GIUSEPPE UNGARETTI

 GIUSEPPE UNGARETTI

  "I Know My Modus Operandi"

Translated by Walter Franceschi

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RE-READING PAUL METCALF ~

 

I've yet to part with this issue of the wonderful

Lillabulero, circa 1973 and at an unbeatable price

of $2 when you consider what was coming inbetween

the covers — all devoted to Paul Metcalf — to this day

one of the sterling iconoclast's of American literature,

all his movements slide between poetry & prose, and one

isn't quite sure what this great grandson of Herman Melville

was, meant in the best of terms, like standingstill and listening

carefully and not quite pinpointing what that bird call is.

Russell Banks, yet to be famous, will begin to reveal what

will make him famous in how he handles our unidentified

birdcall in a fine rolling and tumbling interview with Paul Metcalf

between small town New Hampshire and small town Berkshire hills.

It remains one of the reasons I keep this issue of Lillabulero between the large three

volume set of Metcalf's collected works from Coffee House Press.

During the time of the interview Metcalf has written most of his major works,

age 54, and is wondering to himself what will be next.

Banks has fished from the author about as good as you can fish.

Contributors to this festschrift is about as good as it gets at this time:

McCord, Enslin, Jonathan Williams, Thomas Meyer, Corbett,

Grossinger, Sukenick.

I also keep this issue for the fine author's photo above.

[ BA ]

POETS WHO SLEEP #29 ~

 

P O E T S     W H O     S L E E P

______________________

                                           drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold

The complete series to date ~ please link here

RUTH ASAWA ~

 

R U T H    A S A W A

Of all the books now available on the life and

work of Ruth Asawa, this one is by far my favorite.

Less on the academic and mumbo-jumbo text and cleanly

told by two authorities, Tiffany Bell and Robert Storr,

this tall silvery volume is high on class and

exquisite throughout with profuse illustrations

chosen wisely for content, chronology and appeal,

never losing sight at how to present an artist to the public

with well fashioned bookmaking design, typography

and profound full page plates of Asawa.

It's a dream.

[ BA ]

David Zwirner Books

2018

PENCIL ~

 

Bosnia and Herzegovina

                                  Jasenko Djordjevic works on his miniature sculpture on a graphite pencil. 

                                  The self-taught artist crafts tiny sculptures on pencil graphite, using nothing 

                                   but hand precision and a sharp knife    Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters

JOHN LUTHER ADAMS ~

 

LIKE IT WAS (JAMES KOLLER) ~

 

L I S T E N    T O    J I M

REMEMBERING HELEN LAFRANCE ("I couldn't say $100") ~

 

HELEN LAFRANCE

RE-READING JOANNE KYGER ~

Destruction



First of all do you remember the way a bear goes through

a cabin when nobody is home? He goes through

the front door. I mean he really goes through it. Then

he takes the cupboard off the wall and eats a can of lard.



He eats all the apples, limes, dates, bottled decaffeinated

coffee, and 35 pounds of granola. The asparagus soup cans

fall to the floor. Yum! He chomps up Norwegian crackers

stashed for the winter. And the bouillon, salt, pepper,

paprika, garlic, onions, potatoes.



                                                   He rips the Green Tara

poster from the wall. Tries the Coleman Mustard. Spills

the ink, tracks in the flour. Goes up stairs and takes

a shit. Rips open the water bed, eats the incense and

drinks the perfume. Knocks over the Japanese tansu

and the Persian miniature of a man on horseback watching

a woman bathing.



                           Knocks Shelter, Whole Earth Catalogue,

Planet Drum, Northern Mists, Trucks Tracks, and

Women's Sports into the oozing water bed mess.



                                                                       He goes

down stairs and out the back wall. He keeps on going

for a long way and finds a good cave to sleep it all off.

Luckily he ate the whole medicine cabinet, including stash

of LSD, Peyote, Psilocybin, Amanita, Benzedrine, Valium

and aspirin.



