Sorry about the ugly bug; but for those who have had this disease, as I have (twice), or a loved one, likewise (crushing), then this short film may prove helpful. Many thanks to Whit for sharing it with us.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
BLUESMAN ~
Sam & Ann Charters
I can't write it any better of this full life than Wikipedia can provide with many of the proper contact points and cross reference dimensions — further below, take the Charters biography on a whirl.
Sam Charters is International and Americana in the best sense of both words. His quiet and enduring achievements in music, history, poetry and the multi-facets of the Beat Generation are legendary to anyone who has stayed abreast of each field, even if the subject himself often takes a back seat and allows the light to bask elsewhere.
In some ways nothing could be more perfect than having him write a portrait in his 80s with his wife, the Beat historian Ann Charters, on the unknown relationship to many, between John Clellon Holmes and Jack Kerouac. The true two dudes who wrote the first true Beat novels Go by Holmes and On the Road by Kerouac.
Brothers Souls by the Charters along with Gerald Nicosia's Memory Babe, coinciding with the actual Beat literature, may become in time, for the arm-chair traveler, the road to take.
University Press of Mississippi
(2010)
from Wikipedia:
Why the continuing interest in the Beats? The Beats constitute the single most important literary movement in America in the last fifty years. It isn't the drugs, the sex, the jazz, the tone of feverish apocalypse that accounts for this. It's the urgency with which they view the artist's aesthetic and social function. It's not their supposed irresponsibility which compels the critics to go on re-assessing their work (even in superficial terms); it's precisely the opposite. It's the fact that they were so responsible to the big questions, the big facts. Their almost maniacal efforts to find new modes, new forms, new styles to go with their material, their new vision, has kept their work not only relevant, but consequential. Oddly enough, the Beats are the direct heirs of the solidest tradition in American literature, what Matthiessen called "the American Renaissance" of the mid-19th Century. History will sort it out.Perspective is the last turn of the wheel.
— JOHN CLELLON HOLMES, Interior Geographies
photo: University of Connecticut at Storrs
Sam & Ann Charters
I can't write it any better of this full life than Wikipedia can provide with many of the proper contact points and cross reference dimensions — further below, take the Charters biography on a whirl.
Sam Charters is International and Americana in the best sense of both words. His quiet and enduring achievements in music, history, poetry and the multi-facets of the Beat Generation are legendary to anyone who has stayed abreast of each field, even if the subject himself often takes a back seat and allows the light to bask elsewhere.
In some ways nothing could be more perfect than having him write a portrait in his 80s with his wife, the Beat historian Ann Charters, on the unknown relationship to many, between John Clellon Holmes and Jack Kerouac. The true two dudes who wrote the first true Beat novels Go by Holmes and On the Road by Kerouac.
Brothers Souls by the Charters along with Gerald Nicosia's Memory Babe, coinciding with the actual Beat literature, may become in time, for the arm-chair traveler, the road to take.
University Press of Mississippi
(2010)
from Wikipedia:
Samuel Charters, born Samuel Barclay Charters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August 1, 1929 (his name also appears as Sam Charters), is an American music historian, writer, record producer, musician, and poet. He is a noted and widely published author on the subjects of blues and jazz music, as well as a writer of fiction.
Charters was born and spent his childhood in Pittsburgh. He first became enamored of blues music in 1937, after hearing Bessie Smith's version of Jimmy Cox's song, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" (Charters 2004). He moved with his family to Sacramento, California at the age of 15. He attended high schools in Pittsburgh and California and attended Sacramento City College, graduating in 1949. After being kicked out of Harvard for political activism, he received a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1956.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Charters purchased numerous old recordings of American blues musicians, eventually amassing a huge and valuable collection. In 1951, at the age of 21, he moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, where he absorbed the history and culture he had previously only read about; he lived there for most of the 1950s. He served for two years in the United States Army (1951-53) and began to study jazz clarinet with George Lewis, but soon acquired an interest in rural blues. In 1954, he and his wife began conducting field recordings (initially for Folkways Records throughout the United States, and then in the Bahamas in 1958). Their 1959 recordings of the Texas bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins proved instrumental to Hopkins' rediscovery.
Charters began his writing career in 1959 with The Country Blues, regarded as the first-book length work on the subject, as well as compiling the companion album to accompany it. Since that time, his writings have been influential, bringing to light aspects of African American music and culture that had previously been largely unknown to the general public. His writings include numerous books on the subjects of blues, jazz, African music, and Bahamian music, as well as liner notes for numerous sound recordings.[1]
From approximately 1966 to 1970 he worked as a producer for the anti-war band Country Joe and the Fish. He became thoroughly disenchanted with American politics during the Vietnam War and moved with his family to Sweden, establishing a new life there despite not being able to speak the language at first. He divides his time between Sweden (where he has a residence permit to live, though maintaining his U.S. citizenship) and Connecticut. He has translated into English the works of the Swedish writer Tomas Tranströmer and helped produce the music of various Swedish musical groups.
Charters is married to the writer, editor, Beat generation scholar, photographer, and pianist Ann Charters (b. 1936), whom he met at the University of California, Berkeley during the 1954-55 academic year in a music class; she is a professor of English and American literature at the University of Connecticut.[2] The two have collaborated together on many projects, particularly their extensive field recording work.
Charters is a Grammy Award winner and his book The Country Blues was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1991 as one of the "Classics of Blues Literature."[1][3] In 2000, Charters and his wife donated the 'Samuel & Ann Charters Archive of Blues and Vernacular African American Musical Culture' to the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center of the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut. The archive contains materials collected during the couple's decades of work documenting and preserving African American music throughout the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa. The archive's materials include more than 2,500 sound recordings, as well as video recordings, photographs, monographs, sheet music, field notes, correspondence, musicians' contracts, and correspondence.[4][5][6]
Charters' most recent book, A Trumpet Around the Corner: The Story of New Orleans Jazz, was released in April 2008.
