WORLD NEWS ~

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CID CORMAN! (A NEW BOOK) ~

Cid Corman — Famous Blue Aerogrammes
edited by Bob Arnold

New and available now from Longhouse ~ 
90 pages with color insert, perfect bound softcover

______________________

$15

Shipping for US addresses $3.95

please use our email address for Paypal payments of poetry@sover.net or see the below link

international orders total is $35 including shipping

please use our email address for Paypal payments of poetry@sover.net or see the below link

Now available through Amazon

all orders may be made by Paypal or check to

US orders for Paypal [temporarily unable to link] — if this link is not working please inquire poetry@sover.net and we will invoice you. Thanks!

International Orders for Paypal [temporarily unable to link] — if this link is not working please inquire poetry@sover.net and we will invoice you. Thanks!

Longhouse
PO Box 2454
West Brattleboro, Vermont 05303

LISTEN! ~

THE NORTHERN RAIL ~

for Kim in a cast, and Susie's helping hand

for my Irish mother (Belfast)

JACK BELDEN ~

any old fella. . .

Jack Belden



Uncle Jack is what the young kids

Around here call him, even though he

Isn’t really their uncle but rather

Their own parents’ uncle and usually

They just called him Jack. His name

Doesn’t come up too much when I’m

Working with my neighbors.

There are three houses of the same family

Up the dirt road running alongside

French Brook. The brook eventually

Climbs higher into the next town of

Cheshire and Jack drinks from this brook.

The dirt road winds around Church Mountain

And swings back into the village

Passing through the covered bridge

And over the waterfall,

Forks then into two roads like a wishbone

That provides travel for a dozen families.

They hardly ever come down our road

Which follows the river, and I don’t

Think anyone knows Jack Belden up there.

The three houses on Jack’s back road

Are the homes for two of his nephews

And his sister; Jack’s small trailer

Is hidden in a hollow from them all.

He never married, doesn’t own a car,

Hikes to Brattleboro 12 miles away or

Picks up a ride with the rural mailtruck.

One day walking home from work

I was 500 feet behind Jack who had just

Left the mailtruck in the covered bridge

And was stalking down the muddy river road.

Middle of the season. A warm day.

The buckets on the roadside maples

Brimming with sap.

A mile down the road

And still a distance between us

I watched him abruptly stop,

Look both ways (but not behind him),

Let down his burlap sack of groceries

From his shoulder, then walk to

One of the trees and remove a bucket,

Drink for a good half-minute

Wipe his mouth with his sleeve

Hang the bucket back

Then continue the remaining mile to home.

I thought all about that yesterday —

It was eight years ago. He was 75 years old.

Today I’m tapping the same trees

On the farmer’s land Jack drank from.

The mud is deep and the day is warm,

Not much has changed.

But I heard and couldn’t believe

That Jack has been in the hospital

Since January, the month we broke

All records for freezing temperatures.

I recall one night sitting with neighbors

Already reminiscing about

The headaches of busted water pipes

Depleting cordwood and icy roads,

But no talk about Jack —

The whiskered old man who walks.

Everett, his nephew, told me

As we filled our aprons with tap spouts

That Jack’s gas ran out in the trailer

During one of those real cold nights.

30 below. His feet froze.

They amputated the gangrene from all his toes.

Shut out all the lights to any more walking.

I wonder what this all means —

We worry about water pipes bursting,

But a quarter-mile away

Jack loses his toes.

It wasn’t brought up at town meeting this year.

Jack’s photograph doesn’t grace

The inside town report bulletin

As one of the patriarchs of Guilford.

Yet, he knows his territory —

Takes a leak outside his trailer door

Like any liberated yankee.

Quietly living so that you

Don’t know that he lives.

Showed me once how to

Crush an early shad bud

Between my fingers
For the first scent of spring.

