THEY FLEW ~

 

F L Y

   Yale 2023

THE KIOWA PEYOTE MEETING ~

 

        Recorded & Edited by Harry Smith

        Anadarko, Oklahoma

REMEDIOS VARO, SCIENCE FICTIONS ~

 

A R T    N E W S

       The Art Institute of Chicago

      2023

SYLVIA LEGRIS ~

 

Occasionally the Field of Possibilities

1

Is branch-spined,

a folded-leaf feeder,

a spatial array

of buckeye larvae,

snapdragons pulling

a pollinator-cue,

orange prolegs

telegraphing mirror-

image eyespots,

a macula lutea sun.

2

Is disruptive coloration,

yellow concentric rings

around a single eye,

a fovea centralis

of seed cones & pollen cones,

closely packed juniper seeds,

a Polyphemus moth with

urticating bristles & needles

with fine stomata lines, a nexus

of cone axis & host pine.

3

Is a field of 30,000 ommatidia,

a composite eye

eyeing woodruff & pale persicaria,

ten conspicuous eyespots

bisecting summer & pupation,

the line severing dusk & night,

the night flying hawkmoths,

is tapetal-mirrored,

a reflective tracheal network,

a superpositional glow.

4

Is a coevolved canopy

of wing scale & leaf,

a broadband acoustic cloak

deflecting echo & foe,

wavelengths of powder & light,

a cloud of stacked platelets,

a thin-film percussion,

hair-penciled & interlinear,

sparkling archaic sun moths,

a microlepidopterous register.

5

Is night-active & pupillary,

wing-fringe grazing cornea,

small moth repetitions

in an orbit of sequestration notes,

thick scale vestiture,

glassy, bluegrass-hosted,

rain-impermeable with snow-

veined forewings, a loop

of sequestration notes,

a small moth repetition.

6

Is a current of candles & dawn

half a clockface ago,

a Yablochkovian glow

of carbon-arcing waxwings,

match twigs, linstock boughs,

a sky of combustible fruit

tinders  river of ruined craters,

winter on its last legs,

a winter of monthlessness,

winter with plants in the belly.

7

Is a complicity

of ruckus & pinion,

is the pollen grain music

of a microstructure of modified hairs,

light-interfering wings,

sight-singing by structural coloration,

a scalic descent

down a microscopic edifice

of struts & holes, wings close

& the moth composes.

___________________________

The Principle of Rapid Peering

Sylvia Legris

New Directions, 2024

Sylvia Legris lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

GAZA NOW! ~

 

Democracy Now!

April 9, 2024

JOHNNY CASH, THE LIFE IN LYRICS ~

 

R E A D   M E

Little, Brown, 2023

JULES LAFORGUE ~

 

Moonlight

Will we ever live on that star? — the thought

Itself has me reeling

But Moon, when you move through August's

Evening skies in enchanting silence, I salute you!

Also when you careen, like some dismasted ship,

Through heaving black breakers of cloud!

Oh to ascend, one of the lost, and slake

My thirst on your baptismal moonshine!

Stricken by blindness, your beacon is lethal

To Icarus-types, left stranded and grieving

Sterile suicide-eye-preside

Over convocations of the world-weary.

Ice-cold skull, heap ridicule on our bald

and terminally ill bureaucracies.

O pill of ultimate fatigue, infuse

Yourself into our stubborn brains.

And chlamys-clad Diana, fermenting

Love unleashes barbs from your quiver

Which infect — ah! — the wingless, the hearts of those

Who would do good  on earth!

Star prone to unheard floods, I pray

That one of your chaste, and anti-febrile rays veers, tonight,

In my direction, drenches my sheets, drives

Me to wash my hands of life!

 ________________________

Lunar Solo, selected poems

Jules LaForgue

translated by Mark Ford

The Song Cave, 2023

THE BANKS OF CLAUDY ~

 

HARRY NILSSON ~ "The Moonbeam Song" ~

 

CANDY DARLING ~

 

"Candy Darling on her Deathbed" 

Peter Hujar

R E A D    M E

Farrar Straus & Giroux

2024

JOHN SINCLAIR ~

Mr. Sinclair was greeted by his wife, Leni, when he was released from prison in December 1971.Credit...Andrew Sacks/SaxPix

J O H N    S I N C L A I R

1941 ~ 2024

TOMAS TRANSTROMER, "April and Silence" ~

 

April and Silence

Spring lies forsaken.

