ANNE WALDMAN

Mammalian

the tree is the repository
its aspen leaves turn yellow
the tray is the mesa






civilization is laceration
the hurricane is relentless
the masters are exposed

the light is your discourse
the globe will be ablaze
the horizon travels

Well known Naropa Institute scholar and poet Anne Waldman published these itty-bitty tracks in earth poems from Longhouse in her booklet Mammalian. Anne first contacted me in 1974 with a postcard from Allen Ginsberg's farm in upstate NY and suggested we stay in touch and some time meet. In 2004 we finally met on a lake blown street of Milwaukee. It only took 30 years. Her many books, anthologies, CDs and performances are known by many.

GERALD HAUSMAN








TEMPORARILY




I stuffed Phil’s pockets
with tens and twenties once
money my students
gave to me to give to him
after he read
Sourdough Mt Lookout
later we ate lunch
Phil’s white shirt
covered with red chile spots
“Seems I can’t eat without
getting it on myself,”
he said mopping his plate
with a sopaipilla
Phil said Jack said,
“One day we’ll all be old
railroad bums
together under the bridge
drinking bottles of Tokay wine.”
I told him
La Llorona
lived under the bridge.
“Who’s that?”
“The woman with no face.”
“Ah,” Phil said, squinting
“That building over there
is either a publisher or
a whorehouse, so many people
coming and going.”
“My publisher,” I said.
He laughed, “Good for you.”
When I dropped him off
At the zendo, we hugged
I asked when I’d see him again
“You know
I’m only here” – he paused --
Sun gleam on blue sage
“temporarily.”

Phil is Philip Whalen, old friend and early supporter to a once young poet Gerald Hausman. Go find for yourself his charmed book of poems New Marlboro Stage, amongst his many other titles for children, young adults, science fiction, biography, and not to be missed from Longhouse a tiny companion booklet of translations by Miyazawa Kenji. This poem is snatched out of Bokeelia also from Longhouse. When not storytelling on the road, Gerry can be found on a westward edge of Florida with Lorry looking out at the deepest blue.

BOB ARNOLD

28 POEMS & TWO INTERVIEWS
EDITED BY JAMES KOLLER
NEW FROM COYOTE'S JOURNAL
~ HERE'S A SIP

EDGE OF LAND

What overtakes me more —
The blue of the sea or her dress
Raised, wading, high above her knees

THE WOODCUTTER TALKS



Long before the great ships at sea
There were the deep inland forests

I stand in one today knee-deep in snow
10 degrees with a wind

My saw shut-down
Oil freeze to bar and gloves

Listening awhile to the ships at sea
The long groaning waves

High high
Above me






FLOATING WORLD



It was a dreamy time for you and me
The weather said so

The pair of windows that opened like shutters
The easy turn of the latch

Through the opening light dazzled
Something like your hair

Many years married I loved you like
A young girl from behind

A small bird with flashing orange wings
Sang from a tree that grew to our window

In this hut we built with our own hands
Some would call it a fairytale

These days pass by as light becomes darkness
There is next to nothing to show for it






SLY



By truck we were
Heading home the same
Time we saw fox heading
Home by the side of the road
Muddy legs like quick
Moving boots he made
His way and I swear
We looked at him
And he looked at us
And the Earth was whole

Bob Arnold has for decades worked from Longhouse in Vermont with Susan along a very cold woods river in the winter that gentles out by June. His books of poetry and prose have been issued since 1974. His most recent book of poems Hiking Down From A Hillside Sky will be released from Bull Thistle Press in Jamaica, Vermont come spring.

go read more at — Coyote's Journal

ALEC FINLAY








Alec Finlay once visited us at Longhouse many years ago with his satchel of good books, hand chosen music, a few warm clothes, and slide show of his father - Ian Hamilton Finlay's life and work from pastoral Scotland. It was about a week of family meals, visits with a few poets, ice-skating on our pond, sledding, and a Super Bowl game. AF went on to cross America visiting others. What we are sharing here is a sample of AFs hand-stamp poems available from Longhouse.

