DOORYARD ~

We had snow this morning. It stuck. I awoke and peeked from the bed through our broad windows and I could see what looked like white blossoms on the trees. I thought, just maybe, I had slept through winter and it was the first of spring and the shad trees were again blooming like they did in our dooryard . . .

. . . melted by noon

photo © susan arnold

6 am

MALCOLM RITCHIE - Two New Booklets from Longhouse

Text & photographs by the author

Each of the two booklets published by Longhouse shown here contain a chapter selected from Malcolm Ritchie's recently completed (unpublished) memoir, The Crows of Gravity.



"A Village at the End of Culture is a cameo from our three-and-a-half year sojourn in the remote farming/fishing village of Sora, on the Japan Sea coast.  It describes our realization that what we were experiencing and witnessing was the last living breath of a profound culture still lived at the cradle of its birth in the cultivation of rice, and under the tutelage of its ancient gods.  The fragile survival of a holistic way of life, somehow still extant, but fast disappearing with the demise of the aged inhabitants of Sora and its neighbouring communities.  A way of living which expresses the true definition of the term ‘culture’ with its roots in the Latin cultura and its meaning of ‘cultivation’ – connection with the natural environment and the seasonal cycles, and its association with cultus, to worship.  The loss of a meaningful life being hastened by the ravening appetites of Western materialism/consumerism and its global markets, which had already transformed mainstream Japanese culture and distorted its traditional cultural mind-set."

Use Paypal to Order Malcolm Ritchie's
 A Village at the End of Culture ~

You choose! Includes S/H

Unsigned to US Addresses $12.00 USD    Unsigned to International $15.00 USD    Signed to US Addresses $15.00 USD    Signed to International $17.00 USD

Text & photographs by the author

"Encounter with the Great Mother recounts my experience with the psychotropic plant ayahuasca, referred to as Mother Ayahuasca by the peoples of the Amazonian rainforest, and worked with as a sacramental medicine in their sacred ceremonies.  It describes my encounter with a profound intelligence which spoke to me both cosmically, and with a deep knowledge, or seeming familiarity with my own individual psyche – the compassionate heart/mind of the planet we are in the habit of calling, while forgetting the truth of, ‘Mother Earth’."

Use Paypal to Order Malcolm Ritchie's 
Encounter with the Great Mother ~

You choose! Includes S/H

Unsigned to US Addresses $12.00 USD    Unsigned to International $15.00 USD    Signed to US Addresses $15.00 USD    Signed to International $17.00 USD

MILITARY MIGHT ~

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/us/reports-of-military-sexual-assault-rise-sharply.html?hp

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175769/tomgram%3A_ann_jones%2C_silent_soldiers%2C_the_losers_from_our_lost_wars/#more

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/nov/21/arendt-eichmann-new-truth/ 

SUCCINCT ~

Poems by the ancients, translations, world wide poets, many famous, beautifully stylized and form-fitted to the page
 from WH Auden in modern times to Louis Zukofsky

 plus ~

Gary Hotham, Ce Rosenow, John Phillips, Bill Knott, Ted Kooser, Ann Deagon, Jeffery Beam, John Brandi, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Ciaran Carson,  Jim Clark, Thomas A. Clark, Cid Corman, J.V. Cunningham, Bill Deemer, Claudia Emerson, Robert Francis, Jack Gilbert, Jonathan Greene, Sam Hamill, Stephen Holt, Joseph Hutchison, Thomas Johnson, William Kloefkorn, George Ella Lyon, Jeff Daniel Marion, John Martone, Michael McFee, Thomas McGrath, Paula Meehan, Samuel Menashe, Ruth Moose, John Montague, Robert Morgan, Adam Morton, Lisel Mueller, Les Murray, Mike O' Connor, Alexis Rotella, R.M. Ryan, Steve Sanfield, Norman Schaffer,  Jack Sharpless, Paul Curry Steele, James Still, Joseph Stroud, Richard Taylor, William Thompson, Charles Tomlinson, James L. Weil, Robert West,  Jonathan Williams, Miller Williams, Joe Zaratonello, Isabel Zuber, Fred Chappell, Bob Arnold, William Harmon, Albert Goldbarth, George Garrett, Louis Bourgeois, R.L. Barth, Max Albern.

Since the majority of anthologies are devoted to strictly name poets, or those-in-the-know at the moment, I thought I'd skip the many known poets as I one-finger-type-out each 'other name' poet with my right hand as the left hand holds the book open. There is no table of contents. There is a well thought out balance in the book between renown and elsewhere.

However, if a poem is good, resonates, nourishes, it is all by itself renown.

Succinct

The Broadstone Anthology of Short Poems

edited by Jonathan Greene & Robert West

Broadstone Books

418 Ann Street

Frankfort, Kentucky

40601-1929

ANN DEAGON

     ________

I never lust

after a man

as much as

before one.

