THELONIOUS MONK LIVE TONIGHT ~

 

Released on: 1964-04-01 Producer: Teo Macero Drums: Frank Dunlop Arranger: Hall Overton Mastering Engineer, Mixing Engineer: Vic Anesini Bass: Butch Warren Tenor Saxophone: Charlie Rouse

ANNA SWIR ~

 Priceless Gifts

An empty day without events.

And that is why

it grew immense

as space.  And suddenly

happiness of being

entered me.

I heard

in my heartbeat

the birth of time

and each instant of life

one after the other

came rushing in

like priceless gifts.

                          _________________________________________________   

translated from the Polish by

Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan

                        

BOB ARNOLD'S "SWWIMMER" ~

"Artists feed each other: John Cheever fed one of the best. Bob Arnold was inspired by the John Cheever’s short story.“The Swimmer” to write a fact based novel SWWIMMER (the double “W” is intentional) that honored Cheever’s achievement. In doing so, Arnold created a rare work of art: a stunning trade book that is also an artist-book, an example of masterful writing, exquisite design, and a story that takes the particulars of personal family relationships and makes them universal as they develop the themes of love, loss, abandonment, the striving to return to inner peace by finding a way outward, “swimming” into the world’s confusions and mysteries." — JOE NAPORA

"The list of can’t do’s for a non-swimmer living by a river, is staggering. We decided we would never give up. And at the age of eight, one June day near his birthday, after we took a trail down to the river through the woods and kicked our sneakers off on the rock ledge and figured this 500th swim would be up for a fight, we heard a splash. Our dog Bo was still beside us." [pp 8-9]

There are so many fine aspects of this writing: the  long “trailing” description of the walk to the river, the detail of kicking the shoes on the rock, but what is most important to notice is what is missing, a narrative voice that tells of the boy jumping into the water. Arnold accomplishes this by staying with the present, acknowledging the privacy of the spot, none other than the boy could make the splash since “Our dog Bo was still beside us”. 

This absence involves the reader. The writer is not presenting a scene, he offers one to our imagination, taking us to the scene that he too can only imagine as he can only hear the sound the boy makes as he jumps into the river.

I am reminded of a similar scene from a very dissimilar scene in the movie Lawrence of Arabia. Not a river but a desert. Not a boy making a splash in the water. A man shooting a companion, a friend. We never see the man being killed. We see the effect on Lawrence as he pulls the trigger of the gun. We see his arm move as he pulls the trigger again. The sound of the gun takes us there. Sound connects. That is masterful directing by David Lean. It involves us.  That is masterful writing by Bob Arnold.            — JOE NAPORA

 Bob Arnold

SWWIMMER

Longhouse

2026

available now

New, perfect bound, 170 pages

Prose

$20

$5 shipping to US addresses

by Paypal or check

Please use our email address of longhousepoetry@gmail.com

LONGHOUSE

P.O. Box 2454

West Brattleboro

Vermont

05303

TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK / PHILIP GUSTON ~

 

  Yale 2024

MARK PRITCHARD & THOM YORKE TONIGHT

 

   2025

TECHNOLOGY AND BARBARISM; THRESHOLDS ~

 

F L Y   W I T H   M E

    Astra House, 2026

ARCHIVE OF DREAMS ~

 

R E A D   M E

      Spector Books

MARGARET ATWOOD ~

 

R E A D   M E

JULEE CRUISE TONIGHT ~

 

  1989

POSTHUMOUS KEATS ~

 

R E A D   M E

      WW Norton 2008

LINDA GREGG ~

 

Asking for Directions

We could have been mistaken for a married couple

riding on the train from Manhattan to Chicago

that last time we were together. I remember

looking out the window and praising the beauty

of the ordinary: the in-between places, the world

with its back turned to us, the small neglected

stations of our history.  I slept across your

chest and stomach without asking permission

because they were the last hours.  There was

a smell to the sheepskin lining of your new

Chinese vest that I didn't recognize.  I felt

it deliberately.  I woke early and asked you

to come with me for coffee.  You said, sleep more,

and I said we only had one hour and you came.

We didn't say much after that.  In the station,

you took your things and handed me the vest,

then left as we had planned.  So you would have

ten minutes to meet your family and leave.

I stood by the seat dazed by exhaustion

and the absoluteness of the end, so still I was

aware of myself breathing.  I put on the vest

and my coat, got my bag and, turning, saw you

through the dirty window standing outside looking

up at me.  We looked at each other without any

expression at all.  Invisible, unnoticed, still.

That moment is what I will tell of as proof

that you loved me permanently.  After that I was

a woman alone carrying her beg, asking a worker

which direction to walk to find a taxi.

____________________     

Linda Gregg

Poetry, April 2026

BLACK ARTIST OF COMIC BOOKS ~

 

R E A D   M E

    IDW Publishing

     2020

ALICE SARA OTT TONIGHT ~

 

WILLIAM KENNEDY ~

 

      Library of America

MALCOLM COWLEY, Man of Letters ~

 

R E A D    M E

     Penguin 2025

RAE ARMANTROUT ~

 

Angel

When I was almost a woman

the men in the radio

called someone I thought

might be me

an angel and a  baby.

I wasn't offended.

What did I know?

I knew I would have to

empty myself to fit inside

the songs. And I wanted

to be in them as long as

they lived, to be called to

and never come. To be full of

my lighter and lighter self,

with literally no place to go

as it is in heaven

Between

"The,"

we say,

making

our claim

on eternity.

"The"

short gray

sidewalk between

those shaved strips

of lawn

_____________________

Rae Armantrout

Go Figure

Wesleyan University Press, 2024

CLIFFORD BURKE ~

 

C L I F F O R D   B U R K E

1942- 30 June 2026

A friend to many in the small press world ~

captain of the seas with his Cranium Press

since the 1960s and long association with

Desert Rose Press while in New Mexico,

Hollow Orange was Clifford's literary journal

to keep.

    Photo by Andrea Grimes

DON CHERRY & ED BLACKWELL TONIGHT ~

 

℗ 1982 ECM Records GmbH, under exclusive license to Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Berlin

RONALD JOHNSON AGAIN ~

 

Wild Apples

                                                        with 'bow-arrow tang'

cows or birds or Johnny Appleseed

planted

New England westward

Whole orchards, boughs knotted

with fruits of coral & gold — to be eaten, Thoreau believed,

in the wind.              

                    Whose 'bloom' rubs off in pockets

like wild horses

broken in, harnessed

to plow.

                    Neither orchards of the east, in lichened

                    walls, or west

                    hedged in eucalyptus—

bounded only by slopes of oak

& of maple,

the woods-apple comes sweet from the hills, both spring

nights & autumn

a wildflower sharpness, an earthy

cider

                    Domestics

                    shape

                    for hand,

                    & tint

                    of 'apple

                    color'

                            —but wild may brindle

                    as a cow,

                    may rust like

                    rock

____________________________

Valley of the

Many-Colored Grasses

The Song Cave, 2023

                    

CROOKED FINGERS TONIGHT ~

 

℗ 2026 Merge Records Released on: 2026-02-27 Main Artist: Crooked Fingers Producer: Eric Bachmann Composer Lyricist: Eric Bachmann