived and so will be drained
He has mocked and so will be muddied
He is hollow and so will howl
He has sullied and so will sadden
He is nothing and so will be nought
He is pain and so will perish
He is emission and so will be missed
He is water and so will weep
He is cavernous and so will cry
He is dross and so will disgust
He is a carcass and so will be cast
He has soured and so will stink
He is rank and so will retch
He is worm and so will writhe
He is corruption and so will be betrayed
He came forth, and so he will fade
Summer Syntax
Saxifrage, arabis, phlox;
lobelia, euphorbia, nasturtium;
coreopsis, guara, flax;
brunnera, salvia, rubrum;
delphinium, snapdragon, alyssum;
bacopa, yarrow, thyme;
viola, cress, chrysanthemum,
convolvulus and clematis that climb
over the flowering fescue,
the prairie mallow, and sage,
with Lucerne sisyrinchium to the rescue
of spirit surveying the cage
of its inching calibrations —
luring us out to stare
into this constellation's
efflorescence as everywhere.
Pathetic
It seemed sick, really, or pathetic:
fertilizer bombs being wired in Gaza,
flesh scraped from a Tel Aviv bus;
radar whirring miles above us,
state-sanctioned torture up the street,
and information like an epidemic —
but I took some comfort today, for hours,
from a kitten we found near a mound of garbage
and nursed back from the edge of death.
By evening, I could feel its breath
against the skin of my neck as it slept —
and reconfigured my notions of power.
_________________________________
The poems above are selected from a forthcoming book The Invention of Influence (New Directions 2014).
Peter Cole's previous books of poems include Things on Which I've Stumbled (New Directions). Among his volumes of translations are The Poetry of Kabbalah: Mystical Verse from the Jewish Tradition and The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492. Cole divides his time between Jerusalem and New Haven.
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