BOB ARNOLD ~ STONE CAIRNS ~

Stonework

by Bob Arnold

all photographs 

© Bob & Susan Arnold

2022

VISCAYNES (SLY STONE) ~

 

JEAN GENET ~

R E A D      M E

Actually, not a book just for "fans."

The Criminal Child is an excellent introduction

to Genet and the essay/visit with Giacometti

is a charm. 

_______________________________

New York Review of Books

2020

MORE MAGIC SAM (LIVE) ~

 

WILLIAM STAFFORD ~

 

A Letter Not Even To Deliver

The world often has a quiet look.

I go down in the orchard quietly

to work every day, because trees keep

trouble away and a grove makes quiet work.

But a jagged glimpse can come — say, when a bird sings

down a row, or over toward a hill. I bow

to near views, and listen close, for this one day:

splendor is not for daily things.

And a bowed back is a disguise. I remember you, fair.

If you visit me, come some quiet way.

There might be an instant; the light might flame —

be quiet then. We are not too try far.

Only the brownest birds that come here belong here.

__________________________

William Stafford

Smoke's Way

Graywolf Press, 1983

MARRIAGE ~

 

The folk singer Arlo Guthrie and Marti Ladd were married on Dec. 8 at the South County Courthouse in Delray Beach, Fla.Credit...James Jackman for The New York Times

M A R R I A G E

FINDING THE RAGA ~

 

R E A D     M E

GARY SNYDER IN CONVERSATION, 2011

 

MARSHALL MCLUHAN, 1974 ~

 

AXE HANDLES WITH HAN SHAN ~

 

MARSHALL MCLUHAN, 1966 ~

 

TOWNES VAN ZANDT ~

 

FRIEDERIKE MAYROCKER, ETUDES ~

 

R E A D      M E

AMHERST COLLEGE PRESS (EMILY DICKINSON ) ~

 

THE   NETWORKED   RECLUSE

JOHN MADDEN ~

 

               John Madden in 1974, when he was the coach of the Oakland Raiders.Credit...Associated Press

J O H N      M A D D E N

1936 ~ 2021

SLIM HARPO ~

 

GEORGE SAUNDERS (2021) ~

 

R E A D     M E

Random House

2021

TINY SUMMER BOOK, BOB ARNOLD ~

Bob Arnold's

Tiny Summer Book

_______________

A back-country life and travel

through poems and many photographs,

which also includes the poet's first book

Rope of Bells, first published

by Cherry Valley Editions in 1974

Longhouse 

2021

________________

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West Brattleboro, Vermont 05303

         The Lumberman, And His Teenage Son

 

Once upon a time my father stayed home sick from work. This happened maybe twice in my lifetime as a youngster living in the same house with my parents. My mother, maybe, sick one day in my life as a youngster.

My father called me into the bedroom, and there he was propped up on pillows.

“Bobby, I need something to read. What do you have in your room?”

Like I was some gunsmith. ‘I need a gun, not just any gun Bobby, you’ll know what to do.’

I’d nod and bring him a well-oiled Smith & Wesson. He’d nod, then he’d ask me to leave the room. Was this sick man going to take his life? Shoot the TV that was playing “I Love Lucy?” Or just spend the day fondling the gun?

But he didn’t ask me for a gun. He asked me for a book, any old book. I nodded. Rushed out of the room and went for the book I had just finished, without ever, and I mean ever and never, breaking the spine.

My father once remarked, as if he was beside himself, that when he looked at my paperback books, a full library and every one in alphabetic order, he was thunderstruck how not one book had a crease in the spine.

“How do you read these books Bobby and not crack a spine?” I showed him my careful technique of reading books as if peering into a small and fascinating room. He predicted I would be blind by age twenty. He was wrong, but he was still my father, who I believed knew more than any other man when I was fifteen. At sixteen I had a different opinion.

When I came back from my room, with Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 in my hand, I spent the rest of the day enjoying hearing my father, once an infantryman in WW2, laughing out loud all through the day as he read the book. He never got out of the bed. He never stopped reading the book. And it seemed he never stopped laughing. Yes, one of the joys of my childhood was that day.

Tiny Summer Book

Longhouse

2021