Roberto Rossellini
© Arnold Adler
Saturday, March 23, 2013
WISE LETTER ~
Charles McCarthy was the chairman of the Drake School Board of Drake, North Dakota.
from Letters, Kurt Vonnegut, edited and with an introduction by the author's close friend
Dan Wakefield. Both authors were born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana.
(Delacorte, 2012)
A terrific collection of letters to literary colleagues, family, friends, adversaries, and mostso KV's children.
To Charles McCarthy from Kurt Vonnegut ~
Vonnegut was the author of Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, Mother Night and other modern classics.
Charles McCarthy was the chairman of the Drake School Board of Drake, North Dakota.
To honor Vonnegut, never mind wise judgement, I like to read this letter at least once a year.
It seems now almost a duty.
from Letters, Kurt Vonnegut, edited and with an introduction by the author's close friend
Dan Wakefield. Both authors were born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana.
(Delacorte, 2012)
A terrific collection of letters to literary colleagues, family, friends, adversaries, and mostso KV's children.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
"BURY THEM FIRST" ~
No one speaks better about "Richard Stark" than his creator and guide Donald Westlake.
Of the 28 Stark novels, 24 feature its star "Parker" — no first name, although Westlake somewhere once said if he had to choose a first name for "Parker", he'd like "Frank". Forget that and just think "Parker" since it goes down like a rock thrown in all the novels.
Not to confuse things — in 1999, a Richard Stark novel The Hunter was made into a film titled "Payback," after the seminal debut starring Lee Marvin as "Parker" but changed to the name "Walker" (remains the best of all Stark film versions, "Point Blank," 1967), and Mel Gibson starred in this remake. Gibson's terrific and even more terrific today as his personal life has given us a true bad boy since the film was released.
Don't take the film too seriously (though I do), after all it is a tongue in cheek noir, foolishly remade a few years later and released as a "director's-cut." While this remake may be technically wiser, it's boring, and has lost the pranks and hijinks and the delicious narration by Gibson himself reeling off his mind at what he's feeling and looking at as "Porter." He's looking at betrayal, and "Parker" (or "Porter" as he's called here) is all about loyalty. Don't cross him.
Everyone in the 1999 version of Payback gets theirs by crossing Porter.
Casting director Marion Dougherty has spun a novelty — nearly every slimeball on the outer edges of Hollywood is brought in, male and female, and by slimeball I mean trained actors who can pull it off. Like William Devane, Manu Tupou and Deborah Unger. Like Kris Kristofferson with James Coburn (combining again Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett from another earlier classic film). The director's cut erases Kristofferson completely; more dumbness.
When Westlake was asked who he thought of as his "Parker," he answered, "Jack Palance." When I mention Palance to Sweetheart she just makes a face and says, "eeewww" (pinching her nose).
Lee Marvin's a glorious and tall leopard-like "Walker" (Parker). Gibson's "Porter" (Parker) is playful & fed-up with idiots, can deliver impeccable Stark lines, and just wants his "$70,000". No more, no less.
_____________
Some Novels Available by Richard Stark
The Hunter (1962, aka Point Blank, Payback, University of Chicago Press reprint 2008) ISBN 978-0-226-77099-4
The Man With the Getaway Face (1963, aka The Steel Hit, University of Chicago Press reprint 2008) ISBN 978-0-226-77100-7
The Outfit (1963, University of Chicago Press reprint 2008) ISBN 978-0-226-77101-4
The Mourner (1963, University of Chicago Press reprint 2009) ISBN 978-0-226-77103-8
The Score (1964, aka Killtown, University of Chicago Press reprint 2009) ISBN 978-0-226-77104-5
The Jugger (1965, University of Chicago Press reprint 2009) ISBN 978-0-226-77102-1
The Seventh (1966, aka The Split, University of Chicago Press reprint 2009) ISBN 978-0-226-77105-2
The Handle (1966, aka Run Lethal, University of Chicago Press reprint 2009) ISBN 978-0-226-77106-9
The Rare Coin Score (1967, University of Chicago Press reprint 2009) ISBN 978-0-226-77107-6
The Green Eagle Score (1967, University of Chicago Press reprint 2010) ISBN 978-0-226-77108-3
The Black Ice Score (1968, University of Chicago Press reprint 2010) ISBN 978-0-226-77109-0
The Sour Lemon Score (1969, University of Chicago Press reprint 2010) ISBN 978-0-226-77110-6
Deadly Edge (1971, University of Chicago Press reprint 2010) ISBN 0-7490-0087-2 and 978-0-226-77091-8
Slayground (1971, University of Chicago Press reprint 2010) — First chapter shared with The Blackbird, a novel in Westlake's Alan Grofield series. ISBN 978-0-226-77092-5
Plunder Squad (1972, University of Chicago Press reprint 2010) ISBN 978-0-226-77093-2
Butcher's Moon (1974, University of Chicago Press reprint 2011) ISBN 978-0-226-77095-6
Comeback (1997, University of Chicago Press reprint 2011) ISBN 978-0-226-77058-1
Backflash (1998, University of Chicago Press reprint 2011) ISBN 978-0-226-77060-4
Flashfire (2000, University of Chicago Press reprint 2011) ISBN 978-0-226-77062-8
Firebreak (2001, University of Chicago Press reprint 2011) ISBN 978-0-226-77065-9
Breakout (2002)
Nobody Runs Forever (2004)
Ask the Parrot (2006)
Dirty Money (2008)
Also appears in:
The Blackbird (1969) by Richard Stark — Parker appears only the first chapter of this novel starring Alan Grofield.
