Oak, pine, juniper and ash grew here in these valleys 60,000 years ago where in summer the ground was covered with wild flowers among the grasses. . . the grains in the cave. . . minute dots drifting in on what we now call "June" breezes. . . a little pale blue butterfly . . . or one of the bodies of . . . the hides and skins of . . . of . . . tiny hollows in a bone decoration . . . or . . . by water in a deep recess here (& here) a little ripple I think Look
fromR I C H E S Behold those times re-created by the brutal power of sunlit images, the light of life's tragedy. The walls of the trial, the field of the firing squad; and the distant ghost of Rome's suburbs in a ring, gleaming white in naked light. Gunshots: our death, our survival. Survivors, the boys enter a ring of distant buildings in the harsh color of morning. While I, in the pit of today, have a kind of snake in my guts, twisting about, and a thousand tears dripping from every point in my body from my eyes to my fingertips, from the roots of my hair to my chest. My weeping knows no bounds: it wells up before I can understand it, almost preceding the sorrow. I don't know why I'm wracked by all these tears as I glimpse that group of boys walking away in the harsh light of an unknown Rome, a Rome just resurfacing from death, surviving with all the magnificent joy of gleaming white in the light, full of its immediate destiny as postwar epic, of brief years worth a whole lifetime. I see them walking away, and it's quite clear that, as adolescents, they're on the road of hope, in the midst of ruins engulfed in a whiteness that is life, almost sexual life, sacred in its misery. And as they walk away in the light I shudder, on the verge of tears: Why? Because there is no light in their future. Because there's only weary backsliding, only darkness. They're grown up now. They've lived their dreadful postwar years of corruption engulfed in light and now they surround me, poor men for whom every agony proved useless, servants of time, at a moment when we awake to the painful surprise of learning that all that light for which we lived was only a dream, unjustified, unobjective, wellspring now of lonely tears of shame.
___________________________________________
P I E R P A O L O P A S O L I N I
The Selected Poetry of Pier Paolo Pasolini edited and translated by Stephen Sartarelli with an astonishingly forthright and revealing Foreword by the film director James Ivory ( University of Chicago 2014 )
A bed with softer animals It is raining. It is Tuesday night. There are 36 steps up to Alan's apartment on the East Sde. A bed with softer animals. A Doberman Pinscher walks into a 7-11 and buys a carton of milk. I notice these things. Rain waters the buildings and they grow and grow. Makes thieves work harder. Softens mountains. Ruins sandwiches. Some paintings make me cry. I Like Crying. Gunsmoke was a good show to cry to Also, the Waltons' Christmas Special. Alan is reading about cannibals in New Guinea. The cannibals average at five feet tall. They roast their dead for 30 days then bury them in the jungle. Alan told me it rains more in the jungle, but I knew that already. What I don't know is how lightning feels on the body. Or what makes a glowworm glow. Or why the neighbor keeps knocking his head against the wall.
_______________
M A Y S H I E N W I N
from Cross-Strokes Poetry between Los Angeles and San Francisco edited by Neeli Cherkovski and Bill Mohr Otis Books The Graduate Writing program Otis College of Art and Design 2015
Emerald Poem there reaches a point without words safe a point deep within the emerald seabright washes over eyes and tongue frozen the stonebirds fly soft among my fingers their tiny beaks tapping snowflakes from my thumb the color of emeralds the solid becomes the liquid and I the greenbreather I am at home among the nebulae in the heart of the emerald safe a point without words one is one and I the green breather I the gill singer oh the liquid green flowers that the small birds carry! they fade to lavender on my tongue they fade to lavender on my eyes oh the stars that devour me in the heart of the emerald safe in the flowers of the emerald safe at the point without words
________________________
L E N O R E K A N D E L
from Cross-Strokes Poetry between Los Angeles and San Francisco edited by Neeli Cherkovski and Bill Mohr Otis Books Seismicity Editions The Graduate Writing program Otis College of Art and Design 2015
A homeowner looks at the view from the property owned by the Edge of U2.
