LAST CHANCE ~

 

R E A D      M E

Windy Dipa Rhoads

POETS WHO SLEEP #14 ~

P O E T S     W H O     S L E E P

______________________

                                                       drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold

all drawings

copyright

Bob Arnold



The complete series to date ~ please link here

RE-READING TWO GEMS ~

Zbigniew Herbert 1960

 

I read again these two slender books over the 4 of July

fest when we could detect from the woods where

we spent two nights by camp fire preparing delicious

simple meals what sounded like mortar fire from two

outlying towns ten miles away, a strong bright

lamp allowed all the reading we wanted late into

the night after dishes with these two strong minds

on the subjects of books, other writers, travel into

foreign lands, and mosing around art, architecture,

wars and recovery.

[ BA ]

RE-READING A VOICE THROUGH A CLOUD ~

John Lehmann, 1951

___________

There are scores of editions of this excellent

autobiographical novel published, though

incomplete (you might not think so) when the

author passed away at thirty-one in 1948.

The above photograph is my book.

Struck down on a bicycle by an automobile 

thirteen years earlier, fracturing his spine,

Welch composed this telling of his life,

accident, healers, and agony of never

surrender in this book for the ages.

RE-READING ANNIE DILLARD ~

Farmer's Daughter



There's always unseasonable weather.

Remember the flood that killed father:

when the water went down, the chickens

lay muddy and drowned. Oh we watch

the weather here on earth; we don't forget

the winter days when girls wear cotton dresses,

the Aprils when the bushes sag with snow.

      We were cutting the apple trees back

      when he said, "Look, it's snowing;"

      but I'd seen a winter of snow

      and knew that more were coming.

Still, what do we know of a season?

Only father could say

when the rain would stop at the mountain

or ruin the hay. I'd try to watch

the hawks or lick a finger,

and the crops were still a failure;

there was frost all over the valley,

south as far as Twin Falls.

      He kissed me when shadows were long

      on the path to the orchard; he promised

      to meet me again when the apples were in;

now when the wind parts the curtains,

now in the city when the cat won't come,

I sleep with only one eye shut,

keeping a weather eye out.






______________________

ANNIE DILLARD
Tickets for a Prayer Wheel
University of Missouri Press
1974





Someone ordered this book from us ~
so since I'm the packer of books, I read it
before I packed it. It's how you say goodbye.

RE-READING GEORGE DENNISON ~

A somewhat forgotten and misunderstood book
which can be aligned with Thoreau's Walden
except we are in rural Maine with George Dennison's
personal journals and his playwright ear for neighbor
portraits — landscape & lingo — and while George passed away
far too soon (1987) to put these pages together into what others
have predicted would be a masterpiece, it's all in the eyes of the beholder.
I met George Dennison once upon a time when we hosted a
gala for a fine Vermont poet and George was there and while
everyone took their chosen corners of our house to bed down
for the night, George said he'd be just as happy out in the front

yard, under the starry hemlocks and the August night with

his sleeping bag. In Temple there is short passage
where George describes a home place
and it may as well be George describing himself,
"The house and grounds are so attractive, cheerful and open —
ample, generous, farm and home."
The book and author — unique.

[ BA ]





Steerforth Press
1994


As for those that criticize Temple for being
merely loose pages from a journal by Dennison —
have a look at Shawno



a gem of a book at 86 pages
straight out of the heart of Temple, Maine
in the home built by Finns as George would write
and his lovely companion, a dog, called Shawno.

___________________
Schocken Books, 1984

RE-READING A CORDIALL WATER ~

This is my favorite M.F. K. Fisher

book of many many — and it must

be this edition, partial to the lovely size

and design of North Point Books. 

Jacket design by Wesley B. Tanner.

Writing straight from the wild.

[ BA ]

RE-READING THOMAS BERNHARD ~

Perhaps best read

after reading all of Bernhard

so far translated into English —
written in 1980, a decade
before the author's untimely passing —
Bernhard takes on all the literary prizes,
the farcical pomp and ceremony,
and of course takes all the money and runs.



