DUDLEY LAUFMAN ~

DUDLEY LAUFMAN

New and available now from Longhouse 2016 ~

 

Bull & More Bull

136 pages, perfectbound softcover

$18

Shipping $3.95 ~ U.S. orders with Paypal
Buy now through easy-to-use Paypal, US Orders, $21.95

 

International orders ~ complete $38 with Paypal payment

L O N G H O U S E

 PO Box 2454
 West Brattleboro
Vermont 05303

NUTSHELL ~

Public’s Disgust With the Democratic Party Propels Sanders

Thomas Frank is the author of "Listen, Liberal, or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?" and "What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America."

Updated March 14, 2016, 3:22 AM

Bernie Sanders is a fine politician, but that is not why he has emerged from obscurity to win so many Democratic primaries. The real story here is the breakdown of the ideology pursued for decades by the Democratic Party’s dominant faction. 

The party gave up its historic mission to serve working people years ago and chose instead to represent the New Economy’s winners.

The Great Recession started in 2007, and for millions of average Americans no recovery has come. For most of the years since then, there has been a Democrat in the White House, and those Americans have a right to wonder why the eloquent hero they voted for has done so little to improve their situation. They see that banks, health insurance companies and Silicon Valley are doing extremely well; why, then, don’t their wages grow?

The answer, and the key to Sanders’s success, is staring us in the face: Because the Democratic Party gave up years ago on its historic mission of serving working people and chose instead to make itself into the party of professionals, of the New Economy’s winners, of a group they love to flatter with phrases like “symbolic analysts,” “wired workers” and the “creative class.” 

This shifting allegiance is the fundamental reason that Democrats began to identify with Wall Street back in the 1990s (and then with Silicon Valley) but what makes this story so aggravating is the way Democrats keep choosing professionals over workers again and again. One class of Americans they reward with subsidies and forgiveness; the rest of us get discipline. The 1994 crime bill and the end of welfare were all brought to you, remember, by the same Democratic administration that rolled back the rules for banks and telecoms. The North American Free Trade Agreement and its many successors have brought, well, freedom to those who employ but anxiety and diminished lives to those who work. The present Democratic administration has hounded individuals who lied on mortgage applications, but it seems to find top bankers incapable of wrongdoing. And in these years of galloping industrial concentration and power grabs by Silicon Valley, antitrust enforcement has dropped off the agenda. 

Democrats habitually brush off economic despair with references to “globalization” and “technology,” as though their complicated free-trade deals were the unknowable doings of the Invisible Hand Itself. The problem is not changing the economic system, they say, it is adjusting ourselves to the changes sweeping the world. When they look at inequality, they see not economic failure but individual failure, usually having to do with education, a subject of pious reverence for the professional class. You’re falling because you didn’t study hard enough or you didn’t go to a good school or you majored in the wrong subject. 

What Bernie Sanders represents is the public’s growing disgust with this kind of liberalism and, hopefully, its final repudiation.

ALSO BERNIE

 

 

 the ny times

ME BOSS ~

THE TV AD MADE FOR THESE TIMES, TRUMP TIMES

THE NATURAL PHENOMENON ACTOR IS PATRICK WARBURTON


 



 

PALM IT ~

Someone kind sent me this book the other day through the mail.

Wasn't that nice!

Don't you love books that fit in the palm of your hand? I do.

This one is published in 100 numbers by Scram Press 

(with that name they sound like they're having fun)

in 2014. Only 100 copies. Catch it while you can.

They're based in Northampton-Tuxedo Park.

The whole of it, I guess, was first published in the Massachusetts Review.  

Illustrations are by Charlie Schmidt from his 1935 book Radio Patrol.

More fun.

James Haug hits the mark on each one with a one line poem, caption,

what have you. It works.

I've been banned from the living room.

AH, REPUBLICANS! ~

George Bush and Hillary Clinton recently shared a hug

at the Nancy Reagan funeral

The photo was posted on Twitter by David Chalian, CNN’s political director. Photograph: Twitter

TERRA ~

Terra

There is evidence of spring everywhere

A pair of geese, into a headwind / point north

The shed door shuts easier now

Rain water comes to the meadows

Planks are thrown down

Passing

It is Spring

Already you relax in a cotton skirt

Passing through mountains is a strong feeling

Fields plowed, new wood split, a hawk floating

Puffs of softwood in the gray hills

A river runs with snow melting

A small bridge neatly built to get by

There is pleasure in such places

An old woman and her huge straw hat

Raking the far corner of a hayfield

 ____________________________________

Bob Arnold

Where Rivers Meet

Mad River Press

 

NAKED IF I WANT TO ~

THE EDGE OF THE WORLD ~

"[what we used to casually call the 'dark ages']

We've seen how plague became the reason,

just like terrorism today, for social regulation, for saying how children must behave,

for taking away a worker's right to choose what work he wanted,

for deciding which of the poor are worthy of help and which are just wastrels.

