A Longhouse Birdhouse

Monday, August 17, 2020

POETS WHO SLEEP #12 ~

P O E T S W H O S L E E P

______________________

drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold

all drawings

copyright

Bob Arnold

The complete series to date ~ please link here

Sunday, August 16, 2020

Well, it's still the loveliest meadow in all Vermont.

I believe that truly, yet for years have hardly

seen it, I think, having lived too long with it —

until I went to clean up the mess of firewood

left by the rural electric co-op when they cut

my clump of soft maples "threatening" their lines,

this morning, the last day of September. My maple leaves

were spilled in the grass, deep crimson. I worked

with axe and chainsaw, and when I was done I sat

on my rock that had housed my fox before the state

executed him on suspicion of rabies, and then

I looked at my meadow. I saw how it lies between

the little road and the little brook, how its borders

are birch and hemlock, popple and elm and ash,

white, green, red, brown, and gray, and how my grass

is composed in smooth serenity. Yet I have hankered

for six years after that meadow I saw in Texas

near Camp Wood because I discovered an armadillo

there and saw two long-tailed flycatchers

at their fantastic mating dance in the air.

Now I saw my meadow. And I called myself all kinds

of a blind Yankee fool — not so much for hankering,

more for the quality of my looking that could make me

see in my mind what I could not see in my meadow.

However, I saw my serviceberry tree at the edge

of the grass where little pied asters, called Farewell-

to-Summer, made a hedge, my serviceberry still limping

from last winter's storms, and I went

and trimmed it. The small waxy pointed leaves

were delicate with the colors of coral and mallow

and the hesitating blush of the sky at dawn.

When I finished I stepped over my old fence

and sat by my brook on moss sodden from last night's

rain and got the seat of my britches wet.

I looked at my brook. It curled over my stones

that looked back at me again with the pathos

of their Paleozoic eyes. I thought of my

discontents. The brook, curled in its reflections

of ferns and asters and bright leaves, was whispering

something that made no sense. Then I closed my eyes

and heard my brook inside my head. It told me —

and I saw a distant inner light like the flash

of a waterdrop on a turning leaf — it told me

maybe I have lived too long with the world.

_______________

Hayden Carruth
If You Call This Cry A Song
Countryman Press 1983

HC once took me up to his meadow, and his large garden, all along his brook ("Foote") that also ran by his house, a place Susan and I found by guessing "that's where a poet might live" and by golly we were right, it was 1974 and we would spend our honeymoon, unannounced, at the home of Hayden and Rose Marie Carruth. They were that generous and we were that silly & young. During that same visit, or another one, Hayden and I hiked the dirt road his house was on, and it was a round hike that went around Marshall's farm, a good friend of the poet. We walked in the night since Hayden worked through the night. I always felt "My Meadow" somehow encompassed every poem Hayden wrote.

[ BA ]

Saturday, August 15, 2020

RE-READING THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS ~

The Signature Of All Things

I

My head and shoulders, and my book
In the cool shade, and my body
Stretched bathing in the sun, I lie
Reading beside the waterfall –
Boehme's 'Signature of all Things.'
Through the deep July day the leaves
Of the laurel, all the colors
Of gold, spin down through the moving
Deep laurel shade all day. They float
On the mirrored sky and forest
For a while, and then, still slowly
Spinning, sink through the crystal deep
Of the pool to its leaf gold floor.
The saint saw the world as streaming
In the electrolysis of love.
I put him by and gaze through shade
Folded into shade of slender
Laurel trunks and leaves filled with sun.
The wren broods in her moss domed nest.
A newt struggles with a white moth
Drowning in the pool. The hawks scream,
Playing together on the ceiling
Of heaven. The long hours go by.
I think of those who have loved me,
Of all the mountains I have climbed,
Of all the seas I have swum in.
The evil of the world sinks.
My own sin and trouble fall away
Like Christian's bundle, and I watch
My forty summers fall like falling
Leaves and falling water held
Eternally in summer air.

2

Deer are stamping in the glades,
Under the full July moon.
There is a smell of dry grass
In the air, and more faintly,
The scent of a far off skunk.
As I stand at the wood's edge,
Watching the darkness, listening
To the stillness, a small owl
Comes to the branch above me,
On wings more still than my breath.
When I turn my light on him,
His eyes glow like drops of iron,
And he perks his head at me,
Like a curious kitten.
The meadow is bright as snow.
My dog prows the grass, a dark
Blur in the blur of brightness
I walk to the oak grove where
The Indian village was once.
There, in blotched and cobwebbed light
And dark, dim in the blue haze,
Are twenty Holstein heifers,
Black and white, all lying down,
Quietly together, under
The huge trees rooted in the graves.

