READING ~

Parnassus

 poetry in review Vol 33 / Nos. 1 & 2, 2013

Published annually

Editor & publisher: Herbert Leibowitz

Editorial office: 205 W. 89th Street

NY, NY 10024

Handsomely printed by Cadmus Press

first photo : ken heyman
2nd & 3rd photos: bob arnold

GOT GAME ~

I won't make the laundry list of complaints and foibles and excuses, mishaps, abuses, and general blah that now faces most excursions out into the world, with the media, watching a contest, and what used to be called rigamarole.

Last night the NBA basketball team the San Antonio Spurs, all in black and about as gentle of a giant one can see today on any athletic field — no players bunched up with muscles and tats, or playing incessantly with their mouth guard — came into Miami, where Caucasian Floridians all wear that color in unison they consider a color: white — and with the dreaded ten or so days off waiting in the wings for Miami to take care of the Indiana Pacers, and NOT using it as an excuse why they played Game One rusty and off-kilter, but instead came in and played Game One from the first second to the last second with an uncanny ability to fool everyone — pro-tv announcers, seasoned know-it-alls, betters, gamers, and thousands and thousands flocking into the stadium — with terrific James Naismith basketball. It's been a long time since any of us have seen this done. I would bet it made Mr. Bill Russell proud.

Now, granted it may not last. Tim Duncan is playing at an elder age, already defying every sorry ass prediction, and playing ten years younger in Game One. Having Tony Parker anywhere nearby as your point guard would help anyone. It helps me! and I'm just observing. . .terrific eye and hand coordination hustle with gear ratio greased teamwork. A beauty to behold.

At the end of the game Duncan and Parker walked off the court and Miami fans were waiting for them in the stands, booing at the two right in their ears as they went by.

These fans don't know basketball.

  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Naismith 

FREEDA PEEPLE ~

AMERICAN PIE ~

For half a century, never letting up, Ralph Nader has zeroed in on faults & liars in this country. Every country needs such a consciousness. Every individual needs such a voice in their own head. I've never agreed with all of Nader's actions, and sometimes he can be slipshod: certainly Barack Obama isn't the biggest "con man" ever to be in the White House. So Nader sometimes hits a foul ball, while consistently smacking doubles, triples, home runs and many runs in. Hear him out.

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/6/4/american_fascism_ralph_nader_decries_how

http://www.theatreinchicago.com/playdetail.php?playID=653

END ZONE ~

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175707/tomgram%3A_noam_chomsky%2C_the_eve_of_destruction

BASHO ~

Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo

if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must

leave your subjective preoccupations with yourself. Otherwise you

impose yourself on the object and do not learn. Your poetry issues

of its own accord when you and the object have become one —

when you have plunged deep enough into the object to see

something like a hidden glimmering there. However well phrased

your poetry may be, if your feeling is not natural — if the object and

yourself are separate — then your poetry is not true poetry but

merely your subjective counterfeit.

                                       _______________________

Matsuo Basho

The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches
(translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa, 1966)

photo : © Tony McNicol

LOVECRAFT ~

H.P. Lovecraft

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jun/03/hp-lovecraft-writer-out-time

CLASSIC ~

Nonny Hogrogian

Carrot Cake

Greenwillow Books

1977

MEMORIES LOOK AT ME ~

A June morning, too soon to wake,

too late to fall asleep again.



I must go out — the greenery is dense

with memories, they follow me with their gaze.



They can't be seen, they merge completely into

the background, true chameleons.



They are so close that I can hear them breathe

though the birdsong is deafening.