Books by Samuel Charters
- 1959 - The Country Blues. New York: Rinehart. Reprinted by Da Capo Press, with a new introduction by the author, in 1975.
- 1962 - Jazz: A History of the New York Scene. Garden City, New York: Doubleday (with Leonard Kunstadt).
- 1963 - The Poetry of the Blues. With photos by Ann Charters. New York: Oak Publications.
- 1963 - Jazz New Orleans (1885-1963): An Index to the Negro Musicians of New Orleans. New York: Oak Publications
- 1967 - The Bluesmen. New York: Oak Publications
- 1975 - The Legacy of the Blues: A Glimpse Into the Art and the Lives of Twelve Great Bluesmen: An Informal Study. London: Calder & Boyars.
- 1977 - Sweet As the Showers of Rain. New York: Oak Publications
- 1981 - The Roots of the Blues: An African Search. Boston: M. Boyars.
- 1984 - Jelly Roll Morton's Last Night at the Jungle Inn: An Imaginary Memoir. New York: M. Boyars.
- 1986 - Louisiana Black: A Novel. New York: M. Boyars.
- 1991 - The Blues Makers. (Incorporates The Bluesmen and Sweet As the Showers of Rain) Da Capo.
- 1999 - The Day is So Long and the Wages So Small: Music on a Summer Island. New York: Marion Boyars.
- 2004 - Walking a Blues Road: A Selection of Blues Writing, 1956-2004. New York: Marion Boyars.
- 2006 - New Orleans: Playing a Jazz Chorus. Marion Boyars.
- 2009 - A Trumpet Around the Corner: The Story of New Orleans Jazz. Jackson: The University Press of Mississippi.
Why the continuing interest in the Beats? The Beats constitute the single most important literary movement in America in the last fifty years. It isn't the drugs, the sex, the jazz, the tone of feverish apocalypse that accounts for this. It's the urgency with which they view the artist's aesthetic and social function. It's not their supposed irresponsibility which compels the critics to go on re-assessing their work (even in superficial terms); it's precisely the opposite. It's the fact that they were so responsible to the big questions, the big facts. Their almost maniacal efforts to find new modes, new forms, new styles to go with their material, their new vision, has kept their work not only relevant, but consequential. Oddly enough, the Beats are the direct heirs of the solidest tradition in American literature, what Matthiessen called "the American Renaissance" of the mid-19th Century. History will sort it out.Perspective is the last turn of the wheel.
— JOHN CLELLON HOLMES, Interior Geographies
photo: University of Connecticut at Storrs
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
DEPOSITION ~
Deposition
a painting by
Jack Kerouac & Franco Angeli
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/arts/design/deposition-by-kerouac-and-angeli-on-view-in-rome.html?scp=1&sq=Two%20rebel%20figures,%20one%20traditional%20painting&st=cse
painting photo by Lorenzo Capellini
Deposition
a painting by
Jack Kerouac & Franco Angeli
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/arts/design/deposition-by-kerouac-and-angeli-on-view-in-rome.html?scp=1&sq=Two%20rebel%20figures,%20one%20traditional%20painting&st=cse
painting photo by Lorenzo Capellini
Monday, June 13, 2011
EARTH ~
Jim Heynen
Born on a farm in northwest Iowa, Jim Heynen attended one of Iowa's last one-room schoolhouses before going on to high school at Western Christian in Hull, Iowa.
read more:
http://www.stolaf.edu/depts/english/faculty/heynen.html
Jim Heynen
DUCKS AND BACON RIND
Well, everyone always told the boys not to feed bacon
rind to the ducks, but nobody told the boys why not.
So they took some raw bacon rind and threw it to
the ducks. A big duck swallowed it. The boys followed
that duck around, watching to see what would happen.
The duck looked all right.
But then the duck stopped, ruffled its wings, and
passed the piece of raw bacon onto the ground as
quickly as if it had laid an egg. Up waddled another
duck and swallowed the bacon rind. Soon this duck
passed it, and another duck quickly swallowed it.
This went on for a while, and the ducks learned to
follow the last duck that had swallowed the rind, waiting
for it to come out so they'd have their turn at it.
The boys watched the bacon rind being passed
around from one duck to another in this way until one
of them got an idea.
Let's tie a string to the bacon, he said.
The other boys looked surprised when they saw in
their minds what would happen.
The boys chuckled and ran to get some strong
string. After they tied this to the rind, they went back
to the ducks. The first duck swallowed it, then the second,
and so on, until the boys had all the ducks on the
string. They held it tight, pulling the bacon ring tight
against the bottom of the last duck.
Later the boys told this story to the men.
That would make a good story to tell some city
slickers, said one of the men. They're the only ones
who'd believe it.
THE BLIND PONY
The pony was blind in one eye when it was born. At
first it was easy to catch if you remembered which side
to come up on. But after a while the ear on the blind
side got strong from listening so hard for someone
sneaking up on it. That ear got so good it would hear
someone coming on the blind side farther than the
good eye could see on the other.
So the boys had to think of new ways to catch the
blind pony. First they tried trapping it in the corner of
the pasture, but the blind pony always ran with its
good eye towards the fence and its good ear towards
the boys. This way it never ran into the fence and
could still whip its head when it heard the lasso com-
ing through the air. The blind pony was a good kicker
too, and the boys learned not to try grabbing at it from
behind.
Next the boys tried hiding in trees where the pony
walked, thinking that they could drop a rope over the
head as it passed under them. But it was as if the pony
could hear that part of the tree where the leaves
weren't rustling and wouldn't walk under a tree where
one of the boys was hiding.
Finally, the boys tried coaxing the blind pony with
apples.
Why didn't we think of this before! said one of the
boys when this worked. Pretty soon the blind pony
came at the sound of the boys climbing the apple
trees. Its nose got strong too, and it could tell which
boy had an apple in his pocket.
But the boys never did saddle or bridle it. They
knew how dangerous it would be to ride a blind pony.