Dead Skip (1972) by Joe Gores — Parker appears briefly in a sequence that was also described (from a different viewpoint) in Plunder Squad (1972).
Jimmy the Kid (1974) by Donald E. Westlake — This novel in Westlake's John Dortmunder series features the gang planning a caper based on a Parker novel they have. Chapters alternate between Parker committing a kidnapping (in the otherwise unavailable novel Child Heist) and the Dortmunder gang screwing it up as they try to imitate Parker. Only a few chapters of Child Heist are featured, and this particular Parker story is not complete on its own.
(wikipedia)
Of the 28 Stark novels, 24 feature its star "Parker" — no first name, although Westlake somewhere once said if he had to choose a first name for "Parker", he'd like "Frank". Forget that and just think "Parker" since it goes down like a rock thrown in all the novels.
Not to confuse things — in 1999, a Richard Stark novel The Hunter was made into a film titled "Payback," after the seminal debut starring Lee Marvin as "Parker" but changed to the name "Walker" (remains the best of all Stark film versions, "Point Blank," 1967), and Mel Gibson starred in this remake. Gibson's terrific and even more terrific today as his personal life has given us a true bad boy since the film was released.
Don't take the film too seriously (though I do), after all it is a tongue in cheek noir, foolishly remade a few years later and released as a "director's-cut." While this remake may be technically wiser, it's boring, and has lost the pranks and hijinks and the delicious narration by Gibson himself reeling off his mind at what he's feeling and looking at as "Porter." He's looking at betrayal, and "Parker" (or "Porter" as he's called here) is all about loyalty. Don't cross him.
Everyone in the 1999 version of Payback gets theirs by crossing Porter.
Casting director Marion Dougherty has spun a novelty — nearly every slimeball on the outer edges of Hollywood is brought in, male and female, and by slimeball I mean trained actors who can pull it off. Like William Devane, Manu Tupou and Deborah Unger. Like Kris Kristofferson with James Coburn (combining again Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett from another earlier classic film). The director's cut erases Kristofferson completely; more dumbness.
When Westlake was asked who he thought of as his "Parker," he answered, "Jack Palance." When I mention Palance to Sweetheart she just makes a face and says, "eeewww" (pinching her nose).
Lee Marvin's a glorious and tall leopard-like "Walker" (Parker). Gibson's "Porter" (Parker) is playful & fed-up with idiots, can deliver impeccable Stark lines, and just wants his "$70,000". No more, no less.
