I had no idea the next time I'd hear from you would be via the New York Times obituary page. You famous wonder-jack, you! Who sent me his books of poems, or just a sheaf of poems at will, as a friend. A friend I never got to meet, and what a shame. You were such a good man, Russell, and the best part of this is every part of that goodness will remain since as a farmer, family man, husband, and neighbor you put it back into the soil. Gave it to Maine. I'm going to miss your short but sweet letters telling me how you chimed into my Birdhouse blog each day, and shared some of your day with me. Heck, that's how we met! You bought my books and took those other books I tucked in as extra. The cancer came and it seemed you had it beat, but I can see in this film below you're doing your ever loving best to stay above the grade, seriously hurt as you were. The grand teacher. The quiet poet. The one animals and birds and the wind already miss. It's very important that those that had never heard of you (impossible in Maine) knew you were with us.
see Russell's book Balance: A Late Pastoral (Blackberry Press, 2007)
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
EAST MEETS WEST ~
RAVI SHANKAR
( 1920~2012 )
"Ravi Shankar, whose formal name was Robindra Shankar Chowdhury, was born
on April 7, 1920, in Varanasi, India, to a family of musicians and
dancers. His older brother Uday directed a touring Indian dance troupe,
which Ravi joined when he was 10. Within five years he had become one of
the company’s star soloists. He also discovered that he had a facility
with the sitar and the sarod, another stringed instrument, as well as
the flute and the tabla, an Indian drum."
The
wolf that researchers called 832F, left, wasshot and killed on Thursday outside Yellowstone National Park's boundaries. The
alpha female of the Lamar Canyon pack, she wore a tracking collar. The
wolf with her, known as 754, was killed last month.
A most humbling way to stack firewood. Save a tree!
Saturday, December 8, 2012
EARTH ~
John Clare
". . .the poems of Clare's that still make a catch in the breath and establish a positively bodily hold upon the reader are those in which the wheel of total recognition has been turned. At their most effective, Clare's pentameters enrage not just the mechanical gears of a metre: at their most effective, they take hold also on the sprockets of our creatureliness. By which I only mean that on occasion a reader simply cannot help responding with immediate recognition to the pell-mell succession of vividly accurate impressions. No one of these is extraordinary in itself, nor is the resulting poem in any way spectacular. What distinguishes it is an unspectacular joy and totally alert love for the one-thing-after-anotherness of the world. Here, by way of illustration, is another one of Clare's sonnets in couplets — perhaps we should call them supplets — picked almost at random from the ones Clare wrote at Northborough during his early and middle forties:
The old pond full of flags and fenced around With trees and bushes trailing to the ground The water weeds are all around the brink And one clear place where cattle go to drink From year to year the schoolboy thither steals And muddys round the place to catch the eels The cowboy often hiding from the flies Lies there and plaits the rushcap as he lies The hissing owl sits moping all the day And hears his song and never flies away The pinks nest hangs upon the branch so thin The young ones caw and seem as tumbling in While round them thrums the purple dragon flye And great white butter flye goes dancing bye
Rarely has the butteriness of a butterfly been so available. The insect has flown into the medium and survives forever there as a pother of lip movement and a set of a substituted feet in the scansion of the line. And the old pond here is like the cesspool in "The Mouse's Nest", in so far as it embodies for Clare not only the reality of all such places as places, with distinct characters and histories, but also their value as a set of memories and affections at the back of his mind. There is dreamwork going on here, as well as photography. The casual rightness and potency of the thing come from a level of engagement well below the visual; in fact, the whole poem acts as a reminder of how integrated and concentrated a poetic response can be. What is unstated can still be felt as a potent charge inside or behind an image or a cadence, and what lies behind the self-possession, the sureness of tone and grip on place in such a poem is Clare's great feat of endurance in the face of historical and personal crises."
_________________________
SEAMUS HEANEY from Finders Keepers selected prose 1971-2001 (Farrar, 2002)
From Helpston in rural Northamptonshire, John Clare was born in 1793.
THANKS! ~
freeloadin' bin black bears nice truck brave woman ladder free!