Environmental groups and residents of canyons and hillsides had
lambasted the rock guitarist's original development proposal, saying it
would cause irreparable harm to habitat and views.
The body and the mind Have a talk together And the mind convinces the body To go out with it on a date. Soon afterwards The mind calls the body up on the telephone And says, "Why don't you drop by?" "When?" the body asks. "How 'bout this afternoon." In no time at all the mind and the body Are doing steady. Then they get married. For a while they are very poor And sometimes they have to go and stay at the body's folks' place And then they have to stay at the mind's folks' place. Neither one is a very good place to stay They decide And almost immediately they have a child. ________________________
A R A M S A R O Y A N
from Cross-Strokes Poetry between Los Angeles and San Francisco edited by Neeli Cherkovski and Bill Mohr Otis Books Seismicity Editions The Graduate Writing program Otis College of Art and Design 2015
1966, Swedish Director Ingmar Bergman Bibi Andersson Liv Ullmann
35 mm print of the film shot by Sven Nykvist
according to David Thomson best viewed in its correct 1.33:1 aspect ratio
(which it isn't here, but it's free, full film showing, and on Youtube) In 2014 Persona was recovered and redelivered on DVD by the Criterion Collection
who have achieved the ratio right
According to Thomson, on Youtube, "the original glow
of Nykvist's work is retained"
Thomson goes further, "Bergman and Nykvist, Andersson and Ullmann
made Persona for movie theaters — But was that their mistake, their
fussiness? Without knowing it, were they really anticipating something like Youtube yet to come?"
The intense little boy in spectacles at the start of the film holds a book,
it's Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time
This boy is Jorgen Lindstrom, born in 1951
he made other films as a child
then went to work in a film laboratory
Even with his film background, Thomson
wonders, "I wonder where he is now."
Ingmar Bergman passed away in 2007
The two actresses are still with us
Susan Sontag thought Persona
the greatest film ever made
~
"It is one of money's deftest tricks to arrange the world so that we don't see it. So it's an accomplished maneuver of the movies to convey a feeling of desirable wealth without provoking fury or revolution in that 90 percent who are neither pretty nor rich enough to be up there on the screen. For decades, it could be claimed that movies were telling us stories, offering us harmless dreams, bringing delight and consolation — doing all those things that the director in Sullivan's Travels comes to see as precious and useful. But in asking you to watch movies, I have to suggest levels of geological content and discontent beneath those friendly messages. The screen breathes money, and it's more than a nickel, or however much you paid the last time you went."
D A V I D T H O M S O N from his essay "Can You See the Money?" How To Watch A Movie Knopf 2015
"Banksy
said: “We’re often led to believe migration is a drain on the country’s
resources but Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian migrant. Apple is the
world’s most profitable company, it pays over $7bn (£4.6bn) a year in
taxes – and it only exists because they allowed in a young man from
Homs.”
Through this memoir, Malcolm Ritchie take us on a journey from early
childhood trauma and damage, onto a quest for self-knowledge and
healing. He describes how his life led him from an interest in the
paranormal, to Jungian psychology, Buddhism and shamanic practices.
Along the way, we have his discharge from the Royal Air Force; his
expulsion from art school; his theft, with three friends, of a Rembrandt
from a museum; his encounter and association with Dr. John Layard –
anthropologist and Jungian psychologist, who was once guru to W.H. Auden
in Berlin in the 1920’s – and his relationships with several well-known
and influential people during the 1960’s and 70’s both in the arts and
literary scene, as well as in the world of fashion. As his story, and
all the many other stories contained within it unfold, we encounter a
cast of poets, painters, healers, tinkers, shamans, Buddhist monks and
Shinto priests, and many others. We are guided into a spiritual realm
of altered states of consciousness and other realities, through his
involvement in training with a Buddhist monk and then a Japanese
shamanic healer, resulting in spirit possession, and culminating in a
dramatic exorcism in the Peruvian rainforest, described at the end of
the book. Ritchie’s memoir pulses with a variety of different energies,
and works on several levels, often placing it beyond the specific genre
of memoir, taking the reader into a life of danger, adventure and
revelation, all recounted and leavened by a mind redolent with a
pantomimic and comedic sense of humour, but shadowed at the same time by
a cynical eye cast over Western civilization and culture.