_______________________

Bob Arnold

Where Rivers Meet

ALWAYS, RALPH STANLEY ~

AT LAST, ULTIMATE ETTA JAMES ~

ULTIMATE JERRY LEE LEWIS ~

FAREWELL, MICHAEL HERR ~

M I C H A E L     H E R R

1940 ~ 2016

GEORGE SEFERIS and HENRI MICHAUX MEET ~

H E N R I     M I C H A U X

This situation of not having a very large audience
has something good in it too. I mean that it educates
you in a certain way: not to consider that great audiences
are the most important reward on this earth.
I consider that even if I have three people who read
me. I mean really read me, it is enough. That reminds
me of a conversation I had once upon a time during
the only glimpse I ever had of Henri Michaux. It was
when he had a stop-over in Athens, coming from
Egypt, I think. He came ashore while his ship was in
Piraeus just in order to have a look at the Acropolis.
And he told me on that occasion:" You know, my dear,
a man who has only one reader is not a writer. A man
who has two readers is not a writer either. But a man
who has three readers (and he pronounced "three
readers" as though they were three million), that man
is really a writer.


 — G E O R G E     S E F E R I S

George Seferis, 1920

from Sweet Theft
a poet's commonplace book
J.D. McClatchy
Counterpoint 2016

YOU CAN'T STAND UP ALONE ~

STOCKHAUSEN ~

ALEXANDER KLUGE ~

Seagull Books 2016

"The composer Karlheinz Stockhausen who composed his
series Moments between 1962 and 1969 and later wrote the
work SATURDAY FROM LIGHT defined his concept of
the MOMENT FORM as 'AN ETERNITY THAT DOES
NOT BEGIN AT THE END OF TIME BUT WHICH IS
ATTAINABLE AT EVERY MOMENT'. 'Depending on
their characteristics, moments can be as long or as short as
one likes', he added. In so doing, he referred to a dispute he
once claimed to have had with Werner Heisenberg (when
he was staying at the Siemens studio for electronic music in
Munich). And it may be he misunderstood him, at least to
the effect that — in the same way that at the level of Planck
space the beginning of the world repeats itself in every tem-
poral interval of now-time, in other words, the universe
renews and produces itself at the elementary level from one
second to the next while still possessing a beginning and a
distant future, as far, that is, as light has been able to travel,
meaning that all things have a life in duration and a life in
the moment — everything that can enter into the sounds of
a piece of music always does so in a two-fold manner: as a
now and as a duration, as a puncture and as an entire piece.

— Can a sound also be rooted in both?

— No.

— Why not?

— Because our access to the moment and our access to
the end of the world belong to two different worlds.

— Parallel worlds?

— Antiworlds! "


A L E X A N D E R     K L U G E



M O R E !

GEORG TRAKL ~

Kaspar Hauser Song
For Bessie Loos



He really loved the sun, which descended the hill crimson,
The way through the forest, the singing blackbird
And the joy of the green.

Sincere was his living in the shadows of trees
And straight his face.
God spoke a soft flame to his heart:
O man!

Silently his footsteps found the city by evening;
The dark wail of his mouth:
I want to be a horse soldier.

But bush and beast followed him,
A house and a twilight garden of white people
And his murderer asked to see him.

Spring and summer and beautiful the autumn
Of the just, his quiet step
By the dark rooms of dreamers.
At night he kept alone with his star;
Saw how snow fell into bare branches
And the shadow of the murderer in the darkening hall.

The unborn's head slumped silver.


___________________________

GEORG TRAKL
translated by James Reidel








 

WARM ~

Warm

Apple, poplar, ash,

Cherry, red maple,

Pine, basswood, oak,

These are the woods

That we sawed today,

In two hours of thinning,

Selecting, we made a cord —

Trampled branches on snow

Worked without words.

Simple thoughts, like picking

Up these sticks — back and

Forth in the mind — until we

Stop to rest together against

The pile, brushing off woodchips,

Shedding hats and gloves,

And because we kiss, I warm

My hands beneath your blouse.

First Snow As I Split Wood

Thin snow falling into

Valley fog, quiets everything,

No bird call, nothing flying.

The splitting wedge and hammer

Echo over the pasture

While the flakes open bigger

For no reason other than snow.

And I straighten my sweaty back

To watch this world, lend a tongue

And taste it melt.

Scout

Here you are again

Late at night

Snow falling in the valley

Life on snowshoes

Hardly faraway from home

In fact, isn’t that the glow

Of the kitchen lamp

Lighting through the trees

I’ve spend the better part

Of darkness stamping in

A mile wide circle enjoying

The measure of going nowhere

Stand with me

Waste some time

Everything you’ve always wanted

Is all around you.



_________________

Bob Arnold
Where Rivers Meet
Mad River Press






Susan photograph by Bob Arnold , 2016