THE ROBIN'S NEST
Their grandfather was going to show them where a
robin had built a new nest in the grove. They walked
along, staring up into the leafy branches, when one of
the boys tripped on something. His Ouch! made
everyone's eyes look down instead of up.
Until now it had been such a quit and easy day,
with the sun and breeze mixing together like whipped
cream and sugar and spreading a sweetness over
everything and everybody. Seeing the robin's nest with
its pale blue eggs would have been what this day was
all about. And now this.
The boy who tripped sat down and grabbed his foot.
Something sharp stuck out of the ground, a rusty
pointed thing.
This is where we used to bury old equipment we
didn't need any more, said heir grandfather. That's
the tooth of an old dump rake trying to sneak back
into the world.
The boy who had tripped saw that the others were
finding the metal tooth more interesting than his mis-
ery. He got up and helped them pull on the tooth,
which was curved like a sliver of moon — and when
they pulled, it was as if they were unzipping the earth,
which split open, and plant roots frayed out from the
wound like tiny threads.
Look at that, said their grandfather. He kicked at
the dirt they had loosened. He knelt down and started
into the dirt. Look, he said, and held up what looked
like a bent horseshoe. This is called a twisted clevis, he
said.
He went back to digging. This is part of the knotter
for the binder back in the days of threshing machines.
And here's a piece of a corn shucker glove. See that little
hook that would pull the husk back? And here's the
sediment bulb off an old tractor.
The grandfather was acting like a dog going after a
hidden bone, scratching away with his strong old
hands as if digging up and naming this useless junk
was good for something.
This here is from an old harrow, he said. Those
there from a cream separator. Here's part of a stan-
chion lock. That's from a double-tree. See this? It's a
gear from a derrick for lifting the fronts of wagons off
the ground.
The boys watched and listened. What their grand-
father was doing didn't make much sense. If you're
going to throw things away and bury them, why not
forget about them and do what you were going to
so — which was find that robin's nest? But they waited,
and after a while they could see that their grandfather
must have gotten what he needed. He shoved dirt
back over what he had dug up, brushed off his dirty
hands, and looked up into the tree branches with
them.
It sure is a nice day, he said. Perfect for finding a
robin's nest. Now be quiet. We don't want to scare her
away.
from The Boys' House
new & selected stories
(Minnesota Historical Society Press)
Well, everyone always told the boys not to feed bacon
rind to the ducks, but nobody told the boys why not.
So they took some raw bacon rind and threw it to
the ducks. A big duck swallowed it. The boys followed
that duck around, watching to see what would happen.
The duck looked all right.
But then the duck stopped, ruffled its wings, and
passed the piece of raw bacon onto the ground as
quickly as if it had laid an egg. Up waddled another
duck and swallowed the bacon rind. Soon this duck
passed it, and another duck quickly swallowed it.
This went on for a while, and the ducks learned to
follow the last duck that had swallowed the rind, waiting
for it to come out so they'd have their turn at it.
The boys watched the bacon rind being passed
around from one duck to another in this way until one
of them got an idea.
Let's tie a string to the bacon, he said.
The other boys looked surprised when they saw in
their minds what would happen.
The boys chuckled and ran to get some strong
string. After they tied this to the rind, they went back
to the ducks. The first duck swallowed it, then the second,
and so on, until the boys had all the ducks on the
string. They held it tight, pulling the bacon ring tight
against the bottom of the last duck.
Later the boys told this story to the men.
That would make a good story to tell some city
slickers, said one of the men. They're the only ones
who'd believe it.
THE BLIND PONY
The pony was blind in one eye when it was born. At
first it was easy to catch if you remembered which side
to come up on. But after a while the ear on the blind
side got strong from listening so hard for someone
sneaking up on it. That ear got so good it would hear
someone coming on the blind side farther than the
good eye could see on the other.
So the boys had to think of new ways to catch the
blind pony. First they tried trapping it in the corner of
the pasture, but the blind pony always ran with its
good eye towards the fence and its good ear towards
the boys. This way it never ran into the fence and
could still whip its head when it heard the lasso com-
ing through the air. The blind pony was a good kicker
too, and the boys learned not to try grabbing at it from
behind.
Next the boys tried hiding in trees where the pony
walked, thinking that they could drop a rope over the
head as it passed under them. But it was as if the pony
could hear that part of the tree where the leaves
weren't rustling and wouldn't walk under a tree where
one of the boys was hiding.
Finally, the boys tried coaxing the blind pony with
apples.
Why didn't we think of this before! said one of the
boys when this worked. Pretty soon the blind pony
came at the sound of the boys climbing the apple
trees. Its nose got strong too, and it could tell which
boy had an apple in his pocket.
But the boys never did saddle or bridle it. They
knew how dangerous it would be to ride a blind pony.
THE ROBIN'S NEST
Their grandfather was going to show them where a
robin had built a new nest in the grove. They walked
along, staring up into the leafy branches, when one of
the boys tripped on something. His Ouch! made
everyone's eyes look down instead of up.
Until now it had been such a quit and easy day,
with the sun and breeze mixing together like whipped
cream and sugar and spreading a sweetness over
everything and everybody. Seeing the robin's nest with
its pale blue eggs would have been what this day was
all about. And now this.
The boy who tripped sat down and grabbed his foot.
Something sharp stuck out of the ground, a rusty
pointed thing.
This is where we used to bury old equipment we
didn't need any more, said heir grandfather. That's
the tooth of an old dump rake trying to sneak back
into the world.
The boy who had tripped saw that the others were
finding the metal tooth more interesting than his mis-
ery. He got up and helped them pull on the tooth,
which was curved like a sliver of moon — and when
they pulled, it was as if they were unzipping the earth,
which split open, and plant roots frayed out from the
wound like tiny threads.
Look at that, said their grandfather. He kicked at
the dirt they had loosened. He knelt down and started
into the dirt. Look, he said, and held up what looked
like a bent horseshoe. This is called a twisted clevis, he
said.