"Get this book!
Malcolm has written the autobiography of his/
our generation across four continents
from “angry young man”
to spiritual pilgrim
to poet of the great ley-lined earth
392 pages of astonishment."
J O H N M A R T O N E
___________________________________
New and available now from Longhouse ~
Malcolm RitchieThe Crow of Gravity A Correspondence of Wounds 392 pages
perfect bound
____________________________________
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LONGHOUSE PO Box 2454 West Brattleboro Vermont 05303
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
K N O C K K N O C K
What do you get when you put two hot-heads together like Donald Trump and "Morning Joe?" We just witnessed the result. More to come. Trump is not only opening the land of bigotry in America (usually hidden with the status quo) He is breaking through the PC crowd as well. Media loves him in the media that wants to make only money (now the majority, including CNN) But now the New York Times has lost control and can’t believe what they are seeing.
Trump is our worst nightmare. But it’s a nightmare that has to play out. Obama was another (for many). It ain’t easy being a young country.
Put us up against the ages of China, Russia, Africa. We are pipsqueaks. There is another way to grow, except we like quick results.
Of course we are as old as the ancients if we ever allow Native Americans as our heritage. It’s funny that we don’t. It isn’t funny that we don’t.
Here it is December, firewood stacked by the door, and way back in May, thin blouses and skirts, The University of Vermont (Special Collections)
set up on their blog, nicely, but we never heard a word, this showcase of Longhouse
now
part of their special collections. You can go to the library and view.
One friend did such a thing. He mailed to us a brochure from his visit.
Since we pick up our mail in town, ten miles away, once every
week
or two weeks (time passes slowly up here in the mountains) we just
received the brochure and a note to the blog showing and that we were
indeed up and running
on the Internet and in Vermont. Home sweet home. This roundabout way
Alexander von Humboldt has been largely forgotten in the
English-speaking world. He was one of the last polymaths, and
died at a time when scientific disciplines were hardening into tightly fenced and more specialized fields. Consequently his more holistic approach — a scientific method that included art, history, poetry and politics alongside hard data — has fallen out of favour. By the beginning of the twentieth century, there was little room for a man whose knowledge had bridged a vast range of subjects. As scientists crawled into their narrow areas of expertise, dividing and further subdividing, they lost Humboldt's interdisciplinary methods and his concept of nature as a
The Clarity of Any Sadness After sustaining any infraction, find a way to direct it toward dissolve. The Sutras are full of such advice.
Try this : place two words, equidistant, against the friction of your speak, against the stricture of stick and stone. See how your own insides thrive on the plants that lush outside you.
Get on your knees while kissing your knees. This is an esoteric teaching I am not at liberty to clarify.
Then separate the string bean part of your heart from the tough potato skin. Boil the butter and pour it, clear, through gauze into any jar of your choosing.
This is not a recipe for sadness. The elephant is already in the broom. I have been using the tail of its massive silk self to clear the way.
______________________________
G E O R G E K A L A M A R A S The Hermit's Way of Being Human
Now come hear these rough rhymes sing
Like sunlight on the ridgelines of far mountain ranges,
Range upon range of recognition in the dawn.
This book documents the settling of the Borderlands.
It is a weaving of humor and tears,
Of men and women grounded in the earth,
The livelihoods and folk knowledges,
The wisdoms fast disappearing,
The horses, the cowboys, the beautiful lands.
