HUSH ~

a quiet morning recently
 at 20 below zero

photo © bob arnold

BE MY VALENTINE ~

be my valentine compilation
by bob arnold
2/14/14
vermont

for susan

LOVE ~

Translators

_______________

DEBEN BHATTACHARYA,

ROBERT BLY,

DILIP CHITRE,

ANANDA COOMARASWAMY,

VIDYA DEHEJIA,

HANK HEIFETZ AND V. NARAYANA RAO,

LINDA HESS AND SHUKDEO SINGH,

JANE HIRSHFIELD,

ARUN KOLATKAR,

DENISE LEVERTOV AND EDWARD C. DIMOCK JR.,

ARVIND KRISHNA MEHROTRA,

W.S. MERWIN AND J. MOUSSAIEFF MASSON,

LEONARD NATHAN AND CLINTON SEELY,

GIEVE PATEL,

EZRA POUND,

A.K. RAMANUJAN,

ANDREW SCHELLING,

GARY SNYDER,

CHASE TWICHELL AND TONY K. STEWART

___________________

Love and the Turning Seasons

India's Poetry of Spiritual & Erotic Longing

edited by Andrew Schelling

Introduction by Eliot Weinberger

C  O  U  N  T  E  R  P  O  I  N  T

2014

we're pleased to announce
 many of the poems in this captivating collection
first appeared as booklets from Longhouse

FILM ARCHIVE ~

(1985)

Not at all for public eyes, and simply how I've filed away films the past year, I thought I'd share this list for friends of the Birdhouse. Again, none of this is for the public, so imagine you are not.

When I scan over various lists year after year, of films or books or music, most seem built to either impress the reader or to make some statement. No statement here. It's the way the chips fall. It's how films came to me, and often via the satellite dish reception, which is out there in the woods and snow. Or what I still glean from town libraries, but I'm doing much less of that these days. I can now pull almost all Criterion films right off my Roku contraption. An old friend, long gone, who used to assist us on retrieving such things over the Internet, the 'sky', or far towns, will get a kick out of knowing we're still keeping-on and finding good stuff. 

Curiously, not many foreign films are listed here, which I watch regularly, although the first film noted is top shelf Europa. Many of these films came off the Turner Classic Movies station c/o Robert Osborne which is like a nice little neighborhood bakery you can't do without. Everyone mentions greater and grander bakeries and dishes and sweets, but here you are sticking to your faithful and tiny shop — Osborne's — day after day. A little bell on the door as you walk in.

The films are noted in no order of importance. It's how each film was registered, others erased, others kept and re-watched many times.

I do consider Claude Lanzmann's Shoah the greatest film ever made. Five minutes, heck, five seconds of Shoah equals all of Citizen Kane. The camera work alone is incredible. The commentary overwhelming. The portraits unforgettable . . . no matter what else comes your way. I watched the film when it was first released and recently watched it again, all six discs, because Sweetheart had never seen it. A masterpiece nine and a half hours long (shaved down from 350 hours of footage). You'll want someone sitting with you.


_______________________________



SHOAH

BLACK NARCISSUS

HAROLD AND MAUDE

PARIS, TEXAS

THE GAME

NIGHT OF THE HUNTER

THE KILLING  (Kubrick)

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT

THE WILD BUNCH

REAR WINDOW

NORTH BY NORTHWEST

A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE

DR. STRANGELOVE

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN

THE GRADUATE

RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY

THE ASPHALT JUNGLE

CAPE FEAR  (original)
 
TWO-LANE BLACKTOP

EYES WITHOUT A FACE

WITHNAIL AND I

CITY LIGHTS

WHERE DANGER LIVES

DIABOLIQUE  (original)

NIAGARA

GUN CRAZY

LADY IN THE LAKE

BADLANDS

BONNIE AND CLYDE

SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS

POINT BLANK

YOJIMBO

ANGEL FACE

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

KISS ME DEADLY

NOTORIOUS

THE VIRGIN SPRING

WE OWN THE NIGHT

A PLACE IN THE SUN

TENSION

PAYBACK

INDIA: MATRI BHUMI

LOUIS C.K. OH MY GOD

HIGH SIERRA

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

OUT OF THE PAST

DARK PASSAGE

SEVEN SAMURAI

LE SAUVAGE

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

VERTIGO

IN A LONELY PLACE

NIGHTMARE ALLEY

ANDREI RUBLEV

FUNNY GAMES (original)

THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY

AU HASARD BALTHAZAR
 


That's enough.

Oh! ALL the films of BUSTER KEATON. Place them, respectfully, right next to SHOAH.

Again, this is not a favorite films list — though many of my favorites are here — it's films that came to me the past year and I kept awhile in an archive to watch, and watch again.

