a beautiful song from one of the best from one more silly new American film best forgotten
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
DOCTOR JAZZ ~
WORDS FOR JAZZ PERHAPS
for Sally Lipsitz
Elegy for Fats Waller
Lighting up, lest all our hearts should break,
His fiftieth cigarette of the day,
Happy with so many notes at his beck
And call, he sits there taking it away,
The maker of immaculate slapstick.
With music and with such precise trampage
Across the deserts of the blues a trail
He blazes, towards the one true mirage,
Enormous on a nimble-footed camel
And almost refusing to be his age.
He plays for hours on end and though there be
Oases one part water, two parts gin,
He tumbles past to reign, wise and thirsty,
At the still centre of his loud dominion —
THE SHOOK THE SHAKE THE SHEIKH OF ARABY.
Bud Freeman in Belfast
Fog horn and factory siren intercept
Each fragile hoarded-up refrain. What else
Is there to do but let those notes erupt
Until your fading last glissando settles
Among all other sounds — carefully wrapped
In the cotton wool from aspirin bottles?
To Bessie Smith
You bring from Chattanooga Tennessee
Your huge voice to the back of my mind
Where, like sea shells salvaged from the sea
As bright reminders of a few weeks' stay,
Some random notes are all I ever find.
I couldn't play your records every day.
I think of Tra-na-rossan, Inisheer,
Of Harris drenched by horizontal rain —
Those landscapes I must visit year by year.
I do not live with sounds so seasonal
Not set up house for good. Your blues contain
Each longed-for holiday, each terminal.
To Bix Beiderbecke
In hotel rooms, in digs you went to school.
These dead were voices from the floor below
Who filled like an empty room your skull,
Who shared your peretual one night stand
— The havoc there, and the manoeuvrings! —
Each coloured hero with his instrument.
You were bound with one original theme
To compromise in your head your terminus,
Or to improvise with the best of them
That parabola from blues to barrelhouse.
DOCTOR JAZZ
Hello, Central! Give me Doctor Jazz!
Jelly Roll Morton
To be nearly as great as you
Think you are, play the same tunes
Again and again: small fortunes,
Diamonds for each hollow tooth.
Django Reinhardt
A whole new method compensates
For your damaged fingers: sweat
In the creases of your forehead,
Mother-of-pearl between the frets.
King Oliver
Now all pretenders to the throne
Learn how the patient gums decay,
Music hurts: though they took away
Your bad breath, the crown's your own.
Billie Holiday
You fastened to your bony thigh
Some dollar bills and waited for
The cacophonous janitor
And silence and the cue to die.
____________________________
MICHAEL LONGLEY
Collected Poems
(Wake Forest University Press, 2007)
Jelly Roll Morton
RCA Manufacturing Company, Inc., studio #3
New York, N.Y., 28th September 1939
WORDS FOR JAZZ PERHAPS
for Sally Lipsitz
Elegy for Fats Waller
Lighting up, lest all our hearts should break,
His fiftieth cigarette of the day,
Happy with so many notes at his beck
And call, he sits there taking it away,
The maker of immaculate slapstick.
With music and with such precise trampage
Across the deserts of the blues a trail
He blazes, towards the one true mirage,
Enormous on a nimble-footed camel
And almost refusing to be his age.
He plays for hours on end and though there be
Oases one part water, two parts gin,
He tumbles past to reign, wise and thirsty,
At the still centre of his loud dominion —
THE SHOOK THE SHAKE THE SHEIKH OF ARABY.
Bud Freeman in Belfast
Fog horn and factory siren intercept
Each fragile hoarded-up refrain. What else
Is there to do but let those notes erupt
Until your fading last glissando settles
Among all other sounds — carefully wrapped
In the cotton wool from aspirin bottles?
To Bessie Smith
You bring from Chattanooga Tennessee
Your huge voice to the back of my mind
Where, like sea shells salvaged from the sea
As bright reminders of a few weeks' stay,
Some random notes are all I ever find.
I couldn't play your records every day.
I think of Tra-na-rossan, Inisheer,
Of Harris drenched by horizontal rain —
Those landscapes I must visit year by year.
I do not live with sounds so seasonal
Not set up house for good. Your blues contain
Each longed-for holiday, each terminal.
To Bix Beiderbecke
In hotel rooms, in digs you went to school.
These dead were voices from the floor below
Who filled like an empty room your skull,
Who shared your peretual one night stand
— The havoc there, and the manoeuvrings! —
Each coloured hero with his instrument.
You were bound with one original theme
To compromise in your head your terminus,
Or to improvise with the best of them
That parabola from blues to barrelhouse.
DOCTOR JAZZ
Hello, Central! Give me Doctor Jazz!
Jelly Roll Morton
To be nearly as great as you
Think you are, play the same tunes
Again and again: small fortunes,
Diamonds for each hollow tooth.
Django Reinhardt
A whole new method compensates
For your damaged fingers: sweat
In the creases of your forehead,
Mother-of-pearl between the frets.
