BERTOLT BRECHT, LOVE POEMS ~

Bertolt Brecht

Love Poems
Liveright 2014

 translated by David Constantine & Tom Kuhn

 

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/bertolt-brecht

JEAN RHYS ~

Jean Rhys

Back Road Chalkies 
Fall 2014

http://www.lennoxhonychurch.com/jeanrhysbio.cfm

back road chalkies  2014  © bob  arnold

JOSEF SUDEK ~

 Josef Sudek

LABYRINTHS

Torst 2013

http://www.photography-now.net/josef_sudek/

DENNIS STOCK'S CALIFORNIA TRIP ~

It only took me 45 years later to come again upon this book — bottom shelf dusty bookshop, all used, way away from any city, backlot, no cover, no matter, last paged through the book with eyes wide open when it appeared in 1970 and I couldn't afford to purchase the book then and do now, only to find out later someone has cleanly removed three photographs from the text, so it's still not all with me, as I leaf through it now with you a few pages here and there — to my mind the California modern era photography cream of the crop.


______________________


Dennis Stock
California Trip
Grossman, 1970

once in vermont films 2014  © bob arnold

JOEL MEYEROWITZ ~

( Phaidon Press, 2014 )

A handy compendium in a long series of equally interesting titles from this publisher scooping up well-known or not so known photographers and artists works and setting them into a small enclosure. Hold it all in one hand. Carry it around with you. 
The weight of a camera.

http://www.joelmeyerowitz.com/

LANGSTON HUGHES ~

 Langston Hughes

 

Misery




Play the blues for me.

Play the blues for me.

No other music

'Ll ease my misery.



Sing a soothin' song.

Said a soothin' song.

Cause the man I love's done

Done   me   wrong.



Can't you understand,

O, understand

A good woman's cryin'

For a no-good man?



Black gal like me,

black gal like me

'S got to hear a blues

For her misery.







Daybreak in Alabama




When I get to be a composer
I'm gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew.
I'm gonna put some tall tall trees in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black white black people
And I'm gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hands
And red clay earth hands in it
Touching everybody with kind fingers
And touching each other natural as dew
In that dawn of music when I
Get to be a composer
And write about daybreak
In Alabama.







Advice




Folks, I'm telling you,

birthing is hard

and dying is mean 

so get yourself

a little loving

in between.






Little Lyric (Of Great Importance) 



I wish the rent

Was heaven sent. 






Homecoming



I went back in the alley

And I opened up my door.

All her clothes was gone:

She wasn't home no more.



I pulled back the covers,

I made down the bed.

A whole lot of room

Was the only thing I had.






Dream Variations



To fling my arms wide

In some place of the sun,

To whirl and to dance

Till the white day is done.

Then rest at cool evening

Beneath a tall tree

While night comes on gently,

       Dark like me —

That is my dream!



To fling my arms wide

In the face of the sun,

Dance! Whirl! Whirl!

Till the quick day is done

Rest at pale evening . . .

A tall, slim tree . . .

Night coming tenderly

        Black like me.





~ LANGSTON HUGHES



____________


Selected Poems
Langston Hughes
Knopf, 1959

LADYBUG ~

I, Ladybug




Citizen

Of the imaginary world

Disreputable

Indisposed

Sorely used

Inordinate

Lay down my rules

And you, ladybug

What do you do?

Who That Divines
Laura Moriarty
Nightboat Books, 2014

EDWARD ABBEY ~

"How strange and wonderful is our home, our earth, with its

swirling vaporous atmosphere, its flowing and frozen liquids,

its trembling plants, its creeping, crawling, climbing creatures,

the croaking things with wings that bang on rocks and soar

through fog, the furry grass, the scaly seas . . . how utterly

rich and wild. . .Yet some among us have the nerve,

the insolence, the brass, the gall to whine about the

limitations of our earthbound fate and yearn for some more

perfect world beyond the sky. We are none of us good enough

for the world we have."

________________

EDWARD ABBEY APPALACHIAN WILDERNESS (1970)

http://www.salon.com/2006/10/22/abbey/

UNFATHOMABLE CITY (NEW ORLEANS) ~

University of California Press

2013

NOT A TEDDY BEAR ~

"The iPhone may cause broken bones and concussions. Yes, I’m leaving out a few in-between steps there.

So let me start over: Craig Palsson, a graduate student in the Yale economics department, argues in a new paper that the expansion of the 3G cellphone network led to more widespread adoption of the iPhone, which led to parents who discovered new apps and continual email on their cellphone; which led to parents who paid attention to their new toys at playgrounds and not necessarily to their small children; which led to 10 percent more accidents for those children from 2005 to 2012, including broken bones and concussions."

DEAN KARLAN

NEW YORK TIMES

11 Nov 14

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/upshot/how-an-iphone-can-lead-to-broken-bones-for-young-children.html?ref=health&abt=0002&abg=1

MUCH LOVED ~

Much Loved

photographs by Mark Nixon

Abrams, 2013

you probably owned one, once upon a time . . . 