Since 1971 I have been logging book, music, film reviews and rural-to-town commentary from Woodburners We Recommend. Susan tells me my chief readers are folks lost a moment looking for more information about their woodstoves. Sorry. The ‘Burners continues on another part of the Longhouse website. Woodburners On-Fire! will be a more concise overview — as if you have stopped on our back road and asked for instructions on how to get out, and instead I speak to you one of these reviews. Go well.

remembering


KEITH WILSON
MAX NEUHAUS
DEWEY MARTIN

~

KEYNOTE ADDRESS / POETS

Amiri Baraka, Ed Dorn & the Western World

Skanky Possum & Effing Press www.effingpress.com
Effing Press 703 W. 11th St. Austin, Texas 78701

freewheelin' reflections delivered in 2008 at the Ed Dorn Sympoium in Boulder, Colorado, covering Dorn as well as Baraka as well as USA small press histories. One to own.










POETRY

David Giannini, Az Two

Adastra Press 16 Reservation Road Easthampton, Ma. 01027-1227


Az in two together, Az in a continuation of a longer work, Az in Arizona for some days the poet's eyes wide open, accepting, giving back in return minded "no time unshadowed".

for sale at Longhouse, please inquire

POETRY

George Bowering, Vermeer's Light

Talonbooks P.O. Box 2076 Vancouver , B.C. Canada V6B 3S3 www.talonbooks.com

with Bowering, as with Simon Pettet further down this list of fired-up books, poetry is a total recall of language meets anarchy meets craft meets deep pleasures page by page. You get in a car and it heads down a road or over a cliff, and all survive.





























ART / POETRY

Jason Clark, Driven-Out, Ditched & Deserted

Coracle Ballybeg, Grange, Clonmel Tipperary, Ireland www.coracle. ie

including a poem by Cralan Kelder, tucked into this field notebook of junkyard sketches by Jason Clark, uniquely possessed and perfectly chosen by a press that has a knack for locating such beauties. Full blossom art.

for sale at Longhouse, please inquire

POETRY

John Martone 1031 10th Street Charleston, IL. 61920

just two examples of recent handmade and often hand-written foldup clutches of new poems from the gardener of Illinois.












AN UNFORGETTABLE

M.F. K. Fisher, A Cordiall Water

North Point Press

a gem stone to slip into the back pocket the way books used to be respected — from the chef of all living is meant to embrace in wholesome chapters, recipies and endurable musings. A favorite re-reader.














POETRY / DISC / PDF FORMAT

Edward Sanders, America, a history in Verse

Blake Route Press PO Box 729 Woodstock, N.Y. 12498 www.Americanhistoryinverse.com




brand new and loaded for bear — covering the last century by a participant, survivor, and one tackling the next century without losing a step. Here are the five volumes from Black Sparrow, over 2000 pages in length, covering 1900-2000 for your computer viewing silver screen.

for sale at Longhouse, please inquire

POETRY

Simon Pettet, Hearth

Talisman House PO Box 3157 Jersey City, NJ. 07303-3157

gorgeous no-holds-bar poetry defying a school, a place, or the usual quibbles of poetry wars & complaints — Simon comes to play. A new & selected poems attempting to span quite a lifetime. Enjoy yourselves.













MUSIC / CD

Ramblin' Jack Elliott, I Stand Alone

Anti, 2006

in the tradition of picking up the guitar and nicely finger-pickin' a tune, Elliott remains the best of the talkin' blues cowboy masters. There's as much Lenny Bruce as Woody Guthrie and they're both long gone — in body, but not spirit — and Ramblin' Jack Elliott isn't.