King Oliver
Now all pretenders to the throne
Learn how the patient gums decay,
Music hurts: though they took away
Your bad breath, the crown's your own.
Billie Holiday
You fastened to your bony thigh
Some dollar bills and waited for
The cacophonous janitor
And silence and the cue to die.
____________________________
MICHAEL LONGLEY
Collected Poems
(Wake Forest University Press, 2007)
poems by Michael Longley
songs chosen by the Birdhouse
songs chosen by the Birdhouse
Monday, December 31, 2012
Sunday, December 30, 2012
LONGHOUSE BIBLIOGRAPHY 2010 ~
LONGHOUSE
BIBLIOGRAPHY PART FOUR ~ 2010 ~
: a small handmade book of one poem said in segments, one small passage per page, getting to the place of no-answer.
: another group of new poems, mostly short, and I believe devoted somewhat to the memory of Joan Crawford in the film "Johnny Guitar", where she says these immortal words. Front cover individually hand stamped.
2010. Bob Arnold.Villa of Souls. A foldout portfolio of Bob Arnold's stonework and photographs from a back woodlot in Vermont. A continuation of his earlier book on stone-building On Stone. This portrait holds both photographs and poems by the poet. In three-color fold out performance.
: showcase of my stone cairns, and photographs, up in the Vermont woodlot here, attached with a few of my stone oriented poems. The photographs are all in color. The cairns remain in their villa, slowly going back to brush and shadows.
: there will be two volumes of A Possible Eden, and not at all planned. The first volume had a bear detail from one of my paintings that I just kept for the second volume, same size books and all. My back self-portrait with Susan is also kept on both books. The only distinction between the two books is a hand drawn number "2" on the back of the second volume. Prose poems.
: I once worked weekly at a family farm for twenty years. Not an animal farm: more land, gardens, landscaped pastures and fields, ponds to trim, firewood to cut, split and haul inside all through the winter. It kept me in some money. There were families, couples, who once upon a time also kept a handyman around their property if they could afford one. Susan sometimes came with me and we put up the family Christmas tree for them, decorated it and took it down. Somewhere along the line I wrote a poem, like this one (or another book: Farm Hand) about being there. Decorated by me and designed, handmade in less than 30 copies.
2010. Jeffery Beam. Me Moving. A three color fold-out booklet of poems with wrap around band.
: Jeffery is always nearby. His poetry, life, charm, book love and all is one we share. Now and again he'll get it in his head to send me a group of poems and every time (so far) they hit the mark and we handmake a booklet for him. He returns by sending hungry readers and collectors wanting his publications. It's win-win with Bob, Susan and Jeffery.
2010. John Bradley What Is Borne: In three-color fold out performance. Pamphlet
: John Bradley has one of the most caring voices in modern poetry. It's no surprise to me his son became a man of the cloth. We have now published three or it may be four booklets by John, ranging from Hiroshima and modern era polemics, to a sheaf of poems on Henry Ford and his time, and a travelogue by John while in Turkey. He just wrote a letter to me this morning describing how he was fleshing out a new piece on Billy the Kid, and would send it if he thought it was up to snuff. I asked him to send it to me, please, snuff or not.
2010. Rolf Dieter Brinkmann / translated by Mark Terrill. Under Glass. A tall three-color foldout folio . New and limited edition
: Mark marches on with Longhouse and another booklet of his translations (the third) — this one from the wild card of Europe Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, which would later go into a full collection of poems by Brinkmann all translated by Mark. His personal bibliography is revealing an outstanding and rich text of his own poems, prose poems, literary essays, book reviews and the translations of modern German poets. Tap the source.
: Australian Pam Brown came to us through her love, amongst many things, of old home architecture and of course poetry, which she is good at. I have a sneaky feeling it was Pam who brought my work and Longhouse to the attention of John Tranter, who then carried it a bit further in the original treasury called Jacket. Pam's poems speak in unsentimental grandeur and grace one poem entwined here to the other.
: Alvaro lives with his wife Barbara, both painters, high on a crest in New Mexico. Neither are of the wealthy New Mexico art life, unless you consider wealthy as living long and beautifully. I long ago discovered Alvaro's poetry via Scribners and Alan Swallow. In my hands I knew I had something. The books even seemed to want to disappear with their humility and tenderness. When Alvaro and I met by mail, books were exchanged like we all often do, and then a painting was sent inscribed to us both. I hung that up right above where I handmake all these booklets. "it is time / to exist" indeed.
: there is too much disturbance to this passionate testimonial in its publishing history that I'll just let it rest that someone, someday, will find the correspondence, and the emails, and what even appeared, unfortunately, concerning the book, on some blogs and make something of it all. The book remains in print because like all good things — like baseball and blues music — it's good to have around. That joyous front cover photograph of woolen cap JC is by Mary K. Greer. And like Mary, Bill Berkson was kind enough to provide a younger Jim Carroll photograph on location (New York) for the back cover.
