P O E T S W H O S L E E P
______________________
drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold
Monday, September 28, 2020
Sunday, September 27, 2020
RE-READING PHILIP WHALEN ~
Further Notice
I can't live in this world
And I refuse to kill myself
Or let you kill me
The dill plant lives, the airplane
My alarm clock, this ink
I won't go away
I shall be myself —
Free, a genius, an embarrassment
Like the Indian, the buffalo
Like Yellowstone National Park.
22:ix:56
__________________________
Philip Whalen
The Collected Poems
edited by Michael Rothenberg
Wesleyan University Press, 2007
____________________________
For nearly any other collected poems
one can almost assume cracking the book open
to the middle will well provide the reader
with some of the best poetry by the poet.
Not so Philip Whalen.
For the last 50 years I guided my Whalen trajectory
through my favorite book of his, On Bear's Head,
a book devised and brought into existence through the
tough work of James Koller, Bill Brown and Don Carpenter
after a little fight with the co-publisher Harcourt & Brace.
Coyote Books was the rightful instigator, as usual.
Whalen was hot from the start — say after he gets through
his apprenticeship in the 40s— from the 50s onward
he is sailing, and Michael Rothenberg's perfect book
for Whalen: cover jacket design and hundreds of poems
(what more do you need?) plus Whalen's drawings and
doodles and general Philip-energy, it's all here in the Wesleyan
edition and I've come during a virus pandemic and read it all (ALL)
now a second time. Reading Philip Whalen is like bicycling up
a hill while eating an ice-cream cone, and maybe it's a hot day
but it doesn't have to be. Energies transfix. You know you've
got a poet when everyone says he or she is reading him and
no one knows who you're talking about.
Saturday, September 26, 2020
Friday, September 25, 2020
RE-READING RONALD JOHNSON ~
from ~
The Book of the Green Man
Of the seasons,
seamless, a garland.
Solstice
to equinox —
days,
The length of
breath,
a sequential foliage
firmly planted in
our veins,
we stand in our rayed form:
blue-eyed,
a chicory,
Sponsa Solis —
& upon the sun appears
a face
also with rays
in descent
trough an undulant
blue.
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Ronald Johnson
The Book of the Green Man
Norton, 1967
There is something beguiling and transfixed,
at least it happens to me, when I re-approach
Johnson's early books published exquisitely
by Norton.
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
RE-READING 80 FLOWERS ~
L I L A C
Sere ring a pipe wood
lodging sweet by tempest lodged
nose knows two colors pale
and deep lilac blossom breezed
pruned some red fall-scattered blossom
hesperis purple mother-of-evening gone spring
angels in bustles deep lilac
pales lilac angels for white
Q U E E N A N N E' S L A C E
Top-turfy gimp fiery oes eyes
light white flat lacy heads
centrums purple many uneven small
flowers each whorl umbel if
awry ladies songflawed wit pretty 's
well queen unwanted princess throws
horse prize wild carrot autumn
hurdle stands jackdaw-course carried her
S N O W - W R E A T H
From solitary flowerstalk some fingers
fragrance look down ridge-back enamel
leaves snowdrop impetal seagreen unseen
months snowflake unplanted snowdrift sweet
alyssum self-risen snowtrillium new valleys
east snowpoppy snow-in-summer starry grasswort
prairie snow-on-the-mountain wilding seacoast
snowberry-drupe snow-wreath earth-rounds bees' rose
__________________
80 Flowers
only
80 copies printed by
The Stinehour Press
Linen cloth boards
Gilded paper title label to spine
I found my copy in a northern
New England working town with
one used bookstore, bottom shelf
old plank floors, big front windows
Priced to move
Lucky me
Monday, September 21, 2020
POETS WHO SLEEP #17 ~
P O E T S W H O S L E E P
______________________
drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold
Sunday, September 20, 2020
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