JACK KEROUAC

~ JUST TO LET YOU KNOW WE ARE STILL DOING

BACK ROAD CHALKIES [pdf file]

BILL KNOTT


A poet and publisher I much respect and admire the work of recently wrote that he made it a practice not to publish poetry because poetry doesn't sell. A nail in the coffin statement. If poets think this way, what hope is there for published poetry? Not much. Poets are supposed to be adventurous, ridiculous, dreamers, rabble-rousers, insane, scouts, fools, and in short magnificent. When you start thinking about money and success in publishing poetry you may as well be a tightrope walker who thinks about falling. It has nothing to do with falling. It has to do with floating. In publishing it has nothing to do with money and success, it has everything to do with taking a chance; a craftsman chance. Publishing that book the world needs, not the one they're expecting. When cutting a tree the woodsman who plants trees knows the trees. The tree knows him, too. Often the continuity is filled with grace. But not always, so plan to get dirty.

Laugh at me? I'll laugh at you, but I'm laughing.

Here below in the mail today is a box load of new books the poet Bill Knott has sent to me. I didn't ask. He probably believes he doesn't have to ask, he's adventurous. I've been reading Bill Knott's books since the late 60s and everyone knows the story of his somewhat hot commodity then, dear Saint Geraud, the tiny poems that knocked the block off most, small press and large press publishers, many books and I've read them all in the legit press and many in his latest appearance as self-publisher dynamo. He may have a rotten behavior or he may have inspired behavior, or maybe he's just a whiner, I don't care — at least he's a doer, and he gets his work up and out and about and pays for it somehow and thinks to share it with me and I share it now with you. The books are shiny black and white. If you threw them out into the snow, the words on the cover would shout out! and I even believe endure.

You're looking at a gift horse in the mouth.

WORSE


All my life I had nothing,
but worse than that,
I wouldn't share it


Bill Knott

FOOTNOTE


All of us who lived on earth
and all our loves and wars
may not appear at all
in the moon's memoirs.


Bill Knott





HUMIDITY'S TONES


Four AM, nothing moving, no hurry,
dawn still has time to be choosy
selecting its pinks. But now a breeze
brushes across me — the way my skin
is cooled off by the evaporation
of sweat, this artistry, this system
sombers me: when I am blown from
the body of life will it be refreshed?
I dread the color of the answer Yes.


Bill Knott

MAD MEN


Last Monday we planned with Midas to replace and install a new muffler with pipes on our old Toyota pickup. Over in New Hampshire, a haul to get there & back on a hot day. A formal appointment was made for 11 in the morning five days ago. All was on the up & up.

Of course we are there right on the dot today. The woman at the desk who we remember from three years ago (last muffler=why we return=warranty on muffler, not the pipes). She says a 15 minute wait. I check out the two workers, kids, both okay. They're milking their time but still okay, they've been told to work this way. The two managers running the floor are what concern me. One slob who is doing nothing but walking around and joking. TGIF written all over him. Then the shaved head character with tats and goatee and attitude. I also remember him from three years ago, likely he's married to the woman at the desk.

A half hour goes by. Nothing on our truck. At 11:30, with party horn blaring, a van arrives to order their din-din, all the workers pile out of the bays and leave their work to gab for at least 15 minutes while someone in the van makes their junk. Gab. Cars up on lifts unattended. Not a worker working. Our truck still out in the sun and it's 11:45. Hasn't been touched. I tell Sweetheart to hold tight (she's losing it) so I can see if these clowns are actually going to go back and forth and joke with the van from their work, touch a tool, head back, more jokes. During all this time two other bays are free and clear to bring any customer vehicle into.

Our truck sits until noon and then I see one skinny kid go out and bring the truck in and raise it on the lift. It's been an hour. We've been waiting this long just for an estimate. They've known we were coming since Monday. I go out to shaved head and say to him, square in the eye: "I just wanted to see if you would go past an hour before you even thought to touch my truck, which had a 11 o'clock appointment. Get it down off the lift, we're leaving. I'm also writing Midas headquarters." He stares at me.

