SKIP JAMES ~

WHAT'S GOING ON ~

OK, THEN LET'S TRY THIS ONE:

ONWARD!

MAYA DARDEL ~

R E V I E W

ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI ~

R E V I E W

Macmillan 2017

RUSSELL EDSON ~

A N     I N T E R V I E W

ANGELS ~

P E T E R     L A M B O R N    W I L S O N

PAUL BLACKBURN ~

P A U L      B L A C K B U R N

U   C   S   D

Dear Bob Arnold,

My name is Nina Mamikunian and I am the new Curator of the Archive for New Poetry at UCSD Library's Special Collections & Archives, following Rob Melton's retirement in 2016. I am very excited to carry on the work of the Archive for New Poetry, documenting and making available experimental work, including public performances and collaborative efforts.

To that end, I am pleased to announce the launch of our latest digital collection, the Paul Blackburn Audio Collection. These digitized recordings feature poetry readings, lectures, conversations, and correspondence recorded on reel-to-reel tape by Paul Blackburn from 1960 to 1971 in New York City.

Blackburn was a cornerstone of the New York Poetry scene: he organized and attended poetry readings at venues across the city, hosted his own radio program, “Contemporary Poetry,” on WBAI, and often recorded casual conversations about poetry with friends.  Blackburn’s recordings include some of the first readings performed at St. Mark’s Poetry Project, correspondence with Julio Cortázar and readings by such poets as Allen Ginsberg and Robert Creeley.

The first release of this collection includes over 100 recordings featuring over 100 poets, now available for streaming at lib.ucsd.edu/blackburn. Subsequent releases will bring the total number of recordings to over 200 available for online streaming and about 70 descriptions of recordings that can be made available onsite at UC San Diego Library’s Special Collections & Archives.  We anticipate having the entire digital collection complete by February 2018.

We would like to thank you for being a part of this project and giving the library permission to stream the readings online. The editor of Blackburn's posthumously published Collected Poems (1985), Edith Jarolim, has called this collection "the most comprehensive oral history of the New York poetry scene between the late 1950s and 1970." We are excited to be able to make this important collection available to a wider audience.

The collection is available at lib.ucsd.edu/blackburn. Additional information about the collection and its release is available at http://libraries.ucsd.edu/blogs/blog/paul-blackburn-audio-collection-now-online/ .

Thank you again for your contribution to the Paul Blackburn Audio Collection. This project would not have been possible without it!

TREASURE ~

One Word

Finally a blue sky day

And you do the wash!

Then you go and hang everything

Out on the line, a place reached

Through two feet of snow, rotten

Ice and a pathway I shoveled

Colorful wash all day

Blowing in the wind

At dusk you go pick

Dry clothes off a rope —

For a moment your billowy

Red skirt, violet sweater

Bright long hair blowing

In the same breeze

I come to help as

You hold one garment up to

Your face breathing in the

Fresh wash and all you

Say with a smile is

“Woodsmoke”

That’s Her

doing farm chores, lugging

water she hikes through a field

of wet grasses in high boots

old pants & cap, a red tee

shirt she slept in & much

earlier in bed I raised this

& kissed her kissed her

Treasure

it’s snow

falling

into her

hair

pail of 

grain

pinning

onto a

heavy

wool

shirt

walking

back from

the hen

house

eggs

inside her

mittens

Egg

Morning light of falling snow

We went outside and did our work

Shoveled out dog huts

Opened a trail to the chicken shed

Busted ice from water buckets

I was sweeping off long metal sheets

Over the woodpile when you said

— see how this feels — and in your

Gloved hand you held the flesh of

A warm egg to my icy cheek

————————————

BOB ARNOLD

I'm In Love With You

Who Is In Love With Me

Longhouse 2012

ART CAN HELP ~

R E A D      M O R E

Yale University 2017

MURIEL RUKEYSER ~

R E A D      M E

New Directions, 2013

JERRY MARTIEN ~

Dream of the West


Driving through the country of the otherworld as I passed
a small town I pulled to the side of the road. I don't know
why I stopped. The sky was dark but the busy highway
and the roadside were just like our world in the middle of
one of its ordinary end of everything afternoons. It could
have been Oklahoma just before a tornado or the bomb.
I was driving a big American car, a Ford LTD or maybe
it was a Continental. The edge of the road sloped sharply
down, then dropped off much faster than I expected. The
huge automobile lurched downward and stopped sideways
on the precarious slope.

I could see the situation from several points of view. The
busy highway. The little Okie town across the fields. My
car ridiculously stuck. Then I saw other cars had gone
off this embankment. Some were part way down, some
farther. Rusted, abandoned. At the bottom of the long
slope a sunny grove of trees. There were people living there.
People in some of the cars.

Just below my car there were some Indians whose car was
older and much worse stuck. There was some
argument. Whose fault it was they'd gone off the road.
Then we began to laugh about our common
predicament. I could envision a big yellow tow truck
coming to my rescue. The whole nine one one. The cable
reaching down from the highway to bring me up again.
But it never came. I never called.

I've been living down here ever since.



——————————
Jerry Martien
Earth Tickets
Bug Press
2017

PREACHER ~

C O M E      T O      M E

C O M E      A G A I N

L I S T E N

Bob Dylan

Getty Images

HAPPY ENDING ~

 R E A D     M E

THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND ~

There are many books about Woody Guthrie,

 including the masterpiece Guthrie wrote himself

Bound For Glory

and this book by noted music historian Santelli

is as good as it gets regarding Woody Guthrie,

his associates, travels, time period, including

Guthrie's celebrated song

"This Land Is Your Land."

Somehow Santelli takes the reader

right up to the song's door.

[BA]

KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD ~

'In Sweden, where I live, war has not been waged since the seventeenth century, that is since the time of 

Montaigne, Cervantes, Shakespeare."

KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD

Americans can swish that sentence around in their heads for a moment.

THE WORLD ON A PERFECT DAY ~

Family

Try to get three berries

Off one stem at rest stop

As three of us

July In The Sun

We pick blueberries this way —

I wear jeans and t-shirt

you wear a pretty dress

the rest is easy

We

I wanted the

Longest kiss —

So we began

The World On A Perfect Day

All day it rains a steady rain

We can’t work in the gardens and fields

We hear the birds while we wait for the rain to end

The rain never ends

We watch the rain in the trees

We are surrounded by woods

We make love at lunch

————————————

BOB ARNOLD

I'm In Love With You

Who Is In Love With Me

Longhouse 2012

AFTERLIFE ~

R E A D     M E





Every one 
of the book blurbs
on this book
are 
dead-on
and to be
believed

THOMAS JAMES ~

T H O M A S     J A M E S

by

Lucie Brock-Broido

TOGETHER STILL ~

R E A D      M E

Seagull Books 2017

DO YOU HAVE A BAND? ~

M O R E !