3

When I dragged the rotten log
From the bottom of the pool,
It seemed heavy as stone.
I let it lie in the sun
For a month; and then chopped it
Into sections, and split them
For kindling, and spread them out
To dry some more. Late that night;
After reading for hours,
While moths rattled at the lamp,
The saints and the philosophers
On the destiny of man;
I went out on my cabin porch,
And looked up through the black forest
At the swaying islands of stars.
Suddenly I saw at my feet,
Spread on the floor of night, ingots
Of quivering phosphorescence,
And all about were scattered chips
Of pale cold light that was alive.

(1946)

_________________________

Kenneth Rexroth

The Signature of all Things

New Directions. 1949

One of my desert island books, which I'll be taking to the desert island
in a huge trunk of other books — I'd take a boat of books but it would look silly —
will be Rexroth's Collected Poems from Copper Canyon, the old Copper Canyon before
Sam Hamill was kicked out — and it was Sam who guided this great book into shape.

[ BA ]

Friday, August 14, 2020

LUCHITA HURTADO ~

L U C H I T A H U R T A D O

1920 ~ 2020

RE-READING HANDMADE HOUSES ~

A book I refer to a great deal.

It works nicely and updates and

compliments many of the earlier classic books

on the woodbutcher's building trade.

Thursday, August 13, 2020

RE-READING T H E B O N E S H O W ~

The Bone Show

Preface ~

The folk literature of the world speaks from the

accumulated traditions of its own diverse beginnings.

Common to all these traditions are the desires to

understand and to participate in both the known and

the still-to-be-known worlds. It all adds up, the folk tell

us, will all make sense, someday, to somebody.

THE BONE SHOW is a ghost dance, a chronicle of

characters and ideas that, because of their folk origins,

are able to interact in and with the Present. They

remain able to move beyond the known, are able to

recreate from the Past, a Now and Future.

The inspiration and focus of the dance, the I CHING,

first appeared as an outgrowth of folk traditions in

ancient China. We know the eight characters who

move through the dance from European and North

American traditions as well as Asian. We know that

what was done before will be done again. We too, have

watched it happen. We know, even as we watch the

dancers change, that it's all the same dance.

J A M E S K O L L ER

____________________

If you own a copy of this book
hang onto it
so you can pass it on

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

RE-READING T H E D E V I L T H U M B S A R I D E ~

Gifford knows his noir. The essays are better than some

of the films he writes about

— E L M O R E L E O N A R D

This is one of my all-time favorite books on

the cinema, never mind film noir.

It's literary in all the right ways

and film-love whispered into your

ear from the guy sitting

behind you.

{BA}

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

RE-READING L I V I N G D Y I N G ~

The Blessing

At the temple

on the hill

a slat from an

old crate requiring

visitors to

dress properly

(not in underwear)

for this place

not to make noise

nor swipe the moss nor

litter the ground

nor loiter

We go — passing

plaques of Buddha

blessing us

for doing nothing.

________________________

Cid Corman
Livingdying
New Directions, 1970

The first book of Cid's I ever found and read and it remains to this day
one of my favorite books not only of Cid's but any poet. So skillfully chosen
and shaped by Corman, and fine tuned and designed and printed by the Stinehour Press.

[ BA ]

Monday, August 10, 2020

POETS WHO SLEEP #11 ~

P O E T S W H O S L E E P

______________________

drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold

all drawings

copyright

Bob Arnold

The complete series to date ~ please link here

Sunday, August 9, 2020

RE-READING JIM DODGE ~

Learning to Talk

Whenever Jason said "beeber" for "beaver"

or "skirl" for "squirrel"

I secretly loved it.

They're better words:

The busy beeber beebing around;

the grey squirrel's tail

like a skirl of smoke along a maple branch.

I never told him he was saying

their names "wrong,"

though I did pronounce them conventionally.

One time he noticed, and explained,

" 'Beeber' is how I say it."

"Great," I told him, "whatever

moves you."

But within a week

he was pronouncing both "properly."

I did my duty

and I'm sorry.

Farewell Beeber and Skirl.

So much beauty lost to understanding.

____________________

Jim Dodge
Rain on the River
Grove Press, 2002

Jim Dodge in 1984. Photograph: Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

Jim Dodge lives right, sees right and writes right and he writes right in both poetry and prose, a two pistol gunslinger, with some of the funniest and plainly unique books like FUP, and story poems that you will want to read aloud to anyone you can find. Find the poem about his brother and Dodge giving their dog a bath and what happens. I'm still laughing.

[ BA ]