The kid who takes it down off the lift is a little afraid of me and I smile to let him know nothing is wrong except with management. The kid apologizes and I tell him "all is okay, but it's too bad you aren't allowed to work like a real worker." He nods and actually says, "I know." We leave. Fuck'em. I wouldn't give them a dime if I was broken down on the highway.

The very worse of corporate and government sleaze bag America has now leeched down into the every day worker, the guy who taught me 50 years ago to pick up after myself, wash off the tools, hustle, tie the load down tight, clean out the truck cab, coil the hose, pull out every nail in the board then straighten the nails, wash out the brush, hold the ladder, check the oil, sharpen the blade, watch the line, sweep the floor, hang the door right, to open the door, to greet the day.

PHILIP ROWLAND

PHOTOS OF POETS


poet so sunk in thought it seems doubtful he’ll speak again
poet who has clearly done his thinking and attained an unassuming serenity
poet with wife and artist-collaborator in bed
poet standing dazed in a sunlit glade
poet skateboarding a Paris pavement
poet making a precise point
poet struggling to keep her hair in place
poet in a dim light, lit only by his laptop’s glare
poet hooded
poet pushing back her hair to reveal an underarm tattoo
poet who’s clearly made it through the menopause unscathed
poet with her little dog, smiling on behalf of them both
poet hugging a life-size papier-mâché lion
poet with members of the Ladies’ Bicycling Association
poet with a ripe apple
poet in silhouette cut out from newspaper classifieds
poet completely bald, clearly delighted
poet stepping eagerly up to the rostrum
poet presiding over his bone china collection
poet arranging tulips to her incomplete satisfaction
poet as a comic book character
poet looking kindly in Tibetan robes
poet with eyes only showing above his glowing T-shirt
poet digitally represented
poet with a finger in each ear, listening intently
poet on the verge of speech
poet with hand on heart and a Panama hat
poet with muscular arms crossed, in front of a slatted fence or beach hut
poet browsing through his many large books of visual poetry
poet holding a disposable camera at arm’s length, photographing himself
poet with lips pursed, in mid-decision
poet in defiantly heavy lipstick
poet nibbling his girlfriend’s ear
poet perched on a rock beneath a mountain pine
poet hunched attentively forward
poet with long hair and prophetic beard who’s just been listening to the Chico Hamilton Quintet
poet in conversation with another poet in an otherwise bare corner of an art gallery
poet in top hat, holding a rubber toy replica of Godzilla
poet in the poetry library’s cafeteria
poet in snappy snakeskin suit, perched on the edge of a 70’s hotel room bed
poet at an antique desk in a see-through fluffy dress, nibbling her pen-tip
poet giving his best man’s speech
poet at dawn on the beach
poet giving a grizzled, disarmingly direct stare
poet gazing out to sea
poet awash in books, leaning back in his chair
poet teaching cross-legged on a desk
poet who refuses to supply a photo, on principle
poet carefully lifting the lid of a piano

NO/ON is Philip Rowland's baby — a supremely elegant journal issued at least once a year from the quiet town of Tokyo, Japan. This journal harbors many of the finest poets at work worldwide in the small tool (poem) trade. Philip's latest book of poems is this newly released foldout of long & short poems from Longhouse. We happily share one of those poems from the booklet with you here.

40 YEARS AGO THIS WEEKEND, THE ULTIMATE WOODSTOCK NATION EXAMPLE

Bob Dylan, once known as "Alias" in a Sam Peckinpah film, was walking around the other day loose (like a Rolling Stone) in some neighborhood in NJ, and came up unrecognized by two cops in their 20s. I keep on saying: they just aren't teaching them like they used to.

One more case, a la Henry Gates, of a neighborhood watchdog calling in the authorities for something, or someone, "unusual".

Rest easy.

~ TWO SOULFUL INVENTORS HAVE PASSED ON ~

LES PAUL (Guitarist extraordinary)

Guitar mindful wizard and master innovator of the solid body electric guitar, whose childhood piano teacher wrote to his mother, “Your boy, Lester, will never learn music.”

RASHIED ALI (Jazz drummer)

“a multi-rhythmic, polytonal propellant, helping fuel Coltrane’s flights of free-jazz fancy.”