Friday, December 7, 2012
BREAKFAST ~
( Fence Books, 2012 )
www.fenceportal.org
LIGHT EXCESSES
That's me: the woman sitting
in her houseamong
many light excesses.
This is winter.
This is a heap of lacking
and the mind's trash
becoming the need
for many fabric protections,
in a way that quilts alone
could never be. I climbed up
on the bed to see you,
and the light from the ceiling
and the dresser lit your face
like an apple orchard on the day
a farmer's favorite horse
rose from the dead.
LEISURE, HANNAH, DOES NOT AGREE WITH YOU (2)
— After Catullus
My house disgusted me, so I slept in a tent.
My tent disgusted me, so I slept in the grass. The grass disgusted me,
so I slept in my body, which I strung like a hammock from two ropes.
My body disgusted me, so I carved myself out of it.
My use of knives disgusted me because it was an act of violence.
My weakness disgusted me because "Hannah" means "hammer."
The meaning of my name disgusted me because I'd rather be known
as beautiful. My vanity disgusted me because I am a scholar.
My scholarship disgusted me because knowledge is empty.
My emptiness disgusted me because I wanted to be whole.
My wholeness would have disgusted me because to be whole
is to be smug. Still, I tried to understand wholeness
as the inclusiveness of all activities.: I walked out into the yard,
trying to vomit and drink milk simultaneously. I tried to sleep
while smoking a cigar. I have enough regrets to crack all the plumbing.
I'm whole only in that I've built my person from every thought I've ever loved.
MAYBE A FAREWELL TOUR
Because it had grown warmer in the night
I realized that while I was sleeping
your anger towards me
must have lessened.
Letters to my friends begin: "Writing you here,
among the poinsettias. . ."
and then I drop my pen
and think about how, at this moment,
my mother and her God are alone in a room,
and he is comforting her.
_______________________
HANNAH GAMBLE Your Invitation To A Modest Breakfast (Fence Books 2012)
“One of the reasons I believe in jazz,” Dave Brubeck said, “is that the oneness of
man can come through the rhythm of your heart. It’s the same anyplace
in the world, that heartbeat. It’s the first thing you hear when you’re
born — or before you’re born — and it’s the last thing you hear.”
love our so right is , all (each thing most lovely) sweet things cannot spring but we be they'll some or if where shall breathe a new (silvery rare goldenly so) moon, she is you nothing may, quite your my (my your and) self without, completely dare be beautiful one if should sing (at yes of day) younger than young bird first for joy, he's i he's i
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Art Collection, The University of Texas at Austin.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
YOU AIN'T GOING NOWHERE ~
A 25-second timelapse video shows every airplane that landed at San
Diego International Airport in a single day between 10.30am and 3pm. The
composite video was created by photography and film professor Cy
Kuckenbaker, who came up with the idea after seeing a composite photo by
Ho-Yeol Ryu at Hannover airport
Born in Harlem, bebop master hand Earl Rudolph Powell ("Bud") was active on the jazz scene in the United States and Europe between 1944-1965. Powell's "Un Poco Loco" was selected by literary critic Harold Bloom for inclusion on his short list of "the greatest works of twentieth-century American art." "It Could Happen to You" was the B-side.