_____________
Some Novels Available by Richard Stark
The Hunter (1962, aka Point Blank, Payback, University of Chicago Press reprint 2008) ISBN 978-0-226-77099-4
The Man With the Getaway Face (1963, aka The Steel Hit, University of Chicago Press reprint 2008) ISBN 978-0-226-77100-7
The Outfit (1963, University of Chicago Press reprint 2008) ISBN 978-0-226-77101-4
The Mourner (1963, University of Chicago Press reprint 2009) ISBN 978-0-226-77103-8
The Score (1964, aka Killtown, University of Chicago Press reprint 2009) ISBN 978-0-226-77104-5
The Jugger (1965, University of Chicago Press reprint 2009) ISBN 978-0-226-77102-1
The Seventh (1966, aka The Split, University of Chicago Press reprint 2009) ISBN 978-0-226-77105-2
The Handle (1966, aka Run Lethal, University of Chicago Press reprint 2009) ISBN 978-0-226-77106-9
The Rare Coin Score (1967, University of Chicago Press reprint 2009) ISBN 978-0-226-77107-6
The Green Eagle Score (1967, University of Chicago Press reprint 2010) ISBN 978-0-226-77108-3
The Black Ice Score (1968, University of Chicago Press reprint 2010) ISBN 978-0-226-77109-0
The Sour Lemon Score (1969, University of Chicago Press reprint 2010) ISBN 978-0-226-77110-6
Deadly Edge (1971, University of Chicago Press reprint 2010) ISBN 0-7490-0087-2 and 978-0-226-77091-8
Slayground (1971, University of Chicago Press reprint 2010) — First chapter shared with The Blackbird, a novel in Westlake's Alan Grofield series. ISBN 978-0-226-77092-5
Plunder Squad (1972, University of Chicago Press reprint 2010) ISBN 978-0-226-77093-2
Butcher's Moon (1974, University of Chicago Press reprint 2011) ISBN 978-0-226-77095-6
Comeback (1997, University of Chicago Press reprint 2011) ISBN 978-0-226-77058-1
Backflash (1998, University of Chicago Press reprint 2011) ISBN 978-0-226-77060-4
Flashfire (2000, University of Chicago Press reprint 2011) ISBN 978-0-226-77062-8
Firebreak (2001, University of Chicago Press reprint 2011) ISBN 978-0-226-77065-9
Breakout (2002)
Nobody Runs Forever (2004)
Ask the Parrot (2006)
Dirty Money (2008)
Also appears in:
The Blackbird (1969) by Richard Stark — Parker appears only the first chapter of this novel starring Alan Grofield.
Dead Skip (1972) by Joe Gores — Parker appears briefly in a sequence that was also described (from a different viewpoint) in Plunder Squad (1972).
Jimmy the Kid (1974) by Donald E. Westlake — This novel in Westlake's John Dortmunder series features the gang planning a caper based on a Parker novel they have. Chapters alternate between Parker committing a kidnapping (in the otherwise unavailable novel Child Heist) and the Dortmunder gang screwing it up as they try to imitate Parker. Only a few chapters of Child Heist are featured, and this particular Parker story is not complete on its own.
(wikipedia)
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
SPRING! ~
photo © susan arnold
We haven't seen a March like this one — thick and rough and no-holds barred — for a few years now. It has me think back a week ago when we were climbing Sugarloaf in Massachusetts and the trail was still slushy but melting fast; and when we went to a nearby library to check out a satchel of books, what with a spring-fever roiling through our bodies, the young librarian clerk cheerfully announced to us "Spring!", and we wanted to smile with her, and we did smile, but she also saw we knew better. That's when she said, eyes lowering, "Oh, yes, I know". . . And here it is — a deep white and muddy Spring Equinox digging out.
photo © susan arnold
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
WILD BILL ~
"William "Bill" Hickman (January 25, 1921 – February 24, 1986) was a stunt driver, actor, and stunt coordinator from the 1950s through to the late 1970s. Hickman played a major role in terms of development and execution in three of the greatest movie car chase sequences of all time: Bullitt, The French Connection and The Seven-Ups, all shot on actual city streets."
"William "Bill" Hickman (January 25, 1921 – February 24, 1986) was a stunt driver, actor, and stunt coordinator from the 1950s through to the late 1970s. Hickman played a major role in terms of development and execution in three of the greatest movie car chase sequences of all time: Bullitt, The French Connection and The Seven-Ups, all shot on actual city streets."
CAN YOU PLEASE ~
Please tell me, I'm not seeing and reading what I'm reading here? Mostso the price of tickets for admission.
Please tell me, I'm not seeing and reading what I'm reading here? Mostso the price of tickets for admission.
The Poetic Table: A Feast with Fine Wines to Benefit Poets House
Date and Time:
March 18, 2013 - 6:00PM to 9:00PM
Event Location:
Poets House & North End Grill
Admission:
Tickets: $750 ($500 tax-deductible)
This is a special benefit for Poets House that helps keep our programming free or low cost.
