RE-READING LANGSTON HUGHES ~

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

                          ( To W. E. B. DuBois )



I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

        flow of human blood in human beings.



My soul has grown deep like the rivers.



I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

           went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy

           bosom turn all golden in the sunset.




I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.



My soul has grown deep like the rivers.








Cross



My old man's a white old man

And my old mother's black.

If ever I cursed my white old man

I take my curses back.



If ever I cursed my black old mother

And wished she were in hell,

I'm sorry for that evil wish

And now I wish her well.



My old man died in a fine big house.

My ma died in a shack.

I wonder where I'm gonna die,

Being neither white nor black?








Epilogue



I, too, sing America,



I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well

And grow strong.



Tomorrow,

I'll sit at the table

When company comes.

Nobody'll dare

Say to me,

"Eat in the kitchen,"

Then.



Besides,

They'll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed, —



I, too, am America.








Poem



We have tomorrow

Bright before us

Like a flame.



Yesterday

A night-gone thing,

A sun-down name.



And dawn-today

Broad arch above the road we came.






__________________
Langston Hughes
The Weary Blues
Knopf 1926

These poems come from Langston Hughes

100 years ago with his first book of poem

The Weary Blues

published by Knopf, a very young press

then, only ten years old, and recently

re-issued with its original 1926 book design

by Miguel Covarrubias.

Ever since George Floyd was murdered

we have sold out every book from our

little bookshop by Langston Hughes, and James Baldwin

and Toni Morrison and George Jackson and

Martin Luther King, and the Black Panthers,

and Malcom X and Audre Lorde and

Lucille Clifton and even MOVE

from dark burned streets of

Philadelphia rose up. A friend

of ours, who worked poetry in

the prisons back in the 80s-90s

told us then she couldn't find a

bookstore that carried any books 

by James Baldwin, and she searched

high and low. No more.

JOHNNY WINTER ~

 

POETS WHO SLEEP #16 ~

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

RE-READING DUNCAN MCNAUGHTON ~

April, Needham



Time becomes a leftover along with

thought. All the gods return. How different

they are, how changed, how quietly they

gather, how calmly. How kind of them to come.



Between Parish Road and Nehoiden Street

our wind is having its way with

our pine trees tonight. I am hearing things

again. The genies are setting someone

loose. Unwrapping someone.



                                                   Water in the

birdbath now ice. History is what

midnight has become.





_____________________

Duncan McNaughton
Fathar Time
Blue Millennium Press
PO Box 958
Bolinas, CA 94924







No one writes like Duncan McNaughton, you'll notice

HAL SINGER ~

 

H A L    S I N G E R

TOOTS HIBBERT ~

 

T O O T S     H I B B E R T

RE-READING ROBINSON JEFFERS ~

Signpost



Civilized, crying how to be human again:this will tell you how.

Turn outward, love things, not men, turn right away from humanity,

Let that doll die. Consider if you like how the lilies grow,

Lean on the silent rock until you feel its divinity

Make your veins cold, look at the silent stars, let your eyes

Climb the great ladder out of the pit of yourself and man.

Things are so beautiful, your love will follow your eyes;

Things are the God, you will love God, and not in vain,

For what we love, we grow to it, we share its nature. At length

You will look back along the stars' rays and see that even

The poor doll humanity has a place under heaven.

Its qualities repair their mosaic around you, the chips of strength

And sickness; but now you are free, even to become human,

But born of the rock and the air, not of a woman.



___________________

Robinson Jeffers
The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers
Random House 1959






We went to his house once long ago.
It's like one of those few places you can't find again.

RE-READING THEODORE ROETHKE ~

Carnations


Pale blossoms, each balanced on a single joined stem,

And leaves curled back in elaborate Corinthian scrolls;

And the air cool, as if drifting down from wet hemlocks,

Or rising out of ferns not far from water,

A crisp hyacinthine coolness,

Like that clear autumnal weather of eternity,

The windless perpetual morning above a September cloud.




____________________

Theodore Roethke

RE-READING ALDEN NOWLAN ~

He Attempts to Love His Neighbours



My neighbours do not wish to be loved.