"If I had to choose one single musician for his artistic integrity, for
the incomparable originality of his creation and the grandeur of his
work, it would be Bud Powell. He was in a class by himself. " Bill Evans
1947: Bud Powell Trio (Roost)
1949-50: Bud Powell Piano Solos (Mercury / Clef) aka (Ω of) Jazz Giant (Norgran / Verve)
1949-51: The Amazing Bud Powell (Blue Note)
1950: Bud Powell Piano Solos No. 2 (Mercury / Clef) aka (Ω of) Jazz Giant (Norgran / Verve)
1950-51: Bud Powell's Moods (Mercury / Clef) aka The Genius of Bud Powell (Verve)
1953: The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 2 (Blue Note)
1953: Bud Powell Trio, Volume 2 (Roost)
1954-55: Bud Powell's Moods (Norgran / Verve)
1954-55: Jazz Original (Norgran) aka Bud Powell '57 (Norgran / Verve)
1955: The Lonely One... (Verve)
1955: Piano Interpretations by Bud Powell (Norgran / Verve)
1956: Blues in the Closet (Verve)
1956: Strictly Powell (RCA Victor)
1957: Swingin' with Bud (RCA Victor)
1957: Bud! The Amazing Bud Powell (Vol. 3) (Blue Note)
1957-58: Bud Plays Bird (Roulette / Blue Note) 1958: Time Waits: The Amazing Bud Powell (Vol. 4) (Blue Note) 1958: The Scene Changes: The Amazing Bud Powell (Vol. 5) (Blue Note)
1961: A Tribute to Cannonball (Columbia) 1961: A Portrait of Thelonious (Columbia)
1963: Bud Powell in Paris (Reprise)
Live and home recordings
1944-48: Earl Bud Powell, Vol. 1: Early Years of a Genius, 44-48 (Mythic Sound)
1953: Winter Broadcasts 1953 (ESP-Disk)
1953: Spring Broadcasts 1953 (ESP-Disk)
1953: Inner Fires (Elektra)
1953: Summer Broadcasts 1953 (ESP-Disk)
1953: Autumn Broadcasts 1953 (ESP-Disk)
1953-55: Earl Bud Powell, Vol. 2: Burnin' in U.S.A., 53-55 (Mythic Sound)
1957-59: Earl Bud Powell, Vol. 3: Cookin' at Saint-Germain, 57-59 (Mythic Sound)
1959-60: Bud in Paris (Xanadu)
1959-61: Earl Bud Powell, Vol. 5: Groovin' at the Blue Note, 59-61 (Mythic Sound)
1960: The Essen Jazz Festival Concert (Black Lion)
1960-64: Earl Bud Powell, Vol. 11: Gift for the Friends, 60-64 (Mythic Sound)
1961: Pianology (Moon [Italy]) [33]
1961-64: Earl Bud Powell, Vol. 4: Relaxin' at Home, 61-64 (Mythic Sound)
1962: Bud Powell Live in Lausanne 1962 (Stretch Archives)
1962: Bud Powell Live in Geneva (Norma [Japan])
1962: Bud Powell Trio at the Golden Circle, Vols. 1-5 (Steeplechase) [34]
1962: Budism (SteepleChase)
1962: Bouncing with Bud (Sonet)
1962: 'Round About Midnight at the Blue Note (Dreyfus Jazz)
1962-64: Bud Powell at Home - Strictly Confidential (Fontana)
1963: Earl Bud Powell, Vol. 6: Writin' for Duke, 63 (Mythic Sound)
1963: Americans in Europe (Impulse!)
1964: Earl Bud Powell, Vol. 7: Tribute to Thelonious, 64 (Mythic Sound)
1964: Blues for Bouffemont (Fontana)
1964: Hot House (Fontana)
1964: Earl Bud Powell, Vol. 8: Holidays in Edenville, 64 (Mythic Sound)
1964: The Return of Bud Powell (Roulette)
1964: Earl Bud Powell, Vol. 9: Return to Birdland, 64 (Mythic Sound)
1964: Earl Bud Powell, Vol. 10: Award at Birdland, 64 (Mythic Sound)
1964: Ups'n Downs (Mainstream)
Notable compilations
Tempus Fugue-It (Proper Records) - Four disc set, from 1944 recordings with Cootie Williams to the first sessions for Blue Note and Clef in 1949-50.
The Complete Bud Powell on Verve - Five discs, sessions from 1949 to 1956.
The Best of Bud Powell on Verve - Single disc compilation of the best of Powell's work for the label.
The Complete Blue Note and Roost Recordings - Four disc set containing all of the Amazing Bud Powell... Blue Note sessions plus Roost sessions from 1947 and 1953. The Blue Note sessions have also been remastered and reissued as individual CDs and are arguably better[citation needed] (though the Roost material is not included).