________________
Joanne Kyger





a forever classic ~ with its strength of natural storytelling and aplomb
combined with a sheer intelligence of what the poet knows from cultures
and the cabin





          

RE-READING ANDRES SERRANO ~

 

Immediately controversial in the 1980's

Andress Serrano (b. 1950 NYC)

in Body & Soul, showcasing the

photographer's work from 1983-1993,

may be more pertinent now during

a worldwide virus pandemic.

The holy and the ghosts

are herein all in one.

[ BA ]

POETS WHO SLEEP #28 ~

 

P O E T S     W H O     S L E E P

______________________

                                           drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold

The complete series to date ~ please link here

RE-READING ANONYMOUS (ESKIMO) ~

Magic Words


In the very earliest time,

when both people and animals lived on earth,

a person could become an animal if he wanted to

and an animal could become a human being.

Sometimes they were people

and sometimes animals

and there was no difference.

All spoke the same language.

That was the time when words were like magic.

The human mind had mysterious powers.

A word spoken by chance

might have strange consequences.

It would suddenly come alive

and what people wanted to happen could

              happen —

all you had to do was say it.

Nobody could explain this:

That's the way it was.


translated from the Inuit by Edward Field


__________________________________

WAXAHATCHEE ~

 

RE-READING ALAN LOMAX ~

FARMS GOT SO POOR "IT TOOK TWO ROOSTERS TO CROW ONCE" 

From the song 'My Last Ole Dollar' a classic hard-luck story from North Carolina comes collected by Lee Morris (MS Federal Writers Project):

"Hard luck just runs in my family. I mind the time I couldn't even buy a hen and a chicken. Decided to kill myself. Scared my old pistol wouldn't work, so I bought me a gallon of kerosene, a piece of rope, bottle of rat poison. Rowed down to the lake to where some trees hung way out over the water.

So I stood up and tied the rope round my neck. Bid farewell to this hard old world. Poured kerosene all over myself, et that rat poison and set my clothes afire, figgerin' I'd shoot myself just when I kicked the bat out from under my feet.

But that durn pistol shot the rope in two. I fell in the river and put out the fire on my clothes and got to stranglin' and chokin' that water, and throwed up the poison. Well from that I figgered my luck was changin', so I swum out and put up for the legislature. Durned if I didn't get elected, too!"

(and I believe we saw some of his younger relatives in the U.S. House of Representatives during the impeachment hearings for Donald J. Trump; in fact, I know we did.)

No book I went back to read during the Covid-19 pandemic

treated me better and settled down around my shins finer than

Alan Lomax's The Folk Songs of North America. My copy

is a hardcover still in its decorative dustjacket and the boards

of the book are layered in old moss and smell like I've pulled out

a slate shingle from an old pile instead of a book. Lord knows where

I ever found the book — I first read Folk Song USA (John and Alan Lomax, the power house

father and son team of traveling sleuths and field recorders)

in puffy softcover while in high school and it was just too loaded for bear at the time and age

when listening to Bob Dylan, Richard Farina, Phil Ochs, Dave Van Ronk, 

Tom Paxton, Hedy West, Joan Baez who had obviously worked like miners

through this book and the North America bible. 

Since Lomax believed the folk song was aligned with

fantasy and the skill of the unconscious where the American dream and

struggle is truly revealed. In the above players mentioned, Dylan's masterpiece

 "Highway 61" (1965) may be our best example. The maestro has readily

admitted what he pulled out of the guts of this book and the Lomax (and Harry Smith)

jukebox, and we haven't even touched down into the rich gardens this book

gives (there are 300 songs) through original work by the likes of Merle Travis,

Blind Willie Johnson, Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, A.L. Lloyd, Jean Ritchie,

Pete Seeger, Jimmy Driftwood, prison camp work songs — long before Howard Zinn, 

this book is the people's history of the United States.

[ BA ]