Saturday, July 13, 2019
Friday, July 12, 2019
PYOTR PAVLENSKY ~
Capucine Henry/Associated Press
“The government’s aim is to suppress or neutralize art, to reduce me to a vandal, a madman, a provocateur,” he told me earlier, “but the criminal case becomes one of the layers of the artwork, the portal through which you enter and see the mechanisms of power exposed.”
— PAVLENSKY
Thursday, July 11, 2019
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
DUY DOAN ~
Rickshaw Boy
The man I pulled tonight
carried a load of books.
When I felt him watching
me uphill, I grimaced.
He gave me lunar
cakes the size
of two camel humps.
When I answered him,
I smiled to his face.
He wore the moonlight
in his specs. Pant
seams clean as the embroidery
work of his book covers.
One cannot grow rich
without a bit of cleverness.
Should I have shown
him the secret of my deft
touch? The Circling Moon,
the Graceful Swan? How East
Wind beats West Wind
if other two winds say so?
Snow falls on cedars.
____________________
Duy Doan
We Play A Game
Yale, 2018
Tuesday, July 9, 2019
EARTHLY SIGNS ~
[ On a second reading
and finding the cloth edition from Yale
I find this an even more powerful reading from Tsvetaeva
as well as a lively translation and revealing
portrait of the Russian poet by Jamey Gambrell ]
Monday, July 8, 2019
Sunday, July 7, 2019
MARIE PONSOT ~
1921-2019
Old Mama Saturday
BY MARIE PONSOT
“Saturday’s child must work for a living.”
“I’m moving from Grief Street.
Taxes are high here
though the mortgage’s cheap.
The house is well built.
With stuff to protect, that
mattered to me,
the security.
These things that I mind,
you know, aren’t mine.
I mind minding them.
They weigh on my mind.
I don’t mind them well.
I haven’t got the knack
of kindly minding.
I say Take them back
but you never do.
When I throw them out
it may frighten you
and maybe me too.
Maybe
it will empty me
too emptily
and keep me here
asleep, at sea
under the guilt quilt,
under the you tree.”
From Springing: New and Selected Poems by Marie Ponsot, copyright © 2002 by Marie Ponsot. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House, Inc. for permission.
Saturday, July 6, 2019
THE YOUNG HOUSEWIFE ~
The Young Housewife
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
At ten A.M. the young housewife
moves about in negligee behind
the wooden walls of her husband's house.
I pass solitary in my car.
Then again she comes to the curb
to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands
shy, uncorseted, tucking in
stray ends of hair, and I compare her
to a fallen leaf.
The noiseless wheels of my car
rush with a crackling sound over
dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.
____________________
Long ago
in some school
— all girls
and let's not
get fussy —
I'd say all boys
if it wasn't
all girls
and winter
time
on my
way
to
class
I managed
to find a
leaf
often an oak
and brouht it
into the
classroom
and this went
on for 20
years the same
way asking
one of the
students to stand
on a chair
and hold the leaf
aloft as if her
arm was a
branch and when
I came to the WCW
line comparing
the housewife to
a fallen leaf
I would nod
and the student
would let the
leaf drop from
her hand and
every single
girl saw
what the poet
saw and I
loved that room
those girls
that moment
that leaf
that poet
that poem
and each
year a
different
leaf
[ BA ]
Friday, July 5, 2019
HUSBANDRY ~
Husbandry
Attention sways, can't fix
to anything.
Every morning he goes to his garden
barefoot, for the cold pleasure. Each day the beans
are taller, the wind
has flattened them against the wire
long enough for a tendril
to take hold
that the vine may climb
toward sunlight. All of it
as if by accident — as if untended: this row of lettuce,
this of beets,
a vagrant clump of weeds, a pile of cuttings. After all,
it's the ratty ends of things
he finds attractive. Little room
to cultivate a life
or a wife.
To accept one's lot may be
to become a pillar of sorrow,
he thinks, but to be alone
is salt itself.
_______________
Mark Weiss
As Luck Would Have It
Shearsman Books 2015
photo ~
patrons of husbandry
Thursday, July 4, 2019
SOUL FIRE (LEE SCRATCH PERRY) ~
Soul fire
I got soul fire
I got soul fire
And we ain't got no water
Soul a burnin'
Soul a burnin'
Soul a burnin'
Water comin'
Water comin'
Water comin'
Soul fire
Eh
La la
Burnin' in my soul
Burnin' burnin' burnin' in my soul
La la
Eh!
Soul fire
Soul fire
Soul fire
And we ain't got no water
We don't have no water
Soul a burnin'
Soul a burnin'
And we ain't got no water
we ain't got no water
La la
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
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