BACK ROAD CHALKIES

MORNINGS ~

MIRA BILLOTTE


Mira Billotte recorded this Bob Dylan tune in 2007 for Todd Hayne's film I'm Not There. It stood out, and is as haunting as the original off John Wesley Harding, which is saying something. When not working the rounds as a solo artist and with that general free-for-all in today's music so beautifully done by many young musicians, Billotte is housed in the band White Magic.

www.last.fm/music/Mira+Billotte



and, speaking of the devil, listen to him cover a Doc Pomus tune, recorded as well by
Big Joe Turner, with equal glee:

Bob Dylan Woodstock.jpg

and then the pro...








Big Joe Turner
jango.com


. . . finally, here is Bob Dylan introducing Doc Pomus ~
born Jerome Solon Felder (June 27, 1925 - March 14, 1991 )
off his radio program "Theme Time Radio Hour".
He says it all the best.








Doc Pomus

EARTH ~









BOBOLINK


He watches my entry

Down the tilt of pasture

Clumps of mud sinking rubber boots,

Chain saw load and fuel jugs,

Holds an eye on me

In his one position.

When I set to work he sets to work,

Drops off the long spring of telephone wire.

Through the day picks at brush piles, goes

Back onto the wire, withstands the heat, watches.

It is only when the saw is shut down I hear what

He says, the scale of whistles both sharp

And gentle to the ear, no one pitch alike, perhaps

The voice of many birds together, in this new one who

Peers down as I leave and now stars to sing.






DOG MEAT


Up on the hill where the sun warms

Under thick maples he used to

Pull a sled of sap buckets past,

I’d see him right there as I walked the road

Pastured in a circle of stamped snow,

Content with hay and pail of oats —

Soft brown except where the hooves

Bushed long white hairs.

Never seemed to move from that place

Though his eyes would see me from a distance,

Wait and turn his head as I went by —

We would look at one another, and I

Remember it very clear today as I pass

And he’s nowhere around —

Sold for $350 I found out later.

The first time in seven years

I haven’t nodded to him my hello,

And this walk isn’t the same.





SELF-EMPLOYED


Take two squared stones and

Drop them almost side by side

Lift the thinner slab of rock and

Bust your guts setting it on top

Now you got reason to sit down








from Where Rivers Meet, Bob Arnold
photo © bob arnold

EARTH ~

DJIVAN GASPARYAN

The folk master of the duduk, a double-reed woodwind akin to the oboe, was born in 1928 in Armenia and started to play with earnest by age 6. Djivan Gasparyan has circled the globe many times since with his music, often leaving a trance on his audience. He has played with everyone from Hossein Alizadeh to Lionel Ritchie (which is a stretch). He's been with me since twenty years ago when I came upon his first LP I Will Not Be Sad In This World in a dollar bin. Sealed. I was hooked by the title alone. The music was all a blessing.

georgien.blogspot.com

HOUSE OF KEYS ~

NEW BOOKLET OF POEMS & ART WORK BY RAY DIPALMA

please click on image to enlarge



Three color booklet of new poems and art work

by Ray in fold-out splendor.

Both signed and unsigned editions.

Longhouse offers a free half-reading above.

Enjoy!

Signed $15.
Unsigned $8.95

(International orders kindly inquire)

order here through Paypal with free shipping

image: greeninteger.com

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ~

Oklahoma born and Texas raised, Terry Stafford was the one-or-two-hit-wonder who covered Elvis Presley's version of "Suspicion" two years after Elvis in 1964.

It was a favorite of a certain someone I know that year, and endured.

On the Billboard chart for that spring it was #6 — the same time the Beatles had locked in positions one-through-five.

The Elvis original is deep and lusty, maybe finer, but somehow he missed out having the cooing backup singers which shiver goosebumps up both my arms. Instead, on the Elvis version come guy-shouters, which often sends our kitten Kokomo flying up the stairs.

"Suspicion" (which sold one million copies) was written by the esteem Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman, and produced by Bob Summers the brother-in-law of Les Paul. Terry Stafford passed away in 1996 at age 54 due to liver failure.

Terry Stafford and The Pixies Three



Of course I'm not about to avoid The King's version:







elvispresleytheking.com





now, put the two songs together and it just might sound
like this ~








chris isaak / www.100xr.com

HELPER ~

stone construction & photo © bob arnold

Bob Arnold's ~
DREAM COME TRUE

please click onto pages to enlarge






Bob Arnold's Dream Come True (Sanndroymd)
Published by Nordsjoforlaget, 2009
Bilingual edition in English & Norwegian
Translated by Lars Amund Vaage
Illustrated by Laurie Clark
Exclusive cloth edition
60 pages

$25 signed


order here through Paypal plus $2 shipping

LAW ~

LITTLE THINGS TAKE 2

Speaking of little — while I proceeded to clean up my tool room last night, still barefoot, handling hammers, saws and sharp blades, I managed to knock over a small box of screws from a shelf