The Complete RCA Trio Sessions - Contains Swingin' with Bud and Strictly Powell.
As sideman
with Cootie Williams
1944: Cootie Williams and His Orchestra 1941-44
with Frank Socolow
1945: New York Journeyman - Complete Recordings
with J. J. Johnson
1946: J. J. Johnson's Jazz Quintets
with Dexter Gordon
1947: Dexter Rides Again
1963: Our Man in Paris
with The Quintet (Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Max Roach)
1953: Jazz at Massey Hall
with Art Blakey
1959: Paris Jam Session
with Charles Mingus
1960: Mingus at Antibes - sits in on one track, "I'll Remember April"
Saturday, December 1, 2012
POP ~ (Lianne La Havas)
Lianne La Havas (with a look on the Letterman show as if a return of The Ronettes)
A poem (or more) will be offered by the hour or with the day and at the very least once a week. So stay on your webbed toes. The aim is to share good hearty-to-eat poetry. This is a birdhouse size file from the larger Longhouse which has been publishing from backwoods Vermont since 1971 books, hundreds of foldout booklets, postcards, sheafs, CD, landscape art, street readings, web publication, and notes left for the milkman. Established by Bob & Susan Arnold for your pleasure. The poems, essays, films & photographs on this site are copyrighted and may not be reproduced without the author's go-ahead.
New from Bob Arnold ~ "Faraway Like The Deer's Eye" ~ Bob Arnold Faraway Like the Deer’s Eye — A Saga — FOUR BOOKS IN ONE VOLUME ~ A Poet’s Memoir // 50 Years of Longhouse & Poets // A Builder’s Life, with photo assembly // The Selected Poems of Bob Arnold // An afterword by Andrew Schelling
Longhouse Bibliography Quick Link —
Link to the Birdhouse Bibliography
Visit the Longhouse Bibliography (a press edited by Bob Arnold) ~
"Poets Who Sleep" by Bob Arnold, Longhouse 2019. 500 portraits by Bob Arnold of poets worldwide & others. Please link on image for ordering information.
Link to a Preview of Poets Who Sleep
Shared at "Dispatches from the Poetry Wars"
Heaven Lake by Bob Arnold
Available from Longhouse. Please link on the image for ordering information.
The Woodcutter Talks by Bob Arnold
Available from Longhouse. Please link on the image for ordering information. Drawing from years of poetry and also new poems, The Woodcutter Talks is Bob Arnold at his finest branching love poems with back country work poems and settlement with community, family and individual portraits. The extensive collection also showcases vintage photographs from woodcutters and woodchoppers and big-saw-pullers of old. Sweat runs down the cheeks of the mere literary and they adore one another.
Stone Hut by Bob Arnold
"Once again, my friends, this is your best book! Exquisite in design, fat enough to be a feast, pretty enough to just wade around in, but deep enough to dive into and stay with, all I can say is WOW, you guys really did it – it’s the first of its kind, a scrapbook novel that is also a how-to and a mystery -- how did he do it, and how does he make rocks balance like Thor? — Gerald Hausman" ~
Museum, An Unlikely Meditation, written by the poet Bob Arnold, is as much an unlikely novel. Visit this page for details.
Cid Corman's Of, Volumes 4 & 5 from Longhouse.
ANNOUNCING. The final volumes to Corman's opus in one book ~ of, volumes 4 & by Cid Corman. 1500 poems, 850 pages edited by Bob Arnold, now available in a limited edition from Longhouse, 2015. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information ~
'Fully a book ~
An interview with Bob Arnold on Cid Corman’s ‘of’
Janina by Janine Pommy Vega
New and available now from Longhouse ~ Janine Pommy Vega Janina Visions, Tales & Lovesongs 288 pages perfect bound packed with poems and photographs. Janine's full course album of photographs, travel journals, poems, facsimile notebooks of poems, childhood photographs, and family, Beat family, plus her unfinished memoir of Jerusalem.
Walking Woman with the Tambourine is the final book of poems by Janine Pommy Vega.