GARY HOTHAM

     _________

fog.

sitting here

without the mountains

TED KOOSER

     _______

    STARLIGHT

All night, this soft rain from the distant past.

No wonder I sometimes waken as a child.

JEWEL ~ STRAIGHT AHEAD ~

SNOW LEOPARDS ~

The male and female cubs, as yet unnamed, were born at NY Central Park Zoo
 this summer to mother Zoe and father Askai.

 Photograph: Julie Larsen Maher/AP

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/05/snow-leopard-cubs-new-york-central-park-zoo

THE COUNSELOR ~

The other day we finally dragged ourselves away from all the construction work, with a rain day helping us along, and saw The Counselor — Cormac McCarthy unwinding more of his southwest devils. Absolutely no one in the theater with us. Matinee. High noon. I believe this is the film McCarthy really wanted instead of No Country For Old Men which probably came across to him as high class entertainment, which it is, and beautifully so. In the new film it's spare, literary, confusing for the general audience that expects everything to be set before them like a calendar — including the hateful time line appearing as a digital readout on the lower part of the screen "Three months later" etc. The Counselor is also nasty, septic, and deadly serious, as Rubén Blades character will remind all gringos. It'd be best to be seen on the wide full screen for the southwest dread and landscape.

 It isn't a happy ending.

POSTCARD 13 ~

"Greetings"
photograph : Ron Sanford

motto

STUMP FACES ~

These faces, slowly gathering, are now on the shelf over the kitchen stove. They've been made as I make a softwood log chair and cut back on the logs. Each butt end becomes "a face" and is collected on the shelf. So far we have from the left clockwise: Layla, her father Carson, one dog representing all our dogs, Bob, Sweetheart and at 9 o'clock Kokomo the cat.

photo © bob arnold

ALLAN BLOCK ~

Allan Block

(1923 ~ 2013)

Musician Rory Block with her father Allan Block, New Hampshire 2002

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/nyregion/allan-block-whose-sandal-shop-was-folk-music-hub-dies-at-90.html?hpw



http://www.ledgertranscript.com/home/9051334-95/music-man-remembered 



http://www.wirz.de/music/blockfrm.htm 

HONKY TONK ~

"Jukebox", Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, Nashville, Tennessee, 1972

This isn't one of those moments to simply cob photographs from this colossal book straight off the Internet (which I'm doing) — it's to share at just how magnificent a book this is. In fact it might have been naughtier, but it gets darn close to the bone enough, mainly reaching back when the photographer Henry Horenstein, out of New Bedford, MA., and boosted by folksinger Paul Clayton (who owned a music shop then in town) got young Henry's eye to look around with a camera, and what a feast we have. I only wish I could draw up the young photograph of Norman Blake for you, and the recent one of hardscrabble troubadour Spider John Koerner. This book takes you back stage, back road, back down, back up, back back. A keeper.

"Hillbilly Tex," Hillbilly Ranch, Boston, Massachusetts, 1972

"Roscoe Holcomb", Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1972

"Fan and Musician", Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, Nashville, Tennessee, 1974

"Lovers," Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, Nashville, Tennessee, 1975

"Patron (2)", Hillbilly Ranch, Boston, Massachusetts, 1972

"Bluegrass Music Fan Frank Brown," Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 1974

"Curly Ray Cline at Home," Rock House, Kentucky, 1974

"Waylon Jennings," Performance Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1976

"Drunk Dancers," Merchant's Cafe, Nashville, Tennessee, 1974

"Country Western Bar and Grill," Highway 41, Nashville, Tennessee, 2008

"Ponderosa," Near Pikeville, Kentucky, 1974

"Tex Ritter", Hillbilly Ranch, Boston, Massachusetts, 1973

"Connie Smith", Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, Tennessee, 1972

"Henry with Mother Maybelle Carter,"

 Lonestar Ranch, Reeds Ferry, New Hampshire, 1973

photo : Lewis Rosenberg

Honky Tonk

portraits of Country Music

by Henry Horenstein

Norton, 2012

SEAMUS HEANEY CHALKIE ~

Back Road Chalkie

photo : longhouse 2013

THE LAST ~

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2472272/A-vanishing-way-life-captured-forever-British-photographer-travels-world-record-dozens-dying-tribes-danger-disappearing-forever.html

thanks to JD

PETER COLE ~

A Byzantine Diptych


I. Leviticus Again

     "And his issue is unclean,"  15:3



He is human and so will be humbled

He is flesh and so will fail

He is bone and so will be broken

He is blood and so will be bleed

He has cheated and so will be changed

He has deceived and so will be drained

He has mocked and so will be muddied

He is hollow and so will howl

He has sullied and so will sadden

He is nothing and so will be nought

He is pain and so will perish

He is emission and so will be missed

He is water and so will weep

He is cavernous and so will cry

He is dross and so will disgust

He is a carcass and so will be cast

He has soured and so will stink

He is rank and so will retch

He is worm and so will writhe

He is corruption and so will be betrayed

He came forth, and so he will fade






Summer Syntax



Saxifrage, arabis, phlox;

lobelia, euphorbia, nasturtium;

coreopsis, guara, flax;

brunnera, salvia, rubrum;



delphinium, snapdragon, alyssum;

bacopa, yarrow, thyme;

viola, cress, chrysanthemum,

convolvulus and clematis that climb



over the flowering fescue,

the prairie mallow, and sage,

with Lucerne sisyrinchium to the rescue

of spirit surveying the cage




of its inching calibrations —

luring us out to stare

into this constellation's

efflorescence as       everywhere.