He went back to digging. This is part of the knotter
for the binder back in the days of threshing machines.
And here's a piece of a corn shucker glove. See that little
hook that would pull the husk back? And here's the
sediment bulb off an old tractor.
The grandfather was acting like a dog going after a
hidden bone, scratching away with his strong old
hands as if digging up and naming this useless junk
was good for something.
This here is from an old harrow, he said. Those
there from a cream separator. Here's part of a stan-
chion lock. That's from a double-tree. See this? It's a
gear from a derrick for lifting the fronts of wagons off
the ground.
The boys watched and listened. What their grand-
father was doing didn't make much sense. If you're
going to throw things away and bury them, why not
forget about them and do what you were going to
so — which was find that robin's nest? But they waited,
and after a while they could see that their grandfather
must have gotten what he needed. He shoved dirt
back over what he had dug up, brushed off his dirty
hands, and looked up into the tree branches with
them.
It sure is a nice day, he said. Perfect for finding a
robin's nest. Now be quiet. We don't want to scare her
away.
from The Boys' House
new & selected stories
(Minnesota Historical Society Press)
Born on a farm in northwest Iowa, Jim Heynen attended one of Iowa's last one-room schoolhouses before going on to high school at Western Christian in Hull, Iowa.
read more:
http://www.stolaf.edu/depts/english/faculty/heynen.html
Saturday, June 11, 2011
EARTHLY ~
photo: John Olson, Life
Color coordinated Frank Zappa with his parents Francis and Rosemary in California
Maybe the greatest white American liberator and champion for freedom since John Brown, Frank Vincent Zappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1940. He would pass away from prostate cancer at age 52 in 1993 after an early life of much sickness and malady, perhaps associated with a chemical warfare facility in the neighborhood where his chemist and mathematician father worked for the US Defense industry. Nothing more was the polar opposite of the father's son, who would compose and produce all 60 albums by The Mothers of Invention or his own solo albums over a career spanning 30 years...the majority of the material for the songs dealing with social injustice, germ warfare, authority and awful Big Brother. The tune chosen below is hauled off the Mothers debut LP Freak Out (1966). Of the four children Frank and Gail Zappa circled as their family, maybe the youngest, Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen has the most Motherist of names.
Maybe the greatest white American liberator and champion for freedom since John Brown, Frank Vincent Zappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1940. He would pass away from prostate cancer at age 52 in 1993 after an early life of much sickness and malady, perhaps associated with a chemical warfare facility in the neighborhood where his chemist and mathematician father worked for the US Defense industry. Nothing more was the polar opposite of the father's son, who would compose and produce all 60 albums by The Mothers of Invention or his own solo albums over a career spanning 30 years...the majority of the material for the songs dealing with social injustice, germ warfare, authority and awful Big Brother. The tune chosen below is hauled off the Mothers debut LP Freak Out (1966). Of the four children Frank and Gail Zappa circled as their family, maybe the youngest, Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen has the most Motherist of names.
photo: John Olson, Life
Friday, June 10, 2011
EARTH ~
Adam Zagajewski
The Rhône Valley
High walls, sheer and powerful.
All New York could fit here,
along with its airports
and its city of underground hallways.
But the Rhône doesn't wait for comparisons,
it flows swiftly, drunk on its own youth.
The vineyards are more cautious — they never rush,
they lie on hillsides, placid as the Swiss.
While the clouds travel on to Italy, to Bergamo,
to Padua and Ravenna — crossing borders.
The valley contains memory,
gray as stones, as granite.
The young Rhône rushes to the sea
but thoughts move in the opposite direction.
Streams fall endlessly
in white robes of mist
as imagination, like a solitary climber,
battles daily with the force of gravity.
The old masters still live here,
unrecognizable, under assumed names,
in modest houses, little gardens;
you may catch sight of them in summer evenings,
when lazy bonfires blaze
— they tend bees and hollyhocks,
naive like Le Douanier Rousseau.
You and I are silent, attending the night.
It takes us even higher than the Alps.
~
In Valleys
And the lovely Garonne, which passes
through drowsy villages each night
like a priest with the last sacrament.
Dark clouds grow in the sky.
The Visigoths live on, in certain faces.
In summer the empire of insects spreads.
You consider how not to be yourself:
is it only on journeys, in valleys,
which open others' wounds?
In a bookshop the sales clerk calls
the author of To the Lighthouse
Virginia. As if she might
turn up at any minute, on a bicycle,
with her long, sad face.
But Paul Valery (of the Academy) thought
history didn't exist. Perhaps he was right.
Perhaps we've been taken in. When he was dying,
General de Gaulle tried to find him
penicillin. Too late.
~
Carts
Carts full of hay
abandoned the town
in greatest quiet.
Cautious glances from the curtains.
A morning empty as a waiting room.
The rustling of papers in the archives;
men calculate the losses.
But that world.
Suitcases packed.
Sing for it, oriole,
dance for it, little fox,
catch it.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI
Unseen Hand
(Farrar 2011)
born in Lvov in 1945, adam zagajewski divides his time
between Chicago & Krakow
his books of poetry & essays are worth a hunt
Adam Zagajewski
The Rhône Valley
High walls, sheer and powerful.
All New York could fit here,
along with its airports
and its city of underground hallways.
But the Rhône doesn't wait for comparisons,
it flows swiftly, drunk on its own youth.
The vineyards are more cautious — they never rush,
they lie on hillsides, placid as the Swiss.
While the clouds travel on to Italy, to Bergamo,
to Padua and Ravenna — crossing borders.
The valley contains memory,
gray as stones, as granite.
The young Rhône rushes to the sea
but thoughts move in the opposite direction.
Streams fall endlessly
in white robes of mist
as imagination, like a solitary climber,
battles daily with the force of gravity.
The old masters still live here,
unrecognizable, under assumed names,
in modest houses, little gardens;
you may catch sight of them in summer evenings,
when lazy bonfires blaze
— they tend bees and hollyhocks,
naive like Le Douanier Rousseau.