It is heard across these howling distances,
Of faraway mountain ranges,
Voices echoing across cedar breaks, arroyos, and mesas.
As far as the eye can see, the distances cling to each spoken word
As each word clings to the distances and tries to take them in.
But if you listen, you can still hear them
When you read these words slowly by the fire
And your voice becomes the people,
The lions, the wildlife, and the land.
___________________
Drummond Hadley from Voice of the Borderlands Rio Nuevo Publishers Tucson, 2005
A poem (or more) will be offered by the hour or with the day and at the very least once a week. So stay on your webbed toes. The aim is to share good hearty-to-eat poetry. This is a birdhouse size file from the larger Longhouse which has been publishing from backwoods Vermont since 1971 books, hundreds of foldout booklets, postcards, sheafs, CD, landscape art, street readings, web publication, and notes left for the milkman. Established by Bob & Susan Arnold for your pleasure. The poems, essays, films & photographs on this site are copyrighted and may not be reproduced without the author's go-ahead.
New from Bob Arnold ~ "Faraway Like The Deer's Eye" ~ Bob Arnold Faraway Like the Deer’s Eye — A Saga — FOUR BOOKS IN ONE VOLUME ~ A Poet’s Memoir // 50 Years of Longhouse & Poets // A Builder’s Life, with photo assembly // The Selected Poems of Bob Arnold // An afterword by Andrew Schelling
Longhouse Bibliography Quick Link —
Link to the Birdhouse Bibliography
Visit the Longhouse Bibliography (a press edited by Bob Arnold) ~
"Poets Who Sleep" by Bob Arnold, Longhouse 2019. 500 portraits by Bob Arnold of poets worldwide & others. Please link on image for ordering information.
Link to a Preview of Poets Who Sleep
Shared at "Dispatches from the Poetry Wars"
Heaven Lake by Bob Arnold
Available from Longhouse. Please link on the image for ordering information.
The Woodcutter Talks by Bob Arnold
Available from Longhouse. Please link on the image for ordering information. Drawing from years of poetry and also new poems, The Woodcutter Talks is Bob Arnold at his finest branching love poems with back country work poems and settlement with community, family and individual portraits. The extensive collection also showcases vintage photographs from woodcutters and woodchoppers and big-saw-pullers of old. Sweat runs down the cheeks of the mere literary and they adore one another.
Stone Hut by Bob Arnold
"Once again, my friends, this is your best book! Exquisite in design, fat enough to be a feast, pretty enough to just wade around in, but deep enough to dive into and stay with, all I can say is WOW, you guys really did it – it’s the first of its kind, a scrapbook novel that is also a how-to and a mystery -- how did he do it, and how does he make rocks balance like Thor? — Gerald Hausman" ~
Museum, An Unlikely Meditation, written by the poet Bob Arnold, is as much an unlikely novel. Visit this page for details.
Cid Corman's Of, Volumes 4 & 5 from Longhouse.
ANNOUNCING. The final volumes to Corman's opus in one book ~ of, volumes 4 & by Cid Corman. 1500 poems, 850 pages edited by Bob Arnold, now available in a limited edition from Longhouse, 2015. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information ~
'Fully a book ~
An interview with Bob Arnold on Cid Corman’s ‘of’
Janina by Janine Pommy Vega
New and available now from Longhouse ~ Janine Pommy Vega Janina Visions, Tales & Lovesongs 288 pages perfect bound packed with poems and photographs. Janine's full course album of photographs, travel journals, poems, facsimile notebooks of poems, childhood photographs, and family, Beat family, plus her unfinished memoir of Jerusalem.
Walking Woman with the Tambourine is the final book of poems by Janine Pommy Vega.
