JAN MORRIS ~

 

R E A D   M E

   Harper 2026

GARY SNYDER "OIL" ~

 

Oil

soft rainsqualls on the swells

south of the Bonins, late at night.  Light

from the empty mess-hall

throws back bulky shadows

of winch and fairlead

over the slanting fantail where I stand.

but for men on watch in the engine room,

the man at the wheel, the lookout in the bow,

the crew sleeps.  in cots on deck

or narrow iron bunks down drumming

passageways below.

the ship burns with a furnace heart

steam veins and copper nerves

quivers and slightly twists and always goes —

easy roll of the hull and deep

vibration of the turbine underfoot.

bearing what all these

crazed, hooked nations need:

steel plates and

long injections of pure oil.

___________________________

Gary Snyder

The Back Country

Fulcrum Press, 1967

HAPPY  BIRTHDAY  ~  GARY  SNYDER

MAX RICHTER TONIGHT ~

 

PHOEBE GIANNISI ~

 

Leaves

Inside these articulations

the beginnings of language

outside of yes and no

inside only the I want

the soul with the body meeting

in all the openly

meteoric leaves

and now, see:

one of them falls slowly

to the earth

_______________

Phoebe Giannisi

Cicada

translated by Brian Sneeden

New Directions 2022

GEORGE HERMS ~

 

G E O R G E   H E R M S

1935 ~ 2026

      Chris Felver/Getty Images

SUN RA HELIOCENTRIC WORLDS VOL. 2 ~

 

FIFTY YEARS OF PAPUNYA TULA ARTISTS ~

 

     University of Virginia Press

    2021

TUNED MASS DAMPER (EL-P) ~

 

     Fat Possum Records

     2002

THREE RINGS ~

 

R E A D   M E

     NYRB 2022

AHMED BOUANANI ~

 

Remember Sinbad

someone

remembers

Sinbad

and plunging

their hands into the water

believes they seize

a living

cloud.

What to Say

I think of the sordid streets of Casablanca

of the silent mornings

odors of Brazilian coffee

odors of rancid god

odors of bleeding dreams

I think of the too-recent day of death

and of madness

I think of those who go

far away to live out the end of a glacial tale

I think of those who stay

or who cannot go far away

or who are shut in, cut off from the sundial.

Soon I'll know what to say.

*

And what is it that you do not say,

poet starved for texts

Here you are

a Friday in the month of Rajab

listening to the desert

A story taps at your window

an old story

rainbowish

with heads hands hair

and postcards of Casablanca

And what is it that you do not say

poet starved for texts

Break the window

Sput in the face of angels on airplanes

Trample on the big cloud of Arabia

Here you are

a Friday in the month of Rajab

listening to the desert.

__________________________

Ahmed Bouanani

The Shutters

translated from the French by Amma Ramadan

New Directions 2018

ALICE COLTRANE TONIGHT ~

 

      Impulse 1971

KUROSAWA'S LONG TAKE ~

 

R E A D   M E

     University of Minnesota Press

    2025