Sweetheart and I now laugh when we think how when in our woods cabin on Saturday night, circa 1974, deep in snow piles and no tv in our midst for the next ten years, how we often dreamt on those nights how nice it would be to sit with a film. So far from town, no one it seemed for miles around, just the river and the stars and the silence. Just.

LOW ON THE TOTEMPOLE ~

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/10/sports/olympics/sochi-got-the-gold-bypassed-village-got-dust.html?hp

POSTCARD 26 ~

century studio, 1930

DROP OUTS ~

_________________________________________________________________________________

BAGHDAD — A group of Sunni militants attending a suicide bombing training class at a camp north of Baghdad were killed on Monday when their commander unwittingly conducted a demonstration with a belt that was packed with explosives, army and police officials said.

The militants belonged to a group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, which is fighting the Shiite-dominated army of the Iraqi government, mostly in Anbar Province. But they are also linked to bomb attacks elsewhere and other fighting that has thrown Iraq deeper into sectarian violence.

Twenty-two ISIS members were killed, and 15 were wounded, in the explosion at the camp, which is in a farming area in the northeastern province of Samara, according to the police and army officials. Stores of other explosive devices and heavy weapons were also kept there, the officials said.

__________________________________________________________________________________

nytimes

10 Feb 14

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/world/middleeast/suicide-bomb-instructor-accidentally-kills-iraqi-pupils.html?hp

ROBERT BRESSON ~

Donald Richie

 (17 April 1924 – 19 February 2013)

http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2418-sight-sound-poll-2012-au-hasard-balthazar

Au Hasard Balthazar:
(dir: Robert Bresson)
"The world in an hour and a half"
 Jean-Luc Godard

HAL ASHBY ~

The great Ruth Gordon standing beside the great Hal Ashby

director on the set of the film Harold and Maude

Ashby passed away at age 59 after a tumultuous career in Hollywood

releasing at least six classic films beginning with his first film The Landlord (1970),

followed by Harold and Maude (1971), The Last Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975),

Bound For Glory (1976), Coming Home (1978), Being There (1979) and his documentary of the Stones tour Let's Spend the Night Together (1983).

Every single independent film director today owes a debt to this ground breaker.

 Some have, thankfully, said so.
I'm sure the late Philip Seymour Hoffman would have been one of them. 

Go read more about Hal Ashby in Al Kooper's marauding music memoir Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards (the updated version from Backbeat Books, 2008).  Kooper made his musical score debut with Ashby's cinematic debut The Landlord (shown, in full, below). 

15 BELOW & HOLDING ~

photo © bob arnold

MAXINE KUMIN ~

(1925 ~ 2014)

Maxine Kumin
After Love

Afterward, the compromise.

Bodies resume their boundaries.

 

These legs, for instance, mine.

Your arms take you back in.

 

Spoons of our fingers, lips

admit their ownership.

 

The bedding yawns, a door

blows aimlessly ajar

 

and overhead, a plane

singsongs coming down.

 

Nothing is changed, except

there was a moment when

 

the wolf, the mongering wolf

who stands outside the self

 

lay lightly down, and slept.

_____________________ 

 Maxine Kumin

Selected Poems, 1960-1990 

 (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1998)  

MALCOLM RITCHIE ~

small lines on the great earth

Poems by Malcolm Ritchie
A film by Ed O'Donnelly
Scotland

http://longhousepoetryandpublishers.blogspot.com/search/label/Malcolm%20Ritchie


http://longhousepoetryandpublishers.blogspot.com/search/label/Malcolm%20Ritchie%20%282013%29


http://longhousepoetryandpublishers.blogspot.com/search/label/Malcolm%20Ritchie%3A%20Village%20Japan

THROWAWAY BOY ~

Overlook Duckworth

2013

http://longhousepoetryandpublishers.blogspot.com/search/label/Henry%20Darger

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JANINE! ~

Birthday cheer to our friend walking the wild blue yonder

Karen Dalton was a friend of Janine's

So was Tim Hardin

Today, the friends, are together as one




 

photo: Janine Pommy Vega
© bob arnold

POSTCARD 26 (WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS) ~

William S. Burroughs
February 5, 1914 (St. Louis, Missouri.) ~ August 2, 1997
Happy Birthday
You would be
100

artist : al rossi
1953
william burroughs as "william lee"




"Burroughs never managed to recover from his addiction at all, and died in 1997 physically dependent on the synthetic opiate methadone. I find this a delicious irony: the great hero of freedom from social restraint, himself in bondage to a drug originally synthesised by Nazi chemists, and dubbed "Dolophine" in honour of the Fuhrer; the fearless libertarian expiring in the arms of an ersatz Morpheus, actively promoted by the federal government as a "cure" for heroin addiction. In the prologue to Junky and the introduction to The Naked Lunch, Burroughs writes of his own addiction as if it were a thing of the past, but this was never the case. In a thin-as-a-rake's progress that saw him move from America to Mexico, to Morocco, to France, to Britain, back to New York, and eventually to small-town Kansas, Burroughs was in flight either from the consequences of his chemical dependency, or seeking to avoid the drugs he craved."