_____________________________

Tomas Transtromer

Memories Look At Me
translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton

(New Directions, 2011) 

LISTENING ~

“People read with their ears, whether they know it or not,” William Zinsser




Listen:


Bo Carter, Banana In Your Fruit Basket; Brian Eno, Music For Films; Bettye Lavette, Tell Me A Lie; George Jones & Tammy Wynette, Golden Ring; Zappa's Universe; Sufjan Stevens, The Age of ADZ; Guy Clark, Workbench Songs; Bobby Valentin, Soy Boricua; Bjork, Biophilia;La Sera, Hardly Art; Amira Medunjanin, Amulette; Book A Trip: The Psych Pop Sounds of Capitol Records; Laura Marling, I Speak Because I Can; The Devil's Swing/El Columpio Del Diablo; Patti Smith, Banga; Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, Live at the Haunted House; Ry Cooder, I, Flathead; The Wailin' Jennys, Bright Morning Star; Paquito D'Rivera, The Jazz Chamber Trio; Miles Davis Quintet, Live in Europe 1967; Mento Merengue Meringue; Dee Dee Bridgewater, J' at Deux Amours; Patsy Cline, The Essential Collection;
Speedy West, Steel Guitar; Etta James, Mystery Lady; Eva Cassidy, Simply Eva;
 

LOVE POEM ~

Love Poem



I hate all these new movies

I hate the sameness of the new theaters
 
I hate the cold seats in the poor old theaters
 
I hate seeing the young kids waiting in line for the film I just hated
 
I hate the parents that let these kids see films that hate
 
I hate you, I know I do
 
I hate the big parking lots
 
I hate the ticket stubs that mean nothing afterwards
 
I hate having to talk about these films
 
I hate not being able to talk about these films
 
I hate that paradox
 
I hate films that have great opening credits and nothing more, nothing more
 
I hate going into a film and coming out seeing that it snowed on the earth while I was away
 
I hate the fact movies no longer tell stories
 
I hate that everyone but me wants to be a movie star
 
I hate the idea that I am a movie star and you just don’t know it
 
I hate the people that don’t watch closing credits
 
I hate the punk who comes in too early to clean the aisles
 
I hate everyone who comes too late
 
I hate anyone who is in my seat — 8 rows up, center
 
I hate anyone who is in my other seat — backrow, center
 
I hate anyone in any of my other seats
 
I hate tubs of popcorn; think of it, tubs!
 
I hate balcony seats that are closed
 
I hate lit EXIT signs and miss old wall clocks
 
I hate smug couples
 
I hate fat farts
 
I hate parents who won’t let their kids run
 
I hate people who stand up behind me
 
I hate the guy who snuck up and criticized us for a film we took our son to then ran away
 
I hate cowards
 
I hate I didn’t get a good look at him
 
I hate the fact it happened while I watched the closing credits



_________________________________________

Bob Arnold
from something forthcoming

 The audience with the film "Gaslight",  Grauman's Chinese Theatre

IT'S NEVER TOO LATE ~

Here are a few photographs from just a few days ago in the northeast as today's weather and tomorrow and the next plan to sky rocket into the 90s ~

Heading up Mt. Greylock (Adams, Mass.)

Whiteface Mountain, NY State, two-feet

In the region, 18 inches

We started our woodstove burning early last October 2012 and lit one match and that fire hasn't gone out until this morning (we think). The longest continuous wood fire we've ever had in five decades of heating our home with wood.

See you at the swimming hole.

snow photos: @massEMA / @tristateweather

WOODBURNERS WE RECOMMEND ~

THE WORLD DOESN'T END ~

We were so poor I had to take the place of the bait in the

mousetrap. All alone in the cellar, I could hear them pacing

upstairs, tossing and turning in their beds. "These are dark

and evil days," the mouse told me as he nibbled my ear. Years

passed. My mother wore a cat-fur collar which she stroked

until its sparks lit up the cellar.


