MICHAEL HETTICH ~

The Happiness of Trees



I slept that summer on a screen porch in the woods
     with the creatures and insects singing so loudly
my mind seemed to join them — out there without me —
     to move around like a breeze from form to form


and then to return as a fox or a cicada,
     some other night creature, to slip back inside me
humming whatever it had heard, patterns
     I couldn't sing along with but felt inside


like the happiness of trees when a soft wind
     turns their leaves' pale underbellies up to the sky
and makes the sap rise. I love to wake
     before myself, to silence and fog.


Sometimes I got up and walked out into the chilly woods
     and sometimes I turned over as though this happiness
might last forever, and slept just a while
     longer, until the first birds sang.


—————————

MICHAEL HETTICH
The Frozen Harbor
Red Dragonfly Press, 2017

WHY POETRY ~

ECCO 2017

A fine enough poet but I believe the best mind of Matthew Zapruder comes through in this excellent new book of essays — really one long essay — on the same subject of why poetry, why poets, why is there air, and he even scores points on Auden's much over-used ragged line "poetry makes nothing happen" . . . with a delightful twist, Zapruder will show the reader that is exactly right: poetry MAKES nothing happen. A big word that "nothing."

In these essays Zapruder shows forth as a natural born teacher. 

Take up this book.

[ BA ]

PAUL OLIVER ~

P A U L     O L I V E R

WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO ~

FOR SUSAN ~

anniversary

FOR SUSAN ~

anniversary

DREAM COME TRUE 3 ~

 DREAM COME TRUE

————————————

 for, you know who

Family

Try to get three berries

Off one stem at rest stop

As three of us

Far From Town

That delicate

Held bag from

The donut shop

Tip-Toe

Summer dress

Covers you

Barely

We

I wanted the

Longest kiss —

So we began

Always the Way

She peeks in my window

But she is so pretty

I’m already peeking out

The Little Things

Snowy months —

A bird call

Means a bunch

Notorious

He’s the town crazy

And we’ve been in town only five seconds

And he’s found us

Remember

Some dogs

Follow you —

Some don’t

———————————

BOB ARNOLD

Dream Come True

Longhouse, tel-let, Nordsjoforlaget 

2001, 2008, 2009

A little book published by three

different publishers and thank you

to Susan, John Martone, Hanne Bramness,

Lars Amund Vaage who translated the poems

into Norwegian

photograph above ~ 
Engaged couple Marshall and Yolanda Jacobs kiss atop a flagpole, Coshocton, Ohio, June 1946, prior to their wedding.
Allan Grant—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images

finis

Back in a week or two with more Bob

FOR SUSAN ~

anniversary

FOR SUSAN ~

anniversary

PAY THE MAN ! ~

THEN THIS GUY CAME ALONG. . .THE BODY MASTER!
(DARIO ROSSI)

MAX ROACH ~

BRILLIANT ~

"In an interview in the Paris Review, poet Anne Carson describes this way a poem unfolds:

Anne Carson: Some people think that means the poet takes a snapshot of an event and on the page you have a perfect record. But I don't think that's right; I think a poem, when it works, is an action of the mind captured on a page, and the reader, when he engages it, has to enter into that action. His mind repeats that action and travels again through the action, but it is a movement of yourself through a thought, through an activity of thinking, so by the time you get to the end you're different than you were at the beginning and you feel that difference.

Interviewer: So it's an action for both the writer and the reader.

Carson: Yes, exactly, and they share it artificially. The writer did a long time ago but you still feel when you're in it that you're moving with somebody else's mind through an action.

The Paris Review Interview

I find this a brilliant unwrapping of any talk about poetry — first picked up in Matthew Zapruder's equally stunning new book of essays on poetry 

(and much more) 

WHY POETRY

 (Ecco 2017)

MAGICIAN ~

DRUM-BEAT ~

 

DRUMMER BOYS ~

TWO MASTERS ~

otata's bookshelf

2017

JOE NAPORA ~

B  U  L  L  H  E  A  D       B  O  O  K  S

2  0  1  7

DREAM COME TRUE 2 ~

 DREAM COME TRUE

————————————

 for, you know who

Fucking

Going grocery shopping

With the one you love

Isn’t grocery shopping

Flowers

How clever to be so

Beautiful — to have us

Move them into the light

In Country

Everywhere —

Little bits of mouseshit

Little bits of seed

Name

With my long hair

Tucked up into my cap

I’m called redneck

No

When there are no poems to write

Get used to it —

No is no

Hidden

Every single second

This stream passes under

This bridge

Eco

I chopped down the tree I planted

Cut up and burned as fuel

Carried out its ash to spread

Sure

The cat hides away all

Day asleep and thinks nothing

Of coming out and wanting a kiss

———————————

BOB ARNOLD

Dream Come True

Longhouse, tel-let, Nordsjoforlaget 

2001, 2008, 2009

A little book published by three

different publishers and thank you

to Susan, John Martone, Hanne Bramness,

Lars Amund Vaage who translated the poems

into Norwegian