Pathetic



It seemed sick, really, or pathetic:

fertilizer bombs being wired in Gaza,

      flesh scraped from a Tel Aviv bus;

      radar whirring miles above us,

state-sanctioned torture up the street,

and information like an epidemic  —



but I took some comfort today, for hours,

from a kitten we found near a mound of garbage

     and nursed back from the edge of death.

     By evening, I could feel its breath

against the skin of my neck as it slept —

and reconfigured my notions of power.




_________________________________

The poems above are selected from a forthcoming book The Invention of Influence (New Directions 2014).

Peter Cole's previous books of poems include Things on Which I've Stumbled (New Directions). Among his volumes of translations are The Poetry of Kabbalah: Mystical Verse from the Jewish Tradition and  The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492. Cole divides his time between Jerusalem and New Haven.

THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE ~

If you love bridges
 (especially this one)
 have a look:

http://www.theguardian.com/travel/interactive/2013/oct/28/san-francisco-golden-gate-bridge-in-pictures



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKU1PTyHtbM



http://goldengatebridge.org/research/facts.php


http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-bridge/



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_%282006_documentary_film%29

 photo : the guardian UK

DUCKS IN A ROW ~ The World Series 2013

It takes a little while to fall in with the Boston Red Sox, especially if you were raised in Massachusetts as a kid and never really liked them, as I was. I was brought up on Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle. Case closed. I still like to see Hank Aaron show up at an event."Yaz" and all the Boston razzamatazz just seemed irritating. Once more Boston having to show and prove they were that city all by itself. My two Boston sports heroes Bill Russell and Larry Bird even had trouble with Boston for one reason or another, or the city had trouble with one of them, and just maybe it was because one was black, amazing, independent and out spoken. Boston has a chip on its shoulder and still it gets laughed at behind its back — The Big Dig, its rock music groups, the Red Sox ups and downs in the World Series — this getting no respect puts a little arrogance onto the landscape and onto its players. Bomb the city's Boston Marathon and they bring a grass roots fierce police vengeance onto your ass. Come to watch the World Series in 2013 after months away from sports and tv because you've been building with stone like any western Massachusetts boy could-be growing up around the stuff and you'll see a whole Boston team in beards. Not trim fireman beards neither. Duck Dynasty potential facial hair and with the same mechanic eyes. Eyes pointing down to the earth, moody and greasy and a little smug and sassy and the only ones willing to get themselves dirty. Compared to the St. Louis Cardinals, who look polite and clean-cut, in sparkling Busch Stadium, you begin to sense that this Boston team of beard weirdos is really representing all what we once (still) loved about the world: camaraderie, beards being tugged guy to guy after an RBI, dumb mistakes on the field taken too seriously and with silly excuses or grumbling later repaired by knuckling under and getting-er-done. It's a world of rotary dial telephones, bicycles, old pickup trucks, paperback books, laundromats, talking neighborhoods. The greatest hitter period on the World Series field no matter which city we are in is the Red Sox 38 year old David Ortiz  — huge, black and articulate. He comes to home plate with a bat in his hands like Paul Bunyan with an axe. He strikes the plate like Bunyan with his axe to an unfortunate stump as if announcing he is here, then proves it. He's 7 for 10 in the series and has reached base 11 of 15 times at bat. He's getting-er-dun. Baseball legend already has him pinpointed at making a 6th inning speech in the dugout to all the team telling them to "play free and loose." Which is nothing at all how he looks striding to the plate but exactly how he finishes up. Fellow player Jonny Gomes, who just inched a homer over the left field fence in game 4 said watching Ortiz at work in the dugout making his little speech was like, "24 kindergartners looking up at their teacher." You see — despite all the beards and cathartic chest thumping, they're all just a bunch of eager kids wanting to win. After Boston once again proved they are the only team in the world that can end a World Series game as they did game 3 — with mistakes and more mistakes tumbling over more mistakes — they showed within 24 hours that glorious New England trait of old colonial tenacity how they can recover, get the barn built, the door closed, and all the cows are in by dark. It was a pick-off play at first base that even surprised the camera operators broadcasting the game. Sure woke us all up at midnight! Between a pitcher on the mound named Koji Uehera and a Cardinal rookie player stepped away from the base a bit too far by the name of Kolten Wong. You've come a long way, baby. We've got a Series.

~ BA

Koji Uehara celebrates with Mike Napoli