POETRY

Patricia Smith, Blood Dazzler

Coffee House Press 27 North Fourth Street Suite 400 Minneapolis, MN. 55401 www.coffeehousepress.org

in a bookstore go to page 8 and read "Only Everything I Own" and decide then and there to buy this book — between Spike Lee's film "When the Levees Broke" and "Blood Dazzler" you hold the scoop on Katrina, who owns you (and they do), and what's to be done.












POETRY

Lisa Jarnot, Night Scenes

Flood Editions www.floodeditions.com


restraint right where you wish it, letting-go where most don't/can't, a poetry that rides the range of rhyme, no rhyme, song-fest, sudden hollow. Why not be fascinated.












FARM LIFE / ARCHITECTURE

Thomas Durant Visser, Field Guide to New England Barns and Farm Buildings

University Press of New England One Court St. Lebanon, NH 03766 www.upne.com

an excellent survey in crisp black & white photographs of exterior and interior magnificence and small pegged details from grand hay barn to corn crib to cranberry bog shanty to outhouse. No stone left unturned, no cows in the way, and the author's name is strong lined old vintage New England.





Dat's..... Dat...... 4....... Now........

KIM DORMAN

rhy-

thm


sto-

len


frm

rain

Some of Kim Dorman's axis of poetry are drawn from his life and work in India and his native region of the southwest, Oklahoma as a boy and Texas to this day. He has published small booklets from Longhouse and continues to issue monthly in grand paper copy circulated by a postal carrier his Gleanings of poetry, commentary, reverence, and gift.

STEPHEN LEWANDOWSKI






MEETING THE BEAR



At night
bears flow
like some dark
force
through the trees
they turn logs
and stones
to lick up food
their thick fur
absorbs starlight
to become bear-shaped
black holes

One slips down from
a weedy road bank
and without a look
enters the field
illuminated by my car
soaking up
every ounce of light-
for a moment
there is no car
no driver
no time
no road
no bear
now we breathe
deep and travel on

Steve Lewandowski, native of upper NY State fields & lakes has worked all his adult life in the professional and private world of environmental activism. His poems have appeared for decades in the small press forest of magazines, journals, chapbooks and books, which are now being somewhat chided as old-hat by those who live with only the screen, but in time much will become missed and want to be embraced....just ask the vinyl record hunters of today.
Hang onto and buy those thin wafer poetry books.

KEITH WILSON










EVENSONG


It is evening again.
My son and his son
sit on the patio, a breeze
catches my grandson's blonde hair,
his father's darkly intense face
leans over his seven-year-old tranquility.

I, a shadow, soon to vanish
watch, hear their voices
as water flowing over
mountain stones or light
caught just before dusk
by surprise, all is held
here in the closing darkness.

— for Kevin & Jeremiah

A bow to one of the enduring poets of the American southwest. Keith Wilson published books with Kayak, Sumac, Clark City, Grove and with many small presses, including Longhouse, where we've drawn this poem from "Life Drawings". Long may he run.

HOA NGUYEN







LIVING



Living in the dream under a US regime

that legalized and actively encouraged

random racism

---------I was the outspoken

sister------------defiant and scared

in the parking garage

talking back to the racist aggro frat boy



How to make dream-jelly when birds

love them-------We name birds


----------------------------Kingfisher

all trilly

---------a beefy kind of bird



Life eats life--------------Here's a fig



Wheeling black vultures collect now in the elm

frosted black wings



My 3-faced goddess nests in the roots

a fruit for child birth



(I wrote child bird originally)



and think

he will go far-------------being male & white-looking & attractive



Gather leaves and dry them Sew them

with reed string

------------------for to make me a book



A story within a story



-------Tree-roots mirror branches----or veins

-----------like a placenta



Rowan's bitter berries sweeten after frost

Hoa Nguyen makes her home in Austin, Texas with Dale Smith and their two sons Waylon and Keaton. Each of her books of poems are glorious and should be hunted down and read and then shared. Longhouse published What Have You in 2008. Her newest book is Hecate Lochia from Hot Whiskey Press

© 2009 by Hoa Nguyen & Longhouse Publishers

LAL DED
(b. 1320, Kashmir)




translated by Andrew Schelling

You are the earth, the sky,
the air, the day, the night.
You are the grain
the sandalwood paste
the water, flowers, and all else.
What could I possibly bring
as an offering?





