Friday, October 30, 2015

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

NORMAN MAILER TO MICHAEL MCCLURE~






N O R M A N    M A I L E R





195. TO MICHAEL MCCLURE


December 19, 1959


Dear Michael McClure,

    I had a hard time reading your letter because like most poets you
write a prose which is an assault on the nervous system of a stylist. I think
it probably has something to do with the mother-love most boy poets get
when they are young and while I'm certain the inner workings of your
mind are a thing of surrealist beauty the expression in prose is so
damned self indulgent that I recoil because you see, baby, everyone I
knew who has any talent is certain that their own mind is the most beautiful
work yet created by God (Paul Carroll said a couple of weeks ago,
"The Devil is the most beautiful creation of God"). But one's style is the
hero of one's art and a hero with bad manners never makes no history
so you would do well to consider all your competitors, large and small,
older and younger than you as being equally greedy and self absorbed
and so never look to them for praise, for love, for attention and certainly
never offer them the spoils of your brain in a casual and styleless
letter since they will only put you down.
     [Don] Carpenter is right. I said that you were beat and not hip and
people who are beat do not really interest me because they are in need
and I do not care to run a free restaurant. I liked you well enough, I
thought you were a saucy little cat but then I began to dig that New York
was not your town and I like it because it is hard and true as negative
truth is true. I had the feeling I might be able to enjoy your company in
a few years when you are harder and less in love with yourself but until
then you were in my book just another royal mountain climber who was
hoping you don't have to get killed or even lose a little on the way up.
     Best to you and cheers,
            Norman 



Random House 2014







Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Monday, October 26, 2015

JACK GILBERT ~




 J  A  C  K      G  I  L  B  E  R  T



 Alone



I never thought Michiko would come back

after she died. But if she did, I knew

it would be as a lady in a long white dress.

It is strange that she has returned

as somebody's dalmatian. I meet

the man walking her on a leash

almost every week. He says good morning

and I stoop down to calm her. He said

once that she was never like that with

other people. Sometimes she is tethered

on their lawn when I go by. If nobody

is around, I sit on the grass. When she

finally quiets, she puts her head in my lap

and we watch each other's eyes as I whisper

in her soft ears. She cares nothing about

our mystery. She likes it best when

I touch her head and tell her small

things about my days and our friends.

That makes her happy the way it always did.


 _________________________



J  A  C  K      G  I  L  B  E  R  T


Collected Poems
Knopf




I started to type out a poem by Jack Gilbert today — in fact, two poems,
and I was going to tell you how the first poem, no need to say which poem,
after typing five lines and more to go, vanished before my eyes. I touched no buttons
but anyone who knows computer mechanics knows full well a button or something had to
have been touched for the poem to vanish. No, the poem simply vanished, probably because
someone wanted this to be so. I let it be so. I started on a second poem and the same disappearance occurred. I then made my way through a third poem, the one here for us.


Saturday, October 24, 2015

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

MICHAEL KRUGER ~








 

What Times Are These




Yesterday, in the wood,

a serious talk

with the trees:

if we had our way,

ran their rustling discourse,

there would be no such thing as nature.

What about us, I asked,

alarmed at the prospect of loss,

what on earth would we do without it?

You'd have to make,

out of second, first nature,

answered the trees,

and deal with it

just as you deal with us.

And in the meantime,

the leaves whispered fervently,

we would run wild, wilder than wild,

so that you, as strangers,

could, later, discover us once again.

When they had said this

they vanished for ever.


 ______________ 

 Diderot's Cat
M I C H A E L    K R U G E R
translated by Richard Dove
selected poems
Carcanet Press 1993





 

Monday, October 19, 2015

KAY RYAN ~







K A Y    R Y A N






EGGS



We turn out

as tippy as

eggs. Legs

are an illusion.

We are held

as in a carton

if someone

loves us.

It's a pity

only loss

proves this.







STILL START



As if engine

parts could be

wrenched out

at random and

the car would

still start and

sound even,

hearts can go

with chambers

broken open.







THINGS THAT HAVE
STAYED IN POSITION



Things that have

stayed in position

may nevertheless

have almost no

root system. You

could unstick

and slide them

like chess pieces.

Much of this

apparently tenacious

earth is fairly slick.