Knopf 2010

POETS WHO SLEEP #13 ~

P O E T S     W H O     S L E E P

______________________

                                           drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold

all drawings

copyright

Bob Arnold


The complete series to date ~ please link here

RE-READING INGER CHRISTENSEN ~

from alphabet



10


June nights exist, June nights exist,

the sky at long last as if lifted to heavenly

heights, simultaneously sinking, as tenderly as

when dreams can be seen before they are dreamed; a space

as if dizzied, as if filled with whiteness, an hourless



chiming of insects and dew, and no one in

this gossamer summer, no one comprehends that

early fall exists, aftertaste, afterthought;

just these reeling sets of restless ultrasounds

exist, the bat's ears of jade

turned toward the ticking haze;

never has the tilting of the planet been so pleasant,

never the zine-white nights so white,



so defencelessly dissolved, gently ionized and

white, never the limit of invisibility so nearly

touched; June, June, your Jacob's ladders,

your sleeping creatures and their dreams exist,

a drift of galactic seed between

earth so earthly and sky so heavenly,

the vale of tears so still, so still, and tears

sinking, sinking like groundwater back



into earth; Earth; Earth in its trajectory

around the sun exists, Earth on its journey

along the Milky Way, Earth on its course with

its cargo of jasmine, jasper, iron,

iron curtains, omens, jubilation, Judas's kiss

kissed right and left, and virgin anger in

the streets, Jesus of salt; with the shadow of the

jacaranda over the river, with gyrfalcons, jet planes,

and January in the heart, with Jacopo della Quercia's

well Fonte Gaia in Siena and with July

heavy as a bomb, with domestic brains

heart defects, quaking grass and strawberries

the ironwood's roots in the earthworn earth



Earth song by Jayadeva in his mystical

poem from the 12th century, Earth with

the coastline of consciousness blue, with nests where

fisherbird herons exist, with their grey-blue arching

backs, or where bitterns exist, cryptic

and shy, or night herons, egrets,

with the wingbeat variations of hedge sparrows, cranes

and doves; Earth exists with Jullundur, Jabalpur and

the Jungfrau, Jambo, Jogjakarta,

with duststorms, Dutchman's breeches

with water and land masses jolted by tremors

with Judenburg, Johannesburg, Jerusalem's Jerusalem





_______________________
Inger Christensen
alphabet
translated by Susanna Nied
New Directions
2001





Even for New Directions, every Inger Christensen book is a knockout

RE-READING KENT JOHNSON'S HOUSE ~

"ALL BECAUSE OF POETRY I HAVE A BIG HOUSE" 

R E A D      M E

Kent Johnson's imagination and generosity has a superior quality to it, thus his poems and sketches are little miracles. It was one of many reasons I wanted to publish his I ONCE MET which I predict will be the author's best book. Hands down. Hands all over it.
. . .HOUSE is a continuation of this poetic odyssey.

[ BA ]

RE-READING KARIN LESSING ~

Talisman





At the back of the head

a giant

anchors the eyelet sea:



in its jaw, a

bone

is singing: good fortune.







Moraine




Through

rhyme



braided

to thyme



followed

the scent that



tumbles,

breast-



high, dream-

thin.



Un-

thinking,



saw;

blinded,



heard

how they lie



cluster and

stray,



sometimes

seem to float.








Night Song




Cypress,



night's

needle, my



life's

slow gyre,



long night, long



dawn, the

star-

bristled day.







Wind-Gathered




Wind-gathered

             the tidal

air



—gardening

crests.



Nightbells'

alarm:



as many rooms as

tongues.



But from the

prairies' glitter

to the estuary:



the grain.







June Poppies




June

poppies



flush

with the road



opening,

shutting,



the pine

mirrors



out

over the fields



the star-

braced shadows:



all

things



under a name.







Dolls' Houses





I saw

through death's

little door



at Cartier's



the wizened tables,

and chairs.




__________________

Karin Lessing
Collected Poems
Shearsman Books
2010