You and I are silent, attending the night.
It takes us even higher than the Alps.
~
In Valleys
And the lovely Garonne, which passes
through drowsy villages each night
like a priest with the last sacrament.
Dark clouds grow in the sky.
The Visigoths live on, in certain faces.
In summer the empire of insects spreads.
You consider how not to be yourself:
is it only on journeys, in valleys,
which open others' wounds?
In a bookshop the sales clerk calls
the author of To the Lighthouse
Virginia. As if she might
turn up at any minute, on a bicycle,
with her long, sad face.
But Paul Valery (of the Academy) thought
history didn't exist. Perhaps he was right.
Perhaps we've been taken in. When he was dying,
General de Gaulle tried to find him
penicillin. Too late.
~
Carts
Carts full of hay
abandoned the town
in greatest quiet.
Cautious glances from the curtains.
A morning empty as a waiting room.
The rustling of papers in the archives;
men calculate the losses.
But that world.
Suitcases packed.
Sing for it, oriole,
dance for it, little fox,
catch it.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI
Unseen Hand
(Farrar 2011)
born in Lvov in 1945, adam zagajewski divides his time
between Chicago & Krakow
his books of poetry & essays are worth a hunt
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
EARTH ~
466
I dwell in Possibility -
A fairer House than Prose -
More numerous of Windows -
Superior - for Doors -
Of Chambers as the Cedars -
Impregnable of eye -
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky -
Of Visitors - the fairest -
For Occupation - This -
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise -
The "normal" opposite of Prose is Poetry. Reflecting on that tired contrast, Dickinson renames poetry "Possibility", a witty gesture that requires her to describe her "dwelling" place. Prose is normally considered to be far more roomy than poetry, able as it is to house many points of view, to have more acreage, even to exhibit more "ways in" to its theme than a poem could offer. A novel may be thought sturdier, more resistant to abuse, than verse. Not so, says Dickinson, and proposes her own view.
Poetry is, in the first place, more beautiful than prose—and hardly anyone will argue that point. She claims for it more vantage points on the world. And since she herself would eventually display almost 1,800 of such windows, what novelist could exceed that number? How is poetry, as a dwelling, superior to prose in terms of "Doors"? I am not entirely sure, but doors are for going out as well as for coming in, and the "possibilities" of poetry seem to Dickinson to allow for her readers much mental passage in and out of the concerns of their lives. Ordinary prose houses are built of pine; her house is built of the everlasting Cedar of Lebanon. Ordinary houses are subject to inspection by others, but Possibilities — those shimmering and ever-changing fantasies — being inner, cannot be seen from outside. And prose — with its expository linearity, even in fiction — is a closed form, whereas the whole hemispherical sky, with its cloudy "Gambrels" and "Roof" is open to Possibility.
(Domhnall Mitchell suggests (personal communication) that these Doors are "Superior" because they are harder to open. He also proposes that Dickinson's hands — one steadying the page, the other writing — are extending over her (graphically) narrow poem.)
...Dickinson ensures that we come away from this exercise in Possibility with a very strong contrastive picture of the House of Prose. It is an unattractive dwelling, with ineffective doors and an insufficient supply of windows (therefore with stinted light and no vistas), with chambers of shoddy materials, easily invaded by others' peering, and with a roof preventing a view of the heavens. This is as "realistic" as one could wish, and Dickinson's aim in leading us into the Paradise of Possibility is precisely to make us realize, by comparison, the limits of our own "prose" shelters. By affixing the verb of habit, "dwell", to the limitless abstraction "Possibility", Dickinson generates a host of particular features constituting her spectacular dwelling place. Through the poet's enumeration of its splendors, Possibility becomes (imaginatively speaking) real to us — so much so that we, now ashamed of our dreary Houses, might begin to construct in our mind a new House for ourselves, with sturdy doors, multiple windows, and an exalted "Roof". Visitors might come to such a House, fairer visitors than we have yet encountered.
~ Helen Vendler
DICKINSON
selected poems & commentaries
Helen Vendler
(Belknap / Harvard 2010)
466
I dwell in Possibility -
A fairer House than Prose -
More numerous of Windows -
Superior - for Doors -
Of Chambers as the Cedars -
Impregnable of eye -
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky -
Of Visitors - the fairest -
For Occupation - This -
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise -
The "normal" opposite of Prose is Poetry. Reflecting on that tired contrast, Dickinson renames poetry "Possibility", a witty gesture that requires her to describe her "dwelling" place. Prose is normally considered to be far more roomy than poetry, able as it is to house many points of view, to have more acreage, even to exhibit more "ways in" to its theme than a poem could offer. A novel may be thought sturdier, more resistant to abuse, than verse. Not so, says Dickinson, and proposes her own view.
Poetry is, in the first place, more beautiful than prose—and hardly anyone will argue that point. She claims for it more vantage points on the world. And since she herself would eventually display almost 1,800 of such windows, what novelist could exceed that number? How is poetry, as a dwelling, superior to prose in terms of "Doors"? I am not entirely sure, but doors are for going out as well as for coming in, and the "possibilities" of poetry seem to Dickinson to allow for her readers much mental passage in and out of the concerns of their lives. Ordinary prose houses are built of pine; her house is built of the everlasting Cedar of Lebanon. Ordinary houses are subject to inspection by others, but Possibilities — those shimmering and ever-changing fantasies — being inner, cannot be seen from outside. And prose — with its expository linearity, even in fiction — is a closed form, whereas the whole hemispherical sky, with its cloudy "Gambrels" and "Roof" is open to Possibility.
(Domhnall Mitchell suggests (personal communication) that these Doors are "Superior" because they are harder to open. He also proposes that Dickinson's hands — one steadying the page, the other writing — are extending over her (graphically) narrow poem.)