: Gerry Loose in the UK in 1972 first published these poems in a small booklet he regretted was long out of print and one day told me so. So I asked him if he would send me the poems and see if we could republish the poems and bring everything back to life. Not too difficult with Cid, simply keep watering. The plant roots are both shallow and deep. Gerry was more than happy to see his original "Byways" publication re-appear.
:Ray sent this manuscript, unsolicited, one summer day and being like a scorcher today, we set right forth and printed it all before nightfall. Hidden in the shade of fine poetry and art work by Ray. We stay in contact at all times via a mutual love for old films, great books and some other friends Ray has brought to us with his guiding hands at knowing often what works where the best. That's a handler, some call it a teacher.
: Donna's first, and it won't be here last, show at Longhouse. Nicely crafted and spoken to the page poems of wonder, right there in the title. We found for the original wrap a see-thru yellow paper stock, that was later replaced with an entirely different red. If you don't fall in love with that first poem on the title page, I'm a monkey's uncle.
2010. Walter Franceschi . A Good Idea. A three color fold-out booklet of poems with wrap around band.
: Walter's second Longhouse booklet. You see I read that "Koan" on the title page (where I put it for good reason) and was hooked. The rest of the poems just kept coming and coming and I flicked them left and right down the foldout page. In Italy, Walter commutes by train. On the train, unknown to most on the passengers, poems are getting seen and composed.
: we met Gloria Frym, briefly, at the first Lorine Niedecker Festival in Milwaukee. That was in 2003. The poems here arrived after we touched base during the Origin, sixth series I was collecting and editing, and a booklet quickly formed "with poetry / which fits in the palm".
2010. Merrill Gilfillan. Treehouse Haibun. In three-color fold out performance. Pamphlet.
: I've been reading Merrill Gilfillan for a long time, as many have, we're lucky. The books quietly appear and quietly rest on our shelves and the poems or prose is never forgotten. It was Ray Di Palma, an old friend of Merrill's who gave me his address to finally contact him for a pair of booklets we'd bring out over the next year. One friend following another friend down the path.
:there are two photographs for this booklet. Colleen, Michael's wife, liked one better than the other, so we obliged and used both. The poems remained unchanged and content right where they set, much the way Michael is, making less demands on anyone and more into his poems which have a capacity to take off into imaginative storytelling.
2010. Brooks Johnson. the people of the state of illinois vs brooks johnson . In three-color fold out performance. Pamphlet.
2010. George Kalamaras. Mingus Mingus Mingus . In three-color fold out performance. Pamphlet.
: of the many of George Kalamras's loves, music is up there, along with western USA lore, India, surrealism, the work of Robert Kelly, and beagles. The poems collected in this booklet are all jazz players in poem portraits by George thriving to the strum of the beat.
2010. John Latta. A Year (Days Off). In three-color fold out performance. Pamphlet.
: for at least a year I was turning daily to John Latta's poems on his blog and collecting myself inside the rhythm and intelligence of his world. This is a clutch of such poems, dedicated to Kent Johnson and all things wildly caught between book covers. The list of authors and thinkers he catches in his galaxy net is becoming.
2010. Dudley Laufman. Scything . A tall three-color foldout folio . New and limited edition
: Dudley is now 81 years old this year and remains constant at the two or three worlds he has long inhabited: fiddling, poetry, and rural ways. He was at Newport when Dylan was making some early trouble there (Dudley was fiddling with a band) and for decades later has fiddled and called contra dances, read his poem publicly with many poets, and kept a small sustained homestead in the Craftsbury region of New Hampshire. It was a pleasure to finally get some of Dudley's rural stories, characters, narratives, poetry into a booklet to share. "Jacqueline" is his wife, fiddling partner, and anchor.
2010. John Levy. Research Regarding Poetry and Driving. A half dozen new prose poems, some first published in U.K., (Stride) and here at Longhouse on the Longhouse Birdhouse. In three-color fold out performance.
: John is showing up this time with a booklet of prose poems. The third in a series of Longhouse booklets that range from a short story, to a collection of poems, and now the prose poems, often quite humorous.
2010. Ed Markowski. A Chinese Box . A tall three-color foldout folio.
2010. Joseph Massey. Mock Orange . A three color fold-out booklet of poems with wrap around band.
: by now we have published three or four of Joe Massey's small foldout booklets. Each one comes along with a small but mighty contingent of faithful readers asking for a copy, Joe hid out somewhere in northern California making-do, with occasional pleas from him to send a booklet here and yonder. We got a thing going.
2010. Norman Schaeffer. Little Sierra Nevada Poems . A three color fold-out booklet of poems with wrap around band. With photograph by Kevin Garner, looking from Lone Pine to Mt. Whitney.