Join us for an unforgettable evening celebrating humanity's most transcendent art. Esteemed wine importer Neal Rosenthal provides elegant pairings while poets Daniel Halpern, Sharon Olds, Charles Simic, current U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey and Anne Waldman tantalize our imaginations over an intimate three-course meal at Danny Meyer's award-winning North End Grill. Kevin Young serves as the host of this gastronomic feast for poets and friends.
6 - 7pm: Champagne Toasts at Poets House
7 - 9pm: Dinner with Wine & Poetry Pairings at North End Grill
Tickets: $750 ($500 tax-deductible) Places are limited.
RSVP by March 1, 2013
Contact Krista Manrique krista@poetshouse.org - (212) 431-7920, ext. 2830
Join us for an unforgettable evening celebrating humanity's most transcendent art. Esteemed wine importer Neal Rosenthal provides elegant pairings while poets Daniel Halpern, Sharon Olds, Charles Simic, current U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey and Anne Waldman tantalize our imaginations over an intimate three-course meal at Danny Meyer's award-winning North End Grill. Kevin Young serves as the host of this gastronomic feast for poets and friends.
6 - 7pm: Champagne Toasts at Poets House
7 - 9pm: Dinner with Wine & Poetry Pairings at North End Grill
Tickets: $750 ($500 tax-deductible) Places are limited.
RSVP by March 1, 2013
Contact Krista Manrique krista@poetshouse.org - (212) 431-7920, ext. 2830
Event Sponsored By:
Poets House
Event Type:
Other Events
Monday, March 18, 2013
THREE MINUTES FOR GOOD BOOKS ~
Books or Music ~
Books or Music ~
Joshua Burkett, Time-Lag 059
Jess O! Tricky Cad & Other Jessoterica, Siglio, 2012 (Jess Collins)
Jack Collom, Second Nature, Instance Press, 2012
Clark Coolidge, 88 Sonnets, Fence Books, 2012
Jonathan Greene, Lustre, Of The Everyday, Common Epihanies, Broadstone Books, 2012
Donald A. Heneghan, City Lights Pocket Poets Series 1955-2005, The Grolier Club, 2005
George Kalamaras, The Mining Camps of the Mouth, New Michigan Press, 2012
Louise Landes Levi and Cralan Kelder, ED. IL. Bagatto, 2013, Broadside #13, Amsterdam, 2012
Kay Larson, Where the Heart Beats, Penguin, 2012
Heller Levinson, From Stone This Running, Black Widow Press, 2011
Robin Magowan, Internal Weather, Pasdeloup Press, 2010
Jeffrey D. Marshall, The Inquest, University of Vermont Press, 2006
Mike Mauri, A Family of Skunks, Recession Editions Press, 2011
Ken McCullough, Broken Gates, Red Dragonfly Press, 2012
Tom Piazza, The Southern Journey of Alan Lomax, Norton, 2013
Francis Poole and Mark Terrill, The Spleen of Madrid, The Feral Press, 2012
Andrew Schelling, A Possible Bag, Singing Horse Press, 2013
T. Kilgore Splake, Rosetta Cafe, Shoe Music Press, 2012
David Thomson, The Big Screen, Farrar, 2012
Paul Vangelisti, Wholly Falsetto With People Dance, Otis Books, 2013
Once In Vermont films © bob arnold
Jess O! Tricky Cad & Other Jessoterica, Siglio, 2012 (Jess Collins)
Jack Collom, Second Nature, Instance Press, 2012
Clark Coolidge, 88 Sonnets, Fence Books, 2012
Jonathan Greene, Lustre, Of The Everyday, Common Epihanies, Broadstone Books, 2012
Donald A. Heneghan, City Lights Pocket Poets Series 1955-2005, The Grolier Club, 2005
George Kalamaras, The Mining Camps of the Mouth, New Michigan Press, 2012
Louise Landes Levi and Cralan Kelder, ED. IL. Bagatto, 2013, Broadside #13, Amsterdam, 2012
Kay Larson, Where the Heart Beats, Penguin, 2012
Heller Levinson, From Stone This Running, Black Widow Press, 2011
Robin Magowan, Internal Weather, Pasdeloup Press, 2010
Jeffrey D. Marshall, The Inquest, University of Vermont Press, 2006
Mike Mauri, A Family of Skunks, Recession Editions Press, 2011
Ken McCullough, Broken Gates, Red Dragonfly Press, 2012
Tom Piazza, The Southern Journey of Alan Lomax, Norton, 2013
Francis Poole and Mark Terrill, The Spleen of Madrid, The Feral Press, 2012
Andrew Schelling, A Possible Bag, Singing Horse Press, 2013
T. Kilgore Splake, Rosetta Cafe, Shoe Music Press, 2012
David Thomson, The Big Screen, Farrar, 2012
Paul Vangelisti, Wholly Falsetto With People Dance, Otis Books, 2013
Once In Vermont films © bob arnold
Sunday, March 17, 2013
DREAM RIDER ~
