POETS WHO SLEEP #18 ~

P O E T S     W H O     S L E E P

______________________

                                           drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold

all drawings

copyright

Bob Arnold


The complete series to date ~ please link here

RE-READING PHILIP WHALEN ~

 

Further Notice

I can't live in this world

And I refuse to kill myself

Or let you kill me

The dill plant lives, the airplane

My alarm clock, this ink

I won't go away

I shall be myself —

Free, a genius, an embarrassment

Like the Indian, the buffalo

Like Yellowstone National Park.

                                                            22:ix:56

__________________________

Philip Whalen

The Collected Poems

edited by Michael Rothenberg

Wesleyan University Press, 2007

____________________________

For nearly any other collected poems

one can almost assume cracking the book open

to the middle will well provide the reader

with some of the best poetry by the poet.

Not so Philip Whalen.

For the last 50 years I guided my Whalen trajectory

through my favorite book of his, On Bear's Head,

a book devised and brought into existence through the

tough work of James Koller, Bill Brown and Don Carpenter

after a little fight with the co-publisher Harcourt & Brace.

Coyote Books was the rightful instigator, as usual.

Whalen was hot from the start — say after he gets through

his apprenticeship in the 40s— from the 50s onward

he is sailing, and Michael Rothenberg's perfect book

for Whalen: cover jacket design and hundreds of poems

(what more do you need?) plus Whalen's drawings and

doodles and general Philip-energy, it's all here in the Wesleyan

edition and I've come during a virus pandemic and read it all (ALL)

now a second time. Reading Philip Whalen is like bicycling up

a hill while eating an ice-cream cone, and maybe it's a hot day

but it doesn't have to be. Energies transfix. You know you've

got a poet when everyone says he or she is reading him and

no one knows who you're talking about.

LENORE TAWNEY ~

The University of Chicago Press

2019

LARRY CAMPBELL & FRIENDS ~

 

HEY JOE ~

 

Billy Roberts

RE-READING RONALD JOHNSON ~

from ~
The Book of the Green Man





Of the seasons,

seamless, a garland.



Solstice

to equinox —
days,





The length of

breath,

a sequential foliage



firmly planted in

our veins,

we stand in our rayed form:



blue-eyed,

a chicory,



Sponsa Solis —



& upon the sun appears

a face

also with rays



in descent

trough an undulant



blue.



_____________________
Ronald Johnson
The Book of the Green Man
Norton, 1967







There is something beguiling and transfixed,
at least it happens to me, when I re-approach
Johnson's early books published exquisitely 
by Norton.

RE-READING 80 FLOWERS ~

L I L A C

Sere ring a pipe wood

lodging sweet by tempest lodged

nose knows two colors pale

and deep lilac blossom breezed

pruned some red fall-scattered blossom

hesperis purple mother-of-evening gone spring

angels in bustles deep lilac

pales lilac angels for white

Q U E E N   A N N E' S   L A C E

Top-turfy gimp fiery oes eyes

light white flat lacy heads

centrums purple many uneven small

flowers each whorl umbel if

awry ladies songflawed wit pretty 's

well queen unwanted princess throws

horse prize wild carrot autumn

hurdle stands jackdaw-course carried her

S N O W - W R E A T H

From solitary flowerstalk some fingers

fragrance look down ridge-back enamel

leaves snowdrop impetal seagreen unseen

months snowflake unplanted snowdrift sweet

alyssum self-risen snowtrillium new valleys

east snowpoppy snow-in-summer starry grasswort

prairie snow-on-the-mountain wilding seacoast

snowberry-drupe snow-wreath earth-rounds bees' rose

__________________

80 Flowers

only

80 copies printed by

The Stinehour Press

Linen cloth boards

Gilded paper title label to spine

I found my copy in a northern

New England working town with

one used bookstore, bottom shelf

old plank floors, big front windows

Priced to move

Lucky me

POETS WHO SLEEP #17 ~

P O E T S     W H O     S L E E P

______________________

                                           drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold

all drawings

copyright

Bob Arnold


The complete series to date ~ please link here

J.J. CALE ~

 

RE-READING JUNE JORDAN ~

 