"Walking Woman with the Tambourine is the final book of poems by Janine Pommy Vega. The author completed the manuscript and left it as she wished with her executor Bob Arnold … New and available now from Longhouse ~ Poetry. 144 pages. Perfect bound softcover. Please link on the image for ordering information
New! James Koller : Selected Poems 2003-2004-2005
James Koller — Selected Poems 2003-2004-2005 Longhouse 2016, 72 pages, perfect bound. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information PLUS more from Longhouse
OPENINGS by JAMES KOLLER
Selected poems 1959 ~ 1985 edited by Bob Arnold. New and available now from Longhouse ~ 72 pages . Perfect bound softcover. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information PLUS more from Longhouse
Lorine Niedecker's A Cooking Book
A Cooking Book Lorine Niedecker Longhouse 2015 72 pages, perfect bound. Please link on the image to purchase this new title from Longhouse.
Kent Johnson's "I Once Met"
Available once again now in 2022! $25 plus shippingVisit the Birdhouse for Kent's book information :
JD Whitney's Selected Poems
J.D. Whitney ~Sweeping the Broom Shorter Selected Poems 1964-2014 from ~ Longhouse 2014. 192 pages. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information PLUS more from Longhouse
New! from Longhouse ~ Island Dreams by Gerald Hausman Please link for details & Paypal payment
ISLAND DREAMS by GERALD HAUSMAN Selected Poems 1968 ~ 2015 chosen & edited by Bob Arnold New and available now from Longhouse ~ 160 pages Perfect bound softcover. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information PLUS more from Longhouse
John Bradley's "And Thereby Everything"
L O N G H O U S E is very proud to announce a new book by John Bradley in their on going series of S C O U T book publications — other titles from the series have been by Kent Johnson, Janine Pommy Vega, James Koller, Bob Arnold and Lorine Niedecker with more in the works. An opening salvo at the front of the book by Patrick Lawler should provide ample cover for what the reader should come to expect. And Thereby Everything John Bradley Longhouse 2015 First edition only issued in softcover 208 pages, perfect bound illustrated throughout by Bob Arnold with 150 photographs
Dudley Laufman : Bull & More Bull
Visit this page for information on this new Longhouse by Dudley Kaufman (2016)
Dudley Laufman's Islandian Poems
The Islandian Poems & Fables Dudley Laufman Longhouse 2015. 72 pages, perfect bound. Please link on the image to purchase this new title from Longhouse.
Duo by Bob Arnold — New from Longhouse Please link to A Longhouse Birdhouse for more information
DUO Bird Poems by BOB ARNOLD. New and available now from Longhouse ~ 92 pages. Perfect bound softcover. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information PLUS more from Longhouse
Start With The Tree by Bob Arnold
New in 2015. Building a marriage, building a family, building a small barn out in the woodlands together as a family, as a marriage, and seeing the roof go on. Over 150 color photographs
Beautiful Days by Bob Arnold
Beautiful Days ~ new poems of living and working in the Vermont woodlands and to Hurricane Irene
Yokel by Bob Arnold
[from "Yokel, A Long Green Mountain Poem" by Bob Arnold] ~ that and more at Bob Arnold webpage of books & poems: Please link on this image for more
Go West by Bob Arnold
Filled with poems and travel photography — shares one cross-country trip the couple took in the mid-1980s to California from Vermont.
"I'm In Love With You Who Is In Love With Me" by Bob Arnold
from Bob Arnold's new book "I'm In Love With You Who Is In Love With Me" ~~~~~~~40 years of love poems
"Rain Bear" by Bob Arnold
Bob Arnold's first children's book "Rain Bear" New and available now from Longhouse ~ 50 pages. Perfect bound softcover with photographs ~ & drawings by Jason Clark
"Heretic" by John Phillips from Longhouse
New from Longhouse ~ John Phillips "Heretic". Poems with collages by the author. Click on the image for more ~
Kim Dorman — "Owner"
"Owner" by Kim Dorman. Including photographs by Kim Dorman. Selected and edited by Bob Arnold. New and available now from Longhouse 2016 ~ 80 pages. Perfect bound softcover
