EARTH ~

The Uros people live in small floating islands in the bay of Puno on the shores of Lake Titicaca, in south-eastern Peru. The 60 islands are home to about 1,000 people and are made out of the reeds that grow in abundance in the shallow waters

photo : mattia cabitza
the guardian (u.k.)

































The Uros are a pre-Incan people who live on forty-two self-fashioned floating islands in Lake Titicaca Puno, Peru and Bolivia. They form three main groups: Uru-Chipayas, Uru-Muratos and the Uru-Iruitos. The latter are still located on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca and Desaguadero River.

The Uros use bundles of dried totora reeds to make reed boats (balsas mats), and to make the islands themselves.[1]

The Uros islands at 3810 meters above sea level are just five kilometers west from Puno port.[2] Around 2,000 descendants of the Uros were counted in the 1997 census,[3] although only a few hundred still live on and maintain the islands; most have moved to the mainland. The Uros also bury their dead on the mainland in special cemeteries.

The Uros do not reject modern technology: some boats have motors, some houses have solar panels to run appliances such as televisions, and the main island is home to an Uros-run FM radio station, which plays music for several hours a day.

Early schooling is done on several islands, including a traditional school and a school run by a Christian church. Older children and university students attend school on the mainland, often in nearby Puno.

from Wikipedia

ONE MORE SAVING GRACE
(of the small press) ~

please click onto







images to







enlarge

A WEEK! ~

Mangled Horses, Maimed Jockeys

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/us/death-and-disarray-at-americas-racetracks.html?hp






photos: Eadweard Muybridge
nytimes

ONE LINE ~

photos © bob arnold

EARTH ~

There's too much of a day


She thought.



I must find the last light,
she thought.

My kitchen needs cleaning,
she thought.

I'm old. No, I'm not,
she thought.

My house needs dusting,
she thought.

My face needs washing,
she thought.

My hair needs combing,
she thought.

My dreams need a dream,
she thought.





Suddenly, it was tomorrow
and dark,



and the man she lived with
would be home



out of the dark, out of tomorrow.
He would come to her careful waiting,



stretch his arms to the last of her lives,
and make truth of the lie.





How many times would he die for her?
Sometimes she liked to sit and count.



Because he died only for himself,
because she was himself,
and his deaths counted her in.



Inward.



She thought of Garrah,
and she wept.





I'm not an old woman.


Got corns on my toes, a few bunions,
but sweet young women have that. My
life gets across to me, even if it don't
to nobody else. Even if my legs are
wiggly and my arms don't hold things
tight no more. He likes me that way, he
says. But when was the last time I
heard him speak? I mean without a
warning in his voice, without me
listening with a humming in my head.





Without my life hollering and screaming
down my belly even as I give him
my softest smiles and purest pain. Oh,
how it gets across to me: that kind
of love that wants redemption in a man's
body, or even in his words and say,
"come here" and "don't go" and
"don't leave me" and "you'll stay"
and "here, a gift", and gentle gestures
of satin and perfume, that sweeten you
up for a night on the town.

He's the fourth one for that.
I'm just learning to count
with my eyes.


Pale the Prince!





Garrah is prowling


through her dreams again.
I met a man yesterday, Garrah says.
He called your name.



They always call my name, she says.
But this man was a stranger, Garrah smiles.
They are all strange, she whispers,
out of the dark.



No. He came with life, and gave me
an onion to eat because I am
out of the dead.



You are strange, Garrah. Stop singing
like that. You talk in songs that
I can't remember, she says.



Here. For you, Garrah sings.
Take the onion and eat. Soon he will
meet you at the well.



Phelia awoke. No one was beside her.
No strong suggestion of his presence
pressed upon the sheets.



He hadn't come home yet.



A bad dream, she thought.
This one will take centuries.





Strange.
She was always rather strange.
She knew it and loved it.
Sometimes she thought people coveted her strange-
ness,
her manners, her opinions, her laughter,
even her afterthoughts.
People wearied her.
I'm dying, She'd think.
Do they want that, too?
They can have it !
I'll just take myself to Suppie's
He serves good molasses cake.
(He should, I gave him the recipe ! )
Sit there for awhile, make my peace with Him.





They sit on the stoop and talk.