JANIS BALTVILKS ~

The avenue decked with colorful-leaves

will prevent you from getting lost —

it will take you straight into winter.









PROOF


A handful of marigold seeds

and the feather of a finch

on my table:

the summer

really was here.









Rain on the windowsill.

Finally!

The grass and trees exult,

and the parched

tips of my nerves.









A lonely heron

high up in the autumn sky. . .



Lonely because it's so high?

High up because it's lonely?








A sprout

pierces last year's leaf.



I'm not sorry for the leaf.

I like the leaf.

And I like the sprout.



I was once a sprout.

Now I'm a leaf.








The wind

when it murmurs in the leaves

it murmurs like the wind.

The wind when it laughs

it laughs like the wind.

When it cries

it cries like a human child.



Everything in this world

cried like a human child.









I still cannot tell the difference between

a new wind and an old one.









A car abandoned in the woods

begs for forgiveness . . .



The moss is the first to draw near.









ABOUT BIRDS


No, not all of them will fly away.

Surely a jay,

a magpie, a pair of nuthatches,

a flock of chickadees in the garden

will stay here,

helping us

get through the winter.








A yellow birch leaf

floats away in the black water . . .



Do I ever want

to know and understand everything?





_________________

JANIS BALTVILKS
The Skylark Will Come
translated by Rita Laima Berzins
Poems 1990-2002
Blackberry Books 2004

CORKING THE WOODSHED DOORWAY ~

Plugging up the woodshed so the

door won't close

8 November 2014

photos 2014  © bob arnold

BECKETT THE POET ~

"look  in  thine  arse  and  write"

S a m u e l   B e c k e t t 

SAMUEL BECKETT THE COLLECTED POEMS OF SAMUEL BECKETT

edited by Sean Lawlor, John Pilling

Grove, 2012

BILL PORTER'S YELLOW RIVER ODYSSEY ~

GARY SNYDER IN CONVERSATION ~

Trinity Unity Press

San Antonio, Texas

2014

MY SWEETEST FRIEND ~

Honor

let me tell you one thing about suicide

if a loved one has the guts or the heartbreak

to pull this off, you better have the same to

say this is how it all ended

even if you argue with her or him in your mind

every day as you bake bread

rake leaves

drive to work

return library books

tie your shoes

walk a cross walk

mail a letter

split wood

and try to sing in the shower again

__________________

My Sweetest Friend by Bob Arnold

Longhouse 2014

72 pages, perfect bound, 5.5 x 6.25 inches

$15

order here through Paypal, plus $2.00 s/h (US shipping only)

Choose US order or International order     US Orders, postpaid $17.00 USD    International  postpaid $27.00 USD

_________________________

"It's so beautiful and for the first time in my life I truly feel the umbilical chord double helix of life and death inseparable."

Donna  Fleischer


Sherry, May 9, 2016

" 27 " ~

Forever 27 Club

Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse

'Now he's gone and joined that stupid club. I told him not to join that stupid club.'
Wendy O' Connor
Kurt Cobain's mother *

________________________

"Not a castaway or a waif, not a raftsman or a whale fisherman, Thoreau (1817-1862)

was a Harvard graduate, the son of a mildly successful pencil manufacturer

in Concord, Massachusetts, who, after floundering a bit, at the age of

twenty-seven"

27

 "built himself a ten-by-fifteen foot cabin of pine logs and

secondhand boards beside Walden Pond and lived there alone

for twenty-six months, raising much of his own food. 

This was not then a cliche, though twentieth-century back-to-the-landers 

have sometimes threatened to make it so.

Like George Orwell, the great English essayist, a hundred years later—

an Eton boy who chose an urban form of self-denial while

"down and out in Paris and London"— Thoreau was seeking

special insight from a stripped-down existence. Both men were radicals,

but Thoreau was after rapture, not social realism. Both were essayists

but Thoreau in his rash and roosterly optimism is quintessentially

American."

EDWARD HOAGLAND About H.D. Thoreau (1991)

* 27, 
A history of the 27 club
by Howard Sounes
Da Capo, 2014

ALEX COX ~

Alex Cox

X Films

true confessions of a radical filmmaker

Soft Skull, 2008

http://www.alexcox.com/

THE BARK CANOE ~

The Bark Canoe and Skin Boats of North America

Smithsonian Institute, 1964

Once In Vermont Films
 2014  © bob arnold

REMEMBERING A NATURAL WANDERER ~

L. M. Kit Carson, in 1991, was a script doctor and an advice-giver for young filmmakers

  Credit The Dallas Morning News 

L. M. KIT CARSON 

1941 ~ 2014 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/movies/l-m-kit-carson-actor-and-writer-dies-at-73.html?ref=obituaries 

 http://vimeo.com/22716785