...Dickinson ensures that we come away from this exercise in Possibility with a very strong contrastive picture of the House of Prose. It is an unattractive dwelling, with ineffective doors and an insufficient supply of windows (therefore with stinted light and no vistas), with chambers of shoddy materials, easily invaded by others' peering, and with a roof preventing a view of the heavens. This is as "realistic" as one could wish, and Dickinson's aim in leading us into the Paradise of Possibility is precisely to make us realize, by comparison, the limits of our own "prose" shelters. By affixing the verb of habit, "dwell", to the limitless abstraction "Possibility", Dickinson generates a host of particular features constituting her spectacular dwelling place. Through the poet's enumeration of its splendors, Possibility becomes (imaginatively speaking) real to us — so much so that we, now ashamed of our dreary Houses, might begin to construct in our mind a new House for ourselves, with sturdy doors, multiple windows, and an exalted "Roof". Visitors might come to such a House, fairer visitors than we have yet encountered.
~ Helen Vendler
DICKINSON
selected poems & commentaries
Helen Vendler
(Belknap / Harvard 2010)
Dickinson grave site, Amherst, MA.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
W
They say you are
rare —
who isn't?
walking out the
back door
evening all you
in the blossoming apple
tree
of course
you call your name over
and over and over and over
with primitive fluidity
wild wilder wildest
fly like a
moth
grander
than any
of us
who are stuck in place
waiting for more
no more
late may 2011
whippoorwill
bob arnold
bob arnold
Friday, June 3, 2011
EARTH ~
Adolfas Mekas, Filmmaker
September 30, 1925 – May 31, 2011
photograph: ©Syd M Johnson
September 30, 1925 – May 31, 2011
Adolfas Mekas, Hallelujah the Hills, 1963 (excerpt) from RE:VOIR on Vimeo.
photograph: ©Syd M Johnson
EARTH ~
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110531/us_yblog_thelookout/officials-say-man-mtus-tear-down-phonehenge-house
Phonehenge West, Alan Kimble Fahey
Phonehenge West, Alan Kimble Fahey
THE VOICE ~
the great state of Vermont
with a population of 630 thousand and change
has the second smallest population next to Wyoming
in the U.S.A.
the state bird is the hermit thrush, which shows up
majestically in the poetry of both Whitman & Eliot
which isn't bad for a tropical bird found in the northern woods
of its current leadership we kick a hardcore group:
Bernie Sanders, Patrick Leahy, Peter Welch & Gov. Peter Shumlin
with an added ingredient, Barack Obama as President,
and even with all that, creeps and business suits run the country
oh, by the way, Hawkeye Pierce, the Alan Alda character
from M*A*S*H, came from Vermont*
*Crabapple Cove, Maine : Some interesting facts about Crabapple Cove: It doesn't exist in 'real life'! Though throughout most of the series (and the book) Crabapple Cove is mentioned as Hawkeye's hometown, in a few instances his place of origin has varied. In the year one episode 'Dear Dad', Hawkeye calls Vermont his homestate, while in the episode 'The Late Captain Pierce', Hawkeye claims that the family only has a 'summer cottage' in Crabapple Cove.
the great state of Vermont
with a population of 630 thousand and change
has the second smallest population next to Wyoming
in the U.S.A.
the state bird is the hermit thrush, which shows up
majestically in the poetry of both Whitman & Eliot
which isn't bad for a tropical bird found in the northern woods
of its current leadership we kick a hardcore group:
Bernie Sanders, Patrick Leahy, Peter Welch & Gov. Peter Shumlin
with an added ingredient, Barack Obama as President,
and even with all that, creeps and business suits run the country
oh, by the way, Hawkeye Pierce, the Alan Alda character
from M*A*S*H, came from Vermont*
*Crabapple Cove, Maine : Some interesting facts about Crabapple Cove: It doesn't exist in 'real life'! Though throughout most of the series (and the book) Crabapple Cove is mentioned as Hawkeye's hometown, in a few instances his place of origin has varied. In the year one episode 'Dear Dad', Hawkeye calls Vermont his homestate, while in the episode 'The Late Captain Pierce', Hawkeye claims that the family only has a 'summer cottage' in Crabapple Cove.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
EARTH ~
I was pensively penning the outline of the inkstand's circular, quivering shadow. In a distant room a clock struck the hour, while I, dreamer that I am, imagined someone was knocking at the door, softly at first, then louder and louder. He knocked twelve times and paused expectantly.
"Yes, I'm here, come in..."
The door knob creaked timidly, the flame of the runny candle tilted, and he hopped sidewise out of a rectangle of shadow, hunched, gray, powdered with the pollen of the frosty, starry night.
I knew his face - oh, how long I had known it!
His right eye was still in the shadows, the left peered at me timorously, elongated, smoky-green. The pupil glowed like a point of rust....That mossy-gray tuft on his temple, the pale-silver, scarcely noticeable eyebrow, the comical wrinkle near his whiskerless mouth - how all this teased and vaguely vexed my memory!
I got up. He stepped forward.
His shabby little coat seemed to be buttoned wrong - on the female side. In his hand he held a cap - no, a dark-colored, poorly tied bundle, and there was no sign of any cap....
Yes, of course I knew him - perhaps had even been fond of him, only I simple could not place the where and the when of our meetings. And we must have met often, otherwise I would not have had such a firm recollection of those cranberry lips, those pointy ears, that amusing Adam's apple....
With a welcoming murmur I shook his light, cold hand, and touche the back of a shabby arm chair. He perched like a crow on a tree stump, and began speaking hurriedly.
"It's so scary in the streets. So I dropped in. Dropped in to visit you. Do you recognize me? You and I, we used to romp together and halloo at each for days at a time. Back in the old country. Don't tell me you've forgotten?"
His voice literally blinded me. I felt dazzled and dizzy - I remembered the happiness, the echoing, endless, irreplaceable happiness....
No, it can't be: I'm alone....it's only some capricious delirium. Yet there really was somebody sitting next to me, bony and implausible, with long-earred German bootees, and his voice tintinnabulated, rustled - golden, luscious-green familiar - while the words were so simple, so human....
