TATYANA TOLSTAYA ~

R E A D     M O R E

Knopf 2018

EARTHLY SIGNS ~

Marina Tsvetaeva

MAN TURNS INTO AN INSECT (what a surprise!) ~

R E A D      M E

Rebecca Solnit

CARMEN MCRAE ~

A LOT OF LEARY ~

Two new books about the

counterculture crushing crusader —

the bottom book details Leary's escape from prison

(more elaborate than you might imagine)

his life on the run to Algieria (and other hideouts, later nabbed in Kabul) 
and facing up with the Black Panthers

(which didn't go well) 

The top book is the richer of the two,
though both books work well together —

smart with correspondence of Leary's

along with Hurston Smith, Allen Ginsberg, Aldous Huxley,

Albert Hofmann, as well as royal vintage photographs ~
A reader's high

"PSYCHEDELIC THERAPY, whether for the treatment of psychological problems or as a means of facilitating self-exploration and spiritual growth, is undergoing a renaissance in America. This is happening both underground, where the community of guides like Mary is thriving, and aboveground, at institutions like Johns Hopkins, New York University and U.C.L.A., where a series of drug trials have yielded notably promising results.

I call it a renaissance because much of the work represents a revival of research done in the 1950s and 1960s, when psychedelic drugs like LSD and psilocybin were closely studied and regarded by many in the mental health community as breakthroughs in psychopharmacology. Before 1965, there were more than 1,000 published studies of psychedelics involving some 40,000 volunteers and six international conferences dedicated to the drugs. Psychiatrists were using small doses of LSD to help their patients access repressed material (Cary Grant, after 60 such sessions, famously declared himself “born again”); other therapists administered bigger so-called psychedelic doses to treat alcoholism, depression, personality disorders and the fear and anxiety of patients with life-threatening illnesses confronting their mortality.

That all changed in the mid-’60s, after Timothy Leary, the Harvard psychologist and lecturer turned psychedelic evangelist, began encouraging kids to “turn on, tune in and drop out.” Silly as that slogan sounds to our ears, a great many kids appeared to follow his counsel, much to the horror of their parents. The drugs fell into the eager embrace of a rising counterculture, influencing everything from styles of music and dress to cultural mores, and, many thought, inspired the questioning of adult authority that marked the “generation gap.” “The kids who take LSD aren’t going to fight your wars,” Leary famously claimed. In 1971, President Nixon called Leary, who by then had been drummed out of academia and chased by the law, “the most dangerous man in America.” That same year, the Controlled Substances Act took effect; it classified LSD and psilocybin as Schedule 1 drugs, meaning that they had a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use; possession or sale became a federal crime. (MDMA, which was still being used therapeutically, was not banned until 1985, after it became popular as a party drug called Ecstasy.) Funding for research dried up, and the legal practice of psychedelic therapy came to a halt."

~ Michael Pollan 

M O R E 

  

RICHARD RORTY ~

T H E     F I R E     O F     L I F E

University of Virginia Press

2016

WALKING ~

Walking From Town Between

Midnight And 4 A.M.

I must have carried out

Every peeper in this valley

Home with me, 13 miles

The trees shiver in light rain

The moon following the

Fences following

A hillside of fog that lies down

Generously in the apple orchard

Here is where a few sheep

Suddenly break into a run

A horse pounds the night

Meeting you at the barbed wire

What is that sound between us

It is the water that has brought me back

Walking Into Rain

At the last of rain

Water patters

From the low pines

To the shed

There is a quiet

The bucket turned over

My knife left standing

On the woodpile

A blackbird perches

On a dipping branch

Feeds from the deep berries

The woods are relaxed

From the waist of the field

Find the small light of the cabin

There — the silence we thought

We would never have

Simple Dress

It was you

Who wore the simple dress

And when there were wet flowers

We gathered them

And walked slowly, you hugging

Our treasure

Two fields to the road

Walking Down To Get Water

She'll return through the pasture

I'll find her shoulders

—————————————

BOB ARNOLD

I'm In Love With You

Who Is In Love With Me

Longhouse 2012

 

THE KILLERS (1964) ~

THE KILLERS (1946) ~

JILL JOHNSTON (MOTHER'S DAY ) ~

J I L L      J O H N S T O N

BACK   ROAD   CHALKIE

S P R I N G    2018

THE LINEUP ~

SHUGGIE OTIS (1971) ~

GHASSAN ZAQTAN ~

Also the House


Near the camp was a river
and in our house were absentees and hands
that will one day wake us in vain

I had just turned seven
while he was sitting in the shade
ironing his clothes
the blue jacket sagging over his shoulders

I paid no attention to the road
or the three steps
and didn't notice the carpet

I don't remember who was it that said
to me or to another
"When you grow up poetry will become your house"

The dust that eats the memories
always distances those folks

yet their chairs appear from afar,
from behind the hills and over the houses,
to hang in an air of summer and holm oak,
those shaded chairs that reach the  heart
on shoulders topped
with five flowers

Which flowers are speech
which flowers are silence?

