Friday, April 6, 2018

CECIL TAYLOR ~



C E C I L      T A Y L O R
( March, 25, 1929, Queens ~ April 5, 2018, Brooklyn )










JENNY WREN ~







THE WISDOM OF FAIRY TALES ~




The quality of this new book is an
unfortunate piece of junk, for $27 mind you,
and however slight, it is Robert Bly, much worth
a read and one would have hoped after Bly has given publishers
a good cash crop of his many subjects over decades: poetry, translations,
essays, and many years as a publisher himself at his Fifties, Sixties,
Seventies, and all the books were well made and handsome,
why not give the old wise man a book to last!
Bly has lost none of his adventurous self.




Henry Holt
2018

Thursday, April 5, 2018

COME RAIN OR COME SHINE ~





I've never played The Eagles. Never. Not allowed in the house.
But this song is.

HENRY MILLER ~





—————————————————
It is not enough to overthrow governments,
masters, tyrants: one must overthrow his own
preconceived ideas of right and wrong, good
and bad, just and unjust. We must abandon the
hard-fought trenches we have dug ourselves
into and come out into the open, surrender our
arms, our possessions, our rights as individuals,
classes, nations, peoples. A billion men seeking
peace cannot be enslaved. We have enslaved
ourselves, by our own petty, circumscribed
view of life. It is glorious to offer one's life for
a cause, but dead men accomplish nothing. 
Life demands that we offer something more —
spirit, soul, intelligence, goodwill. Nature is
ever ready to repair the gaps caused by death,
but nature cannot supply the intelligence, the
will, the imagination to conquer the forces of
death. Nature restores and repairs, that is all. It
is man's task to eradicate the homicidal instinct
which is infinite in its ramifications and mani-
festations. It is useless to call upon God, as it is
futile to meet force with force.

H E N R Y      M I L L E R





Anyone lifting their head up to recognize the power and the glory
of Henry Miller, in my book, is a good day for the reader,
the individual, the world. Although a bit of a boggy
appreciation, Burnside does dig down into the golden
essence of Miller — not simply the once popular
lust of his Tropic books — but the realer lust
for life, which hasn't been equaled in his
many books of essays, travel, philosophy
and like Whitman, the greater love
of poetry and liberation.


Princeton 
2018

photo: Henry Miller
home on Big Sur




Wednesday, April 4, 2018

BESO, the Donkey ~








Beso and the Mailman




Beso is tired and old

but will wake up

and travel the pasture

to greet the mailman.



He carefully studies

the mouth of the box being

opened and the hand

feeding it.



I wonder if he remembers

the rum cake

my mother sent to me

last year.







Beso the Helmsman




A tide of gray fog floods

the valley floor.



Iron oaks drink their brew

with the dead and loom.



Beso measures deep waves

lifting pasture, hills,

and hemisphere,

with ancient earth legs.



The world seems unhidden.



We were marched onto this ark

a long time ago —



what was I?








Ask Beso




Are you wonderful?

Ask Beso

what he thinks about

the drinking song

he endured

when he carried you home

last night.








Beso's Dialect




Woud I know

if Beso spoke?

Maybe he has been

conversing with me

in a dialect that he

assumes I understand

because sometimes

I scratch his ears,

fetch the apple,

or leave him alone,

as requested.






Beso Keeps



Overcome by weariness,

Beso keeps to his stall.



One halfhearted ear tracks

hawks passing over the barn.






———————————

Richard Jarrette
Beso the Donkey
Michigan State University Press







Tuesday, April 3, 2018

WINTER REVELS ~








About One More Wood



From this little wood,

at last,

for ever or for years

the mushrooms have gone.

This happened slowly,

over thirty years.

And now, as I think back,

this disappearance, their "going"

seems one single action,

like the dying away

of a long-lived orchestra

of a long-lived choir.


————————

Gennady Aygi
translated by Peter France









Monday, April 2, 2018

WOODLANDERS ~








Woodlanders







She sat in the last of a summer sun

Her eyes closed

All ocean








Winter Light







We walked the town

By staying in the sun

And the sun was everywhere

That day and so were we






Fucking






Going grocery shopping

With the one you love

Isn’t grocery shopping






All At Once






Is my love for her really that vast — 

or is the heart-shaped onion she



brings to my hand at the grocery cart

really that beautiful? 




————————————
BOB ARNOLD
I'm In Love With You
Who Is In Love With Me
Longhouse 2012


 






Sunday, April 1, 2018

BETTYE LAVETTE ~







I'M WORKING ON A BUILDING ~












THE ROCK IS MY HOME ~



























Der Fels ist mein Haus
Le Rocher est ma demeure
The Rock is My Home

VAN NOSTRAND REINHOLD
1977

My bible for the last 40 years of stone work
and no book to my knowledge gets down to the ground level
of appreciation of touching, lifting and placing stone.
Now very costly to purchase, in the many 100s$
but far beyond the thought of money to me.
With stone work you want someone with the
Werner Blaser eye, who wrote the text
and took the photographs
and found the treasures.

[ BA ]