UNION ~

Clinton or Trump

I mean, could it be

possibly worse?

No. 

We get two

baby boomers

from our generation

where one was a

prig in prep-school

& the other a

geek in big glasses 

who supported Nixon

and still loves Kissinger. 

Where are the real ones?

The versatile

sparky 

well versed 

champs? 

They killed them.

(look it up)

SUMMERTIME (WALLACE STEVENS) ~

The House Was Quiet and
the World Was Calm



The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The reader became the book; and summer night



Was like the conscious being of the book.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.



The words were spoken as if there was no book,

Except that the reader leaned above the page,



Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be

The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom



The summer night is like a perfection of thought

The house was quiet because it had to be.



The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:

The access of perfection to the page.



And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,

In which there is no other meaning, itself



Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself

Is the reader leaning late and reading there.


__________________________

W A L L A C E     S T E V E N S
The Palm at the End of the Mind
Knopf

DEATH LETTER ~

THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION ~

Dear Michael,

I was actually turned on by Michelle Obama’s walk to the podium and her frisky look at her arrival. The hair and almost peek-a-boo was just right. Her mouth is enticing. It wasn't so much I was turned on as I felt a turn-on in the air and I was thrilled to know after eight years in the White House and dealing with literal pigs, she hasn’t lost her girlie ways, and she would call them girlie ways. And I was happy for Barack Obama that he had a partner this restoring and intelligent. She had the best speech of the night. I’m sorry but I find Elizabeth Warren what Donald Trump calls  “goofy” and in fact a little drippy, but also quick and sparky but all in bureaucratic motions. Cory Booker I am impressed by, have been for years, but he was forcing a civil rights speech down our throats and we have heard many many better. Bernie was okay. A lovely standing ovation for a very long time, but not as long as I remember chilled to the bone hearing Bobby Kennedy get at another convention once upon a time. I believe the audience cheered RFK for eleven minutes.

Debbie Wasserman Shultz can’t leave soon enough, she’s a pest, as was Howard Dean in the same DNC role. They are crooks who do rig the system. Hillary, if elected won’t change much at all. Of course she will have none of the gravitas of Obama, nor his patience and reserve in the right places. Trump has a very good chance of getting in. Many people will never admit to voting for him but there is a perverse nature to Americans brought up on entertainment and shlock. It’s been here now since we were teenagers. Instead of Trump I’d like to see the Republicans elect someone like Ike — an elder stationed male (or female) who knows the system and knows how it works. We have to see this country work right again, although I believe the people are mainly warped and tangled. The worker force is gone, kaput. Certainly we can find dozens who still work well but the machinery is corrupt and prejudiced and no gears work with that in the way. While you were having chocolates during the Dem convention so was I! And a few trail mix handfuls and I was paging slowly through this magnificent Blake book detailing his exodus with Dante (and Virgil). I went through all the book in three hours. I slept a little rocky myself and it may have been the warm night.

[ BA ]

COUNT BASIE ~

Back Road Chalkie

July 2016

ABOVE THE VALLEY ~

Senior Citizen

Probably 1,000 carpenters

Live in the southern part

Of this state, a lot of them

Hip and young with a brand new

Leather apron, heavy duty

Trucks, wives or companions

That are weavers or potters

Or dancers, and of course they

All have a story to tell.

Though yesterday I was in

An old woman’s house high off

From the back road, and she

Lived alone and missed all

Her grandchildren and braided

Rugs in the back of the house

With a hand needle and years

And years of wool, and the

Story she had to tell was

Already written in her choice

Of words, the rope of her hands,

And the scar above her left eye

Made thirty-five years ago

By the shuttle of a textile loom.

Back Road Caller

I came to have my chain saw fixed

And he did that, but

A half hour job

Stretched to three hours

Because he had to show me

All his new tools,

Plus his 75lb. bow

And the antlers from the buck

He shot last fall —

“Arrow went clean through”

Never mind the drawer

Of chewing tobacco

He offered me, and then

To his father, and we both

Politely declined a dip,

And as if that wasn’t enough —

He pulled out the flat

Enveloped reeds he used

For turkey hunting —

Tucked one up on the roof

Of his mouth and cupping

His hands chucked out a

Perfect few syllables

Which would have turned any

Bird’s head, and depending

On how he rolled his body

With a call he could make

It sound horny, but he

Only saved that one for

The summertime, when the

Weekend neighbor’s daughter

Came to visit all alone.

Approach

I’ve only been away one day

But already between the width

Of the stone wall gate

Spans the thinnest first strand of

A spider’s web, floating there

As the river fog this morning

In the valley — well enough to

Stoop beneath it,

Cause no harm.

Above the Valley

          

                        for Scott Tindall

Over 3,000 feet

Above the valley

Our eyes looking

Southward with an

Old man we came

Upon resting on a

Stump. We exchanged

Greetings in the warm

Light he enjoyed,

The leaves falling,

And asked where

He had hiked from.

And he stood up and

Pointed to a lake I knew

Far off in the lower hills

Catching the sun, saying

“The other lake after that” —

One I never knew of.

Then later in the day

Higher up from the old man,

Air sharp with balsam,

We looked back and saw how

His lake had lit up too.

_____________________

Bob Arnold

WHERE RIVERS MEET

photograph: "Berkshire from Greylock"
copyright 2015 by Two~Hands

FREAK OUT (1966) ~

Freak Out is 50 years old.

Take a bow.

