DOCK BOGGS ~

 

TAMPA RED ~

 

THE MAKING OF "THE MISFITS" ~

 

Gail Levin

Director

2002

ROBERT CHRISTGAU LOVES PETER STAMPFEL ~

 

READ   ME

If you love music

you'll love this,

or grow to

FRED JORDAN, PUBLISHER AT GROVE PRESS ~

 

F R E D       J O R D A N

ROOT, HOG, OR DIE (A Beautiful Film)~

 

 by Rawn Fulton and Newbold Noyes

black and white, 56 min, 1978, digitally remastered 2014

From early Colonial times, the rural hilltowns of New England have been home to generations of dairy farmers. They earned their living through a remarkably varied combination of seasonal activities and incessant daily chores — maple sugaring, plowing, planting, cultivating, haying, logging, clearing fields, building stone walls, mending fences, harvesting crops, cutting, splitting and stacking firewood, breeding, doctoring, trading and slaughtering their cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens and horses; while also daily milking & feeding their herds, mucking stalls, cooking, cleaning, tending home fires and raising their families.

All the while they supported each other in tightly knit communities sustained by shared values, mutual needs, and respect for the land.

When Jefferson envisioned the citizenry essential for the success of America's experiment in democracy, these were very possibly the type of agrarian people he well knew and had in mind: self-reliant, hard-working, good-humored, neighborly, and blessed with common sense.

Root Hog or Die is a portrait of a living remnant of this once pervasive but rapidly vanishing way of life. Filmed in 1973 in hilltowns across Western Massachusetts and Southern Vermont, it follows the cycle of the farming year from spring to winter. In its course we visit with an array of elders, who reflect on farming's deep natural patterns, share their family histories and personal memories, and ponder the inevitable forces of technological and social change they have endured. The bittersweet nature of their challenges is manifest, as is the quiet pride they take in their lives as farmers.

“A significant contribution to American oral history.” — Alan Lomax

“A must for every American Studies program.” — Robert Gardner

SOLOMON BURKE ~

 

ALABAMA SHAKES ~

 

move the room

ISABELLE HUPPERT ~

 

NOAM CHOMSKY ~

 

L I S T E N

TOSHIRO MIFUNE ~

 

ROSE WYLIE ~

 

R E A D     M E

POETS WHO SLEEP #48 ~

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

JOHN SAYLES TALKS MOVIES ~

 

CLIMBING ~

 

WALKS w/PAUL CELAN & JEAN DAVIE ~

 

R E A D       M E

THERE IS NO EXILE WHERE THE HEART IS PURE ~

  

There Is No Exile Where The Heart Is Pure

                                                                            ( for Pablo Casals )

Behind the barn, the first week of March, on a bright

morning after long rain,

the windy cedar tree

turns round and round in the sunlight.

A winter horse

rubs himself on the corner of the barn.

Little pieces of cedar glide down where the ants are

calling home their old senators who

have failed utterly.

Coming home, carrying suitcases full of noise,

they pass through small American towns.

On the barn wall,

rusted nails bleed; and in fences, in hinges, in boards.

The horse (I think of Casals in exile!) plays

a suite unaccompanied in the silver cedar boards.

Inside,

the stranded hay-wagon shudders.

Between its floorboards

seeds

trickle to the earth.

A dry dusty odor mingles with festering dampness,

and a hand —

         blue ridges and rivers coming and going through it —

rests on the white sheet of the windows.

          My grandmother

          comes to swing open wide the huge

          double doors,

          doors like drifting continents,

          and a wedge of healing sunlight

          slips into the barn before her.

_____________________________

Robert Sund

The Hides of White Horses Shedding Rain

Copper Canyon Press, 1981

there never were enough Robert Sund poems —

it's strange, each time I type out Robert Sund's

name it shows up as Robert Sung — as if he is

returning (as I type) or has indeed returned —

to the Sung Dynasty, where of course he belongs.

This book, signed by Sund, I have no idea where

it came from — maybe a good friend, a lucky find?

here in New England — far from the Sund home of

Washington State — where as I boy in the late 60s I

had already found his masterpiece Bunch Grass

and crowded the book into my work lunchpail as

a great companion with me at midday. "Whatcha

got there, Bob, the book. . .what's bunch grass?"

I'm finding out. . .

[ BA ]

POETS WHO SLEEP #47 ~

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

LARRY EIGNER ~

"Briggflatts is a poem: it needs no explanation" 

B  A  S  I   L         B  U  N  T  I  N  G

I enjoy any book by or about

L A R R Y      E I G N E R

including by academics going on & on

in the long run it seems where

the outsiders —

and Eigner was one,

like Philip Whalen —

will be rescued and petted

by the academic Red Cross

but perhaps keep in mind

what John Berryman

once wrote to Ezra Pound 

then residing in St. Elizabeth's Hospital

far from the academy,

"Thirty years ago the

("intellectual") public knew nothing,

at present it is only too damned

apparently familiar with every-

thing — among others, with all

of you. . . There is a whole school

of now-academic criticism

to be broken down also (Ransom,

Winters Tate Blackmur Warren), which I

am convinced is stifling talent."

John Berryman 1947

________________

New Mexico, 2020

"Let the incidents and images take care of themselves"

B  A  S  I   L         B  U  N  T  I  N  G