__________________

Charles Simic

Houghton Mifflin, 2013

SCUFFY ~

art © bob arnold

EARTH ~

"lilacs"
photo © bob arnold

spring 2013

WONDER WHEEL ~

The Klezmatics sing the lyrics of Woody Guthrie

TORNADO ~

He Had 7 or 8 Horses
_______________ 
explaining a tornado



 


First he called it a monster

then a giant lawn mower

then a flying landfill









 

little kids come out of the

wreckage luckily alive with faces

that look again like the newborn








 


 
state troopers hats look nothing like those worn in Vermont

the Oklahoma hat looks like a hard

shelled insect


 








 



I break

when I hear the radio announcer's

voice break









 


the tornado is coming from across the earth —

you make a mistake wondering

what does it all mean?









 

we're becoming used to children dying

this should be given some thought. . .

and more thought



 









 

their last moment on earth

the children were seen

hugging a wall










 
he had 7 or 8 horses —

now he has 1 horse

and no shirt











they were bleeding and hurt teachers

carrying children out of the wreckage

holding them like parents






 








 
this is happening faraway —

yet on the only planet

with life











neighborhood after neighborhood

wiped away

back to earth











it all comes it all goes

but memories

are fixed




 







 
Tornadoes

and bedrock —

the Indians knew to keep moving




for big & little







He Had 7 or 8 Horses
_______________
 explaining a tornado




 by © Bob Arnold
Longhouse ~ Vermont
May 2013


 

BYE BYE BLACKBIRD ~

MYSELF ~
(1926)

Arthur Waley

by Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892-1927)



When I am insulted, for some reason or other it is always good while before I am annoyed. But after about an hour I do invariably begin to feel gradually more and more annoyed.

When I saw Rodin's Count Ugoli—or rather, a photograph of the Count Ugoli—certain homosexual passages in my life suddenly came into my mind.

When I look at trees, it seems to me quite unbelievable that I, like any other human being, have a front and back side.

Sometimes I become a tyrant and want to see large numbers of men and women eaten by lions and tigers. But the mere sight of a bit of bloodstained gauze lying on a surgical tray gives me a sudden feeling of physical indisposition.

I sometimes feel about other people that I should be glad if they were dead, and some of the people about whom I have felt this were my nearest relations.

I have no conscience of any kind, not even an artistic conscience; but nerves I have in abundance.

I am entirely devoid of hate, but I make up for this from time to time by outburst of contempt.

I know by experience that among my own characteristics the one that fills me with the greatest loathing of myself is the fact that I find falseness everywhere. Moreover, I do not, even at the time, get the slightest feeling of satisfaction by these discoveries.

I listen very closely to the way different sorts of people speak. For example, the way the boy from the fishmonger's says konnichi wa (good morning). He doesn't end it with a vowel sound, but says something more like konchiwaas. I don't know why he puts this unnecessary s at the end of the word.

I am not merely one person. I am a son, a landlord, a male, in my view of life a realist, by temperament a romantic, in philosophy a sceptic, and so on. There's nothing particularly inconvenient about this. Yet I am tormented by a perpetual conflict as to which of these is really me.

Whenever I get a letter or anything else from a woman whom I do not know, I cannot help beginning at once to wonder whether she is good-looking.

All words go in pairs that are like the head and tail of a coin, I call so-and-so pretentious; but that does not mean that in the relevant respects he is at all different from me. When I behave in the same way I am only showing a decent amount of self respect.

When I go to a doctor, I never succeed in telling him anything definite or precise. With the result that I come away feeling that I have simply been shamming.

In proportion as I move away from where I am living, I feel my identity growing dimmer and dimmer. This phenomenon seems to begin as soon as I am about thirty miles from home.

My spiritual life never goes smoothly forward, but progresses in jumps, like a flea.

When I meet anyone I know by sight, I always bow. If he does not notice that I am doing so, I have a feeling of being out of pocket.

Akutagawa Ryunosuke was a prolific and intensely original writer whose influential career came abruptly to an end when he committed suicide at the age of thirty-five. This fragment, written shortly before his death, is one of his few autobiographical writings.

___________________

Translated by ARTHUR WALEY
edited by Ivan Morris:
Madly Singing in the Mountains
(Harper 1972)