"There - you remember. Yes, I am a former Forest Elf, a mischievous sprite. And here I am, forced to flee like everyone else."
He heaved a deep sigh, and once again I had visions of billowing nimbus, lofty leafy undulations, bright flashes of birch bark like splashes of sea foam, against a dulcet, perpetual, hum....He bent toward me and glanced gently into my eyes. "Remember our forest, fir so black, birch all white? They've cut it all down. The grief was unbearable - I saw my dear birches crackling and falling, and how could I help? Into the marshes they drove me, I wept and I howled, I boomed like a bittern, then left lickety-split for a neighboring pinewood.
"There I pined, and could not stop sobbing. I had barely grown used to it, and lo, there was no more pinewood, just blue-tinted cinders. Had to do some more tramping. Found myself a wood - a wonderful wood it was, thick, dark, and cool. Yet somehow it was just not the same thing. In the old days I'd frolic from dawn until dusk, whistle furiously, clap my hands, frighten passersby. You remember yourself - you lost your way once in a dark nook of my woods, you in some little white dress, and I kept tying the paths up in knots, spinning the tree trunks, twinkling through the foliage. Spent the whole night playing tricks. But I was only fooling around, it was all in jest, vilify me as they might. But now I sobered up, for my new abode was not a merry one. Day and night strange things crackled around me. At first I thought a fellow elf was lurking there; I called, then listened. Something crackled, something rumbled....but no, those were not the kinds of sounds we make. Once, toward evening, I skipped out into a glade, and what do I see? People lying around, some on their backs, some on their bellies. Well, I think, I'll wake them up, I'll get them moving! And I went to work shaking boughs, bombarding with cones, rustling, hooting....I toiled away for a whole hour, all to no avail. Then I took a closer look, and I was horror-struck. Here's a man with his head hanging by one flimsy crimson thread, there's one with a heap of thick worms for a stomach....I could not endure it. I let out a howl, jumped in the air, and off I ran....
"Long I wandered through different forests, but I could find no peace. Either it was stillness, desolation, mortal boredom, or such horror it's better not to think about it. At last I made up my mind and changed into a bumpkin, a tramp with a knapsack, and left for good: Rus', adieu! Here a kindred spirit, a Water-Sprite, gave me a hand. Poor fellow as on the run too. He kept marveling, kept saying - what times are upon us, a real calamity! And even if, in olden times, he had had his fun, used to lure people down (a hospitable one, he was!), in recompense, how he petted and pampered them on the gold river bottom, with what songs he bewitched them! These days, he says, only dead men come floating by, floating in batches, enormous numbers of them, and the river's moisture is like blood, thick, warm, sticky, and there's nothing for him to breathe....and so he took me with them.
"He went off to knock about some distance sea, and put me ashore on a foggy coast - go, brother, find yourself some friendly foliage. But I found nothing, and I ended up here in this foreign, terrifying city of stone. Thus I turned into a human, complete with proper starched collars and bootees, and I've even learned human talk...."
He fell silent. His eyes glistened like wet leaves, his arms were crossed, and, by the wavering light of the drowning candle, some pale strands combed to the left shimmered so strangely.
"I know you two are pining," his voiced shimmered again, "but you're pining, compared to mine, my tempestuous, turbulent pining, is but the even breathing of one who is asleep and think about it: not one of our Tribe is there left in the Rus'. Some of us swirled away like wisps of fog. Others scattered over the world. Our native rivers are melancholy, there is no frisky hand to splash up the moon-gleams. Silent are the orphaned bluebells that remain. By chance, unmown, the pale-blue gusli that once served my rival, the ethereal Field-Sprite, for his songs. A shaggy, friendly, household spirit, in tears, has forsaken your besmirched, humiliated home, and the groves that withered, the pathetically luminous, magically somber groves....
"It was we, Rus', who were your inspiration, your unfathomable beauty, your age long enchantment! And we are all gone, gone, driven into exile by a crazed surveyor.
"My friend, soon I shall die, say something to me, tell me that you love me, a homeless phantom, come sit closer, give me your hand...."
The candle sputtered and went out. Cold fingers touched my palm. The familiar melancholy laugh pealed and fell still.
When I turned on the light there was no one in the armchair....no one!....nothing was left but a wondrously subtle scent in the room, of birch, of humid moss....
VLADIMIR NABOKOV
The Wood-Sprite
I was pensively penning the outline of the inkstand's circular, quivering shadow. In a distant room a clock struck the hour, while I, dreamer that I am, imagined someone was knocking at the door, softly at first, then louder and louder. He knocked twelve times and paused expectantly.
"Yes, I'm here, come in..."
The door knob creaked timidly, the flame of the runny candle tilted, and he hopped sidewise out of a rectangle of shadow, hunched, gray, powdered with the pollen of the frosty, starry night.
I knew his face - oh, how long I had known it!
His right eye was still in the shadows, the left peered at me timorously, elongated, smoky-green. The pupil glowed like a point of rust....That mossy-gray tuft on his temple, the pale-silver, scarcely noticeable eyebrow, the comical wrinkle near his whiskerless mouth - how all this teased and vaguely vexed my memory!
I got up. He stepped forward.
His shabby little coat seemed to be buttoned wrong - on the female side. In his hand he held a cap - no, a dark-colored, poorly tied bundle, and there was no sign of any cap....
Yes, of course I knew him - perhaps had even been fond of him, only I simple could not place the where and the when of our meetings. And we must have met often, otherwise I would not have had such a firm recollection of those cranberry lips, those pointy ears, that amusing Adam's apple....
With a welcoming murmur I shook his light, cold hand, and touche the back of a shabby arm chair. He perched like a crow on a tree stump, and began speaking hurriedly.
"It's so scary in the streets. So I dropped in. Dropped in to visit you. Do you recognize me? You and I, we used to romp together and halloo at each for days at a time. Back in the old country. Don't tell me you've forgotten?"