The screws fell without a care, scattered like metal seeds all over the strong plank floor

I picked those up and put them back into the box, only to lift the box and have the entire bottom of the box collapse and all the screws fall and scatter again

I stared down at the screws-------Saw my bare feet

This time a handful were caught between the planks of the floor

I could see them, brass tipped, not entirely lost to the below

I went to get tweezers, and the tweezers picked each one out like the doctor that once used these tweezers and picked out the stitches in my forehead after I smashed heads with a player in a backyard pick-up basketball game

I asked for the tweezers, knowing the doctor would ditch them after me

He looked at the tweezers, then into my eyes. "Sure", he said.

photo collage in tool room: © bob arnold

EARTH ~

TREEPLANTER

Never see how —

But see how —

The pine tree

Has grown a foot

Since a year ago







SKY


Hiking down from a hillside

Snow packed, saw on the shoulder

There is no doubt now

Of rain in the air

I stop at a sound

Far / nearing / wait

Two crows flying

Calling, wide apart

One straight south

The other — eastward

Belly on the tree line

I've lost sight of one

For keeping with the other







ON BUILDING A STONEWALK IN NOVEMBER


This river drifts the land,

In the long air of pines

I smell spring.

Down here, don’t wear gloves,

Don’t wear boots with leaks,

Stay working, and of course

Use the flat stones —

All the things

One learns

In a first year —

The boots take awhile, I know.

But come to you water gentle,

Very clear

Draw strong

Carry the river home to bathe.

It is November / wide open / colding

There is ice you shouldn’t trust.







from Where Rivers Meet, Bob Arnold
photo © bob arnold

SUMMERY ~

june '10

july '10

july '10

now '10

drawings © bob arnold

FLOWER ~

COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER

For me, Wildwood Flower will always be sung by the Carter Family, and after them June Carter Cash.

Written in 1860 by Maud Irving with music by Joseph Philbrick Webster, this legend has seen many variations, including some retooling by Woody Guthrie, the master of tools...plus Joan Baez, Iris Dement; Merle Travis gave us an instrumental and so did Bill Frissell, plus Jean Ritchie, Hobart Smith, and even Mike Ness took it home, wherever.

Now we have Loretta Lynn with a mountain stream opening and her usual but ever genuine Butcher Holler Kentucky way of phrasing and keeping it honest.

Born the second of 8 children, Lynn married at 13 and stayed married 50 years to a man named Doolittle. Their lives at the start was portrayed by Sissy Spacek and Tommy Lee Jones in a film with the above title, directed by Michael Apted (1980). It is well known Lynn and Doolittle tusseled but, she said, "he never hit me one time that I didn’t hit him back twice."

Lynn, at age 75, has never stopped singing. Always this good.

GORAN SONNEVI ~







from Mozart's Third Brain



LXIX


At night once more the moon's quiet, mystical light

The moon is in the trees in the forest, no wind at all xxxNo one sees it

but me, from inside the sleeping house

Now a light breeze moves stiff leaves in the heat

What does human light have to do with me? Have I

turned away, esoteric; though this was never my choice

I don't know I cannot abjure inner sovereignty

Which is also external xxxI taste blood

in my mouth, on my lips xxWho am I sacrificing?

For whom shall I become an offering? Perhaps no one xxxNot even for that

would I be of any use xxxBut I shall touch you with life . . .

Native of Lund, Sweden (b. 1939) Goran Sonnevi is translated here by Rika Lesser.

The above poem is from Mozart's Third Brain (Yale).

photo: norden.org

OLD SCHOOL ~

KOKO TAYLOR

The daughter of a sharecropper born (1928) Cora Walton in Shelby county Tennessee, Koko Taylor may be one of the very last of the hard blues singers/interpreters, and here we have her singing Lefty Dizz's "Bad Avenue" in true Muddy Waters style.

When people say they like their blues the dirtier the better — well, here you go.
Keep in mind the singer's almost 80 years old.

After recording with Charley and Chess in her early years, Taylor moved exclusively into
the good hands at Alligator Records until her unfortunate passing in 2009.

EARTH ~

JAMES GAMMON

(1940-2010)

If you watched the classic television westerns of the 1960s: "Gunsmoke", "The Wild Wild West" "The Virginian", etc., you know James Gammon. He was in Cool Hand Luke. He didn't last long in Natural Born Killers, which was unusual for him. Everything about his presence and face was about endurance. Nobody was like him and he was like everyone when you saw him in character as an outlaw or a gunman or a regular joe. With a voice that sounded like not a voice, maybe a boot on gravel. On film he'll only grow. From the stage they'll be someone missing.