Go play them......

PRIMO LEVI







ALMANAC


The indifferent rivers
Will keep on flowing to the sea
Or ruinously overflowing dikes,
Ancient handiwork of determined men.
The glaciers will continue to grate,
Smoothing what lies beneath them.
Or suddenly fall headlong,
Cutting short fir trees' lives.
The sea, captive between
Two continents, will go on struggling,
Always miserly with its riches.
Sun, stars, planets and comets
Will continue on their course.
Earth too will fear the immutable
Laws of the universe.
Not us. We, rebellious offspring
With great brainpower, little sense,
Will destroy, defile,
Always more feverishly.
Very soon we will extend the desert
Into the Amazon forests,
Into the living heart of our cities,
Into our very hearts.


2 January 1987

translated by Ruth Feldman

Born in Turin Italy and dying there only a few months after writing the poem above, Primo Levi's poetry is probably less known than all of his other writings rich as memoirs, fiction and non-fiction. His slender Collected Poems roughly begins from his Auschwitz captivity, where Elie Wiesel commented at the time of Levi's death (disputed suicide) in 1987 , that "Primo Levi died at Auschwitz forty years earlier." Nonetheless, Levi's poetry speaks for endless time.

[& unable to help myself, here is another from a year earlier]



PROXY


Don't be afraid if the work is hard:
You who are less tired are needed.
Since your senses are fine-tuned, you hear
The hollow sound under your feet.
Consider our mistakes again:
We have also had among us
Someone who set about searching blindly
The way a blindfolded man repeats an outline,
Someone who set sail like the pirates,
And someone who tried his very best.
Help, insecure one. Try, though you're insecure,
Because you're insecure. See
If you can repress the annoyance and disgust
Of our doubts and certainties.
Never have we been so rich and yet
We live in the midst of embalmed monsters,
Other monsters obscenely alive.
Don't be dismayed by the rubble,
Or the stench of refuse dumps: we
Cleared them up with our bare hands
In the years when we were your age.
Continue the race, as best you can. We have
Combed the comets' mane,
Deciphered the secrets of origins,
Trampled the moon's sand,
Built Auschwitz and destroyed Hiroshima.
See: we have not remained inactive.
Take up the cause, perplexed one;
Don't call us teachers.



24 June 1986

FARE THEE WELL MIKE SEEGER
AUGUST 15, 1933 ~ 7 AUGUST 2009

WHEN ONE BIRD SANG TO ANOTHER

JAMES KOLLER & BOB ARNOLD READ TO ONE ANOTHER

(AND SOME OTHERS) IN VERMONT

BOB ARNOLD









DAY AND NIGHT



How often have we
Stepped together into water —
You left your clothes on the rocks
And shivered your way to me,
Said it was freezing as I thought
Of the mountain stream filling this
Clear basin of evening light, and how
Swallows showed us the angles of the sky
Far above barbed wire and pasture heat
Which we came down from after work
Smelling lilac in the breeze —
And it was the long blonde hair you shook
Out of a blue bandana and later braided
That had me remember the day and night.




from Where Rivers Meet (Mad River Press) noted in its image to the right

REMEMBERING CLARENCE SCHMIDT











It is the hour — any hour is — to remember Clarence Schmidt, the grass roots Woodstock, NY artist and his reign of building House and Gardens over a twenty year period (1952-1972). Ohayo Mountain to be exact is where Schmidt built and held fort with stupendous natural glee, creating roof top gardens, countless symbols and totems, and two sculpture structures — one reaching 7 storeys, and both lost to fire. One man's attempt at creating and interior/exterior living experiment mainly from used materials, found objects, castoffs, architectural mayhem, craftsmanship and deep wonder.

The above photograph "Doll Foot Shrine" is by Gregg Blasdel, thank goodness documented while Schmidt's structure was still afloat. One of myriad objects created and planted, holding its own aura over the region.

COMING TO KNOW GARY SNYDER






The man will be eighty years next year and to witness the two visual feasts below will be a reminder of what is within our midst. Good direct talk on bio-regionalism, sustainability in the U.S. and abroad, livelihood, family/tribe, forest/fire management, Earth household and poetry. Both presentations come from Snyder's rich past & present habitats — whether at home in the Sierra Nevada, or as a one time resident and student at Berkeley. Listen to the stories.