Poem about My Rights

Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear

my head about this poem about why I can’t

go out without changing my clothes my shoes

my body posture my gender identity my age

my status as a woman alone in the evening/

alone on the streets/alone not being the point/

the point being that I can’t do what I want

to do with my own body because I am the wrong

sex the wrong age the wrong skin and

suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/

or far into the woods and I wanted to go

there by myself thinking about God/or thinking

about children or thinking about the world/all of it

disclosed by the stars and the silence:

I could not go and I could not think and I could not

stay there

alone

as I need to be

alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own

body and

who in the hell set things up

like this

and in France they say if the guy penetrates

but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me

and if after stabbing him if after screams if

after begging the bastard and if even after smashing

a hammer to his head if even after that if he

and his buddies fuck me after that

then I consented and there was

no rape because finally you understand finally

they fucked me over because I was wrong I was

wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong

to be who I am

which is exactly like South Africa

penetrating into Namibia penetrating into

Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if

Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the

proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland

and if

after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe

and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to

self-immolation of the villages and if after that

we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they

claim my consent:

Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of

the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what

in the hell is everybody being reasonable about

and according to the Times this week

back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem

and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they

killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba

and before that it was my father on the campus

of my Ivy League school and my father afraid

to walk into the cafeteria because he said he

was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong

gender identity and he was paying my tuition and

before that

it was my father saying I was wrong saying that

I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a

boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and

that I should have had straighter hair and that

I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should

just be one/a boy and before that         

it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for

my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me

to let the books loose to let them loose in other

words

I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A.

and the problems of South Africa and the problems

of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white

America in general and the problems of the teachers

and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social

workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very

familiar with the problems because the problems

turn out to be

me

I am the history of rape

I am the history of the rejection of who I am

I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of

myself

I am the history of battery assault and limitless

armies against whatever I want to do with my mind

and my body and my soul and

whether it’s about walking out at night

or whether it’s about the love that I feel or

whether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina or

the sanctity of my national boundaries

or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity

of each and every desire

that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic

and indisputably single and singular heart

I have been raped

be-

cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age

the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the

wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic

the wrong sartorial I

I have been the meaning of rape

I have been the problem everyone seeks to

eliminate by forced

penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/

but let this be unmistakable this poem

is not consent I do not consent

to my mother to my father to the teachers to

the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy

to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon

idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in

cars

I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name

My name is my own my own my own

and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this

but I can tell you that from now on my resistance

my simple and daily and nightly self-determination

may very well cost you your life

________________________

June Jordan

Directed By Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan

Copper Canyon Press, 2005

RE-READING PIERRE REVERDY ~

On Tiptoe



Nothing stays anymore

               between my ten fingers

A vanishing shadow

               At the center

               a footstep

Choke off the voice that rises too high

That moaned and wouldn't die

That went too fast

It was who put a stop to this magnificent ardor

          Hope and my pride

              have passed on the wind

The leaves fell

           while the birds were counting

                             the drops of water

The lamps went out behind the curtains

Not so fast

Be careful you'll break everything with so much noise






Perspective



Did the same

Car carry me away

                             I see where you came from

                             You turn your head

Midnight

On the moon

Just struck

                              At the street corner

                              Everything is turned around

I saw her face

Even her hands

                              The last star

                               Is in the garden

Just like the first

Think of tomorrow

                               Where will they be

                                The thoughtless dead

When the wall vanishes

                                 The sky will fall







The World Before Me



Some time ago

Clear night

New sunrise

Next day

An old man on his knees holds out his hands

Animals ran all along the road



I sat me down

I have dreamed

A window opens on my head

Nobody home

A man goes by behind the hedge



The countryside where a single bird sings

Somebody is afraid

Somebody is amused

Down there between two little children

Joy

You against me

Rain washes away tears



You can't walk the narrow path

You go back the same way

There is a gate

Something just fe;;

Down behind there



His shadow bigger than himself

goes around the earth

And me I just sit there and don't dare look





__________________
Pierre Reverdy
Selected Poems
Translated by Kenneth Rexroth
New Directions, 1969






Around midnight, on hands & knees, I pulled
this old friend up off the bottom shelf and began
to read and instead of reading on and on I put in the
bookmark to save for the next night and the next. . .