___________________


KAY RYAN
Erratic Facts
Grove 2015









Thursday, October 15, 2015

INUKSUIT ~









 The first comprehensive book about the Arctic's
mysterious stone figures called inuksuit, as told 
by Inuit elders to Norman Hallendy together with
his classic and out-rock photographs









Douglas & McIntyre
2      0      0      0











Wednesday, October 14, 2015

JOHN BRADLEY MEETS HENRY FORD & BILLY THE KID ~







 A  N  D     T  H  E  R  E  B  Y     E  V  E  R  Y  T  H  I  N  G

by John Bradley



L O N G H O U S E is very proud to announce a new book by John Bradley in their on going series of S C O U T book publications — other titles from the series have been by Kent Johnson, Janine Pommy Vega, James Koller, Bob Arnold and Lorine Niedecker with more in the works. An opening salvo at the front of the book by Patrick Lawler should provide ample cover for what the reader should come to expect.



And Thereby Everything
John Bradley
Longhouse 2015

First edition
only issued in softcover
208 pages, perfect bound
illustrated throughout by Bob Arnold 
with 150 photographs



 "John Bradley is a conjurer of conjunction and conjugation. Indeed, he does “speak his spark” from Old West to sold-out Hollywood, from Firestone to Sharon Stone to tombstone, from assembly line to disassembled line. His “language is a noise, noose, nuisance nuptial,” and And Thereby Everything—is everything. Maybe this book is why there was a Billy the Kid (“boy-bandit-king”) and Henry (Fordlandia) Ford. Maybe this book is why there is America. “Every story undulates another.” It is a tour de everything—a mix of aphorisms and dialogues and surrealistic lyrics with tics and “gears of history” and letters and plays and chorales featuring the voices of Adrienne Rich, Tony Soprano, George Zimmerman, Jean Harlow, Harpo Marx, Joan of Arc, et al. Burstingly funny and fiercely brilliant, this is Aaron Copland for dancers with clown shoes. This is Jack Spicer with a 1000 false clues and no place to hide. This is a Sam Peckinpah film starring Jane Russell as Billy with a soundtrack by Cotton Mather. John Bradley opened up America (with its dreams and icons, its violence and capitalism) and poured it inside this “Confusion Matrix” of a book. This is an American opera—maybe the only true American opera—starring, with all their desires and damage, with all their excess and dreams, Billy the Kid and Henry Ford as America."

Patrick Lawler
author of Child Sings in the Womb and
 Rescuers of Skydivers Search Among the Clouds





We want everyone on a horse, and in a car.

The cost of a ride ~ $20



  Shipping $3.95 ~ U.S. orders with Paypal


Buy now through easy-to-use Paypal, US Orders, $23.95









International orders ~ complete $45 with Paypal payment






all orders may be made by Paypal or check
mail order here:

 
L O N G H O U S E

 PO Box 2454

 West Brattleboro, Vermont 05303



Tuesday, October 13, 2015

THE CROSSROADS ~





PIERRE MARTORY   ~  JOHN ASHBERY

PARIS 1957




T H E    C R O S S R O A D S



The rubble is still to come.
The exciting night sky was shining yesterday
On the usual fits of insomnia.
The young man decides to go away
Away from an obscure horoscope
In search of an obscure destiny
In the encouraging silence of the gods.

The intersecting routes the lost maps
The name drowned in foreign languages
His father and mother never knew.
The young man takes his sack and his stick,
Leaves it all to chance, to his good luck,
Spins around, and, far from his flocks
Walks toward his first meeting.

It's a woman and it's a dog
She smiles and she yaps
Singing amid the scattered bones
Something resembling the absurd question
The young man has never asked himself
Which he answers without thinking.
The sky falls like a night on his shoulders
The dog-woman dies inside a long howl.

And when he tries to return, yesterday is tangled.
There is no more tree or star or bed
Or woman or question or horoscope.
The crossroads is only a line without risk.
Nothing moves, a thread stands out, red
Against the sun. The rubble
Starts to smoke as in the past never.





____________________ 

PIERRE MARTORY
translated by John Ashbery
The Landscapist, selected poems
The Sheep Meadow Press, 2008


http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/pierre-martory