THE MOST INCREDIBLE BEAT DREAM in the world, it's near St. Rita's church, on that street from Moody, but as my mother and sister Nin and I are traveling up Mammoth Road on some kind of train a woman rushes up shouting "I want to see Dinah Shore!" — She, Dinah, lives right up the street, right at the location of that grammar school — in a house — she has a "canary yellow" jeepster or convertible, which I point out to the lady saying, "That'll be her house there, Olivia DeHaviland has a canary yellow car" — (confusing the names) — My mother and sister accompany the woman: but I stay behind in a kind of suddenly transplaced Sarah Avenue house, it's Sunday, I'm the 30 year old beat brother and loafer of the family — "Dinah Shore" is standing in front of her house, and, seeing that I had directed the woman autograph hound to her she says, bleakly looking at me in an "official" or "Hollywood courteous" way — Wont you come in with us?" (for a bleary visit) —
"Oh no — I'm busy — " but, they can see that I'm yielding and in my head I've started calculating advantages I can get from knowing "Olivia de Haviland" — So I gave in, but in such a beat obvious way, and we go on in —
"I'm a novelist," I announce forthwith," you should read my book," I say to the hostess — "Your husband is a writer too — a very great writer, Marcus Goodrich." Then the persistentifiction I have that Dinah Shore is really Olivia de Haviland has to break down here and I say "Oh well, of course, yes, you're Dinah Shore, I keep thinking you're Olivia de Haviland" — but this is so gauche — and I havent shaved and stand there in her parlor, she is bleakly attentive, I'm like a thinner younger Major Hoople who really had a small taste of early success but then lost it and came home to live off his mother and sister but goes on "writing" and acting like an "author" — on the little street — But now, my sister sees that I am botching everything so she steps in and in an even more beat awful gauche way begins to try to impress Dinah with a kind of halting Canuck-English speech (attempts at 'social smartness') (and really painful to hear) goes into some speech about how this and that, and so on, to show how really chic she's been at one time, we've been, our really more elegant real backgrounds than what shows (and in spite of this pitiful brother, and she's spoken up really to cover me up and also cut me, as she has her own ideas about how to impress people like Dinah Shore) to which Dinah listens even more bleakly — and my mother standing by like the original lady who wanted an autograph — it ends on this bleak beat note . . .with me all anxious and chewing my nails —the comic opera of our real days —
I'm also a neighborhood self-styled roue' ready to make all the housewives but they don't really want any part of me, except a few of the older ones who want to have something on my mother —
Dinah Shore entertains US troops at a show in France, Aug 1944
THE MOST INCREDIBLE BEAT DREAM in the world, it's near St. Rita's church, on that street from Moody, but as my mother and sister Nin and I are traveling up Mammoth Road on some kind of train a woman rushes up shouting "I want to see Dinah Shore!" — She, Dinah, lives right up the street, right at the location of that grammar school — in a house — she has a "canary yellow" jeepster or convertible, which I point out to the lady saying, "That'll be her house there, Olivia DeHaviland has a canary yellow car" — (confusing the names) — My mother and sister accompany the woman: but I stay behind in a kind of suddenly transplaced Sarah Avenue house, it's Sunday, I'm the 30 year old beat brother and loafer of the family — "Dinah Shore" is standing in front of her house, and, seeing that I had directed the woman autograph hound to her she says, bleakly looking at me in an "official" or "Hollywood courteous" way — Wont you come in with us?" (for a bleary visit) —
"Oh no — I'm busy — " but, they can see that I'm yielding and in my head I've started calculating advantages I can get from knowing "Olivia de Haviland" — So I gave in, but in such a beat obvious way, and we go on in —