Plague enforced frontiers that were otherwise wonderfully insecure,

and made our movements and travels conditional.

It helped make the state a physical reality, and give it ambitions."

_______________________

from The Edge of the World

Pegasus Books

2014

 

KEITH EMERSON ~

~

K E I T H    E M E R S O N

(2 November 1944 – 10 March 2016)

BELL HOOKS SPEAKS HILLARY CLINTON ~

DUKE'S PLACE ~

BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS ~

Just a little word here on books —

I'm showing on this page a sample of what I picked up recently from my local library visit,

perhaps a lucky day. Yes, I read through all the books, in fact I adore and desire this. Always

have since I was about fifteen years old and really took off as a reader. Each and every book I post

on the Birdhouse has no strings attached, including the books I design and publish. I seek out

all these authors personally. I don't have the slightest marketing push to make any book anything more than it is, so I try to choose wisely on the author and the book that it won't be a whiner, a flaming ego, the hottest topic in the hot land of poetry, but rather a great read. Something I think you may want to read and want to own. Same with every book I am reading at the moment and I post onto the Birdhouse: no strings, just a great read. Try it.

 

H E Y ! E L I T I S T ~

T H O M A S     F R A N K     :     D O N A L D     T R U M P

 

CLIFFORD BURKE ~

C L I F F O R D     B U R K E

Out of Nowhere

Nineteen Tiny Poems

with Woodcuts from

Ten Thousand Square Ideas

Desert Rose Press

2003

From the master craftsman's hand of the letterpress and binding ~

Thank you, Clifford, for sending a copy this way!

TIME FOR SOME GOOD NEWS ~

Dindim the penguin makes a 5,000-mile journey from Argentina to a small island near Rio de Janeiro every year to be reunited with a man who saved his life after finding him covered in oil and struggling to survive. João Pereira de Souza, 71, a retired bricklayer, found the South American magellanic penguin in 2011 and nursed him back to health

The Guardian / U.K.

BERTOLT BRECHT ~

Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin playing chess, Denmark, Skovsbostrand, 1934

On the Terms of Exile 

No need to drive a nail into the wall

To hang your hat on;

When you come in, just drop it on the chair

No guest has sat on.

Don't worry about watering the flowers —

In fact, don't plant them.

You will have gone back home before they bloom,

And who will want them?

If mastering the language is too hard,

Only be patient;

The telegram imploring your return

Won't need translation.

Remember, when the ceiling sheds itself

In flakes of plaster,

The wall that keeps you out is crumbling too,

As fast or faster.

__________________________

Translated from the German by Adam Kirsch 

 

 

PATSY CLINE LIVE AT THE CIMMARON BALLROOM ~

"Cut July 21, 1961, at Cline's first show after a

near-fatal auto accident. As her studio

recordings couldn't do, the rough,

brassy set catches the spirit of a

woman who never got around

to apologizing for anything."

G R E I L     M A R C U S

GEORGE MARTIN THE FIFTH BEATLE ~

G E O R G E     M A R T I N

(3 January 1926 – 8 March 2016) 

M O R E !


AND SONGS!

MY CHEAP LIFESTYLE ~

 circa 1980s

My Cheap Lifestyle




After a bourbon

I came in turned on the tube

Lit a joint and watched Monterey Pop

Nearly wept when Janis came on

Janis's legs kicking on stage was a memorable sight

Janis does her sweet little Texas girl smile as

her act finishes.  She kicks her heels

And Otis Redding is so sexy.

Millions of young Americans experience religion for the first time

In their lives

Or so the cameras would inform us

I'm concerned about manipulations in this media

How one gains such wonderful power

But of course I'm too tired

Thrilled by the process of bringing down a familiar blanket

Upon my bed

It's nearly fall

Nearly winter

I expect the stars will be bright

The woods full of bears.






S h h h




I don't think

I can afford the time to not sit right down &

write a poem about the heavy lidded

white rose I hold in my hand

I think of snow

a winter night in Boston, drunken waitress

stumble on a bus that careens through

Somerville the end of the line

where I was born, an old man

shaking me. He would've been my dad.

