Saturday, February 14, 2015
Friday, February 13, 2015
Thursday, February 12, 2015
TRIGGER ~
Roy Rogers' famous horse "Trigger"
A permanent resident of the Roy Rogers
and Dale Evans Museum
One can play "Happy Trails"
recording on the postcard
on any nonautomatic return
phonograph player at 33-1/3 rpm
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ ~
A long time ago, way back, there were beings
Who formed a circle to keep the wolves
At bay and stay warm; they were bound to vanish
They were a lot like us.
We're here, our last words are fading,
The sea has gone
For one last time lovers are embracing,
The land is naked.
Above our bodies sound waves rise
And fall and move
Around the world,
Our hearts are nearly cold
Death must surely come, deep and gentle;
Soon, human beings will run off from this world.
The dominion of machines will then be complete
And pure information will triumph and fill
The empty carcass of the absent divine;
And this noise will rule until the end of time.
The Long Road To Clifden
West of Clifden, headland,
Where the sky changes to water
Where water changes to memory
At the edge of a new world
Along the hills of Clifden
The green hills of Clifden,
I shall lay down my pain.
For us to live with death
Death must change to light
Light change to water
And water change to memory.
To the west, all of humanity
Gathers on the road to Clifden
On the long road to Clifden
Humans lay down their pain
Between the waves and the light.
The Long Road To Clifden
West of Clifden, headland,
Where the sky changes to water
Where water changes to memory
At the edge of a new world
Along the hills of Clifden
The green hills of Clifden,
I shall lay down my pain.
For us to live with death
Death must change to light
Light change to water
And water change to memory.
To the west, all of humanity
Gathers on the road to Clifden
On the long road to Clifden
Humans lay down their pain
Between the waves and the light.
___________________________________
MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ
The Art of Struggle
translated by Delphine Grass & Timothy Mathews
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
SILVINA OCAMPO ~
Fragrance
I who live close by
bear witness that at certain hours
of the night or day
it floods the areas of the square where it lives
and enters the windows of neighboring houses;
it's more important than the corporeal
beauty of the trees because even the blind can see it
through the illusion of perfume,
as through music.
Often, at any hour,
I tried like a sleuth to find where that heavenly
fragrance came from and I reached the conclusion
that it's simply like the soul
lodging nowhere and all about.
~
Love
I would like to be your favorite pillow
where you rest your ears at night
to be your secret and the fence
around your sleep; asleep or awake
to be your door, your light when you go away,
someone who does not try to be loved.
To escape the anxiety in my complaints,
and manage at times to be what I am; nothing,
never to be afraid of losing you
through fickleness and unfaithfulness,
nor pointlessly grant to you
the tedious, vulgar faithfulness
of those abandoned who prefer
to die instead of suffer, and do not die.
__________________________
Silvina Ocampo
translated from the Spanish by Jason Weiss
New York Review Books, 2015
Monday, February 9, 2015
SIT DOWN ~
B E C K
_____________________________________________________________________________
The born loud and now rich Kanye West picked on Beck last night at The Grammys, grumbling about how Beck, of all people, isn't worthy of the album of the year award. He may as well have picked on George Martin of The Beatles. This is what I mean by loud. His mother or father never got across "think" then "speak."
______________________________________________________________________________
STEVE ~
Steve Sanfield & Doc Dachtler
I just learned of an old friend's passing. This is what I get for living so tucked away in the snow.
News comes from a snail mail letter from another old friend in Colorado telling me about Steve's passing in the Sierra of California. And I'm not sure how long my letter sat in the post office box but I opened it tonight sitting by the wood stove on a small bench in barely any light and when I came to that part of the letter about Steve I moved into the light and read the paragraph again to make sure I was hearing things right. That's right, hearing things right.
Above is a photograph of two long-time Longhouse poets I always liked to publish and be in touch with. You can see they were pals.
Steve Sanfield was one of the founders of the American Storytelling
Renaissance, becoming the first storyteller-in-residence in
the United States in 1977. He is also the founder of the Sierra
Storytelling Festival. Steve had over thirty published books under his belt — poetry and prose, but really it was all poetry.