— Will Self, "William Burroughs - the Original Junkie"
The Guardian, UK, 31 Jan '14

(Twelve, 2014)
736 pages

BALTHUS 4 ~

Balthus
The Mountain (1937)

 Vanished Splendors
  (Chapter 103) 



   I believe that at the end of human life, one reaches something unadorned and essential, a kind of simplicity that eschews convoluted intellectual questioning. Romanticism and the anguish resolved and simplified, assembled as in Chinese ideograms. Henceforth one day breeds another, that must be given to painting, the pursuit of work until God finally wants to summon you to Him. It's as simple as that. God provides for you. You must not worry about tomorrow. Continue to relish the sweetness of evening that falls on Rossiniere, listen to Mob's soft whistle as it snakes along the mountain, and drink at Mozart's source. With time, things lose their harshness and asperity. They are seen differently, and sometimes vanish from view. Time's shrinking of the little that remains is to be fully accepted; one knows that time is limited, yet it is vast and infinite. This is the whole paradox of life. Perhaps the infinity that one glimpses more clearly is already a premonition of God's infinity, another idea of time that is necessarily ushered in. Now, despite the vicissitudes and constraints of old age, many things become minor, making room for what is essential. It's a sublime impoverishment that clarifies the dross of human life and the hazards of our condition. One should die amid the sweet promise of meeting God, in the splendor for which, I'm convinced, painting always sought to pave the way. To paint means to approach. Close to a light. The light.

_____________

 
 

Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski)
Vanishing Splendors
Ecco, 2001
translated from the French by
Benjamin Ivry

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/19/arts/19BALT.html?pagewanted=2

MOURNING POEMS ~

The bulk of the poems in this anthology were first published from New Directions which has a deep and nurturing trough to draw from. Well chosen by a bright editor who has divided the poems into forty-nine days as you look over the table of contents, "or stations, of grief," as described by Jeffrey Yang. "Each day consists of a poem or a series of poems for the reader to slowly read, re-read, and dwell upon. Its structure echoes a simplified Buddhist calendar of mourning — the forty-nine bardo days of chants and ritual meditation that assist the dead on their journey to the next life. These imperative words are spoken not only to the dead, but to the living, directed to one's self, words bearing both memento mori and the promise of rebirth." On further reflection, the editor discovered another 49-day period of mourning, observed in the traditional Jewish calendar, "outside of the week-long shivah, between Passover and Shavuot, called the Counting of the Omer." Both of these traditions hold guidance. I also put the book before a young poet's eyes who skipped the editor's introduction, could care less about the table of contents and just started reading, locating poets or even forms of poems that instantly meant something to him. I, on the other hand, reached for my glasses because the type font is too small. That is my only negative remark about a book that fits nicely into the palm of your hand.

[ BA ]

______________________


Rest in Peace




sure — rest in peace
but what about the damp?
                         and the moss?
                                     and the weight of the tombstone?
and the drunken gravedigger?
and the people who steal the flowerpots?
and the rats gnawing at the coffins?
and the damned worms
crawling in everywhere
they make death impossible for us
or do you really think
we don't know what's going on. . .

fine for you to say rest in peace
when you know damn well that's impossible
you just like running off at the mouth

well for your information
we know what's going on
the spiders scurrying up our legs
make damn sure of that

let's cut the crap
when you stand at a wide open grave
it's time to call a spade a spade:
You can drown your sorrows at the wake
we're stuck at the bottom of the pit.


                                                         Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman



____________________

NICANOR PARRA
from Time of Grief:
Mourning Poems
edited by Jeffrey Yang
New Directions 2013

in memory of philip seymour hoffman

SUPER BOB DURING THE BOWL ~

a super bowl commercial at a cost of 16 million dollars, thank you

Chrysler has since removed the commercial —
because what's the point in sharing?

POSTCARD 28 ~

mostly postcard

DOWN IN THE VALLEY ~

The Head and the Heart

The Head and the Heart 

 (2011, Sub Pop)

  Charity Rose Thielen - vocals, violin, percussion
    Josiah Johnson - vocals, guitar, percussion
    Jonathan Russell - vocals, guitar, percussion
    Tyler Williams - drums
    Chris Zasche - bass
    Kenny Hensley - piano