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

TED ~

". . .the late Intermezzi of Brahms (Opus 116-118) are magnificent. I have said to all of my close friends that when I leave, instead of the conventional remembrances I would hope that they might listen to Opus 118, #2."

~ THEODORE ENSLIN

Johannes Brahms

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111126/OBITS02/111260312

in memory of Theodore Enslin
posted in spirit by
Bob, Susan Arnold & Whit Griffin

photo © whit griffin

TED ~

THEODORE ENSLIN
1925-2011








a partial list of Ted's books:

• The Work Proposed (1958)
• The Place Where I Am Standing: Poems (1964)
• This Do (1966)
• To Come, To Have Become: Poems 1961-66 (1966)
• New Sharon's Prospect & Journals (1966/1967)
• The Four Temperaments (1966)
• Characters in Certain Places (1967)
• The Diabelli Variations, and Other Poems (1967)
• Agreement and Back: Sequences (1969)
• Forms 1-5 (1970-1974)
• Views 1-7 Berkeley, CA: Maya (1970
• The Country of Our Consciousness (1971)
• Etudes (1972)
• Sitio (1973)
• The Swamp Fox (1973)
• Views (1973)
• With Light Reflected: Poems 1970-1972 (1973)
• The Mornings (1974)
• Fever Poems (1974)
• Of East Dennis: The Highlands in Sorrow (exact year not known: 197-?)
• Mahler (1975)
• Ländler (1975)
• The Median Flow: Poems 1943-1973 (1975)
• Synthesis 1-24 (1975)
• The July Book (1976)
• The Further Regions (1976)
• Carmina (1976)
• Papers (1976)
• Assensions (1977)
• Ranger CXXII & CXXVIII (1977)
• Circles (1977)
• Concentrations (1977)
• Ranger (2 vols. 1978 corrected edition 1980)
• Tailings (1978)
• Occurrence: An Issue of Theodore Enslin (1978)
• 16 Blossoms in February (1978)
• May Fault (1979)
• Opus 31, no. 3 (1979)
• 2 Plus 12 (1979)
• The Fifth Direction (1980)
• The Flare of Beginning Is in November (1980)
• Star Anise (1980)
• Two Geese: Two Poems (1980)
• Madrigal (ca. 1980)
• In Duo Concertante (1981)
• Axes 52 (1981)
• Markings (1981)
• Processionals (1981)
• September’s Bonfire (1981)
• “F. P.” (1982)
• Meditations on Varied Grounds (1982)
• A Man in Stir (1983)
• Gray Days (1984)
• Songs w/out Words (1984)
• The Weather Within (1985)
• For Mr. Walters: Master Mechanic (1985)
• The Path Between (1986)
• The Waking of the Eye (1986)
• Case Book (1987)
• Six Pavannes (1987)
• Love and Science (1990)
• Little Wandering Flake of Snow (1991)
• Mad Songs (1995)
• Conversations (1998)
• Sequentiae (1999)
• Then and Now: Selected Poems, 1943-1993 (1999)
• In Tandem (2003)
• Nine (2004)
• I, Benjamin (2010)
  

the saddest news just now in via phone call from richard levasseur, one of Ted's closest friends, and mine. Few words but that the good man was gone last night (Sunday-Monday) in his sleep. Ted and I read our poems in public together as a twosome a few times, maybe the most memorable for me was at Melville's home Arrowhead in the Berkshires. Goodbye musician~poet of the seascoast & hills.


Photo courtesy Whit Griffin
Photo courtesy of Alison Enslin

DELTA ~

"Three pictures from a recent excursion around the Delta and Hill Country."

That's what Longhouse friend Whit Griffin wrote to us this morning and I thought the setting and timing was quiet enough to share.

Whit often takes photographs and sends them our way from his travels. I didn't even ask him this time if it was okay to post — it always seems okay between us. I kinda wanted to surprise him back with the shots.

The legendary life dates for Robert Johnson are barely wide enough to get a breath taken. Just one song from him is worth a life time.

I remember reading once that Fred McDowell's original gravestone (where his name was spelled incorrectly) had been damaged and replaced by this one above. Bonnie Raitt paid for the new stone, and that photograph of the great bluesman on the stone, born in Tennessee, may have been taken the year he died.