Solitary, I roamed the extent of Space,
leaving calculation behind.
The place of the hidden Self
opened and suddenly
out of the filth
bloomed a lotus.





O Blue-Throated God
I have the same six constituents as you,
yet separate from you
I’m miserable.
Here’s the difference—
you have mastered the six
I’ve been robbed by them.

* The six kancukas, “husks” or “coverings” of existence in Kashmir Saivism: appearance, form, time, knowledge, passion, fate.

This selection, from a booklet published by Longhouse, is just short of a dozen translated poems that suggest a deep allegiance to the Kashmiri form of Siva worship, as worked up by Andrew Schelling from a much longer and life enforcing work. Poet, translator and teacher Andrew Schelling has for years been a pivoting influence and friend to many from the halls of montezuma Naropa Institute of Boulder Colorado.

© 2009 by Andrew Schelling & Longhouse Publishers

MICHAEL MAURI

NOTE TO SELF
(South Deerfield, North Amherst)

Note to self: next year don’t split so much of the firewood into small pieces; leave more big chunks for a longer burn. Otherwise the day is too hectic, spent running up and down the stairs to stoke the fire.

Also, make sure to cut all the wood 15 inches or less. 16’s don’t fit in the stove. 15 and a half is the max. You knew that but you messed up anyway. Now you have to get out your saw and cut a bunch of pieces a second time.

End of January. World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Global leaders trying to explain where they went wrong, who messed up. What happened to the Grand Celebration? Even the rich got fooled this time, letting Wall Street paper-pushers fritter away their wealth, all the while siphoning off regal fees and stunning bonuses. Of course, the rich are still rich, and the poor are still poor, and everyone else is still in between. We’re all in this together, it’s just that we’re all worse-off at being whatever we are.

I’m thinking that what I have here is an Off-Davos Un-Economic Forum, of sorts, in South Deerfield, Massachusetts, with just myself in attendance, and I’m looking at my woodpile. It appears the woodpile might last the next two months. But, then again, it might not, either. So, if not, ⎯ note to self ⎯ be ready to bring in more wood next year. More than just three cords.

Today I’m making a chocolate layer cake. Why? It was on the cover of a magazine in the dentist’s office, on glossy paper in rich, sumptuous detail. I saw it; and, ogling the lush, image, I decided I’d try it. But, let’s face it, this is not really a cake, this is insanity. So much butter, so much sugar; so much heavy cream, even cream cheese! On the platter, the cake weighs about 15 pounds. But, oh, the excited faces of my girls! That regular routine of bread- and pie-making has kept me in the dark about the excesses of layer cakes. Home-making’s questionable side. But it’s too late now. Must go forward. Must eat.

Nonetheless, after we each eat a piece, and then another, we cut the rest of the cake into three chunks. Give two away to friends with kids. Keep one for tomorrow.

And now I know: beware of Family Circle magazine. It could lead you astray.

A death notice is taped above my computer. A young guy, just 31 years old. Ten years ago he was the crack young mechanic fixing my chain saws down in the basement of Streeter’s General Store. But then he got a job with the railroad, a good job. And now this. The newspaper mentions that people can donate to juvenile diabetes. The poor dad. I know him. A great guy, too, like his son was. What’s he going to do now?

True, my work involves cutting trees, yet I felt like weeping when I saw the great, old beech tree in front of the North Amherst library. All the branches had been cut off, amputated on all sides! Just the bare stem was still standing. While driving home from a day’s work, I saw it, standing naked in the cold air, darkness settling in, crescent moon already out.