You need a ride? Wait, he said.

This flower is so heavy in my hand.

He drove me home in his old blue

Dodge, a thermos next to me,

cigarette packs on the dash

so quiet like Boston is quiet

Boston in the snow. It's New York

plates are clattering on St. Mark's

Place. Should I call you?

Can I go home now

& work with this undelivered

message in my fingertips

It's summer

I love you.

I'm surrounded by snow. 




Harmonica


Don't want to put my glasses on
Cause I don't want to see

Don't want to move again
Because I don't want to
Live

Don't want to love again
Because I don't want
To lose

Don't want to eat again
Because I don't want
To be full

Don't want to drink
Again because I don't
Want to feel quenched

Don't want to sleep again
Because I don't want to
Wake up

Don't want to live in the summer
Again because I don't want
To be hot

Don't want you to kiss me again
Because I don't want to be alive

Don't want to see you again
Because I don't want to vanish

Don't want to ride my bike
Because I don't want to
Get there

Don't want to know my family
Anymore because I don't want
To remember me

Don't want to walk my dog
Because I don't want to be out

Don't want to stay in anymore
Because I don't want to be
Alone

Don't want to be tired anymore
Because I don't want to feel old

Don't want to eat candy anymore
Because I don't want to feel sweet

Don't want to talk to my friends anymore
Because I don't want them to know me

Don't want to sing anymore
Because I don't want to hear me.

Don't want to die anymore
Because I don't want to see god.

Don't want to live anymore
Because I don't want to repeat

 E I L E E N     M Y L E S


_______________________

I Must Be Living Twice
new and selected poems
Ecco Press 2015 

 

GHOSTS ~

Ghosts



March comes and water moves,

The river, ponds, brooks open.

On snowshoes this is the last week

You’ll hike down these banks of

Rotten snow, the last week bridges

Of ice will be there to criss-cross

Down stream, the last week a

Deer carcass will be pinned between

Rocks and white water spray through

The white of her skull — the runoff

Will let her go, or break her to pieces —

You’re aware of this where you step.

Pools of water swirl 5 feet deep,

Maybe her bones will lay down in the

Sand and white pebbles here, it is

The last week to think of any of this.

Beneath your feet of oblong ashwood

And softened leather you sense the newness

Of life — hide has slipped all winter off

The body, it is time to go places.


___________________________ 

Bob Arnold


Where Rivers Meet
Mad River Press



 

WILLIAM WANTLING ~

Poetry



I’ve got to be honest. I can
make good word music and rhyme

at the right times and fit words
together to give people pleasure

and even sometimes take their
breath away – but it always

somehow turns out kind of phoney.
Consonance and assonance and inner

rhyme won’t make up for the fact
that I can’t figure out how to get

down on real paper the real or the true
which we call life. Like the other

day. The other day I was walking
on the lower exercise yard here

at San Quentin and this cat called
Turk came up to a friend of mine

and said Ernie, I hear you’re
shooting on my kid. And Ernie

told him So what, punk? And Turk
pulled out his stuff and shanked

Ernie in the gut only Ernie had a
Metal tray in his shirt. Turk’s

shank bounced right off him and
Ernie pulled his stuff out and of

course Turk didn’t have a tray and
caught it dead in the chest, a bad

one, and the blood that came to his
lips was a bright pink, lung blood,

and he just laid down in the grass
and said Shit. Fuck it. Sheeit.

Fuck it. And he laughed a long
time, softly, until he died. Now

what could consonance or assonance or
even rhyme do to something like that?


 ____________________

W I L L I A M     W A N T L I N G 


Charles Bukowski on William Wantling

SHOES ~

Shoes


when you're young

a pair of

female

high-heeled shoes

just sitting

alone

in the closet

can fire your

bones;

when you're old

it's just

a pair of shoes

without

anybody

in them

and  just as

well. 



__________________


C H A R L E S     B U K O W S K I
edited by Abel Debritto
ON LOVE

the third and perhaps more to go in an excellent series drawing on many of Charles Bukowski's favorite subjects — horse racing can't be far behind

Ecco Press, 2016  

THIS WINTER ~

© bob arnold

SUGARING TIME ~

Sugaring Time



All at once

Off in the distance

Where an old hut

Sinks into the ground

Two small windows lit

And steam bellows

Up into the farmland sky —

You thought it was a fire

Until you tasted the air


______________________


Bob Arnold


Where Rivers Meet
Mad River Press