“This was a guy who could act circles around most other actors,” Sam Shepard said. Gammon was a favorite of the playwright in many of his plays.





photo: butthorn.wordpress.com

EARTH ~

STONE JOB

It was one of those stonewall jobs I laid up once upon a time

Hand dug the foundation ditch

Crushed in small stone

Someone brought me the rock each day to keep things busy

No machinery, no radio, no rattle, no traffic

The river through the trees

stonework & photo © bob arnold

THINK BACK, PILGRIM IX

The Grapes of Wrath, director John Ford

MORE LONGHOUSE BOOKLETS !

please click on image to enlarge

Back by Popular Demand! more hand-made booklets & jewels ~

Thomas Meyer, Dudley Laufman, Bob Arnold, Austin Smith, Daniel Smith, Tom Clark, Ed Markowski, Marcia Roberts, John Levy, Gloria Frym, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann (trans. Mark Terrill)

Each title is the length & breadth of a chapbook, using far less paper product & waste.

Inquire about purchasing all eleven titles at one saving price.

HANS MAGNUS ENZENSBERGER ~

MY WIFE'S MERITS


My wife's merits are too numerous

for an A4 sheet of paper.

She is multicellular, with rustling hair

thriving wonderfully at night, in her sleep.

Each and every hair is dear to me. She's well provided

with soft spots. Whenever her nostrils

vibrate slightly, I know: she's thinking.

How often she thinks, and how in arbitrarily she lives!

I know she can curl her tongue,

play footsie. When she laughs or grumbles

a new wrinkle appears at her mouth,

which I like. She's not entirely white,

is of more than one colour. Her breaths, too,

are numerous, not to mention

the manifold souls in her breast.

I am amazed that here,

where I happen to be, is where is usually is.


translated by Esther Kinsky





IN SEMI-DARKNESS


When she's lying there, so entirely

of this world as a cow or a cat,

without intention or regret,

in the semi-darkness a halo

hovers around her shimmering skin.



You can sense it, feel it,

when you're close enough to her,

this soft radiation

in the more distant glow of infrared.

A Fourier transform

No one will decipher.



It is only a breath,

touching you more deeply

than the touch,

and not to know why —

perhaps that is happiness.


translated by Esther Kinsky






THE COPY


When Steinar Petursson, a gaunt man

from Borgarnes in distant Iceland,

carpenter by trade,

arrived in Copenhagen by packet steamer

a good hundred years ago,

he saw a wonderful machine.



It was a band saw

of gleaming steel.

Yet when Steinar discovered what it cost,

as much as one hundred and fifteen

sheep by Faxafloi Bay,

he closed his eyes.



He ran his fingers

over belt pulley, hand wheel and step.

For four days on the packet

Steinar Petursson was silent.

At home he took the hardest wood

and shut himself into his workshop.



His work, a band-saw made entirely of wood,

only the blade is iron,

can still be seen today, among spinning wheels,

stuffed puffins

and old birch spoons, in a corner

of the local museum at Borgarnes.


translated by Martin Chalmers






AT TIMES


When you meet someone

who is smarter or more stupid than you —

don't make too much of it.

The ants and the gods,

believe me, feel just the same.

That there are more people in China,

say, than San Marino,

is no misfortune.

Most people, no doubt, are

blacker or whiter than you.

At times you're a giant,

like Gulliver, or a dwarf.

Somewhere or other you're always discovering

an even more radiant beauty,

someone even worse off.

You're mediocre,

luckily. Accept it!

Seven degrees centigrade more

or less on the thermometer —

and you would be beyond saving.


translated by Martin Chalmers






A LITTLE SWAN SONG TO MOBILITY


It was cold in Bogord.

All the restaurants were shut for the day

in Much-Binding-on-the-Marsh.

In Fiji pouring rain.

Helsinki was booked up.

In Turin the refuse collectors were on strike.

Roadblocks everywhere

in Bujumbura. The silence

over the roofs of Pecs

was something close to panic.

It was least unbearable

under the pear tree

at home.


translated by Martin Chalmers






ALSO ONE HALF OF LIFE


At first it's just a tiny number falling prey.

One is run over, the bigmouth from 6b,

or the chubby cousin with her plaits

who had this funny smell is gone,

suddenly gone. Others died in a fire

or were taken away, late at night. Later

bordered letters arrived. Like shadows

it grew, the little group of the absent ones,

and you can't remember this one's

hat and another one's mouth.

And then, one day, the moment comes,

imperceptibly, and passes, when half

of those who fed you, hated, taught

and kissed you have disappeared.


translated by Esther Kinsky



from A HISTORY OF CLOUDS
(Seagull Books / seagullbooks.org)


Poet, translator, novelist, essayist, children's book author, and editor of the book series Die Andere Bibliother, Hans Magnus Enzensberger was born in Germany in 1929. In his teens he joined Hitler Youth, but was kicked out soon after for what may be termed a general insubordination, or nonconformity. For those seeking Enzensberger, he also writes under the name Andreas Thalmayr. Curiously, with the closing of this year's World Cup and a Spain victory; HME was a collaborating inventor of a machine that automatically composed poems which was used in the 2006 games to provide commentary on the games.

photo: © flickr.com