FRED HERZOG ~

 

F R E D     H E R Z O G

I could

look at

Herzog

Leiter

Eggleston

day in

day out

BALANCE ( CHINA ) ~

 

steady

JONATHAN GREENE ~

Fishing

At times, taking the hook out,

before releasing back into the water

caught eyeing one another

in their different worlds.

A False Continuity

Seeming to me now.

I have been so many selves

unrelated one to another

though covered by the same name

and birth date, incidental facts,

dental records. More than inner self.

No sole soul, not even

look-alikes, now shrinking back

in height, adding weight.

Hard to explain this,

how now, looking back,

these selves do not know

one another.

Buddhist Scholars On Silence

Silence

so precious

they can't stop

talking about it.

_________________________

Jonathan Greene

Ebb & Flow

Broadstone, Kentucky

2021

POETS WHO SLEEP #43 ~

 

P O E T S     W H O     S L E E P

______________________

                                           drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold

The complete series to date ~ please link here

AFTER A LONG WINTER — RIDE!

 

hang on!

DOUG ANDERSON ~

______________________________________ 

What is it about Doug Anderson?

I used to read a new literary journal

every day, for years — who am I

kidding — for decades! and

one day I sold them all, because someone

wanted to do what I had done all

those many years reading, and staying

in-tune with who was writing —

naturally, I kept my favorites

like Coyote's Journal, Caterpillar and Origin

and now when I pick up a journal

to see what is happening out there

I often find Doug Anderson's poems —

and what is going on: Doug

Anderson's poems are most often

the very best poem(s) in there.

Journal after journal.

What do I mean?

Go downstairs and have a look.

[ BA ]

The Dark

A black dog shows up in my yard,

needle teeth under-bite and milky eyes.  Wags once

and rolls over on his side,

smells like he's pissed himself. He's come a long way,

stowed in steerage with the poor of spirit (blessed

are they) but I don't want this dog, don't want his snoring,

whining in his sleep, his leg twitching. I close the door,

put on some Howlin' Wolf and get ready for bed.

But I can't sleep knowing he's out there in the cold

so I pull what's left of last week's chicken off the bone,

warm some milk. Open the door and let him in.

He sniffs and rolls his cataracted eyes around the walls,

buries his face in the bowl and slurps.

Okay, I know you're here for a while, just don't make a mess.

He cocks his head at me. What does he see, my silhouette

through milk-glass?  A moon in clouds?  I go to bed.

And still I can't sleep knowing he's down there all by himself

in a strange house. Down stairs again I lift his stinking hulk

into my arms, carry him upstairs and put him in my bed.

He's warm against my leg, his breathing slow.

At three A.M. I'm wide awake. I reach down and scratch his battered head.

Toward dawn I press my ear against him and listen to his heart.

Inside, a spring rising through rock.

There's a shifting deep down in the strata.

A groan, an angel being born from a chrysalis,

the morning sun at the bottom of the well.

____________________________

Doug Anderson

from the Asheville Poetry Review

Issue 29 (2019-2020)

A wise, elder poet once wrote to me to say,

"Beautiful poem, Bob, I would have been proud

to have written that poem." He taught me something.

That's how I think of Doug's poem.

RE-READING LYNETTE ROBERTS ~

 

Brazilian Blue

If I could create one tree

And hang it in the sky

And spray it with the living

Gold of the sun, and hold

The natural pattern of its growth,

I would ay that I had done

More than enough.

But observe where the sun

Has set against the black

Edge of the leaves,

How other leaves seem

To drift from one

Branch to another, or

Were they bird against

Tis darkwinged Brazilian sky!

Wings that edge the

Sao Paolo woods.

This flitting by,

This sudden appearance,

And inconsequence of time,

Is the moment I would

Hold before you;

Tomorrow evening it will

Have gone.

______________________

Collected Poems

Lynette Roberts

edited by Patrick McGuinness

Carcanet, 2005

________________________________________

The editor of this fascinating volume says it best:

"The Argentine-born Welsh writer Lynette Roberts

published two books of poems as dramatic, varied,

dense, elliptical and inset with verbal novelty as any

experimental poetry in the twentieth century. T.S. Eliot

her friend and editor at Faber,  praised her work, complimenting

it by that most Eliotic of criteria: that it communicated

before it made sense." Robert Graves was also a close reader.

Wyndham Lewis drew her portrait, and Dylan Thomas was

best man at her wedding. And you have probably never heard

of her. No help from Lynette Roberts herself — in her later life

Roberts had a mental breakdown and stopped publishing; in fact

she refused to have her two books of poetry re-published when

interest arrived. Thus her work was largely forgotten and she died

a relatively unknown writer in 1995. (4 July 1909-26 September 1995).

It's her diaries I wish to find next.

[ BA ]

LORRAINE O'GRADY ~

 

L O R R A I N E      O' G R A D Y

“Art Is . . . (Girl Pointing),” 1983/2009.

 Lorraine O’Grady has been shaping her art on a different model.Credit...

Lorraine O’Grady/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Alexander Gray Associates

RE-READING ANN QUIN ~

 

A N N   Q U I N

SALLY GROSSMAN ~

 

S A L L Y      G R O S S M A N

the album cover of album covers

photograph:

Daniel Kramer

RE-READING ROSEMARY TONKS ~

 

R O S E M A R Y    T O N K S

Addiction to an Old Mattress

No, this is not my life, thank God ...

... worn out like this, and crippled by brain-fag;

Obsessed first by one person, and then

(Almost at once) most horribly besotted by another;

These Februaries, full of draughts and cracks,

They belong to the people in the streets, the others

Out there – haberdashers, writers of menus.

Salt breezes! Bolsters from Istanbul!

Barometers, full of contempt, controlling moody isobars.

Sumptuous tittle-tattle from a summer crowd

That’s fed on lemonades and matinées. And seas

That float themselves about from place to place, and then

Spend hours – just moving some clear sleets across glass stones.

Yalta: deck-chairs in Asia’s gold cake; thrones. 

Meanwhile ... I live on ... powerful, disobedient,

Inside their draughty haberdasher’s climate,

With these people ... who are going to obsess me,

Potatoes, dentists, people I hardly know, it’s unforgivable

For this is not my life 

But theirs, that I am living.

And I wolf, bolt, gulp it down, day after day.

__________________________

Rosemary Tonks

Bedouin of the London Evening:

Collected Poems & Selected Prose

(Bloodaxe Books, 2014)  

© Estate of Rosemary Tonks 2014, 2016.

POETS WHO SLEEP #42 ~

P O E T S     W H O     S L E E P

______________________

                                           drawn & scribed by Bob Arnold

The complete series to date ~ please link here

ARTHUR GUNTER ~

 

VINCENT TRIPI ~

 

With her pan

     the old prospector

          points upward

                              — for Laura Bell

______________________

Vincent Tripi

the day i find

poems from a desert hermitage

1725 Marion Avenue, Apt 12-I.

Novato, CA. 

_________________________

according to his inscription, Vincent

sent me a gift of this fine book of short

poems when he was living in Novato, CA.,

and come to think of it Sweetheart and I

passed through there some years earlier —

I believe Vincent even tried to look us up

in Vermont when he was living just down

river from us but I guess he got lost, as

others have, long before GPS took the fun

out of everything — Vincent passed away

last Fall and I'm thinking about him now

[ BA ]