There are so many things
I want to tell you, Garrah.


the way things go, the walk
of every little memory
going down the street before me,


you know, like the backs
of people steadying themselves
before their feet catch in cracks


of concrete when the wind blows
against them. You, Garrah, so tall
and high above.


My memories are all I have.


Garrah listens.






Stop dreaming about me dead,
Orphelia, I ain't dead.
Go about your business.



like the woman you are, don't be led
by no dreams, no nightmare either.
I'm here, beside you. I'm Garrah,




your sister, late and never.
You're escaping. You don't know
the rules or maybe you've never tried them.


Be good to yourself, ever good.
Nobody's going to do it for you.
Take my hand, now.


Hold onto it.






Phelia hesitates.



Beans jumps in his sleep.



Garrah gets up,
leaves the stoop,
opens the screen-door,
vanishes.



Phelia sits with the palm of one hand open,
her empty grasp lingers in the autumn breeze,
disembodied, breathing.






She remembers her mother's stories about Jo,


her ancestor, a slave woman, who refused to leave
the plantation and follow her husband
in his escape from that life, but kept close
to what she knew, what she had earned, while blessing
his departing footsteps, Jo survived ninety-three years,
died a goat-looking woman, kept the hell of her life
in her apron pocket and dared it to burn or touch her
flesh.


And she never saw her husband again,
and she never kept the lamp burning,
and she never forgot how she loved him,
and she never raised her children
to remember anything but a good father,
for that she was to the day he left.


How Phelia smiles as she indulges
the strange memory, and the smile
is not exact ; it does not ask much
of her. It merely pauses, casts a silken shadow
passes.






She prays to Jo: you had the best,
that kind of abandonment,
it left you whole. Mine is different.
He never left. His abandonment is to stay,
and sometime tonight, he'll come home,
to this house,
our only kinship,
and select something else to take to the pawnbroker
to keep us going. Oh, if only we both could leave
the plantation and really keep going!


But why should I worry?
He ain't mine anyhow,
just somehow I borrowed.
He never wifed me.


In this she abandons her prayer,
in this she finds abandonment safe,
in this Jo's blood quickens in her memory,
bites a little, causing a shivering,
a need to go for a walk
outside the impatient, brooding house, away from her
summoned ancestor who, she knows,
no longer listens,
but waits by the well.



DOLORES KENDRICK
Why the Woman Is Singing
On the Corner
(a verse narrative)
Peter E. Randall, Publisher
2001

Native Washingtonian, Dolores Kendrick was appointed Poet Laureate of the District of Columbia on May 14, 1999. She is the second person honored with this title, following Sterling Brown, who was appointed in 1984.

EARTH ~

NOMAD'S UTOPIA


Movements


1

he moves as the season permits
every place has laws dictated by the climate
in inclement weather he sets up his defenses
he moves from place to place to survive or live
in winter he'll work undercover
knowing the uses of many places
food will be given to him in return




2

hands are the first wealth and intelligence
the second wealth the rest comes by itself
he can return to the same grazing places
change itinerary and repeat his circuit of the land
at the end he comes back to a place agreed on from the start




3

he will have children by one or more women
he spends the time necessary to teach them
what he knows the woman or women provide until the father
comes back to see if the children follow the father
they speak without roles




4

he turns his back on a plundered land
surrounded by boneless men saying
without lying that the wealth is elsewhere




5

just standing still in greeting
roots from the feet sprout and sink in
upon parting they rip up without harm




6

the city named Image has neither boundaries
nor centers it can model itself on itself
place where you meet it is not therefore
a city but a point of protection
porches or tents vegetable and animal place
place of waters and human cultivation
they meet there or leave as they wish they show their
thoughts language which is taken literally
systems of planes and curves for going down and coming up
behind women behind children and animals
ownership of the soil doesn't exist




7

they leave the plain occupied by Industry
men without being big shots he's no boss
abandoned territories mountainous habitable
they learn to do without what the Rich One has
the one that disappears plunder hole in the earth
Chemical Cathedral


[tr. Paul Vangelisti]








ANTONIO PORTA
Piercing the Page
selected poems 1958-1989

Otis Books | Seismicity Editions
http://gw.otis.edu

please click onto image to enlarge

EARTH ~

The Basic Con


Those who can't find anything to live for,
always invent something to die for.


Then they want the rest of us to
die for it too.


These, and an elite army of thousands,
who do nobody any good at all, but do
great harm to some,
have always collected vast sums from all.