The velvet-dark ditch

crawls by my side

without refections.

The only thing that shines

are yellow flowers.

I am cradled in my shadow

like a violin

in its black case.

The only thing I want to say

glimmers out of reach

like the silver

at the pawnbroker's.

___________________________

The Sorrow Gondola

Tomas Transtromer

LUDMILA ULITSKAYA ~

 

R E A D   M E

Body of the Soul

BY LUDMILA ULITSKAYA ; TRANSLATED BY RICHARD PEVEAR & LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY

Yale University Press

2023

A DREAM IN THE CREAM ~

a selection 

_____________________

O the purity

of the aloneness

of pulling off socks

Dark kitchen

but the lights of

a distant bridge

An old woman

breaking teeth

off a comb

Ignorant of their own souls

monkeys swinging

between temples

Possibly the

largest shell on the beach

and it looks like a shoe

Being sad

and pissing

at the same time

During lunch

stories about

sandwiches

Making

dying flowers glow

the moon's best intentions

Dusting a mirror

she takes a moment

to check her eyebrows

Small bronze head with big nose

holding down

take-out menus

Garden diary

all that's left

of the garden

Such an elegant rainfall

even the dog refuses

to shake it off

Cold summer rain

piercing my shirt

slipping between ribs

A small grave of sorrows

on one branch

in one bird

____________________

Ronald Baatz

A Dream in the Cream

Black Fig Press, 2021

CLEMENS STARCK ~

 

FAREWELL, CLEM

 November 30, 1937 ~ March 21, 2024

NOVEMBER 30, 1937 ~ MARCH 21, 2024No

NOVEMBER 30, 1937 ~ MARCH 21N, 20NOVEMBER 30, 1937 ~ MARCH 21, 202424NOVEMBER 30, 1937 ~ MARCH 21, 2024

FLANNERY O'CONNOR ~

 

R E A D    M E

   Good Things Out of Nazareth

   Convergent, 2019

THE 5 ROYALES ~

 

SOCIAL FORESTRY ~

 

R E A D    M E

Synergetic Press

2023

HIROKO OYAMADA ~

 

R E A D    M E

      New Directions, 2020

MARJORIE PERLOFF ~

 

M A R J O R I E   P E R L O F F

1931 ~ 2024

BILL MONROE & DOC WATSON ~

 

OSAMU DAZAI ~

 

O S A M U     D A Z A I

R E A D    M E

LUCY SANTE ~

 

L I S T E N

R E A D    M E

   Penguin 2024

JOSEPH SPENCE, ENCORE ~

 

Smithsonian Folkways

2021

DIARIES OF EXILE ~

 

DIARY OF EXILE III

April 25

This year the blackbirds are the tiles

on the roof of summer.

Fear gropes like the blind man's hand

for the handle of the door.

You sit on a rock

You're calm because you're tired

you're good because you were afraid

you forget easily because you don't want to remember

you don't forget.

May 1

The soldier crushed his cigarette into the ground.

How easily every single thing can be crushed.

Across the water, Laviro.

Who is it who said: the women reapers

with the swallows' scythe?

Cover your ears with your hands.

Shame. Shame.

May 3

The people sit in the sun

they take off their jackets

their boots become tight

the soldiers' armpits sweat.

You rub a little thyme between your fingers.

This is how we slowly slowly age

above the second death.

May 4

Someone is smoking beside the guardhouse.

The evening star looks out above the mountain

as if it's knocked on the wrong door.

The utility poles darken

they stretch full length

afraid they'll bend.

May 5

They owe us a lot.

If we don't get it back

we'll owe that too.

The floorboards are moldy from the damp

the windows warped the panes broken

dirtied sheets loose boots

the bread has no odor

the people have grown very thin

like saints.

Concentration camp

Makronisos, 1950

_______________________

Yannis Ritsos

Diaries of Exile

translated by Karen Emmerich & Edmund Kelley

Archipelago Books, 2013

TIN FOIL TO VINYL ~

 

R E A D     M E

Bloomsbury 2023

        

VERMONTER ~

 

M. Emmet Walsh in “Blood Simple” (1984), the first feature film by Joel and Ethan Coen.Credit...

River Road Productions/Circle — Sunset Boulevard, via Corbis, via Getty Images

M.  EMMET  WALSH

1935 ~ 2024

PULLING THE CHARIOT OF THE SUN ~

 

R E A D    M E

Scribner 2023