"I'm a novelist," I announce forthwith," you should read my book," I say to the hostess — "Your husband is a writer too — a very great writer, Marcus Goodrich." Then the persistentifiction I have that Dinah Shore is really Olivia de Haviland has to break down here and I say "Oh well, of course, yes, you're Dinah Shore, I keep thinking you're Olivia de Haviland" — but this is so gauche — and I havent shaved and stand there in her parlor, she is bleakly attentive, I'm like a thinner younger Major Hoople who really had a small taste of early success but then lost it and came home to live off his mother and sister but goes on "writing" and acting like an "author" — on the little street — But now, my sister sees that I am botching everything so she steps in and in an even more beat awful gauche way begins to try to impress Dinah with a kind of halting Canuck-English speech (attempts at 'social smartness') (and really painful to hear) goes into some speech about how this and that, and so on, to show how really chic she's been at one time, we've been, our really more elegant real backgrounds than what shows (and in spite of this pitiful brother, and she's spoken up really to cover me up and also cut me, as she has her own ideas about how to impress people like Dinah Shore) to which Dinah listens even more bleakly — and my mother standing by like the original lady who wanted an autograph — it ends on this bleak beat note . . .with me all anxious and chewing my nails —the comic opera of our real days —
I'm also a neighborhood self-styled roue' ready to make all the housewives but they don't really want any part of me, except a few of the older ones who want to have something on my mother —
____________________
JACK KEROUAC
Book of Dreams
(unabridged edition)
City Lights 2001
Dinah Shore entertains US troops at a show in France, Aug 1944
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Friday, March 15, 2013
New from Longhouse ~
( Spring 2013 )
( Spring 2013 )
Steven Manuel, First Ayres
Three color booklet of new poems
by Steven Manuel in fold-out splendor.
Both signed and unsigned editions.
by Steven Manuel in fold-out splendor.
Both signed and unsigned editions.
from Longhouse
Signed limited edition $12.95
Unsigned $7.95
(International orders kindly inquire about shipping)
order here through Paypal (plus $2 s/h)
Thomas Cochran, Little Poems
Three color booklet of new poems
by Thomas Cochran in fold-out splendor.
Both signed and unsigned editions.
by Thomas Cochran in fold-out splendor.
Both signed and unsigned editions.
from Longhouse
Signed limited edition $12.95
Unsigned $7.95
(International orders kindly inquire about shipping)
order here through Paypal (plus $2 s/h)
Krista Feakes, To Where I Walk
Three color booklet of new poems
by Krista Feakes in fold-out splendor.
Both signed and unsigned editions.
by Krista Feakes in fold-out splendor.
Both signed and unsigned editions.
from Longhouse
Signed limited edition $12.95
Unsigned $7.95
(International orders kindly inquire about shipping)
order here through Paypal (plus $2 s/h)
Jason Watts, nothing is looking
Three color booklet of new poems
by Jason Watts in fold-out splendor.
Both signed and unsigned editions.
by Jason Watts in fold-out splendor.
Both signed and unsigned editions.
from Longhouse
Signed limited edition $12.95
Unsigned $7.95
(International orders kindly inquire about shipping)
order here through Paypal (plus $2 s/h)
Forthcoming:
A booklet of scattered gems translated by Robin Magowan & Reza Saberi
of Saeb Tabrizi
A new book of prose poems, photographs and art work by Bob Arnold
A book of early travel years by Janine Pommy Vega
Thursday, March 14, 2013
"love iz a big fat turkey and
every day iz thanksgiving" ~
brown and solemn
the dog jumps up on the bed
crawls over me.
"are you the Word?" I ask him.
he doesn't answer.
"are you the Word? I'm looking for the Word."
he has brown and solemn eyes.
"I'm waiting for the Word, " I tell him,
"I'm walking around like a man
in a large hot
frying pan."
he wags his tail and tries to
lick my face.
"listen," she says from the bathroom,
"why don't you get out of bed
and stop talking to that dog?"
my parents didn't understand me
neither.
_______________________________________
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
What Matters Most Is How Well You
Walk Through The Fire
(Black Sparrow 1999)
every day iz thanksgiving" ~
brown and solemn
the dog jumps up on the bed
crawls over me.
"are you the Word?" I ask him.
he doesn't answer.
"are you the Word? I'm looking for the Word."
he has brown and solemn eyes.
"I'm waiting for the Word, " I tell him,
"I'm walking around like a man
in a large hot
frying pan."
he wags his tail and tries to
lick my face.
