A GREAT DAY OF READING ~

Alec  Finlay at Langais in North Uist

Here is a link of poetry

and thought from around the world

a great day of reading for you

not to go wrong ~

https://otatablog.wordpress.com

Write the story of a contemporary cured of his heartbreaks solely by long contemplation of a landscape.

CamusNotebooks: 1942-1951

Justin O’Brien, Trans

SWEET JACK ~

'Adieu, sweet Jack, the air of life is
permeated with roses all the time.'
Jack Kerouac
from Visions of Cody

Jack Kerouac ~ Alec Finlay
MORNING STAR PUBLICATIONS

EARTH ~

Ian Hamilton Finlay



There's Ian trying to row his way out of the photograph, by leaf cover, a man in motion.

This is a superb collection which is a must for everyone's library. Or kitchen table. The poems are all tools, food, bits of fruit, colored leaves, messages. Thoroughly human.

The book is edited by someone who knew him better than anyone possibly could ~ his son Alec, and the long and luxurious introduction by Alec Finlay is a true gift of revelation and respect. Highlighted with photographs and stitches, as Alec calls it, from Ian Hamilton Finlay's letters.

The complete works will one day be twenty volumes, since Ian was poet, artist, builder, sailor and warrior, but this volume of over 300 pages is a wondrous start.

HOW TO BE HAPPY


They take all their rubbish

Down to the sea-shore

And the sea comes and

It takes it away

Twice every day.

IAN HAMILTON FINLAY
SELECTIONS
Edited and with an introduction by Alec Finlay
University of California Press

TED ~

And if he sings

-------------------with care,

he sings

------------------a new song

made of old

---------------flints struck.

New fires/

--------------------/flames.

O.K. He sings his source.

The photograph above is Ted Enslin a year ago right in his natural habitat: the Maine seacoast.

I'll miss Ted for sure. Next to no one like him the last 50 years in US poetry, maybe the last 100 years. He stayed independent to the shivering end.

Thanks again to Whit Griffin who took some of the finest photographs of Ted in his last decade.

The poem of Ted's is from an appreciation piece I wrote about him tucked inside his Little Wandering Flake of Snow, published by Alec Finlay as a Morning Star Folio 1/4, Edinburgh ~ Scotland.

photo © whit griffin

ALEC FINLAY








Alec Finlay once visited us at Longhouse many years ago with his satchel of good books, hand chosen music, a few warm clothes, and slide show of his father - Ian Hamilton Finlay's life and work from pastoral Scotland. It was about a week of family meals, visits with a few poets, ice-skating on our pond, sledding, and a Super Bowl game. AF went on to cross America visiting others. What we are sharing here is a sample of AFs hand-stamp poems available from Longhouse.