RE-READING WANG WEI ~

Living in the Hills




In calm loneliness I shut my door

Against the whole afterglowing sky

Cranes are nesting in all the pines

No visitors at my wicket gate

Tender bamboos with the new bloom on them

Red lotuses shed of ther old garments

A lamp shines out at the ford

Water-chestnut pickers come home.







Drifting on the Lake



The autumn sky is clear into the distance

The clearer so far from human habitation

On a sandy shore a crane, or beyond clouds

A mountain top makes my content

The limpid ripples calm and evening comes

The moon shines out and I relax

Tonight my single oar takes over

As I drift without thought of going back.







Return to Mount Sung



The river ran clear between luxuriant banks

And my carriage jogged along on its way

And the water seemed to flow with a purpose

And in the evening the birds went back together—

Desolate town confronting an old ford

Setting sun filling the autumn hills

After a long journey, sat the foot of Mount Sung

I have come home and shut my door.






Written in my Country Garden in Spring



On my roof spring pigeons call

And round the village almond trees bloom white

Men take axes to cut the high branches

Shoulder hoes to inspect the conduits

Returning swallows know their old nests

The old resident scans the new calendar

About to drink I suddenly hold my hand

With a pang for a friend on a far journey



____________________
Wang Wei (A.D. 699-761)
Poems
translated by G.W. Robinson
Penguin 1973






I'm always reading Wang Wei

RE-READING 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.

Shoe would do.



But I won't be born as a human being ever again.




____________________

Ko Un
The Three Way Tavern
Selected Poems
translated by Clare You & Richard Silberg
University of California Press 2006





You can read lots and lots of Ko Un, that good.
But I picked out one pumpkin from the patch.

POETS WHO SLEEP #20 ~

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

GREAT SET ( JACK WHITE ) ~

 

One more three piece dynamo

Dedicated to Eddie Van Halen

ALAN LAU ~

 

A L A N    L A U

Artist, writer, and community organizer Alan Lau grew up in Paradise, California. In his first book, The Buddha Bandits Down Highway 99, Lau recalls early memories of his grandmother teaching him calligraphy in her kitchen – his first experience with the brush. After earning his BA in Art from the University of California – Santa Cruz in 1976, Lau traveled to Japan where he studied sumi-e and brush painting. After settling in Seattle, Lau developed a visual style inspired by the traditional brush painting techniques, but unfettered by strict tradition.

_________________________

ArtXchange Gallery, Seattle

RE-READING JAMES KOLLER ~

 

Snow on Mount Saint Helena

the mountain behind me, I drove south & west

passed three Angels in Valley Ford

five more & a girl at the crossroads to Tomales

& four gassed up at Point Reyes Station, roared away

chrome & hair catching sunlight, to the north

to join the others

Billy & Toby were off, again

to Oregon, as per

I Ching, The Book of Chnges

going thru changes

like music

harmoniously, minor discords

like she burned or threw away everything, always

burns her bridges

pulled the old light out of the ceiling

tore the wires loose, all connections

change gears

Angels at every turn

all crossed roads

both sides, the streets lined with Harleys, choppers

of every description

         he opened her coat

         & held it open

         carefully & with expert eye

         examined

         what she had to offer

         so to speak, as it were

                                             a whole world

& nothing ever dies, it's all here

on every road, behind every tree

growing out of the ground, a beautiful

fire, flames

                          I'm grinning

exhaust, carbon

                           diamonds & threads

my mind is filled with diamonds & threads

we go off in all directions, thru intersections & crossed roads

a necklace to live in

_________________________

JAMES KOLLER

POEMS for the BLUE SKY

Black Sparrow Press, 1976

___________________________________

A gorgeous book of poems, if you can find

yourself a copy, spanning the wealth of one decade —

the 1960s, which Koller had a vivid and active eye to.

Along with poems that come from the vanished, are the

poets versions of songs of the Tlinget and the

Teton Sioux, working after John R. Swanton

and Frances Densmore. One of Koller's

loveliest poems is also here, "Wind"

which reads the best in the context of all the book.

Less than 100 pages and every page a gem.

I BUILD WITH AN AXE

[BA]

photograph of James Koller

by Alo Zanetta

GREAT MAESTRO SHAJARIAN ~

 

S H A J A R I A N

RE-READING RUSSIAN FOLKTALES ~

Vassilisa the Beautiful

Sister Alyonushka
and Brother Ivanushka
/
The White Duck


R E A D      H E R E




Cozak
Moscow
1970s



Jim Koller gave us these books
as gifts long long ago —
nobody else would have.

