Sunday, April 17, 2022

Saturday, April 16, 2022

WHOLE EARTH ~

 




Whole Earth

The Many Lives of

Stewart Brand

John Markoff

Penguin, 2022



Thursday, April 14, 2022

CLIVE FAUST ~

 




"Light flickers on and off ruffled layers of leaves."


_________________

TODAY

WE REMEMBER

THE PASSING OF OUR FRIEND

CLIVE FAUST

PLEASE READ MORE ABOUT THIS FINE

POET




E.B. WHITE ~

 






Wednesday, April 13, 2022

ALICE PAALEN RAHON ~

 



Varda Poem

                                     for Yanko


You who taught numbers to know the rainbow


Who opened every door in the celestial city


Who always made more when there was less


Who enchanted birds


Who loved all things except the mean


Should you be seen


Dancing in your golden ashes


About half a league off our port beam


As we go out the Gate


While the sun sets clear


Will you tell us one more time


How hard it is to be human


When it's so easy to be divine



_______________________


Shapeshifter

Alice Paalen Rahon

New York Review of Books

Translated by Mary Ann Caws

2021



Tuesday, April 12, 2022

IN A CLAY PIG'S EYE ~

 






screeching like baby birds

in a crowded nest ~

dumplings frying







on the fourth day

I named the fly

howard







my senile father

eats the fortune cookie

and the fortune







our beautiful old love

on such thin ice

we can't even shiver







a splinter

pulled from my thumb

spit into the fire







because of my old father

my old mother has learned

to make baby food






after the storm

an apology

of soft rain







going out the door

i pass a grape that had

rolled away from breakfast







a fence between

the cemetery and the road

leans toward the road







mountains disappear in fog

and i want to go right along

with them



_____________________________


selected from ~

Ronald Baatz

In A Clay Pig's Eye

Seastone Editions, 2005







Tuesday, April 5, 2022

FROM THE MOUNTAIN ~

 



photograph, Bob Arnold 

Monday, April 4, 2022

GENEVIEVE TAGGARD ~

 



Remembering Vaughan in New England


I saw reality the other night,

By New England moon-light.


All of my life, living has been

One or another kind of dream.


Now, nothing festooned itself between

Me, and the substance of moon-beam.


The land is honest, small and swept

Bare as a barn-yard floor


In winter. And no third thing crept

As it had, times before.


No feeling, its mist to intervene,

No inner thought to warp . . .


I stood: and behold, the trees were lean,

And lo ! the hills were sharp.


Moon's no ephemeral faint stuff

First seen, painted upon


Windows and walls . . . it is yellow as dawn,

After dream, it is marvelous rough,


Coarse as hoar-frost . . . texture no dream

Can invent.

                     Cut my vague dream away !

Moon in New England, O pure moon-beam,


Let it be day.



___________________________

Genevieve Taggard

Remembering Vaughn in New England

Arrow Editions, 1933





Saturday, April 2, 2022

JERZY FICOWSKI ~





Village Landscape



There is silence in the meadows

of former battlefields


the bank of the bug river arranges

shells and bones


at times a wasp's ricochet

shoots from the burdocks


someone was buried here

or somewhere else


and there is no hole in heaven

as there is on earth




.     .     .


I was unable to save

a single life


I couldn't sleep

a single bullet


so I circle cemeteries

that aren't there

I search for words

that aren't there

I run


to the aid uncalled for

to the rescue delayed


I want to get there on time

even if it's already over





Kazakhstan, USSR



they let us out of the wagons

right here


And nothing anywhere


not a river

to drown in


or a tree

to hang oneself



____________________________

Jerzy Ficowski

Everything I Don't Know

Selected Poems

translated from the Polish by

Jennifer Grotz & Piotr Sommer

World Poetry Books, 2021




Friday, April 1, 2022

DIANE DI PRIMA ~ REVOLUTIONARY LETTERS ~

 






City Lights Books 2021



April Fool Birthday Poem for Grandpa



Today is your

birthday and I have tried

writing these things before,

but now

in the gathering madness, I want to

thank you

for telling me what to expect

for pulling

no punches, back there in that scrubbed Bronx parlor

thank you

for honestly weeping in time to

innumerable heartbreaking

italian operas for

pulling my hair when I

pulled the leaves off the trees so I'd

know how it feels, we are

involved in it now, revolution, up to our

knees and the tide is rising, I embrace

strangers on the street, filled with their love and

mine, the love you told us had to come or we

die, told them all in that Bronx park, me listening in

spring Bronx dusk, breathing stars, so glorious

to me your white hair, your height your fierce

blue eyes, rare among Italians, I stood

a ways off, looking up at you, my grandpa

people listened to, I stand

a ways off listening as I pour out soup

young men with light in their faces

at my table, talking love, talking revolution

which is love, spelled backwards, how

you would love us all, would thunder your anarchist wisdom

at us, would thunder Dante, and Giordano Bruno, orderly men

bent to your ends, well I want you to know

we do it for you, and your ilk, for Carlo Tresca,

for Sacco and Vanzetti, without knowing

it, or thinking about it, as we do it for Aubrey Beardsley

Oscar Wilde (all street lights

shall be purple), do it

for Trotsky and Shelley and big/dumb

Kropotkin

Eisenstein's Strike people, Jean Cocteau's ennui, we do it for

the stars over the Bronx

that they may look on earth

and not be ashamed.


_____________________


Diane Di Prima

Revolutionary Letters

50th Anniversary Edition

Pocket Poets No. 27

City Lights, 2021





Thursday, March 31, 2022

Wednesday, March 30, 2022

NEW! ANDREW SCHELLING FROM LONGHOUSE ~

 



Andrew Schelling

FOREST, TEMPLES, GLACIAL RIVERS

Longhouse

2022



many-colored
& limited
$10
postpaid

$15
   SIGNED



We accept Paypal

Please use our email address of 

longhousepoetry@gmail.com


Payable by check ~

Longhouse 

PO Box 2454

West Brattleboro, Vermont 05303



Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Sunday, March 27, 2022

STONE CARVERS ~

 



Julio Jiménez drives short spikes into a large piece of stone in order to cut out a section from a quarry near Escolásticas.


S T O N E    C A R V E R S





Thursday, March 24, 2022

STEWART BRAND ~




R E A D      M E


                                                                       Mark Maheny/Redux


Credit...Mark Maheny/Redux

Wednesday, March 23, 2022

CARMEN GIMENEZ SMITH ~

 




Lullaby


What does the poet call

a loss of words?

She calls it widest pupil.

They call it skewered sight.


How precise the nerves

that bear the toll of language.


Once there were stories

I didn't want true about me,

but here I am, twisted


with appetite. My mother

said I was a curious child.

She meant it as a gift.


Pirate moon, the

rapture of deep sleep,

build me a fortress

for my mantle.



__________________________

Carmen Giménez Smith

Cruel Futures

City Lights 2018