TOMAS TRANSTROMER ~

THE FORGOTTEN CAPTAIN




We have many shadows. I was on my way home

one September night when Y

climbed out of his grave after forty years

and kept me company.



At first he was completely blank, just a name

but his thoughts swam

faster than time ran

and caught up to us.



I put his eyes into my eyes

and saw the war's sea.

The last boat he commanded

rose up from under us.



Ahead and behind the Atlantic convoy crept,

those who would survive

and those who'd been given The Mark

(invisible to all).



While the sleepless hours relieved each other

but never him —

the life vest snug under his oilskin coat.

He never came home.



It was internal crying that bled him to death

in a Cardiff hospital.

He finally got to lie down

and turn into the horizon.



Farewell eleven-knot convoys! Farewell 1940!

Here's where world history ends.

Bombers hung in the air.

Heather bloomed in the moors.



A photo from early in the century shows a beach.

Six well-dressed boys standing there.

They have sailboats in their arms.

What serious expressions!



The boats that became life and death for some of them.

And to write about the dead

is also a game, made heavy

by what is yet to come.



___________________________

T O M A S    T R A N S T R O M E R
translated by Patty Crane
Bright Scythe
Sarabande Books 2015

WE GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS PLACE ~

U N I V E R S I T Y  O F  M A S S A C H U S E T T S  P R E S S

 2015

http://news.wisc.edu/12188

the beat goes on. . . 

MIROSLAV HOLUB ~

The Last Night Bus

The last night bus echoes away

into the depth

of the night's

spinal cord.

Stars shiver

unless they explode.

There are no other civilizations.

Only the gentle

galactic fear

based on methane.

Teaching About Arthropods

The male mite Adactylidium

hatches in his mother's body,

gobbles her up from the inside,

while mating

with all his seven

little sisters.

So, when he's born,

it's as if he were dead:

he's been through it all

and he's freelance,

in the bull's-eye,

in the focus

of extracurricular existence:

an absolute poet,

non-segmented,

non-antennated,

eightlegged.

Distant Howling

In Alsace,

on July 6, 1885,

a rabid dog knocked Joseph Meister down

and bit him fourteen times.

Meister was the first patient

saved by Pasteur's

vaccine, in thirteen

gradually increased doses

of weakened virus.

Pasteur died of ictus

ten years later.

Fifty years later

the watchman Meister

committed suicide

when the Germans

occupied Pasteur's institute

including the poor dogs.

Only the virus

never got involved.

When the Bees Grew Silent

An old man

suddenly died

alone in his garden

under an elderberry bush.

He lay there until dark

when the bees

grew silent.

It was a beautiful death, wasn't it,

Doctor, says

the woman in black

who comes to the garden

as always

every Sunday,

and in her bag brings

lunch for two.

The Dead

After the third operation, his heart

pierced like an old carnival target,

he woke in his bed and said:

Now I'll be fine,

like a sunflower. And have you ever

seen horses make love?

He died that night.

And another one plodded on for eight

milk-and-water-years

like a long-haired water plant

in a sour creek,

as if he stuck his pale face out

on a skewer from behind

the graveyard wall.

Finally the face disappeared.

In both cases the angel of death

stamped his hobnailed boot

on their medulla oblongata.

I know they died the same death.

But I don't believe they're dead

in the same way.

_____________________

MIROSLAV HOLUB

Interferon, or On Theater

translated from the Czech by

David Young and Dana Habova

Field, 1982

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/miroslav-holub

EVE'S HOLLYWOOD ~

New York Review of Books 2015

http://www.nyrb.com/products/eve-s-hollywood?variant=2197698945

http://thesecondpass.com/?p=493

DO WE? WE DO ~

MILTOS SACHTOURIS ~

M I L T O S    S A C H T O U R I S

Wind Blew




Wind blew

flowers from another world



like a church



with black stigmata of evil

here and there

burning the skin red



in sleep

her hair

smelled tragically

sweet






Hour-Hand


From a high mountain I saw the sea

in its arms I saw

birds living and dying

and I shone high like a star

with tears and with nails

and around me fish and ladders

ladders they could climb up to push out

my heart

ladders I could climb down

to shred the heart of the sea







For Spring



The sun is green

the trees are burning

awaiting the swallows

our iron swallows' nests

no longer fool us with their flowers

they cost us our arms and legs

now our arms and legs are hanging

from the trees






The Poet's Head


I cut off my head

I put it on a plate

and took it to my doctor



— There's nothing wrong, he said,

it's just overheated

throw it in the river and we'll see



I threw it in the river with the frogs

and it raised a dreadful racket

it started shrieking and howling

all kinds of strange songs



I picked it up and put it back on my neck



and roamed the streets in a rage



with a poet's green hexagonometric head 



__________________


Miltos Sachtouris
Poems
(1945-1971)
translated from the Greek by
Karen Emmerich
Archipelago books, 2006

RICHARD HELL ~

S O F T   S K U L L   P R E S S   2015

http://www.richardhell.com

KAREN DALTON ~

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/mar/23/folk

NEW! FRANCO BELTRAMETTI BOOK ~

edited by Stefan Hyner


http://www.spdbooks.org/Search/Default.aspx?PublisherName=Blackberry%20Books

"Franco Beltrametti's smooth-barked Muse leads him across the grids of latitude and longitude to the source of good medicine poems. A suavity masks these elemental songs - or rather, gives these elder faces a modern "human" mask. Civilized, in the best sense."