We both lived as long as we lived in our respective spots on earth — 45 years in our spots — which I believe was part of why we contacted one another in the first place. Brotherly Place. Steve's spot on earth was the San Juan Ridge at his home on Montezuma Hill.
_____________________
Sunday, February 8, 2015
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Friday, February 6, 2015
Thursday, February 5, 2015
SHAPING THE LOTUS SUTRA ~
Shaping the Lotus Sutra
Eugene Y. Wang
University of Washington Press 2005
Buddhist visual culture in
Medieval China
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Monday, February 2, 2015
HUGE LATER PAUL CELAN ~
P A U L C E L A N
Farrar, Straus 2014
P I E R R E J O R I S
"Just read and keep reading!
Understanding will come by itself."
PAUL CELAN
Sunday, February 1, 2015
GEOFF MULDAUR MUSIC BOX~
Geoff Muldaur
photograph by
Catherine Sebastian
music box
compiled 1 March 2015
by bob arnold
Saturday, January 31, 2015
HAPPY BIRTHDAY THOMAS MERTON! ~
How to Enter a Big City
Thomas James Merton
(1915-1968)
I
Swing by starwhite bones and
Lights tick in the middle.
Blue and white steel
Black and white
People hurrying along the wall.
”Here you are, bury my dead bones.“
Curve behind the sun again
Towers full of ice. Rich
Glass houses, “Here,
Have a little of my blood,”
Rich people!”
Wheat in towers. Meat on ice.
Cattlecars. Miles of wide-open walls.
Baseball between these sudden tracks.
Yell past the red street—
Have you any water to drink, City?
Rich glass buildings, give us milk!
Give us coffee! Give us rum!
There are huge clouds all over the sky.
River smells of gasoline.
Cars after cars after cars, and then
A little yellow street goes by without a murmur.
There came a man
(”Those are radios, that were his eyes“)
Who offered to sell us his bones.
Swing by starwhite buildings and
Lights come to life with a sound
Of bugs under the dead rib.
Miles of it. Still the same city.
II
Do you know where you are going?
Do you know whom you must meet?
Fortune, perhaps, or good news
Or the doctor, or the ladies
In the long bookstore,
The angry man in the milkbar
The drunkard under the clock.
Fortune, perhaps, or wonder
Or, perhaps, death.
In any case, our tracks
Are aimed at a working horizon.
The buildings, turning twice about the sun,
Settle in their respective positions.
Centered in its own incurable discontent, the City
Consents to be recognized.
III
Then people come out into the light of afternoon,
Covered all over with black powder,
And begin to attack one another with statements
Or to ignore one another with horror.
Customs have not changed.
Young men full of coffee and
Old women with medicine under their skin
Are all approaching death at twenty miles an hour.
Everywhere there is optimism without love
And pessimism without understanding,
They who have new clothes, and smell of haircuts
Cannot agree to be at peace
With their own images, shadowing them in windows
From store to store.
IV
Until the lights come on with a swagger of frauds
And savage ferns,
The brown-eyed daughters of ravens,
Sing in the lucky doors
While night comes down the street like the millennium
Wrapping the houses in dark feathers
Soothing the town with a sign
Healing the strong wings of sunstroke.
Then the wind of an easy river wipes the flies
Off my Kentucky collarbone.
The claws of the treacherous stars
Renegade drums of wood
Endure the heavenward protest.
Their music heaves and hides.
Rain and foam and oil
Make sabbaths for our wounds.
(Come, come, let all come home!)
The summer sighs, and runs.
My broken bird is under the whole town,
My cross is for the gypsies I am leaving
And there are real fountains under the floor.
V
Branches baptize our faces with silver
Where the sweet silent avenue escapes into the hills.
Winds at last possess our empty country
There, there under the moon
In parabolas of milk and iron
The ghosts of historical men
(Figures of sorrow and dust)
Weep along the hills like turpentine.
And seas of flowering tobacco
Surround the drowning sons of Daniel Boone.
_________________________________
The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton
(New Directions)
Friday, January 30, 2015
Thursday, January 29, 2015
bpNichol ~
A fine poet
A fine press
This gift
bookmark
brought home
to us from
a friend
while in
Vancouver
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