RE-READING DRUMMOND HADLEY ~

 

Cutting Loose in the Springtime

I.

Billy Brown, being an old Texas cowboy,

Was a hard and fast tie man.

That means he tied his rope solid,

Or fast, to the saddle horn, as against dallying.

Dallying means to take turns of the rope around the saddle horn,

To hold an animal you've got roped,

So if something happens and you start to get into a wreck,

You can let your rope slide around the saddle horn,

Or take those dallies off the horn.

Billy only dallied roping little calves in a corral,

'Cause, he said, you had to learn it when you were young,

Or you couldn't do it well enough to keep from losing

A finger, or a hand, or a thumb.

Billy carried a knife strapped to his chaps right above his thigh bone,

So if he had a cow brute, or some critter roped,

And he was tied hard and fast,

And was maybe riding a spinning, pitching colt,

With the coils of that rope winding around him,

He could pull his knife free, and start cutting loose.

II.

Sometimes, Spring comes whirling up these desert canyons

From the South so strong, I'd cut loose and go a-prancing. . .

With one of these light seeds that flies up towards the canyon rim.

Sometimes, those sweet scents of the Sprintime

Come whirling up these draws from Mexico so strong,

When the blood-weed starts greening up,

And the mourning doves start calling long,

Long into the beginning of the morning.

III.

When the Spring winds come blowing down the ridge lines,

And you feel them blowing along the creased lines of your skin,

Who would tell Springtime to be still,

Or to go away from the rims of these dry canyons and hills,

Till all the honey and all the humming bees,

And those light blue eyes are gone?

Who would tell the Springtime to be still?

___________________________

Drummond Hadley

Voice of the Borderlands

Rio Nuevo 2005

LISTEN TO DRUMMOND HADLEY

_______________________________________

I had a phone call once from Drummond Hadley.

Nice surprise! Drum was calling me in the very

early days of the cell phone, those big submarine sandwich

size things. Drum said he wanted to tell me how much

he liked my book of poems Where Rivers Meet, and 

he said he had driven his pickup truck to the

highest section of his vast ranch in 

Arizona (Drum was a real cowboy)

so he could tell me. With guys like

Drum, it's important that you know

that he means to get across.

Voice of the Borderlands

is a masterpiece at stories

and true characters getting across

in elegiac and narrative poems,

side-glances and the great unknown.

Go there. Get lost. Be found.

[ BA ]

RE-READING GENNADY AYGI ~

And a cloud is floating, a round cloud,

like a cap on my head,

and my time passes, like a dream

dreamed without sleep.

________________

I was back reading Gennady Aygi

in late July — muggy wet weather

blasted by a now and then breezy lovely 

sunny day to ride the bicycle (we rode

the bicycles on the muggy wet days too),

each book beautifully presented by Peter France

Salute — to Singing; Time of Gratitude;

Winter Revels and Ever Further into the Snow

and so many of his other books on my shelves

________________________

P E T E R     F R A N C E  ~  I N T E R V I E W

About One More Wood

From this little wood,

at last,

for ever or for years

the mushrooms have gone.

This happened slowly,

over thirty years.

And now, as I think back,

this disappearance, their "going"

seems one single action,

like the dying away

of a long-lived orchestra

of a long-lived choir.

take care little mushrooms

RE-READING EDWARD FIELD ~

 

E D W A R D     F I E L D

Susan Sontag brushes by through this wonderful

stringy text, mush-mouthed with flavored gossip

and a nicely balanced personal feel. So expect a bit less Sontag

and much more Alfred Chester, Paul Bowles,

Ralph Pomeroy, Frank O'Hara and May Swenson —

none as striking looking as Sontag some might

say, but all of them gay and enriched.

The sincerity Field shows to someone like the all

but forgotten Alfred Chester is quite stunning,

revealing a care the author will give to each chapter. 

Field is still with us, marvelously at 96 years of age.

I've always considered him out of the Grove Press

stable: hip, smart, and telling truths.

[ BA ]

University of Wisconsin Press

2005

POETS WHO SLEEP #19 ~

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

NEW! LOUISE LANDES LEVI ~

 

_________________________

A long poem sequence by Louise from Kyoto, Japan

Foldout booklet in Japanese papers

New! 

Fall 2020

LONGHOUSE

$12

order  through Paypal & use our email 

 address  ~

poetry@sover.net

Free shipping

in USA

Longhouse, Box 2454, West Brattleboro, VT 05303

MORE HARRY SMITH ~

 

H A R R Y     S M I T H