"Walking Woman with the Tambourine is the final book of poems by Janine Pommy Vega. The author completed the manuscript and left it as she wished with her executor Bob Arnold … New and available now from Longhouse ~ Poetry. 144 pages. Perfect bound softcover. Please link on the image for ordering information
New! James Koller : Selected Poems 2003-2004-2005
James Koller — Selected Poems 2003-2004-2005 Longhouse 2016, 72 pages, perfect bound. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information PLUS more from Longhouse
OPENINGS by JAMES KOLLER
Selected poems 1959 ~ 1985 edited by Bob Arnold. New and available now from Longhouse ~ 72 pages . Perfect bound softcover. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information PLUS more from Longhouse
Lorine Niedecker's A Cooking Book
A Cooking Book Lorine Niedecker Longhouse 2015 72 pages, perfect bound. Please link on the image to purchase this new title from Longhouse.
Kent Johnson's "I Once Met"
Available once again now in 2022! $25 plus shippingVisit the Birdhouse for Kent's book information :
JD Whitney's Selected Poems
J.D. Whitney ~Sweeping the Broom Shorter Selected Poems 1964-2014 from ~ Longhouse 2014. 192 pages. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information PLUS more from Longhouse
New! from Longhouse ~ Island Dreams by Gerald Hausman Please link for details & Paypal payment
ISLAND DREAMS by GERALD HAUSMAN Selected Poems 1968 ~ 2015 chosen & edited by Bob Arnold New and available now from Longhouse ~ 160 pages Perfect bound softcover. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information PLUS more from Longhouse
John Bradley's "And Thereby Everything"
L O N G H O U S E is very proud to announce a new book by John Bradley in their on going series of S C O U T book publications — other titles from the series have been by Kent Johnson, Janine Pommy Vega, James Koller, Bob Arnold and Lorine Niedecker with more in the works. An opening salvo at the front of the book by Patrick Lawler should provide ample cover for what the reader should come to expect. And Thereby Everything John Bradley Longhouse 2015 First edition only issued in softcover 208 pages, perfect bound illustrated throughout by Bob Arnold with 150 photographs
Dudley Laufman : Bull & More Bull
Visit this page for information on this new Longhouse by Dudley Kaufman (2016)
Dudley Laufman's Islandian Poems
The Islandian Poems & Fables Dudley Laufman Longhouse 2015. 72 pages, perfect bound. Please link on the image to purchase this new title from Longhouse.
Duo by Bob Arnold — New from Longhouse Please link to A Longhouse Birdhouse for more information
DUO Bird Poems by BOB ARNOLD. New and available now from Longhouse ~ 92 pages. Perfect bound softcover. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information PLUS more from Longhouse
Start With The Tree by Bob Arnold
New in 2015. Building a marriage, building a family, building a small barn out in the woodlands together as a family, as a marriage, and seeing the roof go on. Over 150 color photographs
Beautiful Days by Bob Arnold
Beautiful Days ~ new poems of living and working in the Vermont woodlands and to Hurricane Irene
Yokel by Bob Arnold
[from "Yokel, A Long Green Mountain Poem" by Bob Arnold] ~ that and more at Bob Arnold webpage of books & poems: Please link on this image for more
Go West by Bob Arnold
Filled with poems and travel photography — shares one cross-country trip the couple took in the mid-1980s to California from Vermont.
"I'm In Love With You Who Is In Love With Me" by Bob Arnold
from Bob Arnold's new book "I'm In Love With You Who Is In Love With Me" ~~~~~~~40 years of love poems
"Rain Bear" by Bob Arnold
Bob Arnold's first children's book "Rain Bear" New and available now from Longhouse ~ 50 pages. Perfect bound softcover with photographs ~ & drawings by Jason Clark
"Heretic" by John Phillips from Longhouse
New from Longhouse ~ John Phillips "Heretic". Poems with collages by the author. Click on the image for more ~
Kim Dorman — "Owner"
"Owner" by Kim Dorman. Including photographs by Kim Dorman. Selected and edited by Bob Arnold. New and available now from Longhouse 2016 ~ 80 pages. Perfect bound softcover