We all know the economy is in free fall. No one is saying it isn’t. Not anymore, anyway. It had to happen. We’ll see what kind of economy comes next. Maybe a new economy that doesn’t wear down the world, dig it up and incinerate it, drop bombs on it, dig huge graves for people, ruin all the places. But that’s still pie in the sky. Right now everyone just wants to patch up the old one, hoist it back up, shine it up a little and get it back on its feet so everyone can start speNNNding again. Buying STUFF.

Someday, maybe, our insignificant micro-decision to raise laying-hens in the backyard will prove provident. Maybe it won’t seem so odd in this American neighborhood setting where maintaining mow-able lawns is a top priority, where status is measured in lack of productivity. Our chickens, our multi-colored feathered folk, a little noisy at times, a little smelly, too, often comical, livening up the yard and bringing joy to one and all. Except when they disturb the neighbors.

It’s just half a dozen hens. Various breeds. We provide for them and they provide for us. Every day now they give us one or two eggs, sometimes three.

Fresh eggs; different shades of brown in your hand as you walk back across the snow, sometimes still warm, to show the girls.


1/30/2009

Michael Mauri has lived in the US and abroad. Raised in western Massachusetts where many of his poems rise from the earth, he lives with his family in the shadow of Sugarloaf Mountain, making his living as a forester. Small booklets of poems have been issued, including Florida Turnips from Longhouse in 2008.





© 2009 by Michael Mauri & Longhouse Publishers

LOUISE LANDES LEVI




Word on the street

Is that Israel created HAMAS,

A good excuse for war /Word on the street

Is that Israel created Hamas, a good way to split

The Palestinians/ every man on his own,

Word on the street is that the

Plan was already drawn up in 2002,

It took 7 years to realize,

What’s so special abt.

Chanukah, are you playing

Maccabee all over again, funny I never

Read abt. Genocide in Jewish Studies 101,

Why didn’t they mention a nuclear arsenal, no. 6/ Top military,

You are going to prevent another Genocide

By doing one, You are

Poor psychological victims,

You are breaking

my

heart,

My Jewish heart, my heart that bore stars & insults,

But these stars & these mandates are

No excuse for murder-

At 8 yrs. of age

I recognized the fucked-up notion of the nation state

I knew you cld. not have a commandment like

THOU SHALT NOT KILL

& A STATE at the same time,

Every time I read the word

Israel in my little book on Hillel,

the elder, I knew that Israel was another

‘name’ for the heart, so Next

Year in Jerusalem meant

one day I wld. Arrive

to my own heart

& no one wld. be able to

take it away because it

didn’t exist in space time, tho I didn’t

know those words then, when I got

to the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory & I was

only 9 & I knew the machine was going to

go off even tho it wasn’t suppose to,

when the kids put

their hands in it, every one pretended

NOT TO NOTICE & when Israel got

Weird & wanted to kill everyone, & it was true

At Sabra & Shatila ---& it’s true yesterday & the day

Before & it’s all over the media but

The media is for sleeping

Not for waking, so it’s a way of

Not noticing, somehow & I think it’s wrong

& it’s only going to cause major pain & disturbance & loss

& I don’t understand except that a psychic friend

says that over there in Israel

she saw some

reborn Nazis & also

the sad rule: the priest who was

fucked in the ass as an altar boy is going to

do that same kind of ritual, he is going to come down

on anyone he can & that’s the

sorryful way things go down,

& really guns are so

OUTDATED.

NYC 2009

‘if I am only for myself who is for me’

In a long tradition of troubadour poets, Louise Landes Levi carries on as itinerant seeker, poet, musician and translator. See her versions of Sanskrit, Henri Michaux, Rene Daumal, plus her many books of poems. In this poem, available from Longhouse as one of our series of foldout booklets, Louise gives a cry out from the street to Israel and Hamas and ourselves.



© 2009 by Louise Landes Levi & Longhouse Publishers