SABINE MILLER







from bee dance



moth, do eat a few

holes in this sweater

for the spring moon



~



fireflies

dreaming

of

fireflies

dreaming

of

fireflies



~



out-breath

-------grasshopper

-------------jumps



~



grief. . .

-------a spider thread breaks

-------in the wind

I believe Sabine Miller once called us and spoke with Susan. It seems like awhile ago. She sent to me a packet once and had drawn on the outside envelope a bird in flight I carefully cut-out and saved, now pinned near one of the desks where I work. The bird has never stopped showing me movement, freely. A quiet and hidden away poet, like so many of the best are. Seek out those seekers. bee dance is a lovely foldout booklet issued in 2004 from Tribe Press. You can find a copy at Longhouse if you wish.

RYOKAN
(1758-1831)







I'm truly simple
living among trees and grasses.
Don't ask me about illusion or enlightenment.
I'm just an old man who smiles to himself.
I ford streams with these thin legs,
and carry my bag in fine weather.
Such is my life,
but the world owes me nothing.



translated by Dennis Maloney

a contemporary of William Blake and Henry David Thoreau, playmate with children, calligrapher and hermit, here is one of the finest from Ryokan and one of the finest one will ever find of the playful and dead serious discipline. It's all in the thin legs and nothing. From Longhouse we can offer you Ryokan until the cows come home — plus Dennis Maloney's even blend translations, of which the above is one, may be had from the recently released Between the Floating Mist (White Pine, wwwwhitepine.org)

MARCIA ROBERTS






from Autumn’s Slant


hey, vaquero, you got boots
my daddy never got me none
said he bought a pair once wouldn’t do it again
gave me a dollar let me drive the car


when the oil pan breaks on a rock, the father walks home at dusk
a good time for mosquitoes, fireflies, and crickets
kids lie on the lawn, picking at clover, listening
to stories how he shot coyotes from the saddle
and how a mad bull attacked him on horseback


~


longhorns derive from barrenda, the spotted ones
retinto, the reds, and ganado prieto, the fighters

stepping into la corrida

it’s me or you, sucka, let the snot roll off your snout
the blood run off your back onto the sand

los caballeros come from la Mancha y Extremadura
singing God, Glory, Gold, and making marks on cattle’s flanks


~


when the father is old one leg gone
he drives off in a cloud, checking on – S –
vaqueros siempre…..desde el comienzo no somos caballeros…..somos paisanos

moving herds north…..spreading mesquite
along the Chisholm…..all the way to Abilene


~


he didn’t wear a bandana or furry chaps
eat mountain oysters or lasso strays

don’t kid yourself, vaquero, my old man was a cowboy
chewing on a long stem of wheat grass

Lazarillo’s hidalgo picks his teeth on an empty stomach
Hernán Cortéz isn’t the caballero we think

the great warrior lies in Burgos
above the Missouri, the father resides

in sage brush, vaqueros wear tapaderos
and Lakota nod hasta luego

en este lugar . . .
there is no good-bye


~


We live where Muwekma Ohlone lived and danced. Elderberry flutes, bird bone
whistles, split stick clappers kept the beat until men from Sonora rode in.

You can see the end of the rainbow. Dark storm clouds push colors down to the
water, making one final glow.


~


at Farragut North the saxophone man plays Amazing Grace
others huddle on grates around the Corcoran

when the archives guard says there can be no spitting
Peg whispers, we’ll spit in our pockets


~


hollyhocks grow on the south side of gray stucco
mother and daughter cut blooms for a glass basket
and gather oatmeal-shaped seeds
planting them again and again


~


the beauty of the daughter overwhelms her
she wants the child to be her art, herself


~


when the mother dies, the daughter is 54
she looks and feels twelve


~


in a dream she tries to plant grass and flowers
on the east side of gray stucco
her mother tells her
grass never grew here and it never will


~


I cannot cross your name from my book
instead, I buy denim with embroidery and beads

come dine tonight with two lemons
I can make pie or cake
we’ll have wine and salad lasagna perhaps
or curry and rice expresso and Duque de Rivas
our speech syncopated
you remember one thing I remember another

and in the final morning dream
we’ll use the first words when the last words begin

Marcia Roberts is a native of South Dakota. Her books of poetry include Open Eye (Skanky Possum Press) and two fine new books from Effing Press: In the Bird's Breath and Autumn's Slant (effingpress.com). The above first appeared in Longhouse-Origin (sixth series). Marcia makes a home with her husband Len in San Antonio, Texas.