Finally, all this machinery
tries to kill us,


because we won't die for it, too.




Lew Welch
Ring of Bone: Collected Poems 1950-1971
Edited by Donald Allen
Grey Fox Press (Bolinas)

please click on images to enlarge

LONGHOUSE! ~

Heathcote Williams



Being Kept By A Jackdaw. Longhouse, 2012. First edition. Three color unfolding concertina format with photograph and one long poem. Well known British writer, poet and activist puts his keen eye to Mother Nature. New and limited. A signed edition is available upon request.
$8, unsigned


Buy now (U.S. addresses with $2 s/h) with Paypal:

Inquiries, please write the Bookshop with thanks

please click on image

EARTH ~

FRIEND



I saw him last

before the big

snow, then we



burrowed into

the woods for

months with a



few lamps, by

spring there

he was on his



tractor and the

mud road call-

ing my name



waving an arm





photo © bob arnold

LONGHOUSE! ~

Gerard Malanga with Archie

photo credit: Asako


Janine Pommy Vega, 1942-2010. Longhouse, 2012. First edition. Postcard. Noted poet, photographer, artist, archivist shares a companionable eye to an old friend, the poet Janine Pommy Vega. Three color approximately 4-1/4 by 6 card. Ideal for framing. New and limited. A signed edition is available upon request. $8, unsigned


Buy now (U.S. addresses with $2 s/h) with Paypal:

Inquiries, please write the Bookshop with thanks

EARTH ~

The FSG Book of Twentieth Century Italian Poetry, An Anthology
Geoffrey Brock, editor
Farrar Straus, 2012 First edition, first printing


__________________________________________


BEGGARS

It's nice to play beggars at Christmas
for the rich then are kind;
it's nice the manger at Christmas
where the lamb lies down
among lions.

ROCCO SCOTELLARO
trans. Cid Corman

___________________________________



Fine and bright as new white boards in decorative dustjacket with crisp bright text throughout. A mammoth breath of fresh air and book, well over 600 pages of an illuminating collection. Bilingual, Italian and English with some of our finest English language poets involved including Ezra Pound, William Arrowsmith, Samuel Beckett, Cid Corman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert Fitzgerald, Allen Ginsberg, Seamus Heaney, Geoffrey Hill, Thomas Lux, Marianne Moore, W. D. Snodgrass, Felix Stefanile, Paul Vangelisti, Rosanna Warren, Charles Wright and many others. The Italian poets include the legendary and the brave from F. T. Marinetti to Ungaretti, Montale, Pavese, Pasolini, Scotellaro, Porta. Already a hallmark with complimentary card from the author tipped in.
Poetry / Anthology

EARTH ~

Gloria Steinem

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/fashion/in-the-womans-movement-who-will-replace-gloria-steinem.html?hp

Ai-jen Poo

Navi Pillay

ny times

EARTH ~

THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS


There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.





Sara Teasdale
Flame and Shadow
(1920)

SONIC ~

Davyd Betchkal, sound catcher, in Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska.

~

IS SILENCE GOING EXTINCT?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/magazine/is-silence-going-extinct.html?hp

photo:

Peter van Agtmael/Magnum, for The New York Times

ny times

LONGHOUSE! ~

Malcolm Ritchie



when the poem's out a sense in the body
like the energy left in a twig
after a bird has flown

Some Small Lines on the Great Earth. Longhouse, 2012. First edition. Three color unfolding accordion booklet with thirty new poems. Poet, Buddhist and Japanese scholar, from his steward on the Arran Island of Scotland. New and limited. A signed edition is available upon request.
$10 unsigned

Buy now (U.S. addresses with $2 s/h) with Paypal:

Inquiries, please write the Bookshop with thanks

please click on image

EARTH ~

small town —

the span

of the radio dial









small town

my big words

are gone









small town

the smell-of

everyone's wood









small town

the print shop owner closes

for a walk









even

in the small town

the questions find me









love

in the small town

almost too big





preface ~
these are my small observations of
a small town in a brief time in a
brief life. a town i've come to
cherish because of the fact that it
always is exactly what it is. a
lesson for us all.

vincent tripi
winter 2003

EARTH ~

please click on images



John Martone
skeleton key
copyright 2012
samuddo / ocean
isbn 978-1-105-53007-4