Rest in peace, and song.










photos © whit griffin

NEW FROM LONGHOUSE ~










TEST MILE


Lost the big herbivores but gained
all these trees. The fir tree is formed
like a flame and is thus the Universal
Root, the foundation of all things.
Enormous and immediate, the dynamic
expression. Alive in a molecular world.
A world estranged from the Mysteries,
reduced to fingering detective fiction.
Science is great when it confounds
fundamentalists, not when it modifies
corn. In the front room pounding
Beethoven with the door locked. Sleeping
with too many afghans. Staff around
to make life nicer. Knit me a corgi.
I was thinking about it and then I was there.
Not important what others call it, so long
as you have a name for it. As the
monarch follows the milkweed. The king
in the custard pie. Even his bookmarks
are interesting. The temptation to be smart.
To dwell inside a cave and glow green
from living off nettles. We are the mountain.

Please inquire about purchasing with a credit card. You may order by check (total $9.95) made payable to "Longhouse" & send to

Longhouse, Publishers & Booksellers, PO Box 2454, West Brattleboro, Vermont 05303. Thank you!

Or, Order now with easy-to-use Paypal ($8.95 + $1 s/h - US addresses only). Thanks!

LIGHTNIN' (Afterword) ~

Chris Strachwitz, Arhoolie Records

Bob,

You probably have this track, but I've always loved it. I grew up listening to the Arhoolie recordings of Lightnin'. My father actually picked him up hitchhiking on Highway 82 in Mississippi in the 60s. My father was heading home to Greenwood from college and saw a guy with a guitar walking along the road. He had no idea who the guy was, despite the guy assuring him he'd made records. They stopped at a little burger joint on the side of the road, but Lightnin' couldn't go in because of segregation laws, so my father bought him a burger and Lightnin' agreed to come to Greenwood and play a house party my father was throwing (his parents were out of town). A few months later a package arrived postmarked from Houston and it contained several of Lightnin's records with a note saying 'I told you I was famous.' Oh how I wish my father still had that.

whit

unknown, Long Gone Miles, Lightnin' Hopkins, Chris Strachwitz

Photo By Mack McCormick

Dear Whit,

Great great story about Lightnin' and your father. Someone had to pick up the hitchhiking musician! Glad it was your father.

Someone else has a similar story about picking up Townes Van Zandt in Texas. Again, just trampin', picked up, said he was known had records etc., and later he either sent the driver some records or else pulled them out of his pack after or during the drive.

Speaking of drive, I collect Arhoolie Records. One time we were in Taos after spending some days in Wisconsin with Cid and Niedecker events/readings. We had a train ticket west to Milwaukee and made it further (at about the same price) since someone, quite kind, paid our way out and so we made the itinerary to Denver. After Wisconsin and friends (including Ted) we went westward and ended up spending some days traveling around New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas...where I plugged into some Arhoolie finds for my collection back home. There was a fellow opening a used LP store, and it looked momentary, in Taos, and he had just picked up at the town dump a scarf of Arhoolie. He said he wasn't sure what he really had but he priced them at $3-5 because he needed the money for the first month's rent. I bought them all. Some more Lightnin' included. The next day I mailed my clothes home and wouldn't part with my LP treasures, or trust the mail. I lugged them through Denver, Chicago, Albany, Springfield, Brattleboro. Companions.

24 degrees this morning. Hard frost.

all's well, Bob

Here's more on Whit, his terrific new book of poems, and the UK wonder
Skysill Press

http://skysillpress.blogspot.com/2010/07/just-published.html

EARTH ~

ROBERT CREELEY

I was very moved when Whit Griffin sent this to me a few weeks ago from his iPhone. He's done this in the past while traveling through the south, or while up in New England. The shots are forever immediate and fresh. No fanfare. He puts me where he is.
And we wish RC a very Happy Birthday today.






photos: courtesy of Whit Griffin

WHIT GRIFFIN, traveling photographer

Bob, Susan, Greetings from the Nantahal Forrest. Whit









Sent from my iPhone ( North Carolina, Nov. 1, 09 )