: this is the first of two booklets we especially enjoyed making with Norman from first his years of hiking the high crest of the Sierra Nevada, to later love poems at home in the Pacific Northwest. It wasn't easy paring the Sierra poems down to an essential backpack duty, but here it is. They each resonate with a scope of mountains and rivers and rising heights. The love poems are coming up. . .
2010. Andrew Schelling. Arapaho Songbook II . A three color fold-out booklet of poems with wrap around band.
: Andrew's part-two to the world of Arapaho, equally as balanced and arrow-flight as the first booklet.
2010. David Shapiro. "To THE EARTH or A LAST POEM" . Love Thy Poet Spring Equinox 2010. Three color 4-1/4 x 6 postcard suitable for framing or slipping into the mail.
: it turns out this passage comes out of a poem already published by the poet but how we've presented it here on a postcard (not yet recognizing it came out of an earlier poem) it lives a whole other existence. Since it was sent to us by David this way, we go this way.
2010. Daniel Smith. Fatherland . New poems from this midwest farmer & poet detailing generations of hardwork and earned abilities, plus pulling up stakes from one long term family farm in Illinois for Wisconsin. In three-color fold out performance.
: well heeled poems out of a midwest farm family. Dan works the soil and his poems with the same ingredient of care and understanding. The father of poet Austin Smith, the family has within the last few years re-located farm and life to Wisconsin where Dan holds a steady hand between the farm work and the poems that call.
2010. Simon Vinkenoog / Translations by Gerard Bellaart, Frederique Berringer, Louise Landes Levi & Hans Plomp and afterword by Louise Landes Levi. SIMON VINKENOOG poems: 1950-2006 A three color fold-out booklet of poems with wrap around band.
: with an afterword by Louise Landes Levi who also sent some of the poems our way, along with artist and Cold Turkey Press extraordinaire Gerard Bellaart, an eventual small selected poems was made for the legendary bohemian from Amsterdam who passed away a year earlier. All tribute.
2010. Vassilis Zambaras. IN CREDIBLE EVIDENCE . A three color fold-out booklet of poems with wrap around band.
: long ago, when he was living in the Northwest, we published Vassilis in our early pages of Longhouse and other publications — so it was more than good to have him back to bring forth a short booklet of many poems which we sent to him in his homeland of Greece.
2010
2010. Bob Arnold. Bakery. In three-color fold out performance. Pamphlet.
: I'm working on
real-time with writing this bibliography. I started at 8 this morning
after an hour of scything and thinking. Now noon and I'm into the year
2010, after a stop for breakfast, some correspondence, and packing books
for customers. An hour before going out into the blazing sun to do more
landscape work. It's torturous weather but we'll be ripe and roiling
for a swim in the woods river. In the meantime, this isn't a bad
collection (Bakery), but not my best it turns out. Only the
prose poem about a bakery being taken-over by some dreamers still works
for me here. Plus one or two of the short poems.
2010. Bob Arnold. Gentleman. In glossy photographic wraps, hand sewn in four colors.
:Gentleman is a precursor limited edition to poems that will go into making some of my trilogy of books Woodlanders (Yokel; I'm In Love With You Who Is In Love With Me; The Woodcutter Talks).
The cover photograph is by Susan, top of Cannon Mountain in the White
Mountains and I'm holding an October snowball in my hands only for her.
Or was it Carson? Two loves.
2010. Bob Arnold. In A Cabin, In A Wood.
Well over a dozen new poems from the Vermont countryside of daily
chores and everlasting love. In three-color fold out performance.
: more new poems in trial run that
will either go into larger collections, or not at all. Share with
friends, and some friends come through and tell you things.
2010. Bob Arnold. More Questions.
A book for children or the child in the adult, asking the simplest
questions often best left unanswered. In three-color showcase, handmade
edition.
: a small handmade book of one poem said in segments, one small passage per page, getting to the place of no-answer.
2010. Bob Arnold. Save Yourself. In three-color showcase, handmade edition. Wraps.
: another group of new poems, mostly short, and I believe devoted somewhat to the memory of Joan Crawford in the film "Johnny Guitar", where she says these immortal words. Front cover individually hand stamped.
2010. Bob Arnold.Villa of Souls. A foldout portfolio of Bob Arnold's stonework and photographs from a back woodlot in Vermont. A continuation of his earlier book on stone-building On Stone. This portrait holds both photographs and poems by the poet. In three-color fold out performance.
: showcase of my stone cairns, and photographs, up in the Vermont woodlot here, attached with a few of my stone oriented poems. The photographs are all in color. The cairns remain in their villa, slowly going back to brush and shadows.
2010. Bob Arnold. A Possible Eden. Bob Arnold’s new book of modern fables. With two paintings by the author. Three color text. Hand-sewn wraps. 40 pages
: there will be two volumes of A Possible Eden, and not at all planned. The first volume had a bear detail from one of my paintings that I just kept for the second volume, same size books and all. My back self-portrait with Susan is also kept on both books. The only distinction between the two books is a hand drawn number "2" on the back of the second volume. Prose poems.
2010. Bob Arnold. Farm Visit. In three-color showcase, handmade edition.
: I once worked weekly at a family farm for twenty years. Not an animal farm: more land, gardens, landscaped pastures and fields, ponds to trim, firewood to cut, split and haul inside all through the winter. It kept me in some money. There were families, couples, who once upon a time also kept a handyman around their property if they could afford one. Susan sometimes came with me and we put up the family Christmas tree for them, decorated it and took it down. Somewhere along the line I wrote a poem, like this one (or another book: Farm Hand) about being there. Decorated by me and designed, handmade in less than 30 copies.
2010. Jeffery Beam. Me Moving. A three color fold-out booklet of poems with wrap around band.
: Jeffery is always nearby. His poetry, life, charm, book love and all is one we share. Now and again he'll get it in his head to send me a group of poems and every time (so far) they hit the mark and we handmake a booklet for him. He returns by sending hungry readers and collectors wanting his publications. It's win-win with Bob, Susan and Jeffery.
2010. John Bennett. Dancing Dancing On The Wind. In three-color fold out performance. Pamphlet
: when I was young and starting out
editing and printing mimeograph publications John Bennett was one of my
heroes. He worked, seemingly on thin air, out in Washington state,
churning issue after issue out of Vagabond. They were homemade
supreme; something dangerous and exhilarating about every issue. Poets
in the issues were either top grain rebels or just part of the crew, but
everything in the issues throbbed and gristled. Great stuff for a
twenty year old to dream over. Disregard, some, after awhile; and keep
to the editor John Bennett who always wrote the tough~love poem or
story. It was easy as pie after all those years to ask John to send me a
bunch of poems and let me make a booklet for him. Finally.
2010. John Bradley What Is Borne: In three-color fold out performance. Pamphlet
: John Bradley has one of the most caring voices in modern poetry. It's no surprise to me his son became a man of the cloth. We have now published three or it may be four booklets by John, ranging from Hiroshima and modern era polemics, to a sheaf of poems on Henry Ford and his time, and a travelogue by John while in Turkey. He just wrote a letter to me this morning describing how he was fleshing out a new piece on Billy the Kid, and would send it if he thought it was up to snuff. I asked him to send it to me, please, snuff or not.
2010. Rolf Dieter Brinkmann / translated by Mark Terrill. Under Glass. A tall three-color foldout folio . New and limited edition
: Mark marches on with Longhouse and another booklet of his translations (the third) — this one from the wild card of Europe Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, which would later go into a full collection of poems by Brinkmann all translated by Mark. His personal bibliography is revealing an outstanding and rich text of his own poems, prose poems, literary essays, book reviews and the translations of modern German poets. Tap the source.
2010. Pam Brown, Sentimental. In three-color fold out performance. Pamphlet
: Australian Pam Brown came to us through her love, amongst many things, of old home architecture and of course poetry, which she is good at. I have a sneaky feeling it was Pam who brought my work and Longhouse to the attention of John Tranter, who then carried it a bit further in the original treasury called Jacket. Pam's poems speak in unsentimental grandeur and grace one poem entwined here to the other.
2010. Alvaro Cardona-Hine. Little Songs to Sing While Singing. A three color fold-out booklet of poems with wrap around band. With art work by the poet and artist Alvaro Cardona-Hine
: Alvaro lives with his wife Barbara, both painters, high on a crest in New Mexico. Neither are of the wealthy New Mexico art life, unless you consider wealthy as living long and beautifully. I long ago discovered Alvaro's poetry via Scribners and Alan Swallow. In my hands I knew I had something. The books even seemed to want to disappear with their humility and tenderness. When Alvaro and I met by mail, books were exchanged like we all often do, and then a painting was sent inscribed to us both. I hung that up right above where I handmake all these booklets. "it is time / to exist" indeed.
2010. Tom Clark. Jim Carroll.
"A poet departs, too soon, and there is a void that will not be
filled. From somewhere deep and old the tears well up in the dark
night.When I met Jim in 1967 he was seventeen. He had been leading a
triple life: high school All-American basketball star, heroin addict/
street hustler, poet." -- Tom Clark, The above is from Tom Clark's wee
memoir of Jim Carroll newly published from Longhouse for the Spring
Equinox 2010. With photographs by Bill Berkson, Mary K. Greer, and
Beatrice Murch. In glossy photographic wraps, hand sewn in four colors.
Ready to be slipped into your back pocket, or anyone's. Tom Clark was
born in Chicago 1941. Man of letters in poetry, prose, biography and the
fine art of proper blogging . A graduate of the University of Michigan,
he then attended Cambridge University and University of Essex before
returning to the United States in 1967. A long time resident of the
American west, he makes his home with Angelica in Berkeley, California.
This is Tom's second Longhouse publication along with "Single" -
Longhouse, 2009.
: there is too much disturbance to this passionate testimonial in its publishing history that I'll just let it rest that someone, someday, will find the correspondence, and the emails, and what even appeared, unfortunately, concerning the book, on some blogs and make something of it all. The book remains in print because like all good things — like baseball and blues music — it's good to have around. That joyous front cover photograph of woolen cap JC is by Mary K. Greer. And like Mary, Bill Berkson was kind enough to provide a younger Jim Carroll photograph on location (New York) for the back cover.
2010. Cid Corman. A Language Without Words.
First published by Byways 6, 1972 : Gerry Loose, Essex, UK. Our ever
thanks for Gerry to reprint & bring this one back into the fold. A
three color fold-out booklet of poems with wrap around band.
: Gerry Loose in the UK in 1972 first published these poems in a small booklet he regretted was long out of print and one day told me so. So I asked him if he would send me the poems and see if we could republish the poems and bring everything back to life. Not too difficult with Cid, simply keep watering. The plant roots are both shallow and deep. Gerry was more than happy to see his original "Byways" publication re-appear.
2010. Ray Di Palma. House of Keys. In three-color fold out performance. Pamphlet.
:Ray sent this manuscript, unsolicited, one summer day and being like a scorcher today, we set right forth and printed it all before nightfall. Hidden in the shade of fine poetry and art work by Ray. We stay in contact at all times via a mutual love for old films, great books and some other friends Ray has brought to us with his guiding hands at knowing often what works where the best. That's a handler, some call it a teacher.
2010. George Evans. The Precise Moment At Which, For Victor Jara . 4-1/4 x 5-1/2. Three color small broadside / card. Ideal for framing.
: a rare item, not even shown! from
the sturdy historical hands of George Evans. We both have a passion for
the late and great Chilean singer Victor Jara, murdered in the Pinochet
Junta era, so this poem was like between two homes. I can't more highly
recommend George's books of poems. All of them floating out there in the
sphere of just too good to be lost.
2010. Donna Fleischer. Twinkle, Twinkle . A three color fold-out booklet of poems with wrap around band.
: Donna's first, and it won't be here last, show at Longhouse. Nicely crafted and spoken to the page poems of wonder, right there in the title. We found for the original wrap a see-thru yellow paper stock, that was later replaced with an entirely different red. If you don't fall in love with that first poem on the title page, I'm a monkey's uncle.
2010. Walter Franceschi . A Good Idea. A three color fold-out booklet of poems with wrap around band.
: Walter's second Longhouse booklet. You see I read that "Koan" on the title page (where I put it for good reason) and was hooked. The rest of the poems just kept coming and coming and I flicked them left and right down the foldout page. In Italy, Walter commutes by train. On the train, unknown to most on the passengers, poems are getting seen and composed.
2010. Gloria Frym. from Mind Over Water. A tall three-color foldout folio
: we met Gloria Frym, briefly, at the first Lorine Niedecker Festival in Milwaukee. That was in 2003. The poems here arrived after we touched base during the Origin, sixth series I was collecting and editing, and a booklet quickly formed "with poetry / which fits in the palm".
2010. Merrill Gilfillan. Treehouse Haibun. In three-color fold out performance. Pamphlet.
: I've been reading Merrill Gilfillan for a long time, as many have, we're lucky. The books quietly appear and quietly rest on our shelves and the poems or prose is never forgotten. It was Ray Di Palma, an old friend of Merrill's who gave me his address to finally contact him for a pair of booklets we'd bring out over the next year. One friend following another friend down the path.
2010. Michael Hettich. More Than Gratitude . In three-color fold out performance. Pamphlet.
:there are two photographs for this booklet. Colleen, Michael's wife, liked one better than the other, so we obliged and used both. The poems remained unchanged and content right where they set, much the way Michael is, making less demands on anyone and more into his poems which have a capacity to take off into imaginative storytelling.
2010. Brooks Johnson. the people of the state of illinois vs brooks johnson . In three-color fold out performance. Pamphlet.
: Brooks, yes, is the son of Kent
Johnson, and a poetry rough rider anarchist of a sort. He, with a small
gang of fellow travelers, once took on the Poetry Foundation in Chicago,
which made for interesting good and bad press for everyone. A lover of
Cesar Vallejo, Brooks lives up to some of what the master may have asked
of him.
2010. George Kalamaras. Mingus Mingus Mingus . In three-color fold out performance. Pamphlet.
: of the many of George Kalamras's loves, music is up there, along with western USA lore, India, surrealism, the work of Robert Kelly, and beagles. The poems collected in this booklet are all jazz players in poem portraits by George thriving to the strum of the beat.
2010. John Latta. A Year (Days Off). In three-color fold out performance. Pamphlet.
: for at least a year I was turning daily to John Latta's poems on his blog and collecting myself inside the rhythm and intelligence of his world. This is a clutch of such poems, dedicated to Kent Johnson and all things wildly caught between book covers. The list of authors and thinkers he catches in his galaxy net is becoming.
2010. Dudley Laufman. Scything . A tall three-color foldout folio . New and limited edition
: Dudley is now 81 years old this year and remains constant at the two or three worlds he has long inhabited: fiddling, poetry, and rural ways. He was at Newport when Dylan was making some early trouble there (Dudley was fiddling with a band) and for decades later has fiddled and called contra dances, read his poem publicly with many poets, and kept a small sustained homestead in the Craftsbury region of New Hampshire. It was a pleasure to finally get some of Dudley's rural stories, characters, narratives, poetry into a booklet to share. "Jacqueline" is his wife, fiddling partner, and anchor.
2010. John Levy. Research Regarding Poetry and Driving. A half dozen new prose poems, some first published in U.K., (Stride) and here at Longhouse on the Longhouse Birdhouse. In three-color fold out performance.
: John is showing up this time with a booklet of prose poems. The third in a series of Longhouse booklets that range from a short story, to a collection of poems, and now the prose poems, often quite humorous.
2010. Ed Markowski. A Chinese Box . A tall three-color foldout folio.
: I love this story. I did when I
first read it as something shared between Ed and I, then I thought how
good this would be to share with others, and wouldn't it be something if
we could get it all to behave and fit into one of our booklets. It did
so. Starting from working in an auto plant in Michigan and then out and
free with a girl at the time, the open road, and even a stop over at the
Naropa Institute, and soon enough jail.
2010. Joseph Massey. Mock Orange . A three color fold-out booklet of poems with wrap around band.
: by now we have published three or four of Joe Massey's small foldout booklets. Each one comes along with a small but mighty contingent of faithful readers asking for a copy, Joe hid out somewhere in northern California making-do, with occasional pleas from him to send a booklet here and yonder. We got a thing going.
2010. Marcia Roberts. Collagraphs. A tall three-color foldout folio
: Marcia Roberts has had three books of poems published by Skanky Possum or Effing Press, both out of hot-stuff Texas. Have a look at these fine presses. We were able to further the Marcia run in Origin, 6th series and later came a generous book of poems What She Knew from BlazeVox. Marcia lives with her family in San Antonio where one senses the Texas space here in Collagraphs.
2010. Norman Schaeffer. Little Sierra Nevada Poems . A three color fold-out booklet of poems with wrap around band. With photograph by Kevin Garner, looking from Lone Pine to Mt. Whitney.
: this is the first of two booklets we especially enjoyed making with Norman from first his years of hiking the high crest of the Sierra Nevada, to later love poems at home in the Pacific Northwest. It wasn't easy paring the Sierra poems down to an essential backpack duty, but here it is. They each resonate with a scope of mountains and rivers and rising heights. The love poems are coming up. . .
2010. Andrew Schelling. Arapaho Songbook II . A three color fold-out booklet of poems with wrap around band.
: Andrew's part-two to the world of Arapaho, equally as balanced and arrow-flight as the first booklet.
2010. David Shapiro. "To THE EARTH or A LAST POEM" . Love Thy Poet Spring Equinox 2010. Three color 4-1/4 x 6 postcard suitable for framing or slipping into the mail.
: it turns out this passage comes out of a poem already published by the poet but how we've presented it here on a postcard (not yet recognizing it came out of an earlier poem) it lives a whole other existence. Since it was sent to us by David this way, we go this way.
2010. Daniel Smith. Fatherland . New poems from this midwest farmer & poet detailing generations of hardwork and earned abilities, plus pulling up stakes from one long term family farm in Illinois for Wisconsin. In three-color fold out performance.
: well heeled poems out of a midwest farm family. Dan works the soil and his poems with the same ingredient of care and understanding. The father of poet Austin Smith, the family has within the last few years re-located farm and life to Wisconsin where Dan holds a steady hand between the farm work and the poems that call.
2010. Simon Vinkenoog / Translations by Gerard Bellaart, Frederique Berringer, Louise Landes Levi & Hans Plomp and afterword by Louise Landes Levi. SIMON VINKENOOG poems: 1950-2006 A three color fold-out booklet of poems with wrap around band.
: with an afterword by Louise Landes Levi who also sent some of the poems our way, along with artist and Cold Turkey Press extraordinaire Gerard Bellaart, an eventual small selected poems was made for the legendary bohemian from Amsterdam who passed away a year earlier. All tribute.
2010. Vassilis Zambaras. IN CREDIBLE EVIDENCE . A three color fold-out booklet of poems with wrap around band.
: long ago, when he was living in the Northwest, we published Vassilis in our early pages of Longhouse and other publications — so it was more than good to have him back to bring forth a short booklet of many poems which we sent to him in his homeland of Greece.
© 2012 Longhouse, Publishers and Booksellers
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http://www.longhousepoetry.com/bibliography3b.html
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Longhouse Bibliography:
http://www.longhousepoetry.com/bibliography1.html
http://www.longhousepoetry.com/bibliography2.html
http://www.longhousepoetry.com/bibliography3.html
http://www.longhousepoetry.com/bibliography1.html
http://www.longhousepoetry.com/bibliography2.html
http://www.longhousepoetry.com/bibliography3.html
http://www.longhousepoetry.com/bibliography3b.html
Saturday, December 29, 2012
CLARK COOLIDGE ~
A FELT SUCCESS
Learn how to put things will you? the pencil
won't stop probing miracles occur down the tube
ink in your shoes through a flatter hat you couldn't
run a whole airplane lost in the Atlantic
Never to be done again the Pacific gleaming
put on orange pants for trawler duty
there's something in the learning glass apparently
peppermint will improve you Palmer Method
she's alive but she's a mess torque you see
that's an idea an alum shield the duration
THUD somebody's here the pain will kill her
the blood will hurt a lot very much can't stand it
the survivors stood on a shutter while the sun
made with the steady blinks and moved multitudes
READ ONCE
Put on this wig and fiddle with those bottles
weak hands in a vast landscape resultant
the effect of certain chests see if you can
set this safe a potpourri of betters
there are certain Houdinis obstacles here
the pen flows where the brain cramps
the city blows only the museum remains
a laying-on of wee surprises use no orioles
there are other-colored collars statistical fillings
moldings of the Gold Octet those boys
occupational blizzards at cop-out speed were you
a Nazarene? a localizer bittersweet fat port
the fog is a washout come home
no matter the obstacle falls come
DOWN AT GRANNY'S CAVE
Anyone interested in art is welcome to shoot up the place
auto mechanics washing down church sides
an iron clock interrupts the grammar lesson
thumbtacks in the coffee you better listen
a split second blink could do it kill some
too few downturns in your m's pouting over
a box loading operation some temper with your tunes?
reflections in the snow? nobody'll ever
you mean it? lot of stone too much telephone
yellowjackets as a coat nightmare as a lock
then only a peck of lemons nobody cares where you are
the eve of optics Orlando Cepeda knows
The Shadow stirs losses all around
the creek turns into a reservoir and explodes
THINK THIS
You don't understand from now on
we'll have grey fun lodged in the skull
it seemed a mind or violin frog?
real striper teacher a car cheat
the clearance to admire sheer doors
the rest suspended by naked strands
couldn't make up their minds was it
a home or a gallery they lived in?
a most tiring mist had come over them
so they attended bed turned off all that stuff
had been speaking the wrong language all their lives
please sharpen those the basement is full of Serbs
I'm positive as wrong as I've been
the field is full of notes not dates
CLARK COOLIDGE
88 SONNETS
Fence Books, 2012
clark coolidge
when he played drums for
serpent power
(1967)
A FELT SUCCESS
Learn how to put things will you? the pencil
won't stop probing miracles occur down the tube
ink in your shoes through a flatter hat you couldn't
run a whole airplane lost in the Atlantic
Never to be done again the Pacific gleaming
put on orange pants for trawler duty
there's something in the learning glass apparently
peppermint will improve you Palmer Method
she's alive but she's a mess torque you see
that's an idea an alum shield the duration
THUD somebody's here the pain will kill her
the blood will hurt a lot very much can't stand it
the survivors stood on a shutter while the sun
made with the steady blinks and moved multitudes
READ ONCE
Put on this wig and fiddle with those bottles
weak hands in a vast landscape resultant
the effect of certain chests see if you can
set this safe a potpourri of betters
there are certain Houdinis obstacles here
the pen flows where the brain cramps
the city blows only the museum remains
a laying-on of wee surprises use no orioles
there are other-colored collars statistical fillings
moldings of the Gold Octet those boys
occupational blizzards at cop-out speed were you
a Nazarene? a localizer bittersweet fat port
the fog is a washout come home
no matter the obstacle falls come
DOWN AT GRANNY'S CAVE
Anyone interested in art is welcome to shoot up the place
auto mechanics washing down church sides
an iron clock interrupts the grammar lesson
thumbtacks in the coffee you better listen
a split second blink could do it kill some
too few downturns in your m's pouting over
a box loading operation some temper with your tunes?
reflections in the snow? nobody'll ever
you mean it? lot of stone too much telephone
yellowjackets as a coat nightmare as a lock
then only a peck of lemons nobody cares where you are
the eve of optics Orlando Cepeda knows
The Shadow stirs losses all around
the creek turns into a reservoir and explodes
THINK THIS
You don't understand from now on
we'll have grey fun lodged in the skull
it seemed a mind or violin frog?
real striper teacher a car cheat
the clearance to admire sheer doors
the rest suspended by naked strands
couldn't make up their minds was it
a home or a gallery they lived in?
a most tiring mist had come over them
so they attended bed turned off all that stuff
had been speaking the wrong language all their lives
please sharpen those the basement is full of Serbs
I'm positive as wrong as I've been
the field is full of notes not dates
CLARK COOLIDGE
88 SONNETS
Fence Books, 2012
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