They have made it clear that they prefer to go peacefully

about their business and want me to do the same.

This ought not to surprise me as it does;

I ought to know by now that most people have a hundred things

they would rather do than have me love them.



There is television, for instance; the truth is that almost everybody,

given the choice between being loved and watching TV,

would choose the latter. Love interrupts dinner,

interferes with mowing the lawn, washing the car,

or walking the dog. Love is a telephone ringing or a doorbell

waking you moments after you've finally succeeded in getting to   
      sleep.



So we must be careful, those of us who were born with

the wrong number of fingers or the gift

of loving; we must do our best to behave

like normal members of society and not make nuisances

of ourselves; otherwise it could go hard with us.

It is better to bite back your tears, swallow your laughter,

and learn to fake the mildly self-deprecating titter

favoured by the bourgeoisie

than to be left entirely alone, as you will be,

if your disconformity embarrasses

your neighbours; I wish I didn't keep forgetting that.




_______________

Alden Nowlan
Selected Poems
Anansi 1996





If you have experienced a quarter of what Nowlan
shares with us here, you get the picture. Shirley Jackson in her
1948 harrowing short story "The Lottery" tells it another way.
As a boy my neighborhood was filled with bicycles and short-cuts.
You go back and the short-cuts aren't there.

[ BA ]

BACK ROAD CALLER ~ JAMES KOLLER ~

 

Back Road Caller

September 2020

POETS WHO SLEEP #15 ~

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

SONGS OF THE LITTLE HUT ~

Songs of the Little Hut
               ____________________


The sky god rains

but my hut is well thatch'd

draft free, simple

I concentrate my mind —

Rain, sky god

           rain

                                                 — Godhika





Who dwells in the little hut?

A solitary hermit

He's shed desire

He keeps a sharp mind

Oh his little hut was not

built in vain


                                                 — Kutiviharin





You have your old cottage

Now you want a new one

but friend don't you realize

a new cottage is just

             further trouble


                                                   — Kutiviharin





Irrigators channel the creeks

Fletchers straighten the

arrow shaft

Carpenters bend a plank to their will

Men of character

            give shape to the self


                                                      — Kula





The seeing one sees both

the one who sees

and the one who doesn't

The one who doesn't see

sees neither


                                                     — Vappa





My little hut pleases me

I have no need for women

Let them take their

fine clothes and trouble

            somewhere else


                                                     — Ramaniyakutika





Addictions he shook off

food, clothes, house, medicine, no longer needed

His birthplace is emptiness

He leaves tracks

like a bird

through the sky


                                                         — Vijaya





We dwell alone in the forest

old trees the woodcutter rejected

People look at me

like hell-bound creatures at someone

             going to heaven


                                                              — Vijjiputta 




______________________________________________

Enlightenment Poems from the Theragatha and Therigatha


Songs of the Sons and Daughters of Buddha
translated by Andrew Schelling and Anne Waldman
Shambhala 2020




just be honest — wouldn't you have loved to have written these poems!

RE-READING PATRICIA HIGHSMITH ~

In July I went back to re-read Highsmith's

The Blunderer (1954) — not an entirely

successful novel by the crime master

but mostly a thrilling read for 3/4s

of the book. A slight muddle

sets in where you can sense the author

has lost her story, whereas she doesn't

in her first novel Strangers on a Train.

Compared to say, Sue Grafton, Highsmith is

Shakespeare, and anything by her, including her short

stories, are well worth frightening yourself.

[ BA ]

P A T R I C I A      H I G H S M I T H

RE-READING LETTERS TO JANE ~

Ausable Press

2004

______________________________

Another one of those unique books

and entirely given and gifted by Carruth,

easily one of my favorite of all his titles

and the one that reveals the poet in his

kindness and love for a much younger

and dying poet Jane Kenyon.

Hayden could be a tiring crank but

there was charm and almost always

thoughtfulness to his every move and

this slim book brings it all forth.

[ BA ]

RE-READING SOLEDAD BROTHER ~~

R E A D     M E

This classic has never gone away,
and won't.