Gary Snyder

Franco in action ~
https://vimeo.com/48647354

THOMAS BERNHARD ~

T H O M A S    B E R N H A R D

MY FATHER

My father suffered from the aridity of the earth,

likewise from the moldered face of summer,

he climbed the mountain and rested above the tarns.

At that time the ships used to sail westwards,

never shall I forget how my father's hand

reached out for the human soul —

He climbed the mountain to see the countryside that they

trampled to bits in seven weeks.

"I tell you," he said, "Love is indestructible —."

Then the tanks rolled over the wheat field and buried

hope for the coming year.

They all suffered from the aridity of the earth, some

fell back into the night, saying: we

cannot find any verses at all in this monstrous poem.

My father believed this earth belonged to him, since he

had bought a hundred acres and a hut with

trees; in which he slept,

but found no dream.

For hundreds of millions of years he gazed into the animals' eyes

as they flickered on Christmas Eve.

He said: "We don't need candles!"

My father brought a branch from the olive tree and carried snow

to the lips of his sisters.

In Siberia he embarked upon a voyage, yet

needed an eternity, because they were all suffering

from the aridity of the earth,

and a voice within him said: "I shall dip my light

in the human snow."

___________________________

 

T H O M A S    B E R N H A R D

translated from the German by

Peter Waugh

 
















 Three Rooms Press (2015)

 http://www.thomasbernhard.org/

STEEL & GLASS ~

SLEEPER'S AWAKE ~

H O T E L    S P L E N D I D

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/travel/latest-hotel-amenity-books.html?hpw&rref=travel&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

https://soundcloud.com/nybooks/president-obama-marilynne-robinson

CORINA, CORINA ~

PERCHANCE TO DREAM ~

http://weirdfictionreview.com/2012/10/weirdfictionreview-coms-101-weird-writers-14-charles-beaumont/

Spooky Halloween! 

SO LONG, IT'S BEEN GOOD TO KNOW YA ~

 

M A R K   M U R P H Y

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/arts/music/mark-murphy-an-unconventional-jazz-vocalist-dies-at-83.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fobituaries&action=click&contentCollection=obituaries&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=10&pgtype=sectionfront

 

 L E O N    B I B B

 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/arts/music/leon-bibb-actor-folk-singer-and-civil-rights-activist-dies-at-93.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fobituaries&action=click&contentCollection=obituaries&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront

A N I T A    S A R K O

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/arts/music/reflecting-on-anita-sarko-influential-dj-of-the-new-york-club-scene.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fobituaries&action=click&contentCollection=obituaries&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=8&pgtype=sectionfront





all credit: nytimes
 

W.G. SEBALD ~

JOHN BRADLEY'S HERMIT ~

http://home.jps.net/~nada/johnson.htm

NORMAN MAILER TO MICHAEL MCCLURE~

N O R M A N    M A I L E R

195. TO MICHAEL MCCLURE


December 19, 1959


Dear Michael McClure,

    I had a hard time reading your letter because like most poets you
write a prose which is an assault on the nervous system of a stylist. I think
it probably has something to do with the mother-love most boy poets get
when they are young and while I'm certain the inner workings of your
mind are a thing of surrealist beauty the expression in prose is so
damned self indulgent that I recoil because you see, baby, everyone I
knew who has any talent is certain that their own mind is the most beautiful
work yet created by God (Paul Carroll said a couple of weeks ago,
"The Devil is the most beautiful creation of God"). But one's style is the
hero of one's art and a hero with bad manners never makes no history
so you would do well to consider all your competitors, large and small,
older and younger than you as being equally greedy and self absorbed
and so never look to them for praise, for love, for attention and certainly
never offer them the spoils of your brain in a casual and styleless
letter since they will only put you down.
     [Don] Carpenter is right. I said that you were beat and not hip and
people who are beat do not really interest me because they are in need
and I do not care to run a free restaurant. I liked you well enough, I
thought you were a saucy little cat but then I began to dig that New York
was not your town and I like it because it is hard and true as negative
truth is true. I had the feeling I might be able to enjoy your company in
a few years when you are harder and less in love with yourself but until
then you were in my book just another royal mountain climber who was
hoping you don't have to get killed or even lose a little on the way up.
     Best to you and cheers,
            Norman 

Random House 2014

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/norman-mailer-a-brief-history-of-norman-mailer/653/

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/michael-mcclure