Friday, April 30, 2021

Thursday, April 29, 2021

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Monday, April 26, 2021

POETS WHO SLEEP #48 ~


P O E T S     W H O     S L E E P


______________________



                                           drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold


Saturday, April 24, 2021

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

THERE IS NO EXILE WHERE THE HEART IS PURE ~

  






There Is No Exile Where The Heart Is Pure

                                                                            ( for Pablo Casals )



Behind the barn, the first week of March, on a bright

morning after long rain,

the windy cedar tree

turns round and round in the sunlight.

A winter horse

rubs himself on the corner of the barn.

Little pieces of cedar glide down where the ants are

calling home their old senators who

have failed utterly.

Coming home, carrying suitcases full of noise,

they pass through small American towns.


On the barn wall,

rusted nails bleed; and in fences, in hinges, in boards.

The horse (I think of Casals in exile!) plays

a suite unaccompanied in the silver cedar boards.

Inside,

the stranded hay-wagon shudders.

Between its floorboards

seeds

trickle to the earth.

A dry dusty odor mingles with festering dampness,

and a hand —

         blue ridges and rivers coming and going through it —

rests on the white sheet of the windows.


          My grandmother

          comes to swing open wide the huge

          double doors,

          doors like drifting continents,

          and a wedge of healing sunlight

          slips into the barn before her.



_____________________________

Robert Sund

The Hides of White Horses Shedding Rain

Copper Canyon Press, 1981


there never were enough Robert Sund poems —

it's strange, each time I type out Robert Sund's

name it shows up as Robert Sung — as if he is

returning (as I type) or has indeed returned —

to the Sung Dynasty, where of course he belongs.

This book, signed by Sund, I have no idea where

it came from — maybe a good friend, a lucky find?

here in New England — far from the Sund home of

Washington State — where as I boy in the late 60s I

had already found his masterpiece Bunch Grass

and crowded the book into my work lunchpail as

a great companion with me at midday. "Whatcha

got there, Bob, the book. . .what's bunch grass?"

I'm finding out. . .


[ BA ]




Monday, April 19, 2021

POETS WHO SLEEP #47 ~


P O E T S     W H O     S L E E P


______________________



                                           drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold


Saturday, April 17, 2021

LARRY EIGNER ~


"Briggflatts is a poem: it needs no explanation" 

B  A  S  I   L         B  U  N  T  I  N  G





I enjoy any book by or about

L A R R Y      E I G N E R

including by academics going on & on



in the long run it seems where

the outsiders —

and Eigner was one,

like Philip Whalen —

will be rescued and petted

by the academic Red Cross

but perhaps keep in mind

what John Berryman

once wrote to Ezra Pound 

then residing in St. Elizabeth's Hospital

far from the academy,

"Thirty years ago the

("intellectual") public knew nothing,

at present it is only too damned

apparently familiar with every-

thing — among others, with all

of you. . . There is a whole school

of now-academic criticism

to be broken down also (Ransom,

Winters Tate Blackmur Warren), which I

am convinced is stifling talent."

John Berryman 1947


________________

New Mexico, 2020




"Let the incidents and images take care of themselves"

B  A  S  I   L         B  U  N  T  I  N  G






Friday, April 16, 2021

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

ROBBIE BASHO ~

 




W A T C H

_____________________

Voice of the Eagle

The Enigma of Robbie Basho

a film by

Liam Barker





Monday, April 12, 2021

POETS WHO SLEEP #46 ~


P O E T S     W H O     S L E E P


______________________



                                           drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold