AMEN ~

photo : rolling stone

PETALS ~

Once In Vermont Films © bob arnold

FOLKLESS ~

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/may/23/moma-needless-act-destruction/








http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/arts/design/defending-the-former-american-folk-art-museum-building.html?pagewanted=all 

BLOSSOMING ~

drawing © bob arnold

springtime '13

COUNTRY GIRL ~
 

Now and then I loose my mind and can pleasantly landslide with my emotions at such beautiful writing — I've had this happen reading Yeats The Celtic Twilight, Synge's Aran Island book, James Stephens, Crock of Gold, Patrick Kavanagh's The Green Fool, and now Edna O'Brien's Country Girl. What do you know, they're all Irish. 


The O'Brien memoir has just been released in the U.S., a spring foal, and I can't help but think it's an immediate age old classic. A book to own, a book to pass down, a book to gift to a young woman or daughter, or graduate. Yourself.


 This book must be read to be believed. I'm only 80 or so pages into the life story and having read O'Brien all my life I'm fairly confident she is going to handle this into a masterpiece — mostso with those early childhood years tucked away in Ireland. I'm only 80 pages and days picking the book up and setting it down, taking it with us on drives, read two more chapters between stacking firewood — I don't want the book to ever end! so I'm taking my sweet old time. A few sentences can satisfy the reader for a whole day. I call that poetry.

______________________________________

"The first book that I recall holding in my hand was a cloth book with pictures and a rhyme:

Hey diddle diddle

The cat and the fiddle,

The cow jumped over the moon,

The little dog laughed

To see such sport,

And the dish ran away with the spoon.

The letters, tall and painted, were like the painted pillars of a house that would never tumble.

Sitting on my mother's lap, smelling her smell, feeling the itch from the wool of her cardigan, the particular heave of her chest, I studied every feature of her face, which was so beautiful to me, except for the forehead, a map of wrinkles, and on that map I wrote my first words, in praise of her."

 

[a little further on in the same chapter titled "Books"]

"I would go out to the fields to write. The words ran away with me. I would write imaginary stories, stories set in our bog and our kitchen garden, but it was not enough, because I wanted to get inside them, in the same way as I was trying to get back into the maw of my mother. Everything about her intrigued me: her body, her being, her pink corset, her fads, and the obsessions to which she was prone. One was about a little silver spoon from a set of six that she had had since her honeymoon. They were kept in a velvet-lined case, the velvet faded and milky, and they were once loaned to the vocational school when dignitaries were coming for a function. However, when the case was returned, there was one spoon missing, and my mother got on her bicycle and went in high dudgeon to the school. There was a thorough search, in drawers, in cupboards, under tables, in the pantry, in two bins, and in the turf shed. Inquiries were sent all over the village, but somehow my mother knew in her bones that she would never see that spoon again, and she never forgave it. She was convinced that she knew who had taken it, a shopkeeper who was jealous of our semi-grandeur, and ever after there was a coolness between them.

When, much later, I wrote about my mother, that preoccupation with her had intensified so that she permeated all worlds — Her mother was the cupboard with all the things in it, the tabernacle with God in it, the lake with the legends in it, the sea with the oysters and the corpses, a realm into which she longed to vanish forever."

Country Girl
Edna O'Brien
Little, Brown 2013

WOODBURNER ~

One of the best books summing-up the life and music of Lightnin' Hopkins

by the late Timothy O' Brien from the University of Houston (the city was Lightnin's stomping ground) 

and musician and writer David Ensminger

Mojo Hand

University of Texas Press (2013)

FOREVER YOUNG ~

This book became an immediate bible for me when read years ago and it's a delight to see Jac Holzman has not slowed down one-step since the early 1950s. For all of us who grew up cherishing, coveting, sharing Elektra LPs and all the great acts on those albums, here's to Jac Holzman and Paul Rothchild and others.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/business/media/miss-the-music-of-the-doors-theres-an-ipad-app-for-that.html

Follow the Music
 Jac Holzman & Gavan Daws
First Media, 2000

TROUBADOUR ~

BOB BROZMAN

 (March 8, 1954 – April 23, 2013) 

 American guitarist and ethnomusicologist

DISCOGRAPHY ~

    Blue Hula Stomp (1981)
    Snapping the Strings (1983)
    Hello Central...Give Me Dr. Jazz (1985)
    Devil's Slide (1988)
    A Truckload of Blues (1992)
    Slide A Go-Go (1994)
    Blues 'Round the Bend (1995)
    Golden Slide (1997)
    Kika Kila Meets Ki Ho'Alu (with Ledward Kaapana) (1997)
    Kosmik Blues & Groove (1998)
    The Running Man (1999)
    Four Hands Sweet & Hot (with Cyril Pahinui) (1999)
    Tone Poems III (with David Grisman and Mike Auldridge) (2000)
    Get Together (2000)
    Jin Jin/Firefly (with Takashi Hirayasu) (2000)
    Live Now (2001)
    Nankuru Naisa (with Takashi Hirayasu) (2001)
    In The Saddle (with Ledward Kaapana) (2001)
    Digdig" (with René Lacaille) (2002)
    Rolling Through This World (with Jeff Lang) (2002)
    Mahima (with Debashish Bhattacharya) (2003)
    Metric Time (2003)
    Songs of the Volcano (2005)
    Blues Reflex (2006)
    Ocean Blues (with Djeli Moussa Diawara) (2006)
    Lumiere (2007)
    Post-Industrial Blues (2007)
    Kani Wai (with George Kahumoku Jr) (2009)
    Six Days in Down (with Dónal O'Connor & John McSherry) (2010)
    Fire in the Mind (2012)

QUICK QUESTION ~









Words To That Effect
 


The drive down was smooth

but after we arrived things started to go haywire,

first one thing and then another. The days

scudded past like tumbleweed, slow then fast,

then slow again. The sky was sweet and plain.

You remember how still it was then,

a season putting its arms into a coat and staying unwrapped

for a long, a little time.



It was during the week we talked about deforestation.

How sad that everything has to change,

yet what a relief, too! Otherwise we'd only have

looking forward to look forward to.

The moment would be a bud

that never filled, only persevered

in a static trance, before it came to be no more.



We'd walked a little way in our shoes.

I was sure you'd remember how it had been

the other time, before the messenger came to your door

and seemed to want to peer in and size up the place.

So each evening became a forbidden morning

of thunder and curdled milk, though the invoices

got forwarded and birds settled on the periphery.







 

Northeast Building




I tell myself I'm a minimalist.

Not that it matters to the big guns

who train their sights on us,

who also know about tomorrow and their brothers,

and  had a pretty good run. It would be that time

in the future, that was predicted. The wearing of boater hats

had become fairly commonplace, like going to the park.

Children ran errands while adults went to the movies.

There were more sights along the strand than at first

imagined. Nobody ever heard of an alternative

to these dingy, then bright vignettes.

We slept well and fell into an uneasy dialogue,

like the United States and Canada. Then mild everything.



The runner is already here,

has been for some time, awaiting instructions.

If it was my turn I'd go, but since that is

out of the question, I'll merely keep my counsel,

looking for some converted to preach to.

The other thing, your happiness program, fits in

with the recent trend for self-expression. All in good time.

Why is parting, then, permitted?




______________________________


JOHN ASHBERY
Quick Question
(Ecco 2012)

photo : guy maddin

New from Longhouse ~

 Saeb Tabrizi (1601-1670)

The Garden of Amazement 

translated by Reza Saberi and Robin Magowan
Sixteen poemsThree color foldout format

 

$12 postpaid, US addresses
Please inquire as to international orders
poetry@sover.net

Available from
 Longhouse
 PO Box 2454
West Brattleboro, Vermont
 05303 

 credit card or check ~

Buy now through Paypal with this link for domestic addresses
Please inquire as to international orders

The Garden of Amazement

Unsigned $12.00 USD    Signed $17.00 USD

 

EARTH ~

The Searchers




We didn't ask for any help

where we worked in the woods

along the river and we worked

steadily for weeks on end, no

one ever came by to visit or to

lend a hand, except for a stranger

who said he was a rock hound, he

hunted for precious rocks, and he

was curious to investigate our river

land where we worked, even showed

us special containers where his findings

shimmered, and since we were working

on the damage caused by a flood we in-

visited him down with us and continued our

woodcutting huge driftwood trees, as he

drifted off, young with shaved head bent

searching and dreaming as miners do




 ________________________

BOB ARNOLD
Beautiful Days
Longhouse 2013






photo © bob arnold

LITTLE BIRD ~

Steve Young

Born in Newnan, Georgia in 1942, Steve Young grew up in Alabama, Georgia and Texas, moving from place to place as his family searched for work. By the time he had completed high school, Young was playing and writing songs that incorporated influences of folk, blues, country and gospel that he absorbed while traveling throughout the South. In the late 60s he worked with Van Dyke Parks and was member of the psychedelic country band Stone Country. He has played with innumerable music legends and written songs for as many, and somehow, successfully, has kept himself in his own good graces.

Discography

1969     Rock Salt & Nails    
1972     Seven Bridges Road    
1975     Honky Tonk Man
1976     Renegade Picker     48
1978     No Place to Fall    
1981     To Satisfy You    
1984     Old Memories    
1986     Look Homeward Angel    
1990     Long Time Rider    
1991     Solo/Live    
1993     Switchblades of Love    
2000     Primal Young    
2005     Songlines Revisited Volume One    
2007     Stories Round the Horseshoe Bend   

MAY DAYS ~

  

Prose poem fables with over 125 color photographs 
from 40 years in Vermont and travels in North America

"Song To Sing While Hiking The River

Your body and soul should be the same after a thrashing summer rain as you go to the river to swim and then again for a second helpin’, how the mud roils and broils, tangles and flows you dip once, dip twice, no matter what’s in your mind the river goes bringing down current from village, farm and field anything that will tip over, budge and yield, while the fish will surprise you with a leap & a flap in their natural ruffle habitat." 

Bob Arnold

This Secret Handshake

____________________________________

New and available now from Longhouse ~

112 pages. 2013. Perfect bound softcover, $22 postpaid

____________________________________

Use Paypal!

for easy ordering — $22 includes s/h (U.S. addressses)

all orders may be made by Paypal, credit card or check ~

please link here for international orders inquiry, or mail order here:

Longhouse, PO Box 2454, West Brattleboro, Vermont 05303

EARTH ~

GOAT SONGS


Something sacred
Has occurred
If an old scarred goatherd
Of a youth
Has broken bread with me
And told me how
The moon goes,
And admired
My river wood.






GOAT SONGS


What the full moon does
For the sunflowers
Is more
Than they do for the moon
Though
They are brothers.






GOAT SONGS


After dreadful winter
I discover
Frogs stitch it up.






GOAT SONGS


Either the wet creek-wood sticks
In the fire or people outside
Whistle and sing.






GOAT SONGS


Traveller approaching.
No. Moonlight on sunflower leaves.
Welcome him.






GOAT SONGS


I hate these nights
When tulip tree leaves
Crack the pavement
And are not
Footsteps,
And the leggy puss
Will not come in
Because her son is here,
And the lonely are always dispersing
And their lights going out.






GOAT SONGS


The eye at the window
Is only night-bug.
Why did you ride away
In tears? I only
Said the amaryllis there
By the window
Is beautiful.






GOAT SONGS


The first lightning-bug!
How many mint-eating nights
Without your coming?






GOAT SONGS


Old moon
It is nice that you are
Sharp underneath
Soft topped.
Be slow going
Like an old white horse.
Come back some times
Come snorting, thick-thighed
Over snow hills.






GOAT SONGS


While I write these
Fat little birds
Type upon the snow.






GOAT SONGS


The horse with the sunflower eye:
Sinuous with bone
In three-ring breeze.
Clowning.






GOAT SONGS


A no-moon night
I stand by the gate
And then by the fire
And then by the gate,
White skull of black horse
Watching.
Let it burn.






GOAT SONGS


Three evening primroses
Opposite new stars
Show up.
In the pines
Across creek
Some small animal
Dies crying.
Falls and wind.
Sing on.
I stir the fire. 





_______________________________________________

from Goat Songs, 1970
Ray Drew is not the defensive end for the University of Georgia Bulldogs

WORKERS OF THE WORLD ~

Tears and Rage as Hope Fades in Bangladesh

(excerpt)

"The Rana Plaza building contained five garment factories, employing more than 3,000 workers, who were making clothing for European and American consumers. Labor activists, citing customs records, company Web sites or labels discovered in the wreckage, say that the factories produced clothing for JC Penney; Cato Fashions; Benetton; Primark, the low-cost British store chain; and other retailers. 

Everywhere near the building, the stench of death was overpowering. Men in surgical masks sprayed disinfectant in the air. Others sprayed air freshener. At one point, the police said, searches inside the structure were suspended because some rescuers were overcome by dust and the odor of decomposing bodies.

Savar is a crowded industrial suburb of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, and the disaster has overwhelmed local institutions. A high school near Rana Plaza is now a staging ground for the identification of corpses. Nazma Begum, 25, stood beside a crude coffin that contained the remains of her sister, Shamima. She was standing guard over it until her father arrived to take the sister back to their home village to be buried. Sticks of burning incense had been wedged into the coffin to fight the awful smell. 

“I had hoped that my sister was still alive,” she said softly. “But that hope is now shattered.” 

Like so many young women in the country, the two sisters had gotten work in garment factories to help support their families. Ms. Begum makes about $85 a month; her sister made $56. Now Ms. Begum wants to quit her job. She has heard rumors that the building where she works is unsafe."

Jim Yardley

The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/world/asia/after-building-collapse-tears-and-rage-as-hope-fades-in-bangladesh.html?hp

update:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/world/asia/bangladesh-garment-industry-reliant-on-flimsy-oversight.html?hp

C'EST CHIC! ~

ann-margret

TRUST NOT APPEARANCES ~

James Joyce

___________________

AMDG

There is nothing so deceptive and for [all] that so alluring as a good surface. The sea, when beheld in the warm sunlight of a summer's day; the sky, blue in the faint and amber glimmer of an Autumn sun, are pleasing to the eye: but, how different the scene, when the wild anger of the elements has waked again the discord of Confusion, how different the ocean, choking with froth & foam, to the calm, placid sea, that glanced and rippled merrily in the sun. But the best examples of the fickleness of appearances are: — Man and Fortune. The cringing, servile look; the high and haughty mien alike conceal the worthlessness of the character. Fortune that glittering bauble, whose brilliant shimmer has allured and trifled with both proud and poor, is as wavering as the wind. Still however, there is a 'something' that tells us the character of man. It is the eye. The only traitor that even the sternest will of a fiendish villian [sic] cannot overcome. It is the eye that reveals to man the guilt or innocence, the vices or the virtues of the soul. This is the only exception to the proverb. 'Trust not appearances'. In every other case the real worth has to be searched for. The garb of royalty or of democracy are but the shadow that a 'man' leaves behind him. 'Oh! how unhappy is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours'. The fickle tide of ever-changing Fortune brings with it — good and evil. How beautiful it seems as the harbinger of good and how cruel as the messenger of ill! The man who waits on the temper of a King is but a tiny craft in that great ocean. Thus we see the hallowness of appearances. The hypocrite is the worst kind of villian [sic] yet under the appearance of virtue he conceals the worst of vices. The friend, who is but the fane of fortune, fawns and grovells [sic] at the feet of wealth. But the man, who has no ambition, no wealth, no luxury save Contentment cannot hide the joy of happiness that flows from a clear conscience & an easy mind.

LDS. 

__________________

AMDG:  Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam: 'To the greater glory of God', the Jesuit motto conventionally placed at the beginning of a pupil's essay, along with LDS, Laus Deo Semper: Please to God forever', at its end.

(This dates from Joyce's student years at Belvedere College, 1893-8. The college is a private Jesuit secondary school for boys located on Great Denmark Street, Dublin, Ireland)

JAMES KOLLER ~

James Koller photo by Donald Guravitch

An interview & poems by James Koller ~

http://riverpineanthologyofcivicdiscourse.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/james-koller-crows-talk-to-him/

New from Longhouse ~

$10 postpaid, US addresses
Please inquire as to international orders
poetry@sover.net

Available from
 Longhouse
 PO Box 2454
West Brattleboro, Vermont
 05303 

 credit card or check ~

Buy now through Paypal with this link for domestic addresses.

Our Waves

Unsigned $10.00 USD    Signed $17.00 USD