His voice literally blinded me. I felt dazzled and dizzy - I remembered the happiness, the echoing, endless, irreplaceable happiness....
No, it can't be: I'm alone....it's only some capricious delirium. Yet there really was somebody sitting next to me, bony and implausible, with long-earred German bootees, and his voice tintinnabulated, rustled - golden, luscious-green familiar - while the words were so simple, so human....
"There - you remember. Yes, I am a former Forest Elf, a mischievous sprite. And here I am, forced to flee like everyone else."
He heaved a deep sigh, and once again I had visions of billowing nimbus, lofty leafy undulations, bright flashes of birch bark like splashes of sea foam, against a dulcet, perpetual, hum....He bent toward me and glanced gently into my eyes. "Remember our forest, fir so black, birch all white? They've cut it all down. The grief was unbearable - I saw my dear birches crackling and falling, and how could I help? Into the marshes they drove me, I wept and I howled, I boomed like a bittern, then left lickety-split for a neighboring pinewood.
"There I pined, and could not stop sobbing. I had barely grown used to it, and lo, there was no more pinewood, just blue-tinted cinders. Had to do some more tramping. Found myself a wood - a wonderful wood it was, thick, dark, and cool. Yet somehow it was just not the same thing. In the old days I'd frolic from dawn until dusk, whistle furiously, clap my hands, frighten passersby. You remember yourself - you lost your way once in a dark nook of my woods, you in some little white dress, and I kept tying the paths up in knots, spinning the tree trunks, twinkling through the foliage. Spent the whole night playing tricks. But I was only fooling around, it was all in jest, vilify me as they might. But now I sobered up, for my new abode was not a merry one. Day and night strange things crackled around me. At first I thought a fellow elf was lurking there; I called, then listened. Something crackled, something rumbled....but no, those were not the kinds of sounds we make. Once, toward evening, I skipped out into a glade, and what do I see? People lying around, some on their backs, some on their bellies. Well, I think, I'll wake them up, I'll get them moving! And I went to work shaking boughs, bombarding with cones, rustling, hooting....I toiled away for a whole hour, all to no avail. Then I took a closer look, and I was horror-struck. Here's a man with his head hanging by one flimsy crimson thread, there's one with a heap of thick worms for a stomach....I could not endure it. I let out a howl, jumped in the air, and off I ran....
"Long I wandered through different forests, but I could find no peace. Either it was stillness, desolation, mortal boredom, or such horror it's better not to think about it. At last I made up my mind and changed into a bumpkin, a tramp with a knapsack, and left for good: Rus', adieu! Here a kindred spirit, a Water-Sprite, gave me a hand. Poor fellow as on the run too. He kept marveling, kept saying - what times are upon us, a real calamity! And even if, in olden times, he had had his fun, used to lure people down (a hospitable one, he was!), in recompense, how he petted and pampered them on the gold river bottom, with what songs he bewitched them! These days, he says, only dead men come floating by, floating in batches, enormous numbers of them, and the river's moisture is like blood, thick, warm, sticky, and there's nothing for him to breathe....and so he took me with them.
"He went off to knock about some distance sea, and put me ashore on a foggy coast - go, brother, find yourself some friendly foliage. But I found nothing, and I ended up here in this foreign, terrifying city of stone. Thus I turned into a human, complete with proper starched collars and bootees, and I've even learned human talk...."
He fell silent. His eyes glistened like wet leaves, his arms were crossed, and, by the wavering light of the drowning candle, some pale strands combed to the left shimmered so strangely.
"I know you two are pining," his voiced shimmered again, "but you're pining, compared to mine, my tempestuous, turbulent pining, is but the even breathing of one who is asleep and think about it: not one of our Tribe is there left in the Rus'. Some of us swirled away like wisps of fog. Others scattered over the world. Our native rivers are melancholy, there is no frisky hand to splash up the moon-gleams. Silent are the orphaned bluebells that remain. By chance, unmown, the pale-blue gusli that once served my rival, the ethereal Field-Sprite, for his songs. A shaggy, friendly, household spirit, in tears, has forsaken your besmirched, humiliated home, and the groves that withered, the pathetically luminous, magically somber groves....
"It was we, Rus', who were your inspiration, your unfathomable beauty, your age long enchantment! And we are all gone, gone, driven into exile by a crazed surveyor.
"My friend, soon I shall die, say something to me, tell me that you love me, a homeless phantom, come sit closer, give me your hand...."
The candle sputtered and went out. Cold fingers touched my palm. The familiar melancholy laugh pealed and fell still.
When I turned on the light there was no one in the armchair....no one!....nothing was left but a wondrously subtle scent in the room, of birch, of humid moss....
from The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (Vintage)
translated by Dimitri Nabokov
A beautiful early tale by the author to be read aloud (as I did this morning on a drive with Sweetheart) and translated by Nabokov's son Dimitri. Written when the author was barely in his twenties — his first story ever published — then signed with his pseudonym "Vladimir Sirin" (sirin is a hawk owl). Nabokov became a published author while a student at Trinity College, Cambridge. He had moved with his family to England in 1919, abandoning Russia forever, and by 1922 they were in Berlin where his father was assassinated.
translated by Dimitri Nabokov
A beautiful early tale by the author to be read aloud (as I did this morning on a drive with Sweetheart) and translated by Nabokov's son Dimitri. Written when the author was barely in his twenties — his first story ever published — then signed with his pseudonym "Vladimir Sirin" (sirin is a hawk owl). Nabokov became a published author while a student at Trinity College, Cambridge. He had moved with his family to England in 1919, abandoning Russia forever, and by 1922 they were in Berlin where his father was assassinated.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Sunday, May 29, 2011
EARTH ~
Early Tuesday, José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva, a forest activist and tree nut harvester, and his wife, Maria do Espirito Santo, drove a motorcycle through Brazil’s northern Para State, in the Amazon rain forest. As they crossed a river bridge, gunmen lying in wait opened fire with a pistol and shotgun, killing them.
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