STONE WALL WORK IN MARCH ~

 

Here's a stone wall I built in March 2025 when two days of thaw slipped in for a moment and I got to work. I was widening a bar-way ten-feet and had to tear down the stone corner you see and rebuild. Tricky. The stone wall run in the background I built in the early 80s. The mound I'm standing on was leveled by shovel and all the stone pulled out of the ground and from an old stone wall in the way went into the new wall I am standing beside. The ground was still blocked with frost and going at it a little at a time each day removed the mound. Even before any of this work could be started there were two four foot high snow banks to shovel away and base ice to melt. Now three weeks later two full days of snow is back since March won't let go. Once it does, a full truck load of 3/4 stone will arrive and we'll get this bar-way looking pretty.

[ BA ]

  photograph by Susan Arnold

SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND DESPOTS ~

 

R E A D   M E

University of Chicago Press

2024

N.H. PRITCHARD ( THE MUNDUS ) ~

 

 R E A D   M E

  M U C H   M O R E

Primary Information

2024

JULIEN GRACQ ~

 

Rainfall

Here in the world cocooned beneath the rain, the moist warmth,

the roof of droplets and twigs, the soft blankets of air with a

thousand splashing stings. Here is beauty on her bed of water,

awakened by the sudden fresh transparency, attuned to a pure

idea of herself, drawn like water by glass. In the air where

the water's babbling above fragrant with grass, and suspends from

the tieback of lianas pearl-studded canopies and the crackling

arithmetic of a crystal abacus.

_____________________

Julien Gracq

Abounding Freedom

translated by Alice Yang

World Poetry, 2024

THE GARDEN OF IAN HAMILTON FINLAY ~

 

J E S S I E   S H E E L E R

I H F

LEON REDBONE ~

 

PAUL McDONOUGH ~

 

Blow Back

once

upon a time

a boat due

for wetdock

maintenance

and repairs

officers

enlisted men

headed to port

...

...

waste

dumped

fore not aft

in briny deep

by mistake

boat sailed

through a cloud

of trash

what was nuclear

gave the hull

a radioactive

veneer

...

...

atomic footprints

of one hundred men

headed for shore

leave

across the deck

of the submarine

tracked

hither and yon

through the night

to

bars

brothels

trailer parks

families and friends

crew pulled back

for safety checks

...

...

but also

running silent

running deep

to keep it

from the press

________________________

Paul McDonough

Electric Boat

Bullhead Books 2024

THE REST IS MEMORY ~

 

R E A D   M E

       Liveright 2025

ALWAYS MICHAEL HURLEY ~

 

M I C H A E L   H U R L E Y

1941 ~ 2025

M O R E

   M O R E   M O R E

  he lived in his songs

APRIL 5 IS NOW ~

 

       Clifford Burke / Virginia Mudd

FORREST GANDER'S MOJAVE GHOST ~

from Mojave Ghost

In the city, a weather of zeros-and-ones

cascades through rising static, while here

in this xeric topography, we fold ourselves

into the circumstances of desert foothills

chewed away by leprosies, toothed winds, and

sudden rains. Will you let me

approach you? Bend forward

and touch consequences, tenderness, leave

the trace of my fingertips

on your throat's dimple, your

clavicle, nipple? Lean in. In

my mouth, the sound of

your name has changed.

___________________

Forrest Gander

Mojave Ghost

New Directions 2024

LISTEN TO BERNIE ~

 

     U.S. Senator, Vermont

GILLIAN WELCH & DAVID RAWLINGS ~

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwUoej-nm6I

LINTON KWESI JOHNSON ~

L I N T O N   K W E S I   J O H N S O N

 

JOHN MILTON ~

R E A D   M E

 

      Gustave Dore

JOHN BRADLEY'S SPELLS ~

 

Stopping By Words Spell

Whose words these are I think I know.

Who can really own them, though.

No one will see me stealing here

To watch these words become my own.

My sturdy tongue must think it weird

To mouth such blather far and near

Between your ears, that lovely space

Where song makes clatter something dear.

You give each word a goodly shake

And ask if this is some mistake.

This tune, so familiar, must leak

From the pillow used by Willy Blake.

These words are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have syllables to keep,

And text to eat before I sleep,

And text to eat before I sleep.

________________

John Bradley

As Blood is the Fruit of the Heart

Dos Madres 2025

NATURAL MAGIC ~

 

R E A D   M E

     Princeton, 2024

BIRDS THROUGH INDIGENOUS EYES ~

 

R E A D   M E

      Princeton 2024

MAKING THEATRE IN KYIV, SPRING 2024 ~

 

R E A D   M E

      Wordville, 2024

JOHNNY ACE ~

 

PICTURES BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN ~

 

R E A D   M E

A N D

      Houghton 2021

THEODORE ENSLIN WOULD BE 100 TODAY ~

 

Little Wandering Snowflake

Ah, little wandering snowflakes are how I watch the day today, now ending March and the thin ice melting and refreezing each day on the pond in the back lot of the yard — ducks we found out there the other morning — a pair of mallards — just imagine the alert green head of the male, the brown muss of the hen hidden nearly in cattail stalks. Ted would. He would want to tramp out there with me to see, stay as long as he wanted, then perk a further walk off somewhere else. We did that one winter day when he visited from Maine. Maine is Ted’s home (largest of the New England states, occupied by more than 5000 rivers and streams, with a state motto Dirigo : I direct), so is New Mexico, Cape Cod, early spring in Philadelphia; early spring anywhere for that matter. Ted is a man at ground level, refurbished daily by the day, and it is clearly your own fortune to meet the man, find the poems and song that come forth from a living earned. Nothing special — and Ted wouldn’t want the undue excitement nor attention — but let’s not upset the magnificence of over one-hundred books of poetry, prose and literary chorales (ie., Forms, Synthesis, Ranger, Axis); and would it be unbelievable in this day and age of stroking champions and making such a fuss over some little big name in the poetry world that Ted would read his poetry across the United States in the old days traveling by bus, selling his books, making friends of dear strangers, recalling fondly those small mountain open towns in Nevada, then returning to his rural home and family, garden and woodcutting detail, tending to the cranberry and blueberry harvest, pressing apples, clamming, a supper table devoted from the land and the sea. The very utensil. It’d be easy to want to quote young Henry Thoreau when thinking of Ted — but why Henry, when we have Ted? —

And if he sings

                          with care,

he sings 

                   a new song

made of old

                     flints struck.

O.K. He sings his source.

and then some. Do yourself a favor and say hello.

                                                — Bob Arnold

       Bob Arnold & Theodore Enslin

Fort Atkinson, WI., 2003

  photo by Susan Arnold

L I N K   T O   T H E   R E A D I N G:

https://mville-edu.zoom.us/j/81912000037

also:

PENN SOUND

WEIJIA PAN ~

 

Ultimatum

If I forget one character a day,

I will have forgotten Chinese

by the end of 2042.

Sooner or later I will forget

my quarrel with my father,

I will forget if

I ever wrote to you.

And the new language

I will have acquired

will not be the same

as the one that bit me.

____________________

Motherlands

Weijia Pan

Milkweed Editions

2023

SHY OF THE SQUIRREL'S FOOT ~

 

R E A D   M E

      North Carolina University Press,

    2024

PRESSURE DROP ~

 

R E A D   M E

Omnibus Books

2024

THE VIETNAM WAR ~

 

R E A D   M E

    Basic 2024