ALBERT SAIJO






LET US INVENT OUR NOBLE SAVAGE SO WE KNOW
ONE WHEN WE SEE ONE — LET US IMAGINE ANEW
THE PERFECTION AT THE BEGINNING OF THINGS
— NOBLE SAVAGE INNOCENT OF DEATH — NOBLE
SAVAGE UNDERSTANDS THE LANGUAGE OF THE
OTHER ANIMALS & TALKS TO THEM & LIVES IN
DEEP PEACE WITH THEM — NOBLE SAVAGE NO
NEED WORK — WITHOUT LABOR NOBLE SAVAGE
FEEDS AT ABUNDANT TREE OF LIFE — NOBLE
SAVAGE EATS AND IS EATEN IN DEEP PEACE —
NOBLE SAVAGE TALKS TO GOD — NOBLE SAVAGE
TRAVELS TO GOD NOT JUST IN SPIRIT BUT
CARNATE AND WHOLE — THEY TALK AT GOD’S
OASIS BENEATH THE IDEAL PALM — THEY TALK
IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE ANIMALS BARKING
AND TWITTERING — NOBLE SAVAGE NEVER FALL

ALBERT SAIJO is "George Baso" in Jack Kerouac's Big Sur. A native of Los Angeles, Saijo penned the classics The Backpacker, Trip Trap (with Kerouac and Lew Welch) and Outspeaks, a Rhapsody.

PAUL CELAN








Ash-Aura back of
your shock-knotted
hands at the three-corners.

Black Sea old times: here,
one drop,
on
the drowned oar blade,
deep
in the fossilized oath,
surf murmurs.

(up the precipitous
breath rope, in those days,
higher than high,
between two knots of pain—while
the brilliant
Tartar moon rose up to us,
I sunk and I sunk into you.)

Ash
aura back of
you three-corners
hands.

Come from the east, the way in front of you
a crap-shoot, terrifying.

No one
bears witness for
the witness.

BOB ARNOLD









ECO


I chopped down the tree I planted

Cut up and burned as fuel

Carried out its ash to spread

WALTER FRANCESCHI










THE GARDENERS' GANG



They have their base in an old garage in ruins

at the end of a short gravel driveway

hidden behind a big green iron gate

and I run across them almost every morning

a few minutes to eight

as they get ready for another working day

bringing ladders, chain saws and any kind of tool

that they might need during the day

from the garage to the street where their trucks are parked

over breezy chats

five or six guys in boots

all young, around my age

and all confident-looking

and as I walk by I wonder how it might be if one of these days

instead of continuing my walk toward the office

I stopped by and joined the gang

Walter Franceschi is the author of Little Satori from Longhouse, see image of booklet below. From his home in Molino del Piano (a small town 15km from Florence) he has been writing to me of the goings-on in his neighborhood, and sometimes about these workers. I suggested he write a poem or two, and he's good for that and maybe even more. His poems often celebrate the very things we may overlook and may even miss entirely. There is great value in that.

IRA COHEN










GOD’S MIRROR


Dreaming about the mirror,

I think of God’s affliction,

about the necessity of freeing Him from the mirror

without breaking it,

His presence so subtle

you cannot see it there.

Several days I have

awakened with this on my mind,

not sure of

the nature of my concern,

yet sure of its importance,

the answer must lie in

the way a mirror is made.

this poem is hidden away with more in this new Longhouse publication for 2009. Ira Cohen is known in the most mystical corners of the globe, even on the stars. His poetry, prose, art work and living has earned him a reputation and friendships everywhere.