And I can't remember
whether it was my uncle who stood at the door,
whether we had palm and lotus trees
in our house in Karameh,
whether my mother
who gave birth to me on the shelf
was folding our clothes behind our father's back
so he could sleep

The watchdogs used to cry from the heat,
and poetry, Husseini of Jerusalem,
and Khidr the mystic were all in our house
as was my uncle who came from a pond
within Hebron's walls

Twenty years would pass before a photo could tell us
we have grown older
and that's that

My father used to discompose his friends
with his days, and women
with the thread of seduction in his voice
as he would sprinkle chatter in their rivers
while walking about here or there with a lilt,
he'd let his days fall off him
and let others gather them as he walked
on gold that came only for him

And I can't remember
in our courtyard there were holm oaks,
a fountain, a tiled floor by a huge door,
we were confused and in a hurry

The closet that faced us in the second room
had a mirror
the mirror we now seek

And my father was standing alone in the hall that led
the stairs to the roof
thanking his days
or preparing for Wednesday's nap
or Thursday's morning
as he left, among the things he'd leave, the water can
full of water
while around his chairs our Saturdays rose

My father didn't want too much from life:
a house, five boys
who don't mess with his papers,
which were already chaos,
and two girls
so that braids could float all around the house


————————
Ghassan Zaqtan
The Silence That Remains
selected poems
translated by Fady Joudah
Copper Canyon, 2017

PETER ORNER ~

Am I Alone Here?

(Catapult Books, 2016)

Hardly!

This book is a wonder and I came upon the title as I do simply wandering book shelves

in a bookstore, new or used, or the town library. I can't tell you how many books I have read on this idea of discovering unique and common books and writing about them, and each collection has come up disappointing since every erudite reader/writer wants to be seen as an erudite reader! It's the same books, the same authors, or as an editor for a poetry anthology told me once on the phone: "I had to drop that great poem because the poet doesn't have a name, and replace the poem with another poem by a more recognized poet." It happens every day.

It's making reading quite miserable, yet challenging if you are a hunter. 

Peter Orner behind the wheel has finally given us the gift. I approached his book with genuine interest and began leafing through to see where he would be taking us — everywhere! Plus his writing is relaxed, humorous and it sparkles when you throw it on the floor. 

A quick stab into a few of his picks like Gina Berriault, Breece D'J Pancake, and Bohumil Hrabal, never mind Herbert Morris, says we're with an explorer. He butterfly nets sleepers. And then out of the blue, and it will win him no kudos, he chooses a book like Rembrandt's Hat by Bernard Malamud, an author very few read any longer. Their loss. I love Orner's daring and dives. He also sneaks in — and I like it that he does — essays about his father, family life, and the rumple of hanging in there.

This is a great work glove of a book.

[ BA ]

THE BLUESBREAKERS ~

OUTLIERS ~

I won't get to the city for this grand exhibit but you might,

but oh, I own and much enjoy the massive book exhibit.

R E A D      M E

National Gallery of Art
The University of Chicago Press
2018

TIME PIECES ~

A     B I T    M O R E

Knopf

2016

GERALD MURNANE ~

G E R A L D      M U R N A N E

LI-YOUNG LEE ~

—————————————



Sandalwood


The ash keeps dropping from the incense stick.



I keep turning you over in my mind.

I keep turning you over in my heart.



The stick shortens, burning.

The ash grows

and falls.



I keep turning you over.

I keep turning you.

I keep turning.



The ash keeps falling, piling up, more

of the silent reduction.

Burning earns such clean wages,

eye of ember, eye of ash hastening.



I keep turning your eyes over

to find your thoughts.

Turning your voice over

to find your meaning.

Turning your body over to find

a place to hide me.



And you keep turning inside me.



—————————
Li-Young Lee
The Undressing
Norton 2018

ENCOMPASS ~

Time Passes Slowly

Breezy naked

Under a red

Summer dress

You will soon

Kiss me but

First point 

To four goldfinches

On a wire close enough

As if watching us

Their colors faded

From a week ago like

These autumn hills 

All That Thunder 

Wouldn’t you know — I was scything deep in the backyard around the wood’s edge and many of the flower beds, when the thunderstorm caught me flat out in the open, shoulder high with Jerusalem artichoke flowers and nowhere else to go. For a moment I ran under a tall ash tree, bundled beside a maple and its large leaf cover. Rain was coming down steady and cold. I took the scythe with me and ran for the outhouse. Kept the door open and watched the rain, the roof tip-tapping. I noticed that Sweetheart had run for the woodshed from her garden work and was standing there waiting for the thunder and rain to pass. It wasn’t working that way, instead it was settling in, darkening the sky, eclipsing the river valley. We waved to one  another. I then sat back on the bench, looked at all the faces and small posters and pictures tacked on the walls over the years. There’s Pete Seeger, there’s Dorothy Day, there’s Madonna’s large green eye peek-a-boo out of blond hair. There’s Sweetheart! she’s come with an umbrella to rescue me out of my rain cave. But instead of heading home we run up to another cottage, deeper in the woods, furious with a steel roof in the rain and fall asleep awhile in each others arm’s and all that thunder.

She Comes To Me This Way

In her stocking feet and the

Pleats of her skirt, the way

The blouse is plain and opened

At the sand of her throat and her

Face is burned with winter and

So happy, that it is only then I

Notice something more — a

Necklace of rawhide and soapstone

Pebble, and even closer, the etch of

Turquoise on the piece, which brings

Me to her eyes . . .

Encompass

Just that slight change in her expression

Warm, tender, all mine it says, changes my life

Since childhood, years before I knew her

—————————————

BOB ARNOLD

I'm In Love With You

Who Is In Love With Me

Longhouse 2012