1937~ 2024
Tuesday, June 4, 2024
Monday, June 3, 2024
Sunday, June 2, 2024
Saturday, June 1, 2024
Friday, May 31, 2024
NEW YORKER DRAWINGS POEMS ~
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Before I started writing and living poetry, which was about the same time I was studying judo, there was that time I picked up my father's pen, who was drawing out blueprints for construction jobs he was planning at the dining room table where we were both stationed, and in his dawdle away from the serious work, he would show me one more cartoon sketch he'd come up with, and I'd try to copy the flair and humor he had caught. I'm still drawing (see my book Poets Who Sleep), the judo outfit was worn into tatters, but the poetry is here every day. . .even if I see that most American poetry has expanded into a business, polemics and babbling, we still have those drawing cartoons, or what my weekly New Yorker subscription terms "Drawings." When I was a judo-boy at my local Boys' Club, which naturally took me to Japan, funny how it works — it also landed me more into the soft hidden nest of poetry and haiku, which is where I see the very best of the New Yorker drawings, these blessed cartoonists. I've been reading the magazine for now 50 years. Slipping past most of what is called poetry, never mind the short stories (I like to read books and wait to read Thomas McGuane and Alice Munro there) and gloriously catch myself in the flytrap of the cartoons. The best anywhere. I'm not sure if I have all the artists names right since I can barely read their haiku modest signatures, but I believe the three drawings I am showing here are by Andy Friedman, Harry Bliss, and Roland High. Poets if there ever were three.
[ BA ]
Harry Bliss
Roland High
Andy Friedman
The New Yorker
May 27, 2024
Thursday, May 30, 2024
Wednesday, May 29, 2024
Tuesday, May 28, 2024
Monday, May 27, 2024
Sunday, May 26, 2024
Saturday, May 25, 2024
Friday, May 24, 2024
Thursday, May 23, 2024
Wednesday, May 22, 2024
Tuesday, May 21, 2024
TOMASZ ROZYCKI ~
75. The Warmest Place
If spring falls short, then be the spring yourself —
you hold abundant light inside, enough to give warmth
to whatever's within reach and even what's in view:
chair midriff, door slab, icicle knob, room.
Who cares if the Baltic is frozen — a Swedish arctic fox
has found a way across the page of ice to write
a runic greeting on the snow in yellow ink
below the lamppost. The coldest place at home
is the radiator's hip, the thermal plant having closed
long ago, and it's pointless to pin your hopes
on spring. Besides you hold within yourself,
enough fire to make the covers melt right off
and thaw the district to a mile radius,
plus a fair depth, and four more dimension besides.
Just for good measure. For starters. Be springtime,
the grass' green flame, its blood, be April, be sun.
92. Never
Never have I found you more beautiful than now.
Look — we're being hunted, yet still we walk around.
In front of us a road in the dust, a lively sea.
A life that turned out as I dreamed it would be.
_____________________
To the Letter
Tomasz Rozycki
translated from the Polish by Mira Rosenthal
Archipelago Books, 2023
Monday, May 20, 2024
PULL MY DAISY (1959) ~
Jack Kerouac provided improvised narration. It features poets Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso, artists Larry Rivers and Alice Neel, musician David Amram, art dealer Richard Bellamy, Delphine Seyrig, dancer[3] Sally Gross, and Pablo Frank, Robert Frank's son.
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