"listen," she says from the bathroom,
"why don't you get out of bed
and stop talking to that dog?"
my parents didn't understand me
neither.
_______________________________________
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
What Matters Most Is How Well You
Walk Through The Fire
(Black Sparrow 1999)
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
ALVIN LEE ~
George Kalamaras
The Bluest Blues
The bluest blues. Your
scorching fingers, at Woodstock, I wished the world had never seen.
( 19 December 1944 ~ 6 March 2013 )
George Kalamaras
The Bluest Blues
—for Alvin Lee, 1944 –
2013
It happens that quickly.
The bluest blues.
Sometimes it’s a knife-cut, something horribly wrong growing
inside the one we love.
It’s rarely as dramatic as a house burning. Or mistakenly drinking a glass of bedside lye.
You’re gone, Alvin. A
decade older than my fifty-six years.
Let me be clear: I could never have survived age thirteen without
you.
Nor sixteen. Eighteen. Even twenty-five. Let me count the scars.
My thirteen years then were simple. The Temptations and the Supremes.
Are You Experienced? Rubber Soul.
Disraeli Gears.
Then you sang, “I Can’t Keep from Crying, Sometimes,” and
suddenly neither could I.
Why is it we are born in certain centuries into one
another’s lives?
We never met, but like the night possum, we track one
another’s marsupial past.
We never met, but paramecia on the wrist remind us of ways
we knew before we poured
into the body’s pouch.
We never met, but I see your barn studio collapse that day from
the gutters, from the rain.
Never met. A sign,
that even while recording On the Road to
Freedom, liberation was
never easy.
Your dear friend, George Harrison, was fortunate, having not
yet arrived from next door.
Stevie Winwood and Mylon LeFevre were outside, discussing a take, smoking a joint.
What if you’d been inside, recording a track? What if George had lent his fame to the lp,
rather than the
credit, Hari Georgeson?
What if I’d never heard Cricklewood
Green? Spent night after night head-phoned
to
“50,000 Miles
Beneath My Brain”?
We wake some mornings with blistering snow in the gut, saying
yes and no at once.
We go in for a routine procedure, telling the one we love
what we want later for dinner.
Small things.
Large. We assume there is time to
love the mice. Brush the dog.
Walk the daughter’s hair.
That we might finally get it right.
Spend our lives with a Gibson hollow-body 335, peace sign
decal pasted onto the axe.
Keeping ourselves that
open is what allows us to receive.
Roaring riffs from the gods.
Clouded—crowds gathered, thereafter, in stadiums for only the
lightning part of you.
Now you have drifted sadly back to ash.
It happens that quickly.
Something horribly blue gone suddenly wrong.
I was thirteen, Alvin.
Now I’m fifty-six.
A life together we never met.
The stutter-shove of a guitar god is true.
The blue blue bluest of the blues.
( 19 December 1944 ~ 6 March 2013 )
George Harrison & Alvin Lee
our thanks to: "Linda Cain, Managing Editor, Chicago Blues Guide"
Monday, March 11, 2013
With a group of friends I set out in search of the Mountain which is the path uniting Earth with Heaven and which must exist somewhere on our planet and must be the abode of a superior humanity; this was proved to our reason by the man we shall call Father Sogol, the most experienced of us in things of the mountain and the leader of the expedition.
And now we have landed on the unknown continent, this kernel of higher substances implanted in the earth's crust, protected from the eyes of the curious and the greedy by the curvature of its space — like a drop of mercury, impenetrable by virtue of its surface tension to the finger that seeks its center.
By our calculations, thinking of nothing else, by our desires, abandoning every other hope, by our efforts, renouncing all bodily comfort, we gained entry into this new world. So it seemed to us.
But we learned later that if we were able to reach the foot of Mount Analogue, it was because the invisible doors of that invisible country had been opened for us by those who guard them. The cock crowing in the milky dawn thinks its call raises the sun; the child howling in a closed room thinks its cries open the door. But the sun and the mother go their way, following the laws of their beings.
Those who see us, even though we cannot see ourselves, opened the door for us, answering our puerile calculations, our unsteady desires, and our awkward efforts with a generous welcome.
_______________________________
RENE DAUMAL
Mount Analogue
A Novel of Symbolically
Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures
in Mountain Climbing
translation by Roger Shattuck
(Penguin)
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