MORNING AND EVENING RAGAS ~

NINETY-NINE STORIES OF GOD ~

21

If there is a crash at an American airport, the wreck-

age is removed immediately so as not to alarm the

passengers on the flights that will come after.

       This is not true at Russian airports.

       While at some airports in the major cities, such

as Moscow or Saint Petersburg, the wreckage might

be taken away quite as if nothing had occurred, small

runways in Siberia are littered with failed flights,

their rusting hulks simply pushed to one side.

       On a recent flight from Nome to Chukotka, the

woman in the seat opposite us bench quite agi-

tated as we dropped rather peremptorily through

the dark skies. She began loudly praying to God for

deliverance. My companion remarked that her fear-

vent request was useless, as God had long ago turned

His great back on Russia. She might just as well

have prayed to the luxurious black sable coat that

enveloped her from chin to ankle. We had earlier

been half-hypnotized by its beauty, what my com-

panion had dared to describe as the glimmering,

endless depths in the fur of so many little animals.

                                                                C O A T

33

A much-admired artist was giving a lecture to a

large audience. His work was known for its peculiar

cold beauty and its intellectual craftsmanship. He

was the recipient of many awards and honors, He

had received the Academia Nazionale dei Lincei's

Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize and Grand

Prix des Biennales Internationales. He was named

Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the

French Ministry of Education and Culture.

       In his own country, he had received awards

from the Academy of Achievement, the American 

Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American

Academy. On one year alone, he won the triple crown

of appreciation and adulation by racing off with the

National Book Critics Circle Award, the National

Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize.

       At the point in his lecture where he was say-

ing that the representative element in a work of art is

always irrelevant, that for one to appreciate a work of

art one must bring to it nothing from life, no knowledge

of life's affairs and ideas, no familiarity with its emo-

tions and desires, he was seized by the most stupefying

boredom and he had to leave the stage.

                                             I R R E D U C I B L E

93

The Lord was in a den with a pack of wolves.

       You really are so intelligent, the Lord said, and

have such glorious eyes. Why do you think you're

hounded so? It's like they want to exterminate you,

it's awful.

       Well, sometimes it's the calves and the cows, the

wolves said.

       Of those maddening cows, the Lord said. I have

a suggestion. What if I caused you not to have a taste

for them anymore?

       It wouldn't matter. Then it wold be the deer or

the elk. Have you seen the bumper stickers on the

hunters' trucks —DID A WOLF GET YOUR ELK?

       I guess I missed that, the Lord said.

       Sentiment is very much against us down here,

the wolves said.

       I'm so awfully sorry, the Lord said.

       Thank you for inviting us to participate in your

plan anyway, the wolves said politely.

       The Lord did not want to appear addled, but

what was the plan His sons were referring to exactly?

                           F A T H E R S   A N D    S O N S

_____________________

J O Y     W I L L I A M S

Ninety-Nine Stories of GOD

TinHouse Books

2016

                

       

THE DISINTEGRATION LOOPS ~

THE WOMAN IN SUNSHINE ~

The Woman In Sunshine


It is only that this warmth and movement are like
The warmth and movement of a woman.

It is not that there is any image in the air
Nor the beginning nor end of a form:

It is empty. But a woman in threadless gold
Burns us with brushings of her dress

And a dissociated abundance of being,
More definite for what she is —

Because she is disembodied,
Bearing the odors of the summer fields,

Confessing the taciturn and yet indifferent,
Invisibly clear, the only love.


W A L L A C E     S T E V E N S

________________

"One of the great poets of our century,

someone whom the world will keep

on reading just as it keeps on listening

to Vivaldi or Scarlatti, looking at

Tiepolo or Poussin. His best poems

are the poems of a man fully

human — of someone sympathetic,

magnanimous, both brightly and deeply

intelligent; the poems see, feel, and

think with equal success. . .Minds

of this quality of genius, of this

breadth and delicacy of understanding,

are a link between us and the past,

since they are, for us, the past made

living; and they are our surest link with

the future, since they are the part of us

which the future will know. . .When

you have finished reading Stevens'

best poems you remember once more

that man is not only the jest and riddle

of the world, but the glory.

RANDALL JARRELL, Partisan Review

photograph: patti smith reading wallace stevens

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY ~

The Goose-Girl



Spring rides no horses down the hill,

But comes on foot, a goose-girl still.

And all the loveliest things there be

Come simply, so, it seems to me.

If ever I said, in grief or pride,

I tired of honest things, I lied;

And should be cursed forevermore

With Love in laces, like a whore,

And neighbors cold, and friends unsteady,

And Spring on horseback, like a lady!


("Goose-Girl" relates to the Brothers Grimm)
Millay wrote the poem in 1920.





from Fatal Interview (1931)



      L.


The heart once broken is a heart no more,

And is absorbed from all a heart must be;

All that it signed or chartered heretofore

Is cancelled now, the bankrupt heart is free;

So much of duty as you may require

Of shards and dust, this and no more of pain,

This and no more of hope, remorse, desire,

The heart once broken need support again.

How simple 'tis, and what a little sound

It makes in breaking, let the world attest:

It struggles, and it fails; the world goes round,

And the moon follows it. Heart in my breast,

'Tis half a year now since you broke in two;

The world's forgotten well, if the world knew.

__________________


Edna St. Vincent Millay
Selected Poems, annotated edition
edited by Timothy F. Jackson
introduction by Holly Peppe
Yale 2016

An exquisite collection, nicely annotated throughout with steward-care from Holly Peppe in the introduction. 

Perhaps the finest collection yet to present the poet, or to be re-acquainted.