OLIVIA LAING ~

 

Norton, 2021

PABLO NERUDA~

 

Is the sea there? Tell it to come in.

Bring me

the great bell, one of the green race.

Not that one, the other one, the one that has

a crack in its bronze mouth,

and now, nothing more, I want to be alone

with my essential sea and the bell.

I don't want to speak for a long time,

silence! I still want to learn,

I want to know if I exist.

______________________

PABLO NERUDA

translated by William O'Daly 

THE SEA AND THE BELLS

Copper Canyon Press 2002

DAVID YOUNG ~

 

Occupational Hazards

      Butcher

If I want to go to pieces

I can do that. When I try

to pull myself together

I get sausage.

      Bakers

Can't be choosers. Rising

from a white bed, from dreams

of kings, bright cities, buttocks,

to see the moon by daylight.

      Tailor

It's not the way the needle

drags the poor thread around.

It's sewing the monster together,

my misshapen son.

      Gravediggers

To be the baker's dark opposite,

to dig the anti-cake, to stow

the sinking loaves in the unoven —

then to be dancing on the job!

      Woodcutter

Deep in my hands

as far as I can go

the fallen trees

keep ringing.

_________________

David Young

The Names of a Hare in English

Pittsburgh 1979

JANE KAUFMAN ~

 

J A N E     K A U F M A N

photo: Whitney Museum

1969 : JOHN FAHEY ~

 

EDWIN MUIR ~

 

The Animals

They do not live in the world,

And not in time and space.

From birth to death hurled

No word do they have, not one

To plant a foot upon,

Were never in any place.

For with names the world was called

Out of the empty air,

With names was built and walled,

Line and circle and square,

Dust and emerald;

Snatched from deceiving death

By the articulate breath.

But these have never trod

Twice the familiar track,

Never never turned back

Into the memorized day.

All is new and near

In the unchanging Here

Of the fifith great day of God,

That shall remain the same,

Never shall pass away.

On the sixth day we came.

______________________

Edwin Muir

One Foot In Eden

Grove 1958

HAUNANI-KAY TRASK ~

 

HAUNANI-KAY  TRASK

LARRY CAMPBELL'S "GOLD RUSH" (Bill Monroe) ~

 

GEOFF MULDAUR ~

 

I GOT A FEELING ~

 

never tire

RY COODER ON BIG JOE WILLIAMS ~

 

MAYA LIN: GHOST FOREST

 

G H O S T      F O R E S T

photograph by Jesse Frohman

GIL SCOTT-HERON ~

 

"BLACK WAX"

A film by Robert Mugge

1983

W A T C H

TED JOANS ~

 

The Truth

IF YOU SHOULD SEE A MAN

walking down a crowded

street

     talking

                  ALOUD

TO HIMSELF

            DON'T RUN

                                           IN THE

OPPOSITE DIRECTION

                                        BUT RUN

TOWARD HIM

                    for he is a

                                         POET

you have NOTHING to

                                          FEAR

FROM THE

                  POET

                          BUT THE

               TRUTH  

_____________________________

Ted Joans (1928-2003)

African American Poetry

250 Years of struggle & song

edited by Kevin Young

Library of America

2020

CHRIS CORNELL ( PRINCE ) ~

 

CID CORMAN ~

 

Cid Corman

                                             June 29, 1924 ~ March 12, 2004

_______________

for all

poets

At the shrine

on the altar

not one relic

but in one way

or another

I remain.

A LORD will dismount

at the imperative of

the cherry blossoms.

DON'T LET the poet

get you down

when he rages

His letter kills but

his spirit

resuscitates.

AN

effulgence

a glory

a subtle

insistent

falling a

lucid rain

a torrent

guttural

clear and shrill

a run of

color con-

fused and con-

fusing a

sky full of

them! Alone

on the downs

on a bright

windless day

NOTRE DAME

Where Roman law made aliens bend

Stands a church, original, vital,

Like Adam once, all nerve and mettle,

Muscles aquiver at the end.

From outside you see the inner plan:

Flying buttresses forestalling

That mass from breaking against those walls

Upholding the vault's outstretching strain.

Labyrinth, impenetrable wood,

Soul of Gothic's rational abyss,

Egyptian might and Christian meekness,

By slim reed  oak, by plumb line — lord.

But the more, fortified Notre Dame,

I studied your immense example,

The more I thought: one day I too will

Build from meaningless a dream.

TU FU is long dead.

Leaves have fallen —

leaves will fall.

Every

thing in his words

on a far lookout.

MAKING

of rock. Letting as

Michelangelo

does the prisoner

becoming the rock

escape.

MOVED — three blocks up

and around in

a row of old

houses under

the bells of St

Stainslas and

cherry blossoms.

Must go get a

sink stopper and

a curtain rod —

if life is to

be tenable.

HERE I am

like a leaf

falling or

fallen. Point-

less as one —

as any —

all. Holding

mother's hand

though she's gone.

WE COME out

in the end

at the end

beginning

to see where

the stars are.

THE HILL

beyond the

gate

the temple

almost

mist.

__________________________

from TU

Cid Corman

The Toothpaste Press

1983

EMILY DICKINSON ~ WRITING IN TIME ~

 

W R I T I N G    I N     T I M E

Adeline of the Appalachian Mountains ~

 

GEORGE KALAMARAS ~

 

Below Buffalo Willows

Give us a kiss.  Goodbye, dear.  The buffalo

willows were full of hurt, and then the fire died.

Kiss the neck,  the nape, the cheek.  Somehow we survive

all the depths of deaths living gifts us.  I have cried.

I am not a we, but you are me,

and we are here.  Whenever we die.  Wherever

we had lived before,  with the sheep,  the cattle,

all the long grass long as a ribbed rib of sleep.

Yes, there was dust.  We slept the animal.

We slipped back and forth many times until

we got it right.  The woman the man hoped

to be was scarred.  The man she bled, hurt.

Say some touch or other.  The way we hold

a hand grieves us tough gusts that beat us

back.  A kiss.  Give it.  Grieve it.  Give us a way.

This mouth or that,  we are all tick-tonguing

our way around the tree bark of the heart.  Say something.

This time.  Anything.  Nothing would be enough.

_________________________

GEORGE KALAMARAS

We Slept the Animal

(Letters from the American West)

Dos Madres Books

2021

LEONARD CROW DOG ~

 

L E O N A R D     C R O W     D O G

Aug. 18, 1942,  Rosebud Sioux reservation in South Dakota ~

June 5, 2021, Rapid City, S.D.

JAMES LAUGHLIN ~

 

A Letter to Hitler

Last winter we were

short of firewood and

it was good and cold

so we used a lot of

old books that were

in the attic just old

novels nobody would

ever want to read but

we found they made

plenty of heat and

twice they set the

chimney afire when

a burning page went

up with the draft and

we found they would

smoulder a long time

after you thought the

fire was all out and

then suddenly burst

into flame & another

thing they made ashes

that wouldn't stay in

the grate but floated

out all over the room!

______________________

JAMES LAUGHLIN

Some Natural Things

New Directions

1945

BETTYE LAVETTE ~

 

WHO'S THE BOSS HERE?

 

CECIL SHAW ~

 

BONNIE LOU ~

 

NOTHING STOPS FREDDIE KING ~

 

THE FLATLANDERS ~

 

RAVEN'S WITNESS ~

 

Nothing like an authorized biography

which should come in good time

and more gleanings selected by a

Lentfer, a close friend with Nelson,

from the anthropologist and explorer's

private journals, well trail-

blazed and revealing.

Go read Richard K. Nelson's

 The Island Within.

Mountaineers Books

2020

BUKKA WHITE ~

 

ROLF JACOBSEN ~

 

Guardian Angel

I am the bird that flutters against your window in the morning,

and your closest friend, whom you can never know,

blossoms that light up for the blind.

I am the glacier shining over the woods, so pale,

and heavy voices from the cathedral tower.

The thought that suddenly hits you in the middle of the day

and makes you feel so fantastically happy.

I am the one you have loved for many years.

I walk beside you all day and look intently at you

and put my mouth against your heart

though you're not aware of it.

I am your third arm, and your second

shadow, the white one

whom you cannot accept,

and who can never forget you.

Moon and Apple

When the apple tree blooms

the moon comes often like a blossom,

paler than any of them

shining over the tree.

It is the ghost of the summer,

the white sister of the blossoms who returns to drop in on us,

and radiate peace with her hands

so that you shouldn't feel too bad when the hard times come.

For the Earth itself is a blossom, she says,

on the star tree,

pale and with luminous

ocean leaves.

Sssh

Sssh the sea says

sssh the small waves at the shore say, sssh

not so violent, not

so haughty, not

so remarkable.

Sssh

say the tips of the waves

crowding around the headland's

surf. Sssh

they say to people

this is our earth

our eternity.

__________________________

Twenty Poems

Rolf Jacobsen

Translated by Robert Bly

Seventies Press 1977

RICHARD K. NELSON w/ TERRY GROSS (1990) ~

 

L I S T E N    T O

R I C H A R D    K.   N E L S O N

FRIEDERIKE MAYROCKER ~

 

F R I E D E R I K E       M A Y R O C K E R

Dec